“It appears that the disremembrance of World War Two is as disturbingly profound as the forgettery of the Great Depression: World War Two, an event that changed the psyche as well as the face of the United States and of the world,” opines Studs Terkel in the introduction to “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II. Seeking to rectify this disremembering, Terkel produced a vivid collection of testimonies and interviews regarding a broadly diverse set of experiences pertaining to the so-called “good war.” Terkel, aptly and also in the introduction, proclaims that:
The memory of the rifleman is what this book is about; and of his sudden comrades, thrown, hugger-mugger, together; and of those men, women, and children on the home front who knew or did not know what the shouting was all about; and of occasional actors from other worlds, accidentally encountered; and of lives lost and bucks found. And of a moment in history, as recalled by an ex-corporal, “when buddies felt they were more important, were better men who amounted to more than they do now. It’s a precious memory.”
It is undeniable that “The Good War” effectively unearths these memories, identities, and experiences in such a wide-sweeping, existentially altering period. It is, however, a tale of two different objectives. The first, as previously described, is an attempt to uncover memories and experiences of the “good war,” which, as the varied “colleagues” (p. 12) of Terkel describe, was not so much a straightforward and good war as commonly thought. The second is to accomplish such via oral histories.
Terkel, as his reputation leads one to believe, is a master of picking a carefully curated and wildly affective group of people to give their inputs into the Second World War. “The Good War” is structured into four separate Books, none of which contain any larger coherence or structure, but instead house a wide variety of topics divided by headings. For example, Book One contains seven headings, with titles ranging from “Tales of the Pacific” and “A Sunday Morning”—Pacific Theater war stories and Pearl Harbor experiences respectively—to “Rosie” and “Reflections on Machismo”, both largely self-explanatory. Terkel truly canvasses about as many topics as possible within the American (with some Japanese and Russian interviewees as well) Homefront-to-Frontline continuum: defense industries workers, Rosies, academics, neighborhood kids, women working for the USO, hugger-mugger riflemen, medics, artillery forward observers, war correspondents, military police, airmen (Tuskegees too) and bombardiers, sailors, quartermasters and PX officers, and much more. Faceless grunts and high-profile dignitaries are drawn upon in a surprising balance: many of the interviewees are just ones in the sea of lived experiences, but Terkel conducted interviews with rather important political and military figures like Thomas G. Corcoran, Admiral Gene Larocque, General William Buster, John Kenneth Galbraith, Eugene B. Sledge, Joseph L. Raugh, Jr., Lowell Steward, and Telford Taylor. It is a definitive strength of “The Good War” in that Terkel was able to draw upon such a range of people, occupations, ranks, and experiences; if he set out to the complicate the Good War into just a War—with all of its misery, trauma, contradictions, letdowns, heroism, coincidences, and all other emotional, economic, social, political, and experiential baggage—then he was assuredly successful. “The Good War” is a necessary read for those seeking a complete picture of the (largely) American experiences during World War II.
If one is to judge the same work on its subtitle, An Oral History of World War II, then the outcome is less favorable. By no means can one assert that Terkel, perhaps the most famous oral historian in the existence of the methodology and genre, is incompetent. Many of the criticisms relating to oral history, as well, are hinged on the fact that “The Good War” is not an academic book, but rather a popular history (no fault there!) without the need for methodology statements or more in-depth commentary on the process of collecting the oral histories. But at the same time, Terkel leaves a lot of questions unanswered as to his methodology. The structure of “The Good War” is largely narrative, succinctly introducing each colleague with a primer on their relevant information and then producing their recollections as responses to Terkel—largely without Terkel’s questions or comments. Sometimes, postscripts or clarifying information is inserted in italics, but each colleague’s section is kept preserved as a stream-of-consciousness narrative in unified form. Keeping each story together without any breaks in the narrative format was likely an intentional decision, and one that works to produce some incredible stories, but undeniably leads to inquiries regarding the nitty-gritty processes involved in producing such. By 1984, when “The Good War” was published and ten years after his famous Working, there was no question of any inexperience with Terkel as an oral historian or the establishment of the methodology itself. The copyright page at the end even admits that “Some of the names in this book have been changed” (p. 569). Such a statement does not necessarily result in a wholesale discrediting of the work, but contributes to the likelihood of a thorough, detailed, and heavy editorial process. Altogether, a methodology statement or section on method would have been incredibly insightful.
