Exploring Letters and Postcards of the Past
A Window Into Everyday Life on the American Home Front,
These correspondences preserved from World War II, offer a rare, unfiltered look into what it meant to live through World War II as an American civilian. These letters, written by my parents and grandmother, caught in an extraordinary moment in time, capture the realities of a nation mobilized for war: rationing, restricted travel, overcrowded railways, financial strain, and the emotional weight carried by families waiting for news from their loved ones.
In these pages we see how mothers worried about their sons, wives longed to be with their husbands, and how soldiers coped with situations that pushed them to their limits. We also glimpse the infrastructure of wartime America, hospital trains transporting the wounded, shifting railroad schedules as troop movement took priority, and the everyday acceptance of sacrifice as a civic duty.
Beyond the headlines, these letters tell the story of how war shaped daily existence: the uncertainty of when loved ones would return, the struggle to balance hope with hardship, and the quiet resilience found in kitchens, train stations, and small towns across the country. Together, they illuminate a world in which ordinary Americans live with constant shortages, ever-changing rules, and the unspoken expectation to endure.
Recent Letters
Convalescent Hospital
In July of 1944, letters to my father were addressed to Fort George Wright Hospital in Spokane Washington. Fort George Wright Hospital in 1944 was a key convalescent and rehabilitation facility for the US Army servicemen. Fort George was a US post established beginning in the late 1890s. The hospital was built on-site in 1898 […]
Restricted Rails
My parents were married in May of 1944 while my father was home on furlough, a brief pause in the turmoil of a world at war. The letters they left behind include tender notes between two young newlyweds and the steady, pleading correspondence from my grandmother to her only son. These letters form an intimate […]
Wartime Rails
On Thursday, July 6, 1944, my grandmother sat at her typewriter once again to write to my father. It seems she wrote every day with letters mixed of small local happenings, the weather and some words of advice for her only son. In this letter her daily life intersects with the larger rhythm of a […]
