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Scholar
of American Women & World War II examines women’s role on 60th
Anniversary of War’s End
Newswise — How did American women
respond to the end of World War II? What did women from across the
United States write to their husbands, relatives and each other
about the wartime use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Judy Barrett Litoff, a history
professor at Bryant University in Rhode Island, and a scholar of
woman and war can offer compelling insights. Professor Litoff
recently delivered a well-received paper on women’s responses to the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945.
The paper was based on letters she has filed in her 30,000-letter
archive of correspondences written by women during World War II.
The conference, Atomic Bomb and
American Society, sponsored by the Center for the Study of War and
Society at the University of Tennessee, was held July 15-17 at the
Oak Ridge National Lab, one of the three national laboratories where
the atomic bomb was developed in the 1940s. Professor Litoff’s
paper: “’Over the radio yesterday, I heard the starting of another
war’: Women’s Wartime Correspondence, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the
End of World War II.” In it, she writes:
“The letters written by America’s
wartime women, both civilian and military, during the final weeks of
the Second World War demonstrate that they did not naively embrace
the coming of the atomic age. While thankful and proud that the
United States had developed a weapon of unprecedented power that
would bring about a quick end to the war, letter writers understood
that the postwar world would face enormous, but still unknown
challenges, as it addressed the difficult questions of how to
maintain peace in the new atomic age.
“One of the striking features of the letters written by American
women during World War II is the degree of political sensitivity and
sophistication that is expressed in their correspondence. While love
and longing formed a central theme of women’s wartime letters,
letter writers also made it clear that they considered the politics
of the war to be of utmost importance.”
She is an excellent source on what
these letters reveal about the conflict that forever changed the
world. Professor Litoff can offer quotable thoughts on how American
women experienced that change, and what they hoped for the future.
Her campus Web page:
http://www.bryant.edu/bryant/facultyprofile/litoff_judy.jsp
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