Remembering WWII

MOSES LAKE — It was perhaps the defining event of the 20th century.

“It’s an area of interest to a lot of people,” said Moses Lake Museum and Art Center Director Dollie Boyd. “It (World War II) was such a complex war, and so many people, so many countries, were involved. It touched every corner of the globe.”

“Washington Remembers WWII, a Legacy Exhibit,” one of three currently being shown at the museum and art center, tells the many, varied stories of World War II by focusing on a handful of Washington state residents and the small role many played in one of the greatest dramas in human history.

“Every family has a story, you know, a grandfather and an uncle who served and made it back or maybe didn’t make it back and it changed people’s lives,” Boyd said.

The exhibit, provided free to museums across the state by the Washington Secretary of State’s Office, displays short profiles along with original photographs of roughly a dozen Washington residents who were involved in the war in various ways, from Stan Jones, a member of the Tulalip tribe who served as a Marine in Nagasaki for nearly a year after the end of the war and witnessed the devastation of the second U.S. atomic bombing, to Regina Tollfeldt, a diminutive teenager who went to work for Boeing and helped build B-17 bombers.

Boyd said even people who have studied the war extensively find there is something to learn in an exhibit like this.

“You may not have heard Bob Hart’s story,” she said, pointing to a panel. “There’s always more to learn and understand.”

Hart was a paratrooper who trudged 50 miles with a broken foot after jumping into the Battle of the Bulge, Nazi Germany’s last major offensive on the war’s western front in December 1944 who later went on to become an airline mechanic.

“We were well-trained and in terrific shape — a bunch of young guys who felt they were immortal,” Hart says in a quote printed on his exhibit panel. “We were anxious about how we’d do in real combat — anyone who tells you otherwise is lying — but after a year of getting ready we wanted to get on with it.”

The exhibit will formally open on Friday, March 31, with a reception beginning a 4 p.m. and a screening of the PBS documentary Last B-24 in the civic center auditorium beginning at 6 p.m. about the expedition to find and recover a sunken B-24 bomber. For more information, contact the museum at 509-764-3826.

The exhibit is scheduled to run through May 12.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.