Legacy

Needless to say the title of this story is making you jump to conclusions regarding what the story is about.  No, that doesn’t make you crazy; it’s a normal reaction to the word stimulus which is suggestive.  However that is not what it’s all about.

It was 1942 and World War II was going full blast in Europe and in the Pacific.  While it’s true an army moves on its belly; it’s also true that the supplies move on rubber tires.  That is the tires on the trucks and airplanes that carry those supplies.

At this time in history we didn’t have rayon or nylon or other fancy tire materials; it was rubber and nothing but rubber.  Rubber didn’t wear as well as today’s materials but rubber was all there was for tires.  Natural rubber is harvested from Rubber trees that can be found in various places around the world.  South America for one, especially around the Amazon and in the adjacent jungles was many Rubber plantations.  Also the Philippine Islands were home to many Rubber Plantations which is one of the reasons why the Japanese wanted to control the Philippines.

The axis, Germany and Japan got their raw rubber from Brazil, the Philippines, and other places.  The United States depended somewhat on rubber sources from Central America; but those weren’t adequate; therefore the United States had to get some of their rubber from the same places the axis was.

That was not an easy task; it involved many secret agents working with sympathetic rubber growers willing to take risks.  They usually were if the money was enough.  In the Philippines many of the growers were British, American and the Dutch.  The Japanese kept close watch over production and allowed the growers to stay alive because of their expertise and management skills.  Of course those sympathetic to the U.S. would cooperate to the extent they could safely to hide back bales of rubber without the Japanese wondering about production levels.  Those bales would be smuggled down river at night and out to sea a few miles or to a hidden coastal cove where an American freighter flying odd flags to confuse the Japanese.  That helped supplement the other sources for America.  Of course our submarines torpedoed a lot of Japanese freighters carrying rubber.  Yet more rubber was getting through to the Japanese than we in America cared to see get there.

Our agents of course when caught would be executed.  Philippine guerillas would also try and sink rubber loaded boats going down river before they could get to a seaport and loaded for Japan.  Many lives were lost in such efforts.  Being aware of such things a Micro Biology Professor and researcher at a major American University started thinking about how a very few agents could literally ruin the rubber before it got to Japan.  He came up with microbe bacterium that he named Actinomycetes.  It would within a matter of weeks after being introduced into any room with rubber in it; start eating the rubber; slow but sure.  The Actinomycetes would also breed exponentially with a food source.  Wide spread outbreak limited because the microbe only had a three week life span even with a food source, shorter without one.

It took far fewer agents to slip into the dockside Rubber rooms holding the raw rubber for shipping.  Apparently the rubber showed no signs of distress until hundreds of miles out to sea; and then it was too late.  As I understand it, the microbe would even sometimes spread to rubber hoses and other rubber fittings on board Japanese ships and cause chaos.  Well to say the least this simple thing helped us win the war by shortening the supplies the Japanese needed.

Some say it had the Japanese so frustrated and befuddled that their officials were just about ready for admission to a Rubber Room.  Seemed fair to me, how about you?