University of Utah historian highlights overlooked disability history of the World War II home front

SALT LAKE CITY — University of Utah associate professor Matt Basso told a Hinckley Institute audience on Veterans Day that disability was a defining, and too often overlooked, part of the World War II American home front.

Basso opened by noting the 80th anniversary of the war’s end and said the scale of wartime injury demands a reassessment of home-front history. "More than 10,000,000 Americans became temporarily or permanently disabled during World War II," he said, calling the figure "an astonishing statistic" that reframes ordinary accounts of the era.

The historian framed his talk around three site types: the White House/Warm Springs, wartime factories, and military hospitals. Using Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Warm Springs as an example, Basso said the president’s public accommodations and specialized equipment made him a visible disabled statesman but also that Warm Springs represented an elite, exclusionary form of access: "This was a community where disabled Americans were able to come together, but not all were invited," he said, noting Black Americans were largely welcome only as staff until late in the war.

Basso described legislative and…