The Essay: Our Fathers' War

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The Essay: Our Fathers' War: A Death in My Family

A Death in My Family

Our Fathers' War

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Our Fathers' War, A Death in My Family

Michael Goldfarb's cousin Frank was killed in the conflict.

Michael Goldfarb tells the stories of Americans who fought in World War II. His cousin Frank was killed in the conflict, leaving a mother mourning for her first-born son.

7 December 2021 marks the eightieth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and with it America's entry into World War II.

Americans' war experience was substantially different from that of Britons. Michael Goldfarb's father was among the World War II generation christened "The Greatest Generation" in popular culture. He uses the stories he heard growing up from the Americans who fought the war to explore those differences both during the conflict and in the years immediately following. 

Michael's own father had a very good war, getting a second chance to apply for medical school because the military was desperately short of doctors.  When life resumed after the conflict, Michael's Aunt Belle, just had the memories of a mother, who became the designated mourner in their family, for her first-born son Frank, who was killed in action.

These are memories imperfect and embellished but they create a picture of what America was like during the war years and how the war came to be woven into America's national myth. He acknowledges just how mighty the forces were that propelled the children of these veterans away from that myth when the call came to serve in Vietnam.

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Michael Goldfarb tells the stories of Americans who fought in World War II.

7 December 2021 marks the eightieth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Michael Goldfarb tells the stories of Americans who fought in World War II.

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