Over Thanksgiving Break, I had the pleasure of visiting New Orleans for the first time in almost six years. While my family and I were there, we went to the National WWII Museum, a place all of us (being a family of American History buffs) had been wanting to go to. As soon as I entered the vast lobby and saw the enormous Douglas C-47 hanging majestically from the ceiling, I knew I was in for a great educational experience.
The European Theater of WWII has always fascinated me, partly because I have a familial connection to it. My great-grandfather was a Jewish-American soldier who went off to fight the Germans and liberate his people. I do not know much about his experience in the war since he died before I was even born, but I have always envisioned it as an Inglorious Basterds-style mission to punish the Nazis for their antisemitic ideology. Because of my Jewish heritage, I feel a strong connection to the millions of Jewish people who were brutally murdered in the Holocaust. The European Front of WWII is therefore very personal to me, so I have delved into it thoroughly.
Yet there is still so much about the war that I don't know. That's the thing: WWII scholarship is a sprawling, massive field of study. The museum contained so much I did not know, particularly regarding the Pacific Theater (that was always my brother's area of WWII expertise). I was pleased to find that the museum had a whole gallery dedicated to the unappreciated Merchant Marine. The Merchant Marine has always been my favorite military branch (along with the Navy) because many of my favorite writers–such as Herman Melville, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg–served in it and had outstanding adventures that they would immortalize in prose. Hardly anyone knows anything about the U.S. Merchant Marine, and the general public is definitely unaware of the fact that the Merchant Marine sustained more casualties within its ranks during WWII than any other branch, which makes sense since they were delivering weapons and vehicles to Allied nations long before America entered the war and often got torpedoed by Axis submarines in the Atlantic. So technically, the U.S. Merchant Marine was the first American military branch to enter the war. 1 in 24 mariners were killed in WWII, making them the unsung heroes of American naval history.
The two big spectacles that the museum lauds are a 4-D film narrated by Tom Hanks that summarized the events of WWII in the course of forty-five minutes and an interactive submarine simulator that allows visitors to experience the final mission of the ill-fated USS Tang. While I enjoyed the movie, the Tang simulation was very underwhelming due to its chaotic structure (I had no clue what I was doing) and pitiful longevity. I've participated in simulations where one is given a task before, and this specific instance couldn't hold a candle to the others, especially the Mission: Space ride at Epcot.
All and all, I think that the WWII museum was one of the best museums I've been to, having seen a lot of the Smithsonian institutes in D.C. It was the right amount of informative and interactive to keep a scholar like me engaged. Plus, very cool vehicles (such as the C-47 from earlier) are on display. Because New Orleans was the manufacturing site of the Higgins boats, the boats (both information and an actual boat) are featured constantly throughout the museum. It is obvious that New Orleans takes pride in their contribution to WWII. As they should be. As we all should be.
