Women's Experiences of the Second World War: Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life

About the Book

Using a very wide range of detailed sources, the book surveys the many different experiences of women during the Second World War. Many existing studies on the role of women in the Second World War concentrate on women's increasing participation in the workplace and on their struggles to cope with rationing and shortages. This book goes further, exploring women's wartime experiences much more fully. Drawing on a wide range of sources including oral interviews, scrapbooks, personal letters, diaries, newspaper articles, Mass Observation files and memoirs, the book illustrates some of the similarities and differences of women's wartime experiences in different situations in different countries. Specific subjects covered include experiences of exile and living under occupation, of coping with proximity to fighting and to the frontline, and of dealing with everyday life in trying circumstances. The book draws out how factors such as political beliefs, nationalism, economics, religion, ability, geography and culture all had an impact. Overall, the book reveals a great deal about the complexities and nuances of women's experiences in this period of enormous upheaval. Contributors: Patricia Chappine, Nupur Chaudhuri, Sylvie Crinquand, Beth Hessel, Sarah Hogenbirk, Regina Lark, Bernice Lindner, Alexis Peri, Kelly Spring, Michael Timonin, Angela Wanhalla, Wai-Yin Christina Wong.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Women's Experiences of the Second World War: Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life - Mark J. Crowley Introduction: Women's Experiences of the Second World War: Exile, Occupation and Everyday Life - Sandra Trudgen Dawson Part One: Living in Exile and under Wartime Occupation Exiles Serving Exiles on the Homefront: Protestant Missionary Workers and Japanese Americans - Beth Hessel Memories of Exile: An Alsatian Woman in German Occupied Alsace, 1939-1945 - Nupur Chaudhuri Entertaining Exile: Norah O'Hagan and the Flying Herzogs at War, 1939-1945 The War Diaries of Hélène Berr and Etty Hillesum: Jewish Women in Occupied Paris and Amsterdam, 1941-1944 - Sylvie Crinquand Part Two: Living with Wartime Occupiers A Friendly Invasion? Maori Women, American Servicemen and the Legacies of Wartime Mobilisation in New Zealand Interracial Marriage in Occupied Japan A Moment of Refuge: Transnational Cooperation at Ming Sum School for the Blind in Occupied Canton in the Second World War Contradictions and Conformity in a Wartime Boarding House: Gender Roles and British Food Rationing in the Second World War Part Three: Everyday Life at Home and on the Battle Front "We Had All Tried to Act like Ladies, but We Weren't Getting Anywhere." :The Bring Back Daddy Clubs and the Demobilization of 1945 Womanhood under Fire: Gender Practice and Identity in Soviet Accounts of the Frontlines "This Is a Woman's War, Too": Canadian Servicewomen's Wartime Scrapbooks US Military Nurses and the Liberation of Concentration Camps in the Second World War

About the Author :
Mark J. Crowley is an Associate Professor at the David Eccles Business School, University of Utah. Sandra Trudgen Dawson is the Executive Administrator of the Berkshire Conference of Women's History. Mark J. Crowley is an Associate Professor at the David Eccles Business School, University of Utah. Sandra Trudgen Dawson is the Executive Administrator of the Berkshire Conference of Women's History.

Review :
This edited collection of essays provides fascinating insights into women's experiences of war on a truly global scale. [...] Overall, the strengths of this edited volume are the range, diversity and richness of the case study material that is core to all twelve chapters. It is illuminating to read across the different contexts presented - from Māori women in New Zealand to Soviet female combatants. This gives the reader a refreshingly global perspective on women's experiences of war and counters the often geographically segmented histories (European, North American, South East Asian, Pacifc, and Antipodean, etc) upon which comparative gender history can be built. The chapters in this work are built on exciting primary sources, all of which highlight women's own voices. The authors draw on diaries and letters from missionaries and front-line soldiers, people displaced by conflict and those living under occupation, bringing together work covering a wide range of geography and age and different kinds of experience of the war. . . . [A] useful, readable starting point for addressing many aspects of women's lives during World War II. This is a wide-ranging collection of essays that highlights women's enormously varied wartime experiences. The essays are written by scholars from diverse academic backgrounds. The contributors use a variety of source materials including diaries, scrapbooks, letters and interviews. Several helpfully delve into the difficulties of using and interpreting their source materials. Diaries are sometimes written for personal fulfilment, but they can be written purposefully to bear witness for future generations. Discussing challenges in source material reminds readers about the interpretive nature of historical analysis but also about the changing interpretations that individuals give to their own lives.