Author: Diane Phelps Budden
Publisher: Diane Phelps
ISBN: 0578557614
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
Touching letters written by a loving couple; musty letters that detail past lives—my parents’ letters. A housewife and her sailor husband with shared immigrant experiences penned more than 500 letters during World War II, and the letters inform this book. Abridged versions of the letters weave a loving romantic story with actual events occurring on the home front and the battlefront. The letters are further brought to life through the 25 original family photographs and remembrances from the period. The 75th anniversary of the end of World War II will be celebrated in 2020. Most of the participants have passed on. While servicemen’s stories have been broadly told, the tales of the resolute war wives, who had a significant impact on the outcome of the war and the well-being of the country, have not been widely shared. While some women joined the military, and others entered the workforce for the first time, the majority stayed at home to raise children. Dear Hubby of Mine focuses on this latter group of women whose stories have been under-represented and largely uncelebrated in World War II literature. In addition, my parents’ immigrant backgrounds formed in the Hungarian community in Cleveland, Ohio, shed light on the experiences of other minority groups and refugees that came before and after them. While many readers may see the story as a touching romance, and it is, others may appreciate the depiction of the country in the 1940s under wartime conditions and how that influenced America’s culture in the decades to come. Women charted new roles during the war that led to new freedoms in the years ahead and eventually brought about major societal changes.
Author: Judy Barrett Litoff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780700607143
Category : Women
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
"Last night Mel and I were talking about some of the adjustments we'll have to make to our husbands' return. I must admit I'm not exactly the same girl you left-I'm twice as independent as I used to be and to top it off, I sometimes think I've become 'hard as nails'. . . . Also--more and more I've been living exactly as I want to . . . I do as I damn please." [These tough words from the wife of a soldier show that World War Ii changed much more than just international politics.] "From a fascinating collection of letters, filled with wonderfully distinctive human stories, Judy Barrett Litoff and David C. Smith have shpaed a rare and brilliant book that transports the reader back in time to an unforgettable era."--Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. "This is a wonderful volume, full of admirable women struggling in a difficult situation, doing their best for their families and their country. Ah, the memories it brings back! Highly recommended for those who lived through the war, and for those who want to understand it."--Stephen E. Ambrose, author of Eisenhower and D-Day, June 6, 1944 "Offering a remarkable view into the lives of ordinary women during wartime, this book will enlighten and catch at the hearts of general readers and cause historians to reconsider how women experienced World War II."-Susan M. Hartmann, author of The Home Front and Beyond. "From among 25,000 of an estimated six billion letters sent overseas during World War II, Litoff and Smith have culled and skillfully edited a sampling by 400 American women. These letters, starting with one to a seaman wounded at Pearl Harbor, are compelling documents of home-front life in varied ethnic, cultural, and financial milieus. Tragic, touching, and funny, the correspondence is full of prosaic news and gossip about jobs and neighbors, along with accounts of births and intimate allusions to love-making. The stress of separation was intensified for women whose loved ones were hospitalized, or imprisoned as either conscientious objectors or security risks. Some women wrote General MacArthur and others for news of missing men or to obtain details of their deaths. Many of these heartrending documents also express acceptance-and even pride-in the sacrifices required by war."--Publishers Weekly. "Other scholars of WW II have published letters written home by servicemen, but this is the first collection sampling the letters written by sisters, sweethearts, wives, and mothers, saved by thousands of servicemen. Chapters are organized around themes that were important to these women: courtship, marriage, motherhood, work, sacrifices. . . . What women tell readers in these letters about their concerns and their wartime feelings will cause historians [readers?] to rethink what has been written about the homefront."--Choice. "Despite the popular appeal of Rosie the Riveter, nine out of ten mothers with children under six were not in the labor force, which helps to account for the vast outpouring of mail from the home front to 'our boys' in the European and Pacific theaters. Some couples wrote every day for four years. This is the rich historic documentation that the authors have drawn upon to create a panoramic pastiche of indefatigable, energetic, patriotic female letter writers in the war years. . . . One is struck by the hard-headed practicality of many of the letters-stories of plucky, sometimes even grumpy, coping. There are letters of growing independence, with strong and at times explicit indication that the boyfriend or husband will be facing a very different woman upon his return from the one he 'knew' when he disembarked for his own, often terrible, venture. . . . Every war leaves mothers with broken hearts. What this volume most remarkably demonstrates is just how prepared American women on the home front were for that dread eventuality."--Jean Bethke Elshtain in the Journal of American History. "Fascinating and often heartbreaking letters. . . . The letters illuminate a time when sex roles were first showing the changes that would culminate in the women's movement. 'I must admit I'm not exactly the same girl you left,' Edith Speert wrote to her husband, Victor, in 1945. 'I'm twice as independent as I used t be, and I sometimes think I've become hard as nails. I don't think my changes will affect our relationship.'. . . In the end, it is the small human dramas in these letters that stand out. Anne Gudis, miffed to distraction by her soldier-swain Sam Kramer, writes what may be the shortest Dear John on record: 'Mr. Kramer: Go to hell! With love, Anne Gudis.' A woman working at a Honolulu nightclub assures a pilot that she'll wait for him-until she's 20. The wife of an Air Corps navigator reads in a news story that only 15 of 1,500 Allied bombers were lost in a raid over Europe and later learns that her husband died in one of the 15. And a grieving mother whose son died in the Pacific asks Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in desperation, 'Please general he was a good boy, wasn't he? Did he die a hard death?'"--Smithsonian. "'They made it possible for me to retain my sanity in an insane world,' wrote one pilot about the letters his wife sent him throughout World War II. The letters contained in this collection explain the soldier's sentiments. Whether full of passionate longing for a missing sweetheart or merely detailing domestic gossip, the letters offer a rich introduction to how American women experienced the war. Since military authorities ordered soldiers not to keep any letters written them by their loved ones, the authors have done a magnificent service in obtaining letters that soldiers either surreptitiously hid or whose authors copied them before sending them on."--Library Journal.
