It was New Year's Day 1945. Allied armies were marching toward Germany. Japan was getting pushed back toward its home islands. Americans were beginning to see light at the end of a long, dark tunnel of war. As they ate pork and sauerkraut, listened to the Rose Bowl on the radio, and daydreamed about their boys coming home, they probably weren't thinking about the trouble with horse racing. But they weren't James F. Byrnes. James F. Byrnes, the director of the US Office of War Mobilization, worried about the manpower and resources that racing consumed. Thousands of able-bodied workers kept stables and tracks operating. Fans wore tons of rubber off their tires and burned untold gallons of gasoline getting to tracks to toss money away on bets. Byrnes had long wanted to shut the sport down. On January 3, 1945, he did. Horse racing was banned—the only sport the government prohibited during the war. Byrnes had to overcome powerful interests to enact his ban. There was an awful lot of money in thoroughbred racing. Americans pulling high salaries from lucrative wartime jobs had money to spare. Gambling, which then usually meant horse racing, offered excitement and the chance to multiply earnings in an instant.
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