Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America
Preface More than 70 years ago the United States entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941 In this book one voice allows us to eavesdrop on what everyday Americans thought and felt about that conflict After my mother Joan Wehlen Morrison died in 2010 my two older brothers and I found hundreds of poems and journal entries she had composed starting from when she was nine years old in 1932 Not seen in seven decades this time capsule allows us to witness the life of a young American girl growing up in Chicago in the wake of the Depression with World War II nearing and later beginning Readers have an abiding interest in normal people’s lives during extraordinary times The great popularity of histori cal fiction period films and even lines of dolls that embody different eras attests to this fact The published diary of a real American girl living in the late 1930s and early 1940s how ever is unique As most of the participants who experienced World War II are aged or dead discovering a fresh voice from that period adds a new dynamic to a time that has long been closed to us Home Front Girl contains a large selection of Joan’s jour nal entries which are identified by date the years 1937 to xi
PREFACE 1943 and ordered chronologically as she ages from 14 to 20 Some journals are missing including her first one and another from September 1939 through November 1940 The ones we found contain much more than what you see here How did I choose which sections to transcribe and make public One of my goals in editing was to include passages I felt were of historical interest but I also picked those that retained Joan’s humor and philosophical outlook And given Joan’s poetic temperament I kept some that were quite simply stylistically beautiful Spelling errors have been corrected though some pre ferred spellings of the era such as faery rather than fairy are left intact Minor style inconsistencies have been stan dardized for ease of reading and some words or lines within individual entries have been cut in the service of concision Joan also used a lot of ellipses I have retained them when she used them to indicate emotional reflection or the passage of time but deleted them if they proved distracting Otherwise the text has been left exactly as Joan wrote it The illustra tions that decorate these pages are Joan’s own In addition to uncovering her diaries we found a great deal of poetry that parallels her personal love life and the war as well as short stories that were written both during and after the war years A small selection of these writings are included here but more can be accessed at www homefront girldiary com This volume contains the reflections of a teenage girl living in a historically fraught time The only daughter of a working-class Swedish immigrant with socialist political con victions and his wife Joan was born in Hinsdale Illinois on December 20 1922 but grew up in Chicago Like many girls xii
PREFACE of working-class families she found employment herself most regularly as a camp counselor every summer She also volun teered at various organizations such as Billings Hospital and the House of Happiness where she taught nature study to children As a scholarship student at the University of Chicago junior college junior and senior years in high school and then as an undergraduate at the U of C from 1940 to 1944 Joan was an intelligent humorous insightful self-mocking and pensive reader of her times and the people around her Her diary gives us an impression of certain aspects of cul tural and psychological importance not readily seen in history books Joan weaves personal reflections on love nature and God with commentary on contemporary political events Habitually late for school Joan shows her naïveté through out her diary For example she indicates sympathy for Charles Lindbergh’s isolationism before the entry of the United States into the war She interweaves the hijinks of her high school and college crowd with insights into cultural events She hears radio shows no television then and goes to the movies quite often no streaming films on her computer Her love life is that of a typical teenager she realizes when she is experienc ing a silly crush and relates how various passions peter out or develop into necking Joan offers us more than mere historical color She alter nates between being a flighty teenager and a budding poet she falls passionately and frequently in love she makes fun of herself yet reflects seriously on political crises nature religion and poetry Her reactions to world events can be pro found reflections on the impending death of her generation As early as 1937 Joan believes that the year 1940 will be a decisive year in history A pacifist she learns to bandage for xiii
PREFACE the Red Cross and works in a factory inspecting cans for the war Joan’s passion for classical literature and culture enables her to see the bombings of London and Berlin as examples of another Troy the city tragically besieged by the ancient Greeks in Homer’s epic The Iliad Her school notebooks which she kept while she was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago from 1940 to 1944 likewise contain information about a young adult’s life in the early 1940s Found tucked in between the covers were two pamphlets one on Wartime Canning of Fruits Vegeta bles The other from the Association of American Railroads in Washington DC warns Don’t Waste Transportation A large part of the Pullman sleeping cars and passenger coaches are assigned to troop service and the armed forces have first call on all the rest Plan ahead avoid weekends and holidays travel light Joan copied over detailed instruc tions on how to knit Men’s Heavy Gloves as knitting was one way that girls could support the war effort Not all the information in her notebooks is utilitarian In psychology class on January 19 1943 after notes about Pavlov’s dogs and conditioned responses Joan wrote Dog gets neurotic if compelled to make too fine a distinction Me too Then she drew a picture of a dog salivating Amongst her scribbles about John Donne’s poetry igneous rocks and Aztec gods are doodles of girls heads and dresses the actress Dorothy Lamour and an anthropologist gone native in his sarong She also played hangman and calculated her men strual period In May 1943 she even jotted down below her English poetry homework a list of 34 boys she dated starting from when she was in elementary school Joan wrote this list shortly before her wedding to my father Robert Bob xiv
