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The US Army Issued Ocarinas to Soldiers in World War II
- brudgers 3mo agoThat explains the Joey's ocarina in the movie Stalag 17.
- warmedcookie 3mo agoGood movie, time to rewatch
- jrop 3mo agoAn old favorite. "How stupid can you get, animal?"
- cholmdomsky 3mo agoMy first thought
- jhbadger 3mo agoThe US military thought a lot about how to entertain its soldiers because there was a lot of downtime during a war and most of them were draftees who didn't necessarily want to be there, Another thing they did was publish pocket paperback editions of books back when paperbacks were less common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Services_Editions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armed_Services_Editions
- throw93949449 3mo ago[flagged]
- multjoy 3mo agoIt wasn’t slavery as they were paid and could be expected to be discharged at the cessation of hostilities. Conscription is as old as society itself.
- throe94944i 3mo ago[dead]
- freedomben 3mo agoYou're both right. We don't want to water down the term "slavery" by using it for draftees, but it is a form of temporary slavery. Slave's have always been "paid" in the form of room and board (however meager), but it's still slavery.
- danaris 3mo agoI mean, to be fair, so is slavery. I think it's important to acknowledge that conscription is a violation of human rights, and absolutely a violation of human autonomy and dignity. The reason it exists is because historically, the primary source of military power has been the number of armed humans you can put on the battlefield. That's much less true now, but even in WWII the technology wasn't yet up to that point. And while the US did not end up being materially at risk in WWII (aside from some very small exceptions like Pearl Harbor), that was not a guarantee going in. The Nazis were hellbent on wiping out all opposition to them, and the fear that, if Europe was lost, they would cross the ocean to attack us was not at all crazy. Furthermore, our allies absolutely were under existential threat—and in such a situation, it's frankly irresponsible of a nation not to use conscription if that's actually likely to make a difference. Either saying "conscription is slavery, therefore it is never justifiable" or "conscription is nothing like slavery, soldiers get treated well" ignores enough of the truth that they're misleading at best. Sometimes you really do have to deal with nuance.
- dmbrThnYou 3mo agoYou have the option to emigrate as opposed to fight, which is fundamentally what differentiates conscription from slavery (and human rights violations). You're not legally obligated to stay in your country.
- danaris 3mo agoUm...what? Desertion has, historically, been a capital crime. Trying to paint conscription as not being a kind of captivity because "you're not legally obligated to stay in your country" is at best wildly disingenuous, and at worst just flat-out wrong. I think you might need to take quite a bit more time to consider this issue, lest you prove your username much truer than you probably want.
- dctoedt 3mo ago> It is called forced labour or slavery. In war, people who tolerate military conscription and discipline will conquer those who're slaves to pigheaded "you're not the boss of ME!" individualism. It'd be nice if humans would voluntarily abandon war someday. But a corollary of the First Commandment is to face facts.
- cucumber3732842 3mo agoThat doesn't make it not forced though. Most of this sub thread people who are unwilling to say "yeah it's forced labor and that's fine considering the details" doing mental gymnastics to make it not forced.
- derektank 3mo agoJust because something is forced, doesn’t make it slavery. I’m forced to pay taxes; that doesn’t make me a slave. Nor was a tenant farmer in the Middle Ages when required to provide corvée. I think the primary objection in this thread is to the use of the word slavery, which is simply not the same thing.
- bloomingeek 3mo agoI agree with your account, the problem is how many perceive slavery. Here in the south (USA) many still think the slaves before the Civil War were "happy". They obviously weren't slaves. Until ALL mankind looks slavery fully in the eye for understanding, we will continue to undervalue those other then ourselves.
- cwmoore 3mo agoI don’t think there can be a bright line between acceptable and unacceptable coercion of liberties.
- throw734848 3mo ago[dead]
- TomK32 3mo agoIn peacetimes, yes, but if it's defensive war I don't see many arguments against a draft, it can't be generalized though.
- crote 3mo agoIf there's anything worth defending, people will volunteer to defend it.
- p-e-w 3mo agoIndeed, and there are many historical examples of this. Today’s average Western nation-state tends to be a rathole that spits into the faces of its citizens every single day, until the moment the state is under attack, at which point everyone is told that they owe their lives to their sacred motherland that has done so much for them.
