Remembering The Good War; Minnesota's Greatest Generation

xxi, [3], 312 pages. Includes Preface, Acknowledgments, Map of European Theater, and Map of Pacific Theater. Illustrations, War's Beginning: Memories of and Reactions to 7 December 1941; War's Broadening Horizons: New Experiences, New Locations; War Experienced: Minnesotans on the Home Front; War Experienced: Military Service in Europe and in the Pacific; War's Impacts: The Human Side; War's End: 1945 as End and Beginning; and War's Legacy: Coming Back, Going Back, Reflecting Back; as well as Further Reading, List of Interviewees, and Index. Dr. Thomas Saylor is a faculty member in the Department of History at Concordia St. Paul. Saylor has a B.S. and M.A. from the University of Akron, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester. Dr. Saylor works in the field of oral history and is the author or co-author of five books, including Remembering the Good War (2005), Long Hard Road: American POWs During World War II (2007) and Minnesota in the 70s (2013). He also wrote a history of Concordia during the years 1893-2018 (Leading in Legacy, 2018). Dr. Saylor has created and directed six different oral history projects and has worked with the state historical society on several initiatives. World War II was the defining event for a generation of Americans. Remembering the Good War tells the stories of over one hundred Minnesotans, ordinary people who rose to duty at an extraordinary moment in our past. Here soldiers and sailors, housewives and farmers, "Rosies" and "Joes" tell what it was like to be swept up in history. Betty Wall Strofus of Faribault recalls how she discovered a love for flying and joined the Women's Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) program to serve stateside during the war. Lyle Pasket of St. Paul marvels that he was only seventeen when his cruiser, the USS Indianapolis, was torpedoed en route to the Philippines. After three days without food or drink in shark-infested waters, he was one of only 317 sailors rescued. Paratrooper Frank Soboleski of International Falls recounts how he depended on north woods hunting skills to keep himself alive during battle in the Netherlands. Schoolteacher Vivian Linn McMorrow remembers with quiet intensity the brief time she shared with her husband Ralph Gland, who was killed in France during the second year of their marriage. From the shock of the attack on Pearl Harbor to the excitement of recruits leaving the farm for the first time to the horrors of the battlefields of Europe, Africa, and the Pacific, Remembering the Good War pays homage to the generation of Minnesotans who were forever transformed by World War II. Their voices, honest, emotional, and resolute, remind us of a time of sacrifice and courage.…