The 1950s were overrated!

[AmericanGirl05]

In the third grade, all of us kids were issued military style dog tags that we were supposed to wear all the time, so that our bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.

That tends to leave a negative impression on a 9 year old....

I graduated high school in 1964, and I NEVER experienced anything like that from 1st thru 12th - not even close.

I graduated from HS in 1969 and this guy is posting a fantasy.

 

[Alex.]

In the third grade, all of us kids were issued military style dog tags that we were supposed to wear all the time, so that our bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.

That tends to leave a negative impression on a 9 year old....

Pics or it never happened.

Seriously can you prove this?

 

[pismoe]

as far as I'm concerned the mid 60s up to the mid 70s when I was a teenager and young adult and riding a motorcycle , cars , snow machines , huntin , shootin and just generally messing around were the best . First serious job was in 1971 . 50S were fine , I loved them but I was a kid and living at home and pretty much just a kid with very good bosses / parents . You didn't ask me but I'm 64 and soon to be 65 AmericanGirl .

 

[AmericanGirl05]

as far as I'm concerned the mid 60s up to the mid 70s when I was a teenager and young adult and riding a motorcycle , cars , snow machines , huntin , shootin and just generally messing around were the best . First serious job was in 1971 . 50S were fine , I loved them but I was a kid and living at home and pretty much just a kid with very good bosses / parents . You didn't ask me but I'm 64 and soon to be 65 AmericanGirl .

I was in high school in the 60s and in college and grad school in the early 70s, then I went to work for the Federal Government. Maybe it was the Carter Administration. But I hated the 70s. Music sucked, the clothes sucked, the economy sucked, politics sucked.

 

[pismoe]

I never got Dog Tags as a kid and I went to school from about 54 - 55 and then to graduation from high school . Born in 49 and saw Sputnik race , Nazi's on trial at Nuremberg , saw JFK assassination as it happened , saw Jack Ruby and events on the telly . As far as the dog tags , I woulda thought that it was cool if I got them . Never did the much talked about duck and cover either. Saw KHRUSCHEV pounding his shoe , remember the Cuban missle crisis . I saw the landing on the moon in the school auditorium .

 

[pismoe]

maybe that's the difference , even as a kid I never spent 5 bucks for music , I dress the same way at 65 that I did at 15 and my style is practical and durable . Not bragging but economy was always pretty good for me and not due to any action on my part . I worked a small regional railroad [union] and we never went on strike or were affected by anything as long as iron ore was needed . When strikes were called we had an agreement that we don't strike but we'd get whatever was negotiated .

 

[Pogo]

In the third grade, all of us kids were issued military style dog tags that we were supposed to wear all the time, so that our bodies could be identified in case of a nuclear attack.

That tends to leave a negative impression on a 9 year old....

Pics or it never happened.

Seriously can you prove this?

No I've heard that before too. I was in Catholic school in Suburbia at the time so we didn't get 'em.
Why do you doubt it?

[edit] Just because we're talking about the '50s doesn't mean we don't have the Googles to look back...

In the early 1950s cities across the U.S. spent hundreds of thousands of dollars outfitting their children with military-style dog tags. Why were we giving kids something that's usually reserved for people at risk of dying horrifically in the line of duty? Because in the era of duck and cover, kids were on the front lines.

The Soviet Union surprised the U.S. and became a nuclear-equipped superpower when it successfully tested its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949. Suddenly the world had two ideologically opposed countries with the capability of unleashing unprecedented devastation upon each other. The campaign to mobilize average Americans by normalizing the discussion of collective death (even with children) was under way.

In February of 1952 the city of New York bought 2.5 million dog tags. By April of that year, just about every kid in the city from kindergarten to fourth grade had a tag with their name on it. Kids in many other cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Las Veagas and Philadelphia also got dog tags, allowing for easy identification should the unthinkable occur.

But educators weren't considering just dog tags to identify the scores of dead and injured children that would result if the cold war suddenly turned hot. They also considered tattoos.

(and fingerprints, both of which don't really work on bodies from which the flesh has been melted off)
More at this link

​

Robert Klein made reference to it in a comedy routine in the '70s:
"Children-- attention, no talking -- take these dog tags, they're to be used in the event you're burned beyond recognition in a nuclear holocaust.
--- and no talking during a nuclear holocaust!
I want an orderly nuclear holocaust! Two lines, no talking!"

 

[pismoe]

I doubt it only because it never happened to me , same as no duck and cover drills . I'm not calling liar , just saying it never happened to me or my brother and sisters or any of the thousands of school kids that I knew Pogo .

 

[Lakhota]

I doubt it only because it never happened to me , same as no duck and cover drills . I'm not calling liar , just saying it never happened to me or my brother and sisters or any of the thousands of school kids that I knew Pogo .

