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I’m sure that there were a few farm boys here and there who looked at the war as a way to get out of the corn fields and see other parts of the world they never thought they’d have a chance to see.

Growing up, I knew plenty who did join just to get away from what they saw as a dead-end life (many of whom stayed in after the war was over). When Pearl Harbor was attacked, it was the proverbial light bulb going off in the head of many.

Before Pearl Harbor, the military was not glamorous at all. My dad's crew literally shared a bomber with three other crews, because the Army didn't have the money to buy more planes. The amazing thing is, there were men in the Army (and the other services) who worked to get men in, even if they didn't have enough planes or tanks or equipment, because they knew that there was a war coming, and they would need experienced men, but I digress.

After Pearl Harbor, you had all of these men who had just come out of the Depression, and for many of them, joining the military was the first time they might have been out of their home state, and with the feelings that were running high, they felt a pride and a sense of belonging to something bigger, and doing something meaningful. One of the guys from Minnesota, one of the guys from Alabama, and one of the guys from California that was in the Marine Raider battalion kinda touched upon that.

I think a lot of us have a hard time understanding the conditions these men (and women) lived in. They had just come out of the Great Depression, something which the majority of us living today have no way of comprehending, many of them were rural, and that's definitely not the case these days. The best example is one of the pilots from Minnesota who talked about growing up on a farm, and would see an airplane every now and then, and how his spirit would soar when seeing that. Rural life in the '30s and early '40s was just not what a lot of young men wanted to do with their lives.

I've often wondered if we did not have the Depression, how things would have turned out, because the Depression was a huge test for many people in this country, and as cliched as it is, it built a lot of character. Many people who served in the military did not have what I would call "soft" backgrounds - they knew what it was like to not have much to eat, they walked all over the place a lot since for many an automobile was a luxury, or it was something used for the family or the farm. My dad and my uncles said that the lean times they had in the '30s helped make them better soldiers and Marines in the '40s.

My dad joined the Naval Reserves in 1928 right after High School cause he had a friend who was also joining who talked him into it. I don’t think he’d ever been out of the state. In the reserves, you got away for 2 weeks every year on a training cruise to Puerto Rico, where the rum & cokes were mostly rum as the coke was more expensive. He told us that MANY times LOL

He got called to active duty in June of 1941 - left Newport, RI and ended up in Pearl Harbor in October of 1941.

He had Sunday, Dec 7th off. He was going to take a bus tour of Honolulu. Obviously, didn’t get the tour. ,p. HE Never talked much about the war outside of little amusing stories about life on the ship. I always felt his generation had the mentality of you do what you have to and you don't complain about it.

Lost him this past January at the age of 97

“...I knew plenty who did join just to get away from what they saw
as a dead-end life.”

A good example of a poor Texas boy that signed up to keep his
brothers and sisters fed (IIRC).
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048729/

“Before Pearl Harbor, the military was not glamorous at all.”

IIRC, beside all the poor levels of materiale/supplies, enlisted
men weren’t even allowed to be married.

“After Pearl Harbor, you had all of these men who had just come out
of the Depression, and for many of them, joining the military was
the first time they might have been out of their home state, and
with the feelings that were running high, they felt a pride and a
sense of belonging to something bigger, and doing something meaningful.”

Three squares and a cot, free medical care and get your teeth pulled
and/or fixed, and a chance to learn some skills...what wasn’t to
like after the gray dreary days of the Depression?

“I’ve often wondered if we did not have the Depression, how things would
have turned out, because the Depression was a huge test for many people
in this country”

I remember reading a story about a young fellow and his experiences
as The Depression bit down hard in his home town of Flint, MI.
Besides recounting how he and his father would spend a day delivering
coal to homes and end up maybe 5 cents in the black...
he talked about how many suicides there were in his neighborhood.
Suicide is awful...but in some cruel calculus, The Great Depression
did take some folks “out of the game”. Just before “the BIG Game”.

Many people who served in the military did not have what I would call “soft” backgrounds -

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Interesting side comment: a guest on cspan yesterday commented that a disproportionate number of men who join Special Forces come from rural backgrounds. He was lamenting the future loss of this pool of talent as the family farm disappears, and the military age folks are growing up in suburbia and exurbia.

The farm-raised boys are much more independent, tough, and pro-active in problem solving, etc.