- esafak 3mo agoWhat if people do but not in enough numbers? Farewell, sweet country!
- WJW 3mo agoIf the country doesn't have enough people to defend it, perhaps it's good and just that some other community gets to control the territory? A country isn't really anything except for its people, after all.
- esafak 3mo agoThe occupying power may be interested in your country's resources rather than its people.
- WJW 3mo agoHow does that change matters? If anything that makes it even worse. If not enough of your people can't be bothered to join the military even when an enemy army is invading, perhaps the country in question should draw the conclusion it's not viable as an independent nation.
- Jcampuzano2 3mo agoNot sure why this is being downvoted. A draft is by definition forced labor and a form of slavery. If you are drafted, you are being forced to do something you did not volunteer for. If enough people volunteered there would be no need for a draft in the first place. People can argue whether they think its "correct" or not all day, its still forced labor.
- mr_toad 3mo agoIf you’re not conscripted to fight the invaders, there’s always the risk that you’ll be conscripted by the invaders.
- leoc 3mo agoThere were also the 2,400 specially-designed upright pianos it bought from Steinway: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Vertical https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Vertical .
- jeffbee 3mo agoMy favorite WW2 morale detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge
- pasc1878 3mo agoThe British did better Put beer into drop tanks on Spitfires https://planehistoria.com/flying-pubs-spitfires-flew-beer-to-normandy/ https://planehistoria.com/flying-pubs-spitfires-flew-beer-to...
- zulux 3mo agoThat still happens in America. Hike to a remote place, and get your friend to drop a keg in a mountain lake from his plane. "Alpine Lake Keg Drop".
- topgrain2 3mo ago> When we get over the beachhead drop out of formation and land on the strip. We’re told the Nazis are fouling the drinking water, so it will be appreciated. There’s no trouble finding the strip, the battleship Rodney is firing salvoes on Caen and it’s immediately below. Oh god. Yeah just follow the path of the 9 x 16" gun salvos from Rodney blowing big-ass holes in the ground, you can't miss it. LOL. Now those are some directions!
- tracerbulletx 3mo agoEven though this is tongue in cheek, an ice cream barge with the requisite refrigeration and dedication of ship space 1000s of miles out in the south pacific is on a whole different scale of investment than this and they also had beer on the ships already. Though it probably wasn't as good as the british beer.
- pasc1878 3mo agoThe British also had a brewery on a ship for use in the Pacific https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Menestheus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Menestheus
- 1313ed01 3mo agoI like this boardgame kit that the Germans printed for their soldiers: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30082557 https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30082557
- dofm 3mo agoCarter? "Yes sir?" What is it, Carter? "An ocarina, sir" Bring it up here! I've had a really nice, small "English four-hole" unglazed terracotta pendant ocarina since I was a kid. They are actually really fun to play and very visceral, in a sense; the way you can get a chromatic scale from only four hole sizes combinatorially is intellectually satisfying and weirdly easy to learn. It came with some sheet music that shows each note as a box with four dots in it that can be shown as either open or closed: https://ocarinasongbook.com/fingering-charts/four-hole/ https://ocarinasongbook.com/fingering-charts/four-hole/ It sounds unusually sophisticated — perhaps even better after forty-plus years -- and it's actually a relatively new design. The ocarina is ancient but the four hole chromatic design dates from the 1960s, so it's newer than those Gretsch ocarinas in the article. You can get them in all sorts of shapes and sizes -- Thomann sell hand-painted clay 4H ocarinas in the shapes of strawberries and clownfish. I wish we'd been taught to play these in school instead of with those Aulos descant recorders that everyone in British schools, particularly teachers I imagine, grew to hate.
- nephihaha 3mo agoI did recorder in primary school. One of the things I dimly remember along with certain games and rhymes. (I think in Irish schools they do the tin whistle.) I gather a lot of schools are adopting ukuleles now. Ukes have a bad name, unfairly I think. (Listen to Eddie Vedder's "Ukulele Songs" album, very underrated). The ukulele is more forgiving than the recorder in my opinion.
