National Home Front Project - Meet Joan Rosenberg Kovachi
The National Home Front Project is a major grassroots initiative under the leadership of historians at Washington College. Our innovative oral history program partners with individuals, communities, and organizations across the United States to record, preserve, and share audio interviews with civilians who experienced World War II. By pulling together in the spirit of wartime Americans, we can ensure that future generations hear their voices, and that our country never forgets its past. For this short entry, we’d like to share the story of Joan Rosenberg Kovachi.
Joan Rosenberg Kovachi was a child during the outbreak of World War II. She grew up with her twin sister and parents in Buffalo, New York, and her father worked for the Merchant Marines as an engineer. In the oral history interview for the Newark Public Library, Joan recalls a phone call from her friend’s mother, Kitty, telling her mother to turn on the radio, “FDR just declared war.” They sat and listened to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s announcement of American entry into the war on the radio. The speech stayed with her, mostly because at just five, she didn’t know what the word “infamy” meant. Her childhood was marked with experiences of the war at home front: school air raid drills, war bond drives, recycling, and rationing.
She also talks about the memories of her father’s work as a Merchant Marine on the Great Lakes during World War II. Joan further remembers her aunts enjoying their factory work, but their sadness at the unavailability of nylons, which were worth more than gold, worth more than money. The women had to go so far as to use household items to make tanning cream and draw pencil marks on the backs of their legs to give the illusion of nylon stockings. Later they were forced to relinquish their jobs when the men returned from war. Joan also talks about the atrocities of war suffered by family members and how their unrecognized PTSD affected them after the war ended. If you want to hear her story for yourself, listen here.
- Blog post by RCL intern Ally Allen
