Thanks for this thoughtful piece. I grew up hearing a story about my grandpa’s experiences in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. It was always the same, always dramatic and heroic. After the death of my grandparents, I got interested in family history and one of the first stories I researched was Grandpa’s USN experience. Imagine my shock when I found that very little of the story was true! My struggle wasn’t so much with the truth of the story, but with the ways family members who’d been alive at the time had stayed true to such a detailed and nuanced falsehood. I’m still not sure what the motivation was, or how the story came to be told so inaccurately. I keep and share both stories in our family history, believing they mattered to my ancestors.
I agree it's important to share both versions of the stories. When I teach and talk about my grandpa's Navy story as told by the family versus what was true, I share possible reasons why it was told this way. I'm doing the same in the book I'm writing.
Shame is a huge motivator for untruth telling. If someone's service wasn't the 'heroic guy on the front lines' then a lot of people then and even today think they did nothing. That's wrong. Everyone had to play their role to make it all work. Fear of fitting into family and community was another factor. Don't tell anyone grandpa is unstable (even though many others in the neighborhood likely were as well.) Grief of what was to be that can never be also played a part.
Our veterans and their families, based on what I've researched to this point, were never really educated on what to do and how to handle things when the war ended and veterans returned. There was only propaganda - get married, go to school, get a job, start a family, forget forget forget.... So many possibilities on why stories were told as they were.
A bigger consideration then becomes - how did all that impact the generations that came later? What are we unconsciously living that was created from war and the aftermath?
Thanks for this thoughtful piece. I grew up hearing a story about my grandpa’s experiences in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. It was always the same, always dramatic and heroic. After the death of my grandparents, I got interested in family history and one of the first stories I researched was Grandpa’s USN experience. Imagine my shock when I found that very little of the story was true! My struggle wasn’t so much with the truth of the story, but with the ways family members who’d been alive at the time had stayed true to such a detailed and nuanced falsehood. I’m still not sure what the motivation was, or how the story came to be told so inaccurately. I keep and share both stories in our family history, believing they mattered to my ancestors.
I agree it's important to share both versions of the stories. When I teach and talk about my grandpa's Navy story as told by the family versus what was true, I share possible reasons why it was told this way. I'm doing the same in the book I'm writing.
Shame is a huge motivator for untruth telling. If someone's service wasn't the 'heroic guy on the front lines' then a lot of people then and even today think they did nothing. That's wrong. Everyone had to play their role to make it all work. Fear of fitting into family and community was another factor. Don't tell anyone grandpa is unstable (even though many others in the neighborhood likely were as well.) Grief of what was to be that can never be also played a part.
Our veterans and their families, based on what I've researched to this point, were never really educated on what to do and how to handle things when the war ended and veterans returned. There was only propaganda - get married, go to school, get a job, start a family, forget forget forget.... So many possibilities on why stories were told as they were.
A bigger consideration then becomes - how did all that impact the generations that came later? What are we unconsciously living that was created from war and the aftermath?