- dofm 3mo agoMusic shops sell a lot of ukuleles. Huge numbers at Christmas, it's a very popular gift. It's a fabulous instrument, nuanced and subtle, and you can buy beautiful instruments these days for really not much money at all. But AFAIK its popularity in school as a teaching instrument has as much to do with Spongebob as it does its capability :-)
- amluto 3mo agoYou can also massively improve many inexpensive ukuleles by restringing them.
- snorkel 3mo agoBack in the day in elementary school we were each issued a tonette
- microgpt 3mo ago[dead]
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- stevage 3mo agoInteresting that they don't seem to have had much cultural impact. I've never heard of these, never seen them in war films. You don't hear songs wistfully using a wartime ocarina or referring to them.
- tomcam 3mo agoSame. I was just able to order an original kit on eBay for $40, so demand isn’t high.
- zulux 3mo agoDoes this explain why all the kids in the States got recorders after the war? It's still a thing in 4th grade for most kids in public school.
- fhdkweig 3mo agoIt is actually a Nazi thing. (Not kidding.) https://duckduckgo.com/q=recorder+instrument+nazi https://duckduckgo.com/q=recorder+instrument+nazi https://www.thestar.com.my/news/true-or-not/2025/02/19/quickcheck-were-nazis-behind-the-reason-why-you-played-the-recorder-in-school https://www.thestar.com.my/news/true-or-not/2025/02/19/quick...
- mrob 3mo agoOcarinas have the great advantage over recorders that you can safely play them without hearing protection. I have personally measured the loud notes on both a soprano recorder and an alto recorder and the SPL meter measured over 100dB(A) at the ear (indoors, so this includes reverberation too, but most recorders are played indoors). Note that standard recorder fingering allows for almost no control over dynamics; each note has a single set volume that it must be played at to sound in tune. (Advanced technique allows slight control over dynamics with alternative fingerings.) For this reason I do not think recorders should be used in schools.
- hcrean 3mo agoHello, Ocarina maker and long time player here! Ocs are unfortunately almost always significantly louder than recorders...
- mrob 3mo agoThanks for correcting. I haven't actually played an ocarina, so I was relying on reports from people saying they are quiet instruments. It's very difficult to find objective SPL comparisons for musical instruments. But lots of people think recorders are quiet too, so I should have suspected that complaints about ocarinas being too quiet could be inaccurate too.
- helterskelter 3mo agoThis reminds me of my very first internet purchase. Back in the late 90's, when Ocarina of Time first came out, there was a website that a friend of mine found (back when you really felt like you found something on the internet) that sold basically perfect replicas of the titular ocarina, it even came with a silk pouch and a booklet that showed you how to play all the songs from the game. I think it was just some rando making clay instruments out of their house and figured they'd try to sell them on this new marketplace. I've still got it somewhere. It feels like the internet is missing stuff like that now, or it's at least harder to find. Nowadays Nintendo would shut that seller down, or the seller would just be drop shipping them from Alibaba for a 500% markup.
- crims0n 3mo agoHey I remember that site! I bought one from there as well, although I couldn't afford the actual replica so settled on a brown squarish one that came as a necklace.
- crooked-v 3mo agoEtsy has plenty of stuff like that, though you do have to do some filtering through the clones and the drop-shippers.
- akovaski 3mo agoYour memory reminded me of Mountain Ocarinas, which I happened upon probably around 2010. It looks like The Internet Archive has a snapshot back from 2000 https://web.archive.org/web/20000902223226/http://www.mountainocarinas.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20000902223226/http://www.mounta... . Just some guy with a website selling his custom-designed instruments. It looks like they stopped producing them in 2024, but that is still a long run. Though they did stop making wood ocarinas at some point in that time frame.
- wyclif 3mo agoOcarina? Immediate clickbait for me; one of my hobbies is playing obscure musical instruments. I have one of these, made of rosewood. Great if you're a little bit more serious about learning, and highly recommended (by me): https://hindocarina.com/sweet_potato.shtml https://hindocarina.com/sweet_potato.shtml
- rasengan0 3mo agocrafting one: https://youtu.be/tB8qTbdw-OQ?si=BQtwuOh83-nG8CrT https://youtu.be/tB8qTbdw-OQ?si=BQtwuOh83-nG8CrT