WWII life on exhibit in NOLA

Posters, newspapers and videos help tell the story of everyday life in “Salute to the Home Front,” the new permanent exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.
Posters, newspapers and videos help tell the story of everyday life in “Salute to the Home Front,” the new permanent exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS -- A rusted fragment of the battleship USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor, a woman's munitions plant uniform and ration books all tell the complex story of life on the homefront in a new exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

"Salute to the Home Front," which opened this month, explores the bitter fight about entering the war, racial and gender prejudice, and the development of the atomic bomb.

Museum President and Chief Executive Officer Nick Mueller said most of the museum's 6-acre site shows how the war was won on the battlefield but the new permanent exhibit explains "why it was fought and how it was won on the homefront."

The 10,000-square-foot exhibit begins with the years after World War I. The peace treaty that ended the war in 1918 was "punitive and did not really solve the social and cultural ills" that led to the war, said Owen Glendenning, the museum's associate vice president for education and access.

Among the artifacts are British gas masks for children -- one that might fit a 5-year-old and a much bigger one designed to hold an infant from head to waist. Gas had been a major weapon of World War I, and people feared that gas bombs might be dropped in civilian areas.

"Fortunately, it never happened, but the population was scared stiff," Glendenning said.

Headlines and newsreels show the strident debate between U.S. isolationists and internationalists, which ended when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Survivors' accounts of that attack are among more than 50 videotaped oral histories interspersed throughout the exhibit.

"The signature of this museum is to engage people in personal stories. ... We hear from survivors of Pearl Harbor, people on Main Street USA. ... We hear first-hand stories about people who went into factories or into the service to fight," Mueller said.

The exhibit's Main Street USA has a newsstand, a theater marquee and a store window filled with propagandistic wares such as Victory bobby pins and a charm bracelet of military service insignia.

Within the picket fence outside two rooms representing a 1940s-style house, one wall is covered with a photo of a victory garden. Nearby are a real hubcap and other metal items for a scrap drive.

Inside the kitchen, the shelves display pamphlets with titles such as "Victory Begins at Home!: Recipes to Match Your Sugar Ration" and "Health for Victory Club Meal-Planning Guide." Pull open kitchen drawers and you see items such as ration books, matchbooks and an icebag.

A living room wall displays a framed map: "Esso War Map II: Invasion Edition." It's designed, an introductory statement says, so people can "follow the strategy of the Allies as it develops from day to day." An open closet in the same room displays children's military dolls, toy guns and dress-up uniforms.

Toni Kizer, vice president for collections management, said one of her favorite pieces is at the bottom right corner of the living room's display cabinet: a statuette of Hitler bending over, with a pincushion as his rear end.

For more information, call (504) 528-1944 or visit nationalww2museum.org.

Travel on 06/25/2017

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