s quite illogical. Fathers and elder brothers were often away at war, so important role models were lost. If the mother worked too, the stage seemed set for wildness among unsupervised children. (124) The wars most serious impact on the young was through prosperity and enhanced job opportunities. . . [that] created teen culture which in the end skewed the high school from a seat of learning into a social center. (126) The complaints of the youth are strikingly similar to the ones heard today. The seeming immaturity of adolescent society and its disrespect for age were also bewildering and troubling. (127) Another fact often overlooked when thinking of that golden age was that more girls got pregnant and the venereal disease rate rose. (124) Racism continued to thrive in the army and in the states. Thousands of Japanese-Americans were sent to detention centers simply on the basis of their looks. In one of the more degrading ironies of American soldiers, in the South, black soldiers had to sit behind German prisoners of war, who were accorded the rights of white men. Black soldiers were given the more dangerous and grim tasks of the war and on top of that segregation in the army continued throughout the war. These imperfections of the World War II generation were quickly cast aside. Selective recall filtered our memories over the years, further contributing to the myth of the best war ever. (115) The most tragic aspect of the myth of the best war ever is the lack of reverence devoted to the men who died and survived horror of the battlefield. To simply point to the economic prosperity sparked by the war is utterly ignorant. The cost of so much blood is much too high to justify with material goods. The picture at home was not perfect, nor did it even approach perfection, as so many believe. The dilemmas were much the same as they were before and after the war. However, we should also not forget that despite the myth, that was the generati...
