Nat Springer served in the United States armed forces during the Korean War, from March 1952 to June 1954. A lieutenant with the Judge Advocate General department providing civil and criminal legal services to army personnel, Springer was stationed at First Army Headquarters on Governors Island, where he traveled by two ferries from a residence on Staten Island. Required to attend many functions of a somewhat formal nature, he purchased this summer tan dress uniform at Brooks Brothers.

Twenty-year old Bronx resident Ben Hurwitz (1921-1997, later changed name to Ben Brown) was among the thousands of Americans who enlisted in the United States armed forces in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war. A graduate of the first class of New York's High School of Music and Art, Hurwitz studied art for a year at the University of Iowa before volunteering for the U.S. Army in 1942. After basic training in Oklahoma and maneuvers in Louisiana, Hurwitz's Cannon Company, attached to the 351st Regiment, 88th Infantry Division, First Battalion, was shipped to North Africa in 1943. Within a few months he was in Italy, his company dragging .105 mm. howitzers from Naples, across the Apennine Mountains, in the lengthy campaign that would eventually liberate Rome in June 1944. During 1943 and '44, Corporal Hurwitz recorded his experiences in North Africa and Italy by keeping a sketchpad and drawing at every opportunity. The results of Hurwitz's fervent wartime recordkeeping-190 tonal and line drawings, as well as photographs and miscellaneous documents-are held by the New-York Historical Society Library.

This uniform was worn in New York City, 1942-1945, by a member of the Civilian Defense Volunteer Organization. After the sinking of thousands of tons of shipping near New York harbor and German radio's threat to target New York, Mayor La Guardia formed the Civil Defense. During the war more than 400,000 New Yorkers joined.