November Porthole Newspaper

This month’s Artifact of the Month is an edition of the Port Hole newspaper from November 1, 1944. This semi-monthly journal was published by the American Red Cross Service Club and printed by Sands & McDougall Pty. Ltd. in Australia for the sailors stationed in the Pacific Theater of World War II. There are numerous articles including two opinion pieces on Navy Day, reports on sports and local events, and notices and schedules of social events. The back page was devoted to an article about William Winter, a popular news commentator who was sent as a war correspondent to the Pacific and the Half-Hitch Comic from the Saturday Evening Post. The cover, however, is dedicated entirely to a caricature-like illustration of a sailor reading a newspaper with the two presidential candidates of the 1944 election on the covers: Thomas E. Dewey and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  

Besides radio, journals like the Port Hole were the way that troops could learn of news in the United States while deployed across the world. This was very important because it was during World War II that voting reforms were passed to make it possible for the millions of soldiers, sailors, and airmen to be able to vote while fighting for their country. Through the Voting Reform Acts of 1942 and 1944, absentee ballots were revised to make it easier for servicemen and women to vote. In fact, absentee ballots originally came about because wartime elections like during the War of 1812 and the Civil War. World War II led to a greater dispersal of troops than ever before in American history. Because of the Port Hole and countless other service-based newspapers, troops were kept apprised of American politics and other goings-on on the home front, allowing them to stay connected to their homes and exercise their right to vote.