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The country rallied around the war effort, and patriotic deeds were at an all-time high. As a teenager I wanted to do my share, though I was too young to join the military.
Two options were open to me, and I pursued both. I collected scrap metal for making war goods. This I did with great gusto, believing that every scrap I turned in would be transformed into ammunition or other equipment to defeat the enemy.
My second option was the Ground Observer Corps. With radar still in its infant stages, the government feared the possibility of a German bombing attack on East Coast cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington. They knew that German planes couldn’t fly over and return, but they might try suicide bombing. However, our government couldn’t yet identify incoming planes with radar.
To fill the radar gap, the US Army Air Corps set up a network of reporting towers at regular intervals from Maine to Florida along the East Coast. They trained civilian volunteers to man those stations and identify all planes, including military planes of the US, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan.
When I finished the intensive training course, I nearly burst with pride on receiving the certificate that declared I was a qualified member of the Ground Observer Corps. For the next year I served my weekly four-hour stint in a hilltop tower outside my New Jersey hometown. Whenever a plane flew within sight or earshot of my tower, I called a central line to describe it and its direction. Even if I could only hear it, I was to report what I heard.
By the time the Ground Observer Corps was replaced by sufficiently developed radar, I had learned a lot about the world.
I continued to feed my intense interest in the war on my daily bicycle newspaper route. As I folded my 50 papers and prepared to load them in my bag, I avidly read the front-page headlines. I followed discouraging reports and maps through 1942, and then the Allied forces’ changing fortunes leading up to the Axis powers’ surrender in 1945. I learned about places I’d never heard of, especially in the Pacific, such as Guadalcanal, Malaysia, Singapore, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and then, of course, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus, I was developing the broadest view of the world I’d ever had.
The war ended just before I turned 18, so I never entered the military. But the global understanding that I developed heavily influenced my spending the next 50 years in world missions.
Today the world is much smaller. We sit in our living rooms and actually see as well as hear or read about global events. But how much world news actually penetrates the hearts and minds of young people in relation to God’s work in global missions? Granted, we know about missions much more today than 50 years ago. But are our children and young people getting a picture that challenges them to get involved?
For years Patrick Johnstone has produced “Operation World,” probably the greatest single source available of up-to-date world missions information. “Window on the World” by Daphne Spraggett with Johnstone’s late wife, Jill, is a children’s version that provides the exciting global information that I gleaned in a far more limited way folding daily newspapers or sitting in a tower watching for planes.
Parents and local churches could creatively use these valuable books and other sources in regular youth programs. My father didn’t have such resources at hand when we were children, but he read us marvelous missionary biographies and stories on Sunday afternoons. I was thrilled and moved by vivid pictures and stories about John G. Paton who worked among cannibals of the South Sea.
I realize today some wonderful programs for children and youth open their eyes to missions. But there may be room for new and creative developments to grab the hearts and minds of this generation. Do we need a new Ground Observer Corps—a World Missions Observer Corps—to challenge our youth about what God’s doing in the world today?
David M. Howard is former president of Latin America Mission.