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Nagasaki Destruction, August 1945

I am continuing to read through the Red Lion Echoes newsletters from World War II. Previous posts told of two Colonels from Yoe, Red Lion man present at Tojo's attempted suicide and the quiet heroism of a Red Lion sailor.

The photos above are four of a dozen published in the January 1946 issue of Red Lion Echoes. These scenes of the horrible devastation at Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 were loaned to the Echoes editor by Sgt. Joe Tyson, 7th Combat Cargo Sqdn., 2nd Combat Cargo Group.

I assume they were taken by Sgt. Tyson soon after the bombing. One photo seems to show servicemen riding in an open truck as a lone bicyclist passes by.

They really do underscore the hell of war.

The editor of Red Lion Echoes wrote:

I am still going through some of the Red Lion Echoes passed on to me by a friend. The World War II newsletter was for and about Red Lion area service men and women.

Some of my favorite historical sources are letters, diaries and newspapers, all created at the time. The following letter was shared with the community in the December 1945 issue of Red Lion Echoes. I'm sure similar letters were written many times over. You get the feeling that the officer whose life was saved by the Red Lion seaman thought that sailor might be too modest to relate the story when he returned home.

The article reads:

It's amazing where York County people turn up.

As I posted earlier, a friend gave me some original copies of Red Lion Echoes, a small paper meant for the service people from the Red Lion area during World War II to keep them up to date on local happenings. The men and women who received the paper would write back to let everyone know what they were doing overseas.

Click here for pervious Echoes post.

Below is an excerpt of a letter from Captain C. William Trout to his parents in Red Lion. Captain Trout was serving in Japan, just after Japanese surrender, with the 441st Counter Intelligence Corps.

As I have pointed out before, York Countians have always been fond of entertainment. Theater, circus, movies--they have always been well received, with top national and international stars appearing here.

Then there were the amateur theatricals, always presented with enthusiasm, but not always with the best of talent. The item below, from the Red Lion news section of the February 3, 1908 York Daily gives a rather kind review of what sounds like a rather lame performance.

The most peculiar part is the rather odd thank-you gift given to the leader of the orchestra.

Lavish 1938 movie ad for the York theater

My post yesterday covered some of the movie theaters in York County and the variety of films they were showing Labor Day weekend in 1938. Now I'll tell you what else those avid movie goers had to choose from.

Click here to read the first movie post.

I checked city directories at the York County Heritage Trust Library/Archives today, so I can also let you know where the theaters were located.

Feel free to respond below with memories of those days 70 years ago when movies were king.

Dallastown to Red Lion, 1876 and 1928

A recent post related the troubles motorists had traveling from Dallastown to Red Lion in the fall of 1928 because of road construction and deep mud on the detour. I was asked exactly where those roads were.

Click here to read that post.

The state road that was being reconstructed was probably the short stretch of Route 74 that runs between Red Lion and Dallastown today. I don't think the path of that road changed much over the years, so it still pretty much follows the red line on the map.

As for the detour and the alternate route mentioned in the newspaper--I tried to reconstruct them using the 1876 Pomeroy, Whitman and Co. Atlas of York County, a present-day ADC atlas and the advice of a friend who knows the area.

You think road construction causes problems for motorists now? The following news article, from the October 19, 1928 York Gazette, might make you appreciate modern techniques.

“ARREST MAN AFTER TEN MILE CHASE--FIND HATCHET AND SEARCHLIGHT.” So screamed front page headlines in the April 20, 1908 York Gazette.

What was the crime?

One hundred and ten years ago an article on the front page of the Gazette starts out: "A gang of burglars raided the post offices at Dallastown and Red Lion sometime Monday night and succeeded in making a fairly good haul."

The first robbery was in Red Lion. The article states: "About 12 o'clock that night [Monday] a number of residents in the vicinity of the post office were awakened by the noise of an explosion. A family named Spangler residing in the office building, on hearing the explosion made an investigation of every room but the post office, and finding everything all right, retired to bed. At Hildebrand's hotel on the opposite side of the street the explosion awakened occupants of the house."

It goes on to say that:

We didn't know how bad smoking was for our health 90 years ago, when cigar factories were springing up everywhere. In York County, we knew cigars were very good for our economy. For well over 150 years, processing tobacco into cigars kept many York Countians gainfully employed.

Lewis Miller illustrated a group of youths, himself among them, making cigars in 1811 at the shop of "William Spangler, Tobacconist." They were Henry Sheffer, John Lehman, Jacob Weiser, Lewis Miller, Daniel Masse, Daniel Wolf, Emanuel Sheffer, John Jones, and Henry Wagner. Miller would have been around 15 at the time. Some of the boys look quite a bit younger.

According to the Red Lion Area Historical Society webpage, in the month of October 1929, 15 million cigars were shipped out of the Red Lion train station on the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad. This wouldn't have included the millions more made each month in factories large and small in York and just about every community in the county.

My grandfather, Edwin Shelley, converted a three-story house into a cigar factory in Lucky, Chanceford Township. Grandpa wasn't alone as shown in the following Gazette article from the fall of 1917: