The Cottonbalers!

My father served as a Marine in the Pacific from 1942 onward and participated in the battles of Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian as a member of the 2nd Marine Division. My father, who passed away in 2003, was never at a loss to relate interesting, and often humorous, stories of his time in New Zealand and Hawaii, but the only times he would speak of his combat experiences was in his nightmares. As his son, I was intensely interested in why it was that dad would wake up screaming and so, I spent the better part of my life studying the war to better understand not only his experiences, but what it was that shaped the man who raised me.

I decided that in pursuing my masters in history, I would turn an historian’s eye upon the effect that World War II had upon the immediate post-war world; the world that I grew up in and that shaped my environment and, therefore, me. What I plan to do is to study the ways in which the memory of the war has changed throughout the years. I intend to gather information from news stories, popular entertainment including memoirs, novels, movies and television and from the participants themselves.