| Original caption: “Is Your Trip Necessary? Millions of Troops are on the Move.” On December 18, 1941, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) signed Executive Order 8989, establishing the Office of Defense Transportation (ODT) within the Office of Emergency Management. The ODT’s ultimate mission was to “assure maximum utilisation of the domestic transportation facilities of the Nation for the successful prosecution of the war.” The most important method of controlling travel demand was limiting the gasoline civilians could buy by rationing the supply. The need to conserve fuel was obvious to civilians on the East Coast. While the details of German U-boat operations were a military secret, coastal residents witnessed the attacks and the media publicised them widely. The gasoline, diesel, and heating oil shortages were significant because tanker ships delivered nearly 90 percent of petroleum products to the East Coast. In areas that relied on shipments by pipeline, railcar, truck, or Pacific Ocean tankers, oil was in plentiful supply. For this reason, when gasoline rationing began in March 1942, it was limited to the 17 eastern states. By the end of 1942, the ODT and the OPA extended rationing to the entire country. Propaganda campaigns to convince American civilians to conserve transportation resources were essential to the ODT’s work, but civilian compliance was voluntary. “Is Your Trip Necessary?” “Don’t travel!” “Avoid Rush Hour Travel,” “Save Rubber,” and “Don’t Waste Transportation” campaigns appealed to patriotism, fear, pride, self-interest, and sentiment. Still, the ODT never directly prevented individuals from buying an inter-city train or bus ticket. In part, the voluntary campaigns were recognition that the line between essential and non-essential travel was not always clear. Keeping up morale and ensuring that productivity remained as high as possible depended, in part, on ensuring that some purely social and personal travel was permitted. So, instead of outright banning “non-essential” travel, the ODT and OWI made sure the message got out that Americans should: “Have a substantial reason for journeys, buy tickets early, travel light…The Office of Defense Transportation emphasizes ‘the need’ for travel. Please don’t make a journey unless there is a real need for it, is the word passed out by the ODT…The person who travels from place to place for fun is not traveling today. Packed trains, waits to enter the diner, a lack of porters, and other attendants to smooth the travel path have eliminated him. Vacations were not abolished. In fact, workers were encouraged to take breaks, including travelling to beach or mountain resorts, but they were asked to take their vacations using as little transportation as possible. If they didn’t “Vacation at home!” as they were admonished, they were told to take all their vacation at once, make just 1 trip to their destination, and 1 return. No weekend jaunts several times a year; that was unpatriotic. If civilians had to travel – for business, bereavement, or illness – they were told to travel mid-week on inter-city trips or during non-peak hours on local buses and trains. In either case, they were chided to give up their seats for travelling servicemen and women. Even businesses reminded consumers to carry their purchases home, rather than use delivery services, and to shop early so that Christmas packages would avoid the December crush. People had another incentive to co-operate: the discomfort of travelling during wartime. Transit systems and inter-city motor buses and trains were crowded, poorly maintained, and offered fewer amenities than before the war. Dellie Hahne (February 4, 1920 – July 16, 2009), a retired Los Angeles schools music teacher who was a Red Cross nurse’s aide during the war, relocated numerous times during the war as she followed her husband, an Army Air Force sergeant, from post to post. She described inter-city travel at the time in this way: “That’s how I got to see the misery of the war, not the excitement. Pregnant women who could barely balance in a rocking train, going to see their husbands for the last time before the guys were sent overseas. Women are coming back from seeing their husbands and traveling with small children. Trying to feed their kids, diaper their kids. I felt sorriest for them. It suddenly occurred to me that this wasn’t half as much fun as I’d been told it would be. I just thanked God I had no kids. We didn’t fly. It was always a train. You often stood in the vestibule and hoped to Christ you could find someplace to put your suitcase and sit down. No place to sleep, sit up three, four nights. The trains were filthy and crowded.” Transit ridership boomed, despite the crowding and lack of maintenance during the war years. Buses accounted for 11.1 percent of all passenger miles by 1943, and railways 33.2 percent. In 1944, their shares were larger still. By 1946, overall ridership numbers had almost doubled, and American transit achieved its peak year of ridership ever of about 23.4 1,000,000,000 passenger trips. Though no statistics for non-motorised modes of transport are available, it is clear that people turned to them in increasing numbers. Americans walked more, bicycled more, and even rode horses and used horse-drawn carriages. News reporters congratulated the civilian who got around without motorised vehicles and found humour in the novelty. But it was necessary to walk and bicycle – fuel was rationed, spare parts were hard to find, distances between bus stops were longer than before the war, and transit vehicles were overcrowded. Artist Montgomery E. Melbourne (July 11, 1893 – September 11, 1970), an advertising artist with Brown and Williams Tobacco Company, designed “Chilly Willy” advertisements for Kool cigarettes; “When It Rains It Pours” for Morton Salt; “Give Your Car A Kick In The Gas” for Gulf Oil; “Tiger Paws” for Uniroyal Tire; and “Spearmint Boy” for Wrigley’s, among an extensive portfolio. He was also an interior designer and architect who renovated Argentina’s presidential mansion in the 1960s. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0908.jpg |
| Image Size | 14.67 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 8501 x 10706 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Office of War Information |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 1, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Washington |
| State or Province | District of Columbia |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-44-PA-1358 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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