American Women in a World at War

Contemporary Accounts from World War II

Edited by Judy Barrett Litoff, David C. Smith

Publication date:

01 December 1996

Length of book:

237 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780842025706

This title brings together twenty-five writings by women who share their rich and varied World War II experiences, from serving in the military to working on the home front to preparing for the postwar world. By providing evidence of their active and resourceful roles in the war effort as workers, wives, and mothers, these women offer eloquent testimony that World War II was indeed everybody's war.

Litoff and Smith combine pieces by well-known writers, such as Margaret Culkin Banning and Nancy Wilson Ross, with important-but largely forgotten-personal accounts by ordinary women living in extraordinary times. This volume is divided into the six sections listed below:

Preparing for War

In the Military

At 'Far-Flung' Fronts

On the Home Front

War Jobs

Preparing for the Postwar World

Chapter 1 Introduction
Part 2 I Preparing for War
Chapter 3 Women for Defense
Chapter 4 Women in the War
Chapter 5 The Negro Woman in National Defense
Part 6 II In the Military
Chapter 7 Yes, Ma'am!: The Personal Papers of a WAAC Private
Chapter 8 The WAVES: The Story of the Girls in Blue
Chapter 9 Three Years Behind the Mast
Chapter 10 Shakedown Cruise
Part 11 III At "Far-Flung" Fronts
Chapter 12 Navy Nurse
Chapter 13 I Served on Bataan
Chapter 14 G.I. Nightingale
Chapter 15 Home Away from Home
Chapter 16 I Knew Your Soldier
Chapter 17 Shooting the Russian War
Part 18 IV On the Home Front
Chapter 19 Camp Follower
Chapter 20 If Your Baby Must Travel in Wartime
Chapter 21 So Your Husband's Gone to War!
Chapter 22 The Negro Woman Serves America
Part 23 War Jobs
Chapter 24 Arms and the Girl
Chapter 25 Negro Women War Workers
Chapter 26 Shipyard Diary of a Woman Welder
Chapter 27 Women and Farm Work
Part 28 VI Preparing for the Postwar World
Chapter 29 Out of the Kitchen—Into the War
Chapter 30 Women Workers in Transition from War to Peace
Chapter 31 Women's Responsibility in World Affairs
Chapter 32 Our Stake in Tomorrow's World
Chapter 33 Suggested Readings

The women here almost leap from the pages and pull the reader into their stories. Thanks to Litoff and SMith for retrieving this crucial segment of women's history.