“The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II

Studs TerkelNonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1984

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Book 1, Section 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Peggy Terry” Summary

Turning from the war front to the home front, Terkel begins a series of interviews with women who lived through World War II. The first is Peggy Terry, who worked in a munitions plant. She recalls that she and the other workers had patriotic feelings about defeating the Nazis but had stronger feelings about the Japanese. She says, “They sure as heck didn’t look like us. They were yellow little creatures that smiled when they bombed our boys” (110).

However, Peggy and her colleagues worked in poor conditions. They were exposed to chemicals and had to buy Coke and Dr. Pepper if they wanted a drink (110). Also, her husband, who fought in the war as a paratrooper, became an abusive alcoholic as a result of his experiences in the war. Still, she enjoyed the peace that followed the war and the prosperity that came with it.

“Sarah Killingsworth” Summary

While talking about her experiences working in a defense plant, Sarah notes that she did not really think about the political implications of the war. Even though white and black Americans were segregated in the military, Sarah adds, “it gives you a kind of independence because they felt that we gone off and fought, we should be equal” (116). In addition, Sarah discusses the war as “a worthy cause” (116) that provided opportunities for many people.

“Dellie Hahne” Summary

A retired music teacher, Dellie Hahne worked as a nurse’s aide during the war. She married a soldier not because she loved him but because of social pressures. Dellie also notes the propaganda she and the public were constantly fed through movies. Although she agrees that the war was justified, she still believes she and the American public were “lied to” (121). Even so, she believes the “beginning of the women’s movements had its seeds right there in World War Two” (122).

“Pauline Kael” Summary

A nationally known film critic, Pauline Kael discusses the role of propaganda in movies during civilian life in the United States. Also, Kael notes that World War II was a more optimistic time characterized by greater faith in world leaders, in contrast to the “general sense of hopelessness and powerlessness” (125) that pervaded in later times.

“Evelyn Fraser” Summary

Evelyn Fraser describes her experience in the Women’s Army Corps, where women served as engineers, mechanical operators, and bakers. She reflects how the experience of the war and the GI Bill enabled her to “gloriously go off on my own and be on my own” (128).

“Betty Basye Hutchinson” Summary

A nurse living in California, Hutchinson tended to patients disfigured in the war. However, the general public was not sympathetic. Betty does not see war as a good experience, especially not with the new possibility of nuclear war. After World War II, Betty got a house in the suburbs like so many others, where the war was forgotten. She remarks, “You couldn’t get anybody to really talk about the war” (133).

Book 1, Section 5 Analysis

Rosie the Riveter, who inspired the title of this chapter, was a fictional cultural icon who embodied American women who worked in shipyards and factories during World War II. The image certainly fits all the women in this chapter, who contributed to the war effort through jobs that supported the military both directly and indirectly.

A theme that runs through the chapter is how women’s experience on the home front was a double-edged sword. Women were given some degree of freedom not normally available in American and British society at the time, because of the salary and the educational opportunities given through the military or war-related jobs. However, they also faced tremendous social pressure to marry and settle into the role of the suburban housewife after the war.

There are other points raised about the home front through this chapter. First was the prevalence of propaganda even in democratic countries during World War II, which challenges the common perception of propaganda as a tool of authoritarian governments. Second, the immediate postwar era saw a new period of prosperity that had not been experienced by the generation that grew up in the Great Depression. However, there was also a cultural reticence to speaking out about negative experiences of the war. This was very much unlike the response to the Vietnam War, when criticism of the political motives behind the war and awareness of the traumas suffered by war veterans were discussed much more openly.