I remember lots of fire drills during my school daze - but no duck and cover drills.

 

[pismoe]

--- That Time American School Kids Were Given Dog Tags Because Nukes --- dog tag info .

 

[pismoe]

tattoo , now that woulda really been cool !! Although , knowing my Dad , he wouldn't allow tattooing .

 

[Pogo]

I doubt it only because it never happened to me , same as no duck and cover drills . I'm not calling liar , just saying it never happened to me or my brother and sisters or any of the thousands of school kids that I knew Pogo .

Actually I was responding to two other posters who said it didn't happen or doubted it. I didn't even see your post.

Here's another reference:

Throughout my elementary school life, I experienced shelter drills and air raid drills. I don't think I understood the ramifications, but I obediently followed the teachers’ instructions over the years. We had to practice duck and cover defenses as well as lining up in the halls away from glass that could shatter on us. These activities were just part of the school day. What terrified me were the air raid sirens. I lived about 300 feet from a fire station that operated a siren. It wasn't possible to hide from that noise. My older sister had standing orders from my mother to escort me home quickly if the sirens started up when we were outside.
​

All this spectre of gloom and suspicion and subterfuge was part of the same '50s. It's probably not possible to overstate the psychological foundational effects on the baby boomers to have been the first generation to grow up with the knowledge that at any moment without warning they could be vaporized in a flash, literally, or worse, could have only half their flesh seared off and slowly sickened with radiation poisoning. I remember vividly the films of Japanese children wasting away in a sick ward and the plaintive dirge they were singing in their misery. That, we were being warned, was what might happen.

It's safe to say that psychological foundation had much to do with the turbulence of the next decade once those baby boomers reached adulthood too.

 

[pismoe]

that's cool , I still doubt it was a widespread practice as like I say , never happened to me , same with duck and cover . Still , looks like it happened in some cases .

 

[pismoe]

probably happened in schools run by anti nuke libs and Soviet appeasers !!

 

[AmericanGirl05]

We did have air raid drills. But no dog tags.

My husband went to school in a very large urban area (I went to school in a small town) and he says they never had dog tags.

 

[Pogo]

probably happened in schools run by anti nuke libs and Soviet appeasers !!

I guess that's supposed to be some kind of joke.


Heh.

 

[pismoe]

I don't remember anything related to hiding from nukes . Sure , I saw fire drills but that about it . Never saw air raid or duck and cover . Oh well , guess I missed something .

 

[pismoe]

naw , the administrators or officials that ordered the dog tags at taxpayer expense MIGHTA been anti nuke libs trying to instill nuke hysteria in children and parents Pogo , I don't know . I mean , the educational establishment is chock full of lefties so I wouldn't put it past them .

 

[Pogo]

naw , the administrators or officials that ordered the dog tags MIGHTA been anti nuke libs trying to instill nuke hysteria in children and parents Pogo , I don't know .

You cannot be serious.

First of all this conflation of "libs" as some kind of political demagogue term was only just being invented in the '50s by the McCarthy wingnuts -- and being wingnuts, few took them seriously. It didn't gain traction really until a couple of decades later. This pretense of "duh liburruls are duh devil" simply did not exist. Second, there was no "anti-nuke" movement until the '70s, and that one referred to nuclear power plants. There was a "ban the bomb" movement but that had nothing to do with "liburruls". Nor was there anything remotely resembling the conspiratorial climate of ideological pseudodivision we live in today.

You're trying to project a contemporary talk-radio mindset onto a very different time. Doesn't work.

No, this was the governmental structure, preparing for the same potential event that the fallout shelter diggers and the air raid sirens and the ConelRad symbols on the radio dial were preparing for. You can even see it in the pop culture of the time -- serious TV shows like the Twilight Zone used the theme often, fictionally. That's because it was something on everybody's mind.

It's arguable that that's got a lot to do with why the non-serious TV culture of the time centered on insipid sterile polyanna fantasies of Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver. Light relief from the dark undercurrent that dared not speak its name, yet was always with us. An electronic soporific; Huxley's soma with rabbit ears.

 

[Rikurzhen]

naw , the administrators or officials that ordered the dog tags MIGHTA been anti nuke libs trying to instill nuke hysteria in children and parents Pogo , I don't know .

You cannot be serious.

First of all this conflation of "libs" as some kind of political demagogue term was only just being invented in the '50s by the McCarthy wingnuts -- and being wingnuts, few took them seriously. It didn't gain traction really until a couple of decades later. This pretense of "duh liburruls are duh devil" simply did not exist.

Except for the part about spying for the Soviet Union and other subversive activities.