I’ve tried searching the WWII US FAQ as well as a general search for WWII patriotism in a couple of forms, and was surprised to come up empty.

Popular media have given me a romanticized view of life in the US during WWII: long lines of young men enlisting, women rushing to factory jobs, kids engaged in recycling drives for metal and rubber, war bond drives in every movie theater, a national focus on winning the war that been unheard of ever since (except maybe the hours after 9/11).

I realize it’s easy for media to present things as this extreme. I realize there were still debates in Congress over expenditures. I assume there were conscientious objectors. And I’m sure many people, such as those too old to enlist, just continued their everyday lives, possibly on mundane jobs whose contribution to the war effort was distant, if at all.

What was it really like? How were people who perhaps didn’t think the war was that important treated?