A small boat rescues a seaman from the 31,800-ton USS West Virginia burning in the foreground at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Courtesy Wessels Living History Farm Inc. from the Library of Congress.

"My Aunt Rose was listening to the radio and I wasn't paying much attention until they kept hearing the word 'war'. . . . I had never heard that word before, so finally I got up there and said, 'Well, what is it? What is it?' They tried to explain to me what war was, and I was appalled! Because up until then, I thought all the grown-ups knew what they were doing, and I could not believe that grown-ups would do this. . . . I lost my faith in the adults real quick." —Rose Marie Murphy Christensen Columbus, NE Grade School Student

There was already a war going on in Europe. After Germany invaded the former Soviet Union in June 1941, the United States joined Great Britain, China, the Soviet Union, and several others to become the Allied Powers. We promised aid to the Soviet Union to resist Germany.

Germany was part of the enemy we called the Axis Powers, along with Italy, and later Japan. Together, they signed the Tripartite Pact in 1940, although they mostly fought independent of each other. After the assault on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. joined in combat both to the east and to the west, making the war officially spread around the world.

The Spreading War Animation of alliances and changes in territory during World War II,                              Courtesy every three months from September 1939 to September 1945.                  Wikimedia Commons.

In the video clip, The Start of War, Doris Kugler of North Platte, NE joins several others to explain what suddenly being thrown into a worldwide combat situation meant, both to those who left home for war and to those who stayed behind. The Start of War

Right: North Platte resident Doris Kugler in 2005. Left: Doris with her husband in the early 1940s. ©2005 The Canteen Spirit.