Picking Dried Milkweed For The Soldiers In WWII

[Henry]

I am sure that those of you that were in grade school during WWII will remember going out and picking the dried milkweed pods.  It was one of a number of things that school children got involved with here in Vermont.  It was not just in the Midwest as stated in the Internet article that I looked up to make sure I got the information right.

In World War II, schoolchildren across the Midwest collected thousands of pounds of milkweed fluff to stuff life preservers for the armed forces in the Pacific, because kapok, the normal material used for this purpose, came from Japanese-occupied Indonesia and was unavailable. Today, you can buy pillows, jackets, and comforters stuffed with this material, which is wonderfully soft and has a higher insulative value than goose down, from a company called Ogallala Down, in Ogallala, Nebraska.

[Henry]

There is a company that still uses Milkweed for down.  Check out the following website.  Didn't check the prices, but bet they are expensive:

http://www.italianfinelinens.com/ogallaladown.html

[Mike Raburn]

Even in my later days in the Navy I wondered why the were called Kapok vests,,,,,,,,
The more you NOW.
Thanks Henry.

I was walking out on the boat boom one day in South Korea, I was attempting to  climb down 15 feet on a Jacobs ladder.
I slipped, and went SPLASH! Luckily missing the boat I was going down onto. That Sojo messes you UP!

It was a good thing I wasn't wearing a Kapok,,,,, It would have snapped my neck.
Kapoks are, were, HUGE.