Wartime Ice Cream

July serves as National Ice Cream Month per President

Ronald Reagan’s 1984 proclamation. While this dessert may seem rather mundane to many observers, ice cream has played an interesting role in United States history. Who after all doesn’t enjoy a nice serving of ice cream on a hot summer day? During the War in the Pacific, the men and women in the theater of operations relied on ice cream to enjoy their circumstances a bit more, remember about home, and of course, socialize. For wartime Hawaii, this wonderful dessert played an interesting part in people's lives as well.

On Oahu, as hundreds and thousands of men and women worked or passed through the island to forward locations, they had free time to sightsee, dine out, get a tattoo or even take in a dance among other things. Troops rested and relaxed at USO clubs across Oahu for which ice cream was an essential part of the R and R. For instance, the USO Victory Club offered their signature banana split to over 447,000 monthly visitors. This required 8,000 gallons of ice cream monthly and almost 30 tons of bananas! When touring the islands on sightseeing excursions, troops would frequently stop at a local dairy for either fresh cold milk or ice cream. Diamond Head Dairy and Hind-Clarke Dairy both served cold treats along Kodak photographic tour routes.

THE ROLE OF ICE CREAM IN WARTIME HISTORY

By Scott Pawlowski, Curator, Pearl Harbor National Memorial

For the Navy, the story gets even more interesting. Ice cream makers arrived on Navy ships as early as 1906 but during WWII, the war department had to work to ensure every sailor or soldier had access to ice cream. Larger ships were outfitted with ice cream making equipment and appropriate freezers per Bureau of Ships policy and the belief of James Forrestal (Undersecretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Navy during WWII) that ice cream was a morale essential. The USS Arizona had a shipboard ice cream parlor also called a gedunk. You can see gedunk bowls still underwater on the wreck today by watching the 2015 USS Arizona Live Dive (https://vimeo.com/125971885) video. Pearl Harbor National Memorial’s museum collection contains a bowl from the USS Arizona that would have likely been used to serve a cold dessert. By December 7, most of the capital ships could make, store, and serve ice cream. To reach navy personnel ashore other efforts were tried to get ice cream into their hands.

On a piece of land near Pearl Harbor called the Damon Track, the Navy built an ice cream factory which quickly acquired the name “Cold Storage University”. Here troops were trained how to make, store and serve ice cream in classes that lasted under a week. The plant produced about 2000 gallons of ice cream per day for the shore-based messes.

As the war moved west, the navy used its concrete supply barges like the USS Quartz (IX-150) to move ice cream in the same direction. Further copying an idea from the Army, and borrowing one of their barges, the Navy even spent around $1 million in 1945 to create a floating ice-cream factory with serving parlor. This vessel could produce 10 gallons of ice cream every seven minutes and store another 2000 gallons. Like the USS Quartz, the ice-cream factory likely passed through Pearl Harbor on its way to Ulithi in the Caroline Islands and other bases.

Pearl Harbor National Memorial’s museum collection doesn’t hold an extensive amount of items related to ice cream and the Pacific War. We do hold some items that help paint a more realistic picture of what life was like in the Pacific Theater of Operations. So please enjoy the month of July tasting ice cream and thinking about history.