Author: Pauline E. Parker
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786413468
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
Lois A. Ferguson was a training teacher for college graduates at a Japanese relocation center in California. Her husband set up a junior college and night school program. Their efforts were to help relieve the injustices done to fellow citizens. Kay Watson's husband fought in Burma while Kay worked at one of the sites of a secret government project known as the Manhattan Project; she later learned that she might have played a small part in the plan to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Mary L. Appling was a librarian in a California high school when she met Hugh Appling, a serviceman just returned from the war; together, they worked in Foreign Service for the United States for nearly thirty years, a direction affected by their actions during World War II. The recollections of these three women and 52 others are edited and presented by Pauline Parker, who also endured the war. Many women had life changing experiences during this turbulent time--Parker has gathered the personal stories of such women as Marines and government workers as well as single mothers whose husbands had gone off to fight.
Author: Emily Yellin
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743245142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492
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Book Description
A stunning and unprecedented portrait of women--from factory workers to pinup girls to spies--during World War II, which drastically transformed women's roles in American society.
Author: Barbara Bannister
Publisher: Abbott Press
ISBN: 145820961X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 197
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Book Description
After years of being apart, cousins Carolyn and Patty are eager to catch up with each other at a relative's wedding. They bring the letters they exchanged during World War II--when they were children--as a way to reminisce. As the women read through the letters, they are transported back to the American home front. When they begin writing letters, Carolyn has just moved from Nebraska to Oregon, and the two girls desperately miss each other. But their communication is soon overshadowed by the events of December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor is bombed. The tone of the letters changes as the girls grow preoccupied with the war. Patty tells Carolyn about how their Japanese American friends move to Canada to avoid being put into camps, while Carolyn expresses her relief that her father cannot enlist in the navy due to a blind eye. Whether they write about gas rationing and blackout regulations or saving money to buy war stamps, Carolyn and Patty reveal the war's impact on their lives. But as the two discuss the contents of the letters at their reunion, they realize just how much the war years shaped who they are as adults. Artfully switching between the past and the present, Letters from the Home Front is a charming novel of America during World War II.
Author: Mark Jonathan Harris
Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Includes primary sources on defense workers, women during the war, conscientious objectors, scrap metal collection and recycling, racial issues on the homefront, and civil defense.
Author: Jörg Echternkamp
Publisher: Germany and the Second World W
ISBN: 0199542961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1160
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Book Description
Volume IX/II of this series draws on a range of historical sources to explore the effect that the Second World War had on the people of Germany, whether they were practically involved in the war effort, or struggling to maintain a normal existance
Author: Joan Wehlen Morrison
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 1613744609
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
Wednesday, December 10, 1941"Hitler speaks to Reichstag tomorrow. We just heard the first casualty lists over the radio. ... Lots of boys from Michigan and Illinois. Oh my God! ... Life goes on though. We read our books in the library and eat lunch, bridge, etc. Phy. Sci. and Calculus. Darn Descartes. Reading Walt Whitman now." This diary of a smart, astute, and funny teenager provides a fascinating record of what an everyday American girl felt and thought during the Depression and the lead-up to World War II. Young Chicagoan Joan Wehlen describes her daily life growing up in the city and
Author: Helen Dann Stringer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
A collection of correspondence between a WWII army surgeon and his wife, capturing experiences on the battlefront and on the homefront. While her husband relates the horrors of war and changes at the war's end in Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, his wife describes family life with four small children. Includes bandw photos. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Author: Kristen Tsetsi
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0615139906
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 327
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Book Description
"I had never had a better understanding of the agony of military separation until I read Kristen Tsetsi's haunting and lyrical debut novel 'Homefront.' Tsetsi, who writes with the power of an old soul, artfully deconstructs aspirations and fears to show us that love, even under the best of conditions, is little more than an artifact of an imperfect heart and an inexplicable emptiness we can never name. She turns a discerning eye on the human condition and leaves us with great sympathy for her characters and ourselves while also providing us the unsettling knowledge that we are all to blame for what we allow to happen in both love and war." -- James Moore, author of "Bush's Brain"
