Teaching History Matters

The Things Our Fathers Saw: 

The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation from Hometown, USA –

Voices of the Pacific Theater

288 pages

27th Infantry Division. Saipan, July, 1944.
New York State Military Museum.

‘I hope you’ll never have to tell a story like this, when you get to be 87.

I hope you’ll never have to do it.’

‑Marine veteran of the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima, to his teenage interviewer

At the height of World War II, LOOK Magazine profiled a small upstate New York community for a series of articles portraying it as the wholesome, patriotic model of life on the home front. Seventy years later, a high school history teacher and his students track down over two dozen veterans residing around ‘Hometown, USA’ who fought the war in the Pacific, from Pearl Harbor to the surrender at Tokyo Bay. They rescue and resurrect firsthand accounts of combat and brotherhood, of captivity and redemption, and the aftermath of a war that left no American community unscathed. Here are the stories that the magazine could not tell, from a vanishing generation speaking to America today.

About the Author

Matthew Rozell’s teaching career is now spanning four decades. He has been recognized as an OAH Tachau History Teacher of the Year and as a recipient of the NSDAR National Founders’ Medal for History Education. Rozell is a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellow, has had his lessons filmed for NBC Learn and the New York State United Teachers, and has even been selected as an ABC World News ‘Person of the Week’. He is also a recipient of several state and local awards for history education.

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The first author appearance is scheduled in Hudson Falls, NY, one of the book’s settings,  for August 8th , 1-4pm, at the Village Booksmith.

Address: 223 Main St, Hudson Falls, NY 12839
Phone:(518) 747-3261