Joe Palooka Goes to War

[thedrifter]

Joe Palooka Goes to War <br />
<br />
In 1940, one man saw the gathering war clouds and decided to forgo his career and enlist in the United States Army. His name was Joe Palooka-and he was a comic strip...

[thedrifter]

By this time Joe Palooka was featured in newspapers in more than 20 countries. Even as Great Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Britons remained obsessed with Joe's adventures. When a wartime shortage of newsprint forced Britain's newspapers to scale back their editions, the editors at the London Star cancelled the newspaper's contract for the Palooka strip. Response from British fans was so vociferous that the paper sent a cable to the comic's syndication company. "War or no war, space or no space, London demands Joe Palooka," it read. "Please ship by Clipper immediately."

Yet not even Joe Palooka could protect London from German bombs. Following the German assault that quickly overwhelmed Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France in the spring and early summer of 1940, Hitler turned his attention to Great Britain as the Luftwaffe tried to bomb the island nation into submission.

With war clouds spreading, in September 1940 the U.S. Congress, at Roosevelt's urging, enacted the Selective Training and Service Act, the first peacetime draft in American history. Two months later, Fisher's all-American hero decided to enlist. He made his choice between the army and the navy, Joe admitted, by flipping a coin. Joe Palooka became the first comic strip character to sign up, a move that may have helped persuade some young Americans to do likewise.

Fisher immediately began communicating patriotic messages in the Palooka strip, and the U.S. Army responded with encouragement. Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson furnished Fisher with a letter that allowed the cartoonist to tour army training camps and gather information for his strip. Soon, Palooka was reporting to Fort Dix for basic training, and he eventually helped instruct new recruits. As he told an army buddy, "The world's gotta be rid of fascists ev'rewhere! !"

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Fisher wasted no time getting his hero into action. One strip published soon after the United States entered World War II saw Joe heading overseas on a troopship. During a boxing exhibition en route, Joe's sparring partner fell overboard. The good-hearted boxer plunged into the ocean to rescue him but instead found himself facing a surfacing U-boat. Joe climbed aboard, subdued the German vessel's officers as they clambered one by one from the conning tower, and captured the submarine-all while still clad in his boxing trunks.

It was February 1942 before Joe actually reached a battlefield, and Fisher took the opportunity to deliver a typically patriotic message. In this strip, Palooka was in a ramshackle house with another soldier, both attempting to shoot German snipers. As the action quiets and the two soldiers converse, Joe exclaims, "I like how labor an' employers is workin' t'gether now -we gotta depend on them as much as they gotta depend on us."

Fisher kept Joe in the thick of the action. Later in 1942 Palooka became trapped behind enemy lines in France following a commando raid. He managed to make it to England where he helped out British Intelligence on an important mission. At other times Joe fought with the Allies in North Africa, was wounded after parachuting into partisan Yugoslavia and joining forces with a patriot guerrilla army there, and finally reached the Dutch East Indies toward the end of his service. During his North African adventure Joe shot an escaping Nazi soldier in the back. This questionable act from the clean cut bastion of American fair play upset a number of readers who wrote to newspapers expressing their dismay. But perhaps Joe had merely taken to heart what his pal Jerry Leemy had told him sometime earlier: "Aren't we fightin' the dirtiest scum th' world ever seen fer gosh sakes??"

Millions of people on the home front followed Joe's adventures, but U.S. service personnel read them too in publications such as Yank and Stars and Stripes. An article by S.J. Monchak in the September 19, 1942, edition of Editor & Publisher noted the contribution that the nation's syndicated cartoonists made to maintaining the morale of civilians and soldiers alike. Monchak singled out Fisher's strip, saying the material in it was so authentic "that Palooka soon became known throughout the ranks as the soldier's best friend."

The armed services also used Pfc. Palooka's likeness in training manuals, recruitment materials, guides to invaded countries, and in hygiene instruction. When the army wanted to use the patriotic pugilist to explain the workings of the Officer Candidate School (OCS) in the strip, they offered Fisher an officer's commission for Joe. Fisher turned the offer down, not wanting to ruin Palooka's "common man" appeal. Fisher did devote some Sunday pages to the OCS, but Joe never rose above the rank of private first class.

And of course Fisher encouraged civilians to pull together in a united effort in the fight against German and Japanese aggression. Joe made numerous pronouncements about the importance of activity on the home front and took a stand against racism. "Anybuddy back home who's spreadin' intolerance against any person bucuz of his race, creed or color is spreadin' Nazi principals," Palooka said. Fisher also had Knobby find work in a defense plant while Ann became a Red Cross worker.

Joe Palooka remained popular after the war. The army used him in an educational comic book designed to assist soldiers in readjusting to civilian life. He also began appearing in his own comic book for the general public. A series of two-reel short films featured Joe Kirkwood as the good-natured boxer from 1946 until 1951, while a short-lived TV series ran in 1954. Ham Fisher, depressed and in ill health, committed suicide in 1955, but a number of artists continued the strip until 1984. In those postwar years Joe left boxing behind, married Ann, and raised a family in Connecticut. There he lived out his comic strip life as he had conducted himself in the military-with unfailing humility, decency, honesty, and devotion to duty.

This article was written by T. Wayne Waters and originally published in American History Magazine in December 2002.



For more great articles be sure to pick up your copy of American History.

http://americanhistory.about.com/library/prm/blpalookawar1.htm


Ellie