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During WWII Nesquehoning was one of the most patriotic towns in the Country. On a per capita basis, Nesquehoning had more people in the armed services than any other town in the whole United States, (over 1200 men and women.) Many Nesquehoning families had 4, 5 and even 6 in the service. One of the Countries first casualties in WWII was from Nesquehoning. Joseph Malatak was killed on Dec 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor. Thirty-four people from Nesquehoning lost their lives in WWII.

     Many newspaper articles were written about Nesquehoning's participation in WWII, some happy and some sad. Some articles are about the wounded, fatalities, prisoners of war, medals received, promotions and many heroic acts preformed by our hometown heroes.
     One article is about a Nesquehoning girl that was voted "the most photogenic WAC north of the Rio Grande" and was chosen to be on a nationally distributed WAC recruiting poster.
     Another article is about a dog from Nesquehoning being enlisted in the Army.
     One of the articles is from a Nesquehoning soldier who said his saddest memories are of the days when as bugler for his company, he played taps over the freshly dug graves of his friends from Nesquehoning. He said that the soldiers hate their bugler, but not in his case. When he wanted to wake'em up in the morning he used to play polkas, they loved him for it.
     One of the most horrifying articles is about the “March Of Death”. Japanese brutality against our heroes that included, lashings, torture, starvation, shootings and burial of live men at Bataan.

This page takes a while to load because I included the most patriotic song from this era, God Bless America written by Irving Berlin. The original version was written during the summer of 1918 at Camp Upton, located in Yaphank, Long Island. He never used the song and it remained tucked away until 1938. In the fall of 1938, Berlin decided to write a song about peace. He recalled his "God Bless America" from twenty years earlier, altered parts to update popular sentiment, and was introduced to the world on November, 11, 1938, by Kate Smith.