The ambient noise of World War II.

David Kennedy: My name’s David Kennedy. And I’m the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. I grew up in Seattle, Washington. I don’t think of it so much as where I came from exactly as when I came from. I was born in 1941. My childhood was deeply shaped by World War II as a kind of ambient thing. Seattle was a big ship and port for the Pacific War, so war stuff was all around when I was a kid. And Seattle became a boom town. Growing up in a very active but still quite provincial city out on the far western shores of the United States was a very peculiar experience. I see that now looking back from later in life. Of course I took it for granted at the time. But I think it made me, among other things, acutely aware of, or curious about what was this larger society of which poor, remote Seattle was not a part?

Recorded on: 7/4/07