时代广场人群庆祝德国投降，纽约市，1945年5月7日

I immediately looked at the bottom to see if the words Undertaker, Mankind and nineteen ninety eight were referenced. Pretty cool story, OP.

Not to mention that they have body armor, guns, and all sorts of other goodies under that suit

So, in the South in particular, and in Northern areas during the summer, wealthy men would wear suits made from linen or summer weight wool. I can't guarantee how thin or light the summer weight wool was, but they didn't wear their winter suits. They also wore lighter colors to cope with the sun and heat. But there is a reason for the stereotypical image of wealthy Southerners sitting on a shaded porch, fanning themselves and drinking cool drinks - yes, they wore full suits, but they were wealthy enough to not have to work. (I also think there was a reason everyone wore hats outside - they protected your head and eyes from the sun and made you feel cooler since the sun wasn't directly beating down on your exposed head.) You might have noted during O Brother Where Art Thou that the working class men don't wear full suits. Overalls and tee shirts were acceptable for farming men, and often any man who had to do anything more strenuous than walk across the street would take off his coat and just wear his waistcoat (modern vest) and shirtsleeves. Cotton denim jeans were invented in the late 19th century, so by the 20s to 30s, they were common for work wear. Working men could also wear cotton drill trousers, so wool suits were not mandated. You did have to wear a suit in proper company, like to church, but very few normal people would wear their full 3 piece suit every day.

Sounds like you were wearing a sweat suit.

A barrel with suspenders.

So, by the '40s, we had department stores and ready to wear garments, and we started to have a variety of clothing for different purposes - work wear, formal wear, sports wear, casual wear... Most of that was still out of reach for the very poorest working class people, but poor people usually had their Sunday suit, and then their work clothes. And I'd imagine that by the '40s, working class people could afford a couple sets of their work clothes so it wouldn't wear out as fast. Yes, cloth used to be exceedingly expensive, but by 1910, there were clothing catalogues selling ready to wear garments for the common people (rich people still wore custom made clothing because they could afford to). Industrialization did a lot to cut down on cloth manufacture costs, and that was in the late 1800s. Men's suits have used the same amount of cloth for centuries, but women's clothing has slowly evolved to use less clothing - just 50 years before the '40s, in the 1890s, women wore floor length dresses with huge leg of mutton sleeves, but 1940s dresses are shorter, slimmer skirts, cut to conserve cloth. Look up various Sears catalogs - in the '40s, a day dress cost $1.40 to $5.00, men's shirts were $1.50, and a 3-piece suit was between $16.95 and $21.75 depending on the wool. (Which, today, would be $24.48 to $87.42, $26.23, $296.37 to $380.29. In my opinion, none of those prices are insanely prohibitive - especially since workwear was much cheaper, and working class men might only buy one or two suits in their adult lifetimes.) (I don't know the average yearly earnings of working class people in the 1940s, so I can't say for certain whether it was crazily expensive, but I don't think it's unlikely that working men had two or three sets of work clothes and more underclothes, and women had several dresses.) Working class people in the 1940s certainly didn't have as many outfits as we do now, but they didn't own one set of clothes - that was more likely over a century ago. And even then, they'd likely still have their work outfit and their nice, Sunday outfit. However, they often had more than one set of their undergarments (men's shirts or undershirts, women's chemises and drawers) and those were changed and washed more regularly. People were concerned about protecting their clothing, so they changed the underlayers to protect their clothing from sweat or body odors, and aprons and various protective garments were worn on top of their garments - have you seen photos of printmakers around the turn of the century? The men wore full aprons and sleeve protectors, and worked with their suit coats off to protect those. As to what they wore when things were in the wash - you don't wash wool, which is what all suits and many women's dresses were made of. So you'd wash the underlayers and protective layers, and then every night you'd neatly hang up the suit or dress so it would air out while you were sleeping.

your sleeping clothes

And as we know, nothing shows how people really live like the movies!

People who like it are usually people who don't have to wear a suit to work every day. Newsflash: it fucking sucks

Not the Japanese Home Islands, but they were on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, which were/are Japanese territories.

It's a bit of a stretch, but since many Pacific islands were under control of Japan, you could consider the many American soldiers fighting on those islands as in Japan.

Also pedantic, most men weren't soldiers. But we knew what he meant. A lot of men were away in the military.

Vasily Q. Public has got to be the best synonym for a communist Average Joe I've ever seen.