Kristin Guillot works on installing images of newspapers as part of the exhibit.
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A letter of a serviceman who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor, to his mother, is part of the permanent exhibit “Salute to the Home Front” at the National World War II Museum which will open to the public this Saturday, in New Orleans, Monday, June 5, 2017. The exhibit tells the home front story from the 1920s to the development of the atomic bomb.
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“Sweetheart Jewelry,” given by soldiers to their mothers, sisters, wives and sweethearts, which often had insignia identifying branch, and sometimes unit and job, is part of the permanent exhibit “Salute to the Home Front” at the National World War II Museum, which will open to the public this Saturday, in New Orleans, Monday, June 5, 2017. The exhibit tells the home front story from the 1920s to the development of the atomic bomb.
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A child’s gas mask is part of the permanent exhibit, “Salute to the Home Front,” at the National World War II Museum.
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Workers walk past a mock-up of an assembly line manufacturing Army jeeps as part of the permanent exhibit, “Salute to the Home Front,” at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, which opened June 5. The exhibit tells the homefront story from the 1920s to the development of the atomic bomb.
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A mockup of a 1940s-era living room, with framed photos of family members who are off to war.
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Nazi regalia are part of the permanent exhibit “Salute to the Home Front” at the National World War II Museum which will open to the public this Saturday, in New Orleans, Monday, June 5, 2017. The exhibit tells the home front story from the 1920s to the development of the atomic bomb.
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A posting that instructs and restricts the movement of people of Japanese origin before they were taken to internment camps is on display.
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Employees walk through a mock-up of a 1940s-style living room, with military uniforms hanging in the closet, as part of the permanent exhibit, “Salute to the Home Front,” at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.
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Kristin Guillot works on installing images of newspapers as part of the exhibit.
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Owen Glendening, National World War II Museum vice president for education and access, walks through a mockup of a 1940s era kitchen, part of the permanent exhibit “Salute to the Home Front” at the museum which will open to the public this Saturday, in New Orleans, Monday, June 5, 2017. The exhibit tells the home front story from the 1920s to the development of the atomic bomb.
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Carpenter Brian McKelligott finishes an installation of a heavy water barrel in a mockup of a Manhattan Project classroom as part of the permanent exhibit “Salute to the Home Front” at the National World War II Museum which will open to the public this Saturday, in New Orleans, Monday, June 5, 2017. The exhibit tells the home front story from the 1920s to the development of the atomic bomb.
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Luggage, an image of a boy of Japanese descent and a video interview of a man who was kept in an internment camp are part of the exhibit.
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Workers go over the final installation of the permanent exhibit “Salute to the Home Front” at the National World War II Museum which will open to the public this Saturday, in New Orleans, Monday, June 5, 2017. The exhibit tells the home front story from the 1920s to the development of the atomic bomb.
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A female ordnance plant worker’s uniform
Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS – A rusted fragment of the battleship USS Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor, a woman’s munitions plant uniform and ration books all tell the complex story of life on the homefront in a new exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.
“Salute to the Home Front,” which opens Saturday, explores the bitter fight about entering the war, racial and gender prejudice, and the development of the atomic bomb.
Museum President and CEO Nick Mueller said most of the museum’s 6-acre campus shows how the war was won on the battlefield but the new permanent exhibit explains “why it was fought and how it was won on the homefront.”
The 10,000-square-foot exhibit begins with the years after World War I. The peace treaty that ended the war in 1918 was “punitive and did not really solve the social and cultural ills” that led to the war, according Owen Glendenning, the museum’s associate vice president for education and access.
“With democracy and capitalism under question, the rise of authoritarian regimes really shook the world,” he said.
Among the artifacts are British gas masks for children – one that might fit a 5-year-old and a much bigger one designed to hold an infant from head to waist. Gas had been a major weapon of World War I, and people feared that gas bombs might be dropped in civilian areas.
“Fortunately, it never happened, but the population was scared stiff,” Glendenning said.
Headlines and newsreels show the strident debate between U.S. isolationists and internationalists, which ended when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.
Survivors’ accounts of that attack are among more than 50 videotaped oral histories interspersed throughout the exhibit.
“The signature of this museum is to engage people in personal stories. … We hear from survivors of Pearl Harbor, people on Main Street USA. … We hear first-hand stories about people who went into factories or into the service to fight,” Mueller said.
The exhibit’s Main Street USA has a newsstand, a theater marquee and a store window filled with propagandistic wares such as Victory bobby pins and a charm bracelet of military service insignia.
Within the picket fence outside two rooms representing a 1940s-style home, one wall is covered with a photo of a victory garden. Nearby are a real hubcap and other metal items for a scrap drive.
Inside the kitchen, the shelves display pamphlets with titles such as “Victory Begins at Home!: Recipes to Match Your Sugar Ration” and “Health for Victory Club Meal-Planning Guide.” Pull open kitchen drawers and you see items including ration books, matchbooks and an icebag.
A living-room wall displays a framed map: “Esso War Map II: Invasion Edition.” It’s designed, an introductory statement says, so people can “follow the strategy of the Allies as it develops from day to day.” An open closet in the same room displays children’s military dolls, toy guns and dress-up uniforms.
Glendenning said the gallery on the rush to turn from a peacetime economy to a wartime one holds two of his favorite artifacts: a cutaway ship model from the Higgins boat-building plant in New Orleans, built as a reference to show workers how everything fit together, and the overalls and cap worn by a female munitions factory worker.
“It has such a ’40s sense of style,” he said. “I love the big red buttons at the hip.”
Toni Kizer, vice president for collections management, said one of her favorite pieces is at the bottom right corner of the living room’s display cabinet: a statuette of Hitler bending over, with a pincushion as his rear end.
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