The fourth Friday morning of each month, I attend a book club. We each read the same fiction or non-fiction and then discuss it. I am by far the oldest in the group. which usually consists of eight women. The others are probably in their seventies although I don’t know for sure.
The last novel we read was “Churchill’s Secret Messenger” by Alan Hlad about World War II. I was appalled when the others all said they hadn’t studied the conflict when they were in school. For example, they were not familiar with the details of The Holocaust when from 1941 to 1945, Nazi-Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered around six million Jews across Germany occupied Europe, approximately two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. The girls had attended a variety of schools in various locations so apparently, at that time, all districts didn’t teach about the hostilities.
I remember the era, although I was only four years old on December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and dragged the United States into the battle, which was in progress. Although our country wasn’t invaded, we made sacrifices for the war effort. Every family had members serving in the armed forces. Young women became “Rosie, the Riveters” taking the men’s places working in the factories, which converted from manufacturing products such as cars to war materials.
Some items such as sugar, meat and gasoline were rationed and our government issued coupons that were needed for purchases.
When I was in eighth grade, before we could study WW II, our teacher, Mr. Mulera, who had been a soldier, wrote information about the clash on the blackboard and we copied pages and pages of notebook paper because our text books were too old to contain the data.
Country leaders depend on their citizens to “Remember Pearl Harbor” so the tragedy doesn’t happen again.
Are you familiar with the details of World War II?