The replacements came regularly and rapidly. A writer in 1943 giddily described “a regiment of new man-made materials” that was “turning old industries topsy-turvy.” The antimalarial drug quinine could be replaced by a synthetic called chloroquine, the opium-derived painkiller morphine by one called methadone. Camphor, a key ingredient in medicines, photographic film, and explosives, came only from Japanese-controlled Taiwan. That is, it did until chemists figured out how to synthesize it from turpentine at one-eighth the cost. When the rubber shortage prevented making liquid incendiaries from
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