Entry #4—“The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II

Introduction

This introduction really helps me affirm that a memory book like this is as valuable if not more valuable to understanding history as a textbook. Rather than just looking at facts and statistics, I am able to hear the stories of the people that created those numbers. This book allows me to see the real feelings of all people involved in the war. The introduction is filled with snippets of actually stories from all sorts of Americans. Big Bill Broonzy posed the question, “How do you expect somebody to feel ‘bout somethin’ he don’t know?”. I agree with him in the sense that one can never truly understand something unless they experience it, but by educating yourself with a variety of stories you can get much closer to understanding. For instance the story of enemies coming together 38 years later helps you understand that they were all the same kind of boys just from different countries.  City boys and country boys realized their sameness, while fighting together, and then this similar sameness when they encountered the enemies. I knew that the war had benefits for the equality of women and Blacks, but until I read the stories I did not soldiers benefited once home. A returning GI said, “The war changed our whole idea of how we wanted to live when we came back. We set our sights pretty high. All of us wanted better levels of living”. A textbook could not have given this insight as effectively as a memory book.  I gained a new understanding of the beginning of War Times ending the Hard Times because of all the stories I was able to read. World War II greatly shaped the course of America and the most beneficial way to try and understand it is through stories.