Published by The Evansville Courier

Domestic products, if available, were rationed. Shortages were the norm, and newspapers were not spared.

The government announced in January 1943 that it would require newspapers to cut newsprint use by 10 percent. By October, The Evansville Courier froze circulation at 50,000 daily, discontinued street sales and began rationing advertising.

A week later, it announced it would publish classified advertising only in its Vanderburgh County editions, and then cut comics in The Sunday Courier and Press from 16 pages to 12.

By January 1944, the newsprint shortage forced The Courier to reduce the size of the newspaper and again reduce the Sunday comics section, this time from 12 to eight pages.

But news pages continued to be chock-full of war news.

A standing column every day kept track of Tri-State men and women in uniform - their training, transfers, battle experiences, decorations and return home.

Reports of casualties among area troops began to trickle in, but soon became part of a daily list - the dead, the wounded, the missing in action and the prisoners of war.

That list grew dramatically after the June 6, 1944, Normandy invasion.

The Courier's war report also covered home-front efforts - rationing information, price-control violations, scrap drives, bond drives, USO activities, milkweed pod collection contests and a wide variety of Office of Civilian Defense programs.

Volunteers were needed everywhere. To register volunteers, Evansville shut down on Jan. 25, 1942, and 90,590 people 15 years old and older and their skills were cataloged.

A number of Courier people held posts connected to the local war effort.

Courier board member C.B. Enlow, president of National City Bank, was chairman of the local Office of Civilian Defense; his son, Robert C. Enlow, who would become president of The Courier in 1952, was chairman of one of two Office of Price Administration boards; Editor Don Scism was chairman of the Civil Defense Committee on Care of Children in Wartime; and Courier cartoonist Karl Kae Knecht was chairman of the Civil Defense Transportation Committee.

To boost morale among war workers and promote the purchase of war bonds and stamps, a number of celebrities visited Evansville. The comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello spent the day in Evansville on Aug. 14, 1942, and sold more than $650,000 in war bonds. More than $150 million in bonds were sold locally by war's end.

Other celebrities who visited Evansville included Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau; actor-dancer Gene Kelly; Mrs. Mark Clark, wife of the Allied commander in Italy; and James V. Forrestal, undersecretary of the Navy who eventually was named Navy secretary.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Evansville and Republic Aviation on April 27, 1943. With voluntary censorship in force, The Courier didn't report on the visit until April 30, after Roosevelt was back in Washington.

In recognition of Evansville's good work and victory in Europe, Evansville Day was celebrated on June 23, 1945. More than 150,000 people jammed Main Street to watch the parade and later commissioning of the USS Vanderburgh.

With the announcement of Japan's surrender on Aug. 14, 1945, Main again was crammed with celebrating people.