1

Detroit and the industrial region surrounding it, was plunged into semi-darkness as all except street lights and in war factories went out for fifteen minutes during a blackout drill on May 4, 1942.

2

Kids at a ball game at Briggs Stadium, Detroit, August, 1942.

3

Looking ahead to the possibility that gas masks may some day be a necessary part of their ensemble, these University of Detroit students were trying out masks in a practice drill on the campus on June 23, 1942.

4

The sign at the left, “My running days are over. My duty now is to lick the Japs,” explains what is happening to these onetime automobiles in Detroit, Michigan on January 23, 1942.

5

In Detroit’s Crowley-Milner department store, the head of the art department works with a new mannequin in July of 1941.

6

In this July 4, 1942 file photo, 28-ton tanks, called “General Grants” by U.S. forces in the Middle East who used them in the battle for Egypt, are turned out in mass production by the Chrysler Corporation’s tank arsenal in Detroit.

7

Female guards, placed on duty at the Naval Ordnance Plant, operated by the Hudson Motor Car Company in Detroit, Michigan, learn how to sight guns on August 7, 1942.

8

Detroit, Michigan. Shoppers at lunch at the Crowley-Milner department store in July of 1941.

9

Detroit police disperse white picketers who objected to occupancy by blacks of Sojourner Truth Federal housing project, erected in a predominately white neighborhood, on April 29. 1942.

10

Gas mask production. Lacing head harnesses of gas masks after they have passed through all the stages of assembly and made ready for packaging, is the job of this young woman who works in the Eureka Vacuum factory which has been converted to war production.

11

A woman passenger climbs out of the rear window of a tram in Detroit, Michigan, on June 21, 1943, after a mob halted the car in an effort to remove the black passengers on board during race riots.

12

A man is dragged from a street car on June 21, 1943, during fighting near Detroit’s downtown section.

13

Police attempt to break up an incident as race rioting flared in the downtown area of Detroit on June 21, 1943.

14

Police use tear gas to disperse a crowd gathered on the main street of Detroit, Michigan, in an effort to halt race rioting on June 21, 1943.

15

Huge anti-aircraft guns, the U.S. Army’s new powerful Stratosphere guns, are lined up in the final assembly area of the Grand Rapids stamping division of Fisher Body in Detroit on June 1, 1944, prior to shipping.

16

A view of Detroit, Michigan, taken by the Ford Motor Company’s advertising blimp on July 15, 1947.

17

Motorists line a street waiting to buy gasoline at 17 cents per gallon at this station in Detroit on September 24, 1945.

18

Men and women, formerly employed in defense work, crowd Detroit branch of War Manpower Commission to file claims for unemployment benefits and also register for new jobs on August 17, 1945.

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/detroit-early-1940s/

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