Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

How Military Wives Kept Love Alive in World War II

On the 65th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, we take a glimpse into the romantic lives of the Greatest Generation.

Jane Leder's new book Thanks for the Memories: Love, Sex and World War II tells the story of the "wandering wives" -- women who traveled from town to town to stay near their military husbands before they shipped out.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.