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Interviewee: World War II, not New Deal alone, brought postwar prosperity to Montana
Summary
The narrator credits World War II mobilization with ending local Depression-era hardship, recalls wartime rationing in Missoula-area households and describes public reaction to atomic bombings as 'terrible.'
The interviewee said World War II, rather than New Deal programs alone, was the turning point that ended the Depression and produced a period of postwar prosperity.
The narrator described wartime conditions—rationing and limited consumer goods—and later financial benefits that reached local families after the war. The account also describes strong emotional reactions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The speaker said, "In spite of everything that Roosevelt did, that wasn't what brought the country out of the depression. It was a war." On wartime household experience the narrator recalled rationing practices and that local communities did not notice an organized black market: "Was there a black market? We didn't have that in mind…Not that we knew of." The narrator reacted to the atomic bombings: "Terrible. Oh, I thought it was terrible."
These recollections document how a Missoula-area household experienced wartime scarcity and how the later wartime economy reshaped local prosperity in the narrator's memory.
