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The Red Cross has long been dogged by the persistent belief that it exacts payment for its services from the victims of disasters. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that notion surfaced again, this time asserting those left homeless and desperate were being charged for coffee, cups of juice, and cookies: The rumor is false: rhe Red Cross does not solicit payment for services rendered from those whom it is called upon to assist during times of emergency. The American Red Cross notes on their web page about disaster preparedness for seniors that All American Red Cross emergency services are provided free of charge, and the Southeast Michigan Red Cross web site's 'Ask Us' page plainly states: Modern rumors about the service's turning a profit by taking items it had been supplied with via donations and selling them to the needy date to World War I. George Creel, Chairman of the Committee on Public Information at that time, offered the opinion that vilification tales aimed at the Red Cross bore unmistakable signs of enemy origin, begun in the hopes the negative stories would turn people against the organization. In WWI, and again in WWII, the slander took the form of cautionary tales about sweaters knit by volunteers as gifts for men serving at the front being instead sold to those troops by the Red Cross. One altruistic knitter, it was said, received a letter from a sailor who had come to be in possession of her work, in which the Navy man both thanked her for the garment and asked if she thought it fair he'd had to pay six dollars for it. Also rampant in WWII was scuttlebutt that soldiers serving in the Pacific theater were forced to pay five dollars for cardigans that had Red Cross labels in them. The sweaters the Red Cross collected from volunteers and sent to servicemen were, of course, never sold to GIs; they were always provided for free. Similarly, the Red Cross was said to be selling to servicemen cigarettes that had been donated by major tobacco companies. The Red Cross blood donor service was also a target of rumor-mongering during WWII. Whispers swept along that blood donations had been accepted from the Japanese, thereby (it was said) making it likely the offspring of those receiving such transfusions would display Japanese characteristics. Similar concerns were raised about blood from African-Americans being added to the pool. Rumor was also used to discourage those inclined to donate blood: stories were spread that those who gave ran the risk of contracting infection or disease from unsterilized instruments. The Affairs of Dame Rumor, a 1948 book about rumors rampant in America, recorded the following: There is truth to one of the rumors, however. During WWII the American Red Cross did indeed charge American servicemen stationed abroad for coffee, doughnuts, and lodging. However, they did so because the U.S. Army asked them to, not because they were determined to make a profit off homesick dogfaces. The request was made in a March 1942 letter from Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson to Norman H. Davis, chairman of the American Red Cross. Because American soldiers were fighting as part of the Allied Forces, matters had to be considered on a Force-wide (rather than a solely American) basis. The Red Cross was asked to establish club facilities for U.S. servicemen overseas where Allied troops would be welcome, and because English and Australian soldiers were being charged for the use of such facilities, it was deemed unfair that Americans were to get similar benefits for free (especially in light of the fact that their pay was higher than that of their Allied counterparts). For the good of the alliance, the American Red Cross was persuaded to exact nominal charges from American GIs for off-base food and lodging. This act resulted in the Red Cross' coming to be regarded by numerous GIs as having profited off them. Bad feeling exists to this day over the decision to charge American servicemen for these services, with any number of such soldiers and their families carrying long-lasting resentments against the service. Yet while that ire might have been merited, it was misdirected: the culprit was the U.S. Army, not the Red Cross. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chief of Staff, United States Army, addressed the controversy surrounding this issue in a statement to the press on 10 April 1946: Even after World War II, the Red Cross continued to be dogged for years by false tales about their imposing fees on military personnel for basic humanitarian services, such as the following 1952 rumor that claimed the organization had charged a U.S. serviceman interest on money he borrowed from them to attend his mother's funeral: The advent of social media breathed new life into rumors the Red Cross was charging disaster victims, which spiked amid separate online controversies involving the organization following Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in August-September 2017: In a separate article regarding rumors that the Red Cross was charging disaster victims after Hurricane Harvey hit in August 2017, we noted: On 31 August 2017, the Red Cross detailed how they would be spending their funds in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, introducing that documentation with the following statement:
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