My experience of the war is mostly second hand—my Uncle Chester’s stories about fighting in the South Pacific, my father’s struggles to find tires and gas for the car, my mother’s complaints about rationing. Until the day she died, my mother grumbled about how many ration coupons I used up for the shoes I kept outgrowing. I wanted to know more about their struggles, challenges, worries. What would it be like to live in a time of such constant fear, deprivation, and uncertainty?