Hastings, which had welcomed 20,000 people in a peaceful celebration of its history in 1939, had become a community in which residents called one another names in the local newspaper in 1942.

The Naval Ammunition Depot built during the ensuing years caused the relatively insular community to suddenly accommodate a huge increase in population, which brought with it diverse social and ethnic groups for which it was unprepared.

This episode is from Beverly Russell's 1995 Nebraska History Magazine article "World War II Boomtown: Hastings and the Naval Ammunition Depot."