WHEN I WAS FIRST contacted by America: Fact vs. Fiction for an interview regarding American women’s contributions to World War II, the questions they sent made me wonder if there might be enough documentation on heroic women of the Pacific War to fill a young adult collective biography. It turns out there was, so I’m indebted to them and also to Chicago Review Press for green-lighting this project.
I’d like to thank the following specialists for their invaluable input: Mary Cronk Farrell, expert on the American Bataan/Corregidor nurses and author of Pure Grit; Dr. Theresa Kaminski, historian and author of Angels of the Underground; the late Betty McIntosh, journalist and OSS agent; Andre B. Sobocinski, historian at the US Navy Bureau of Medicine; John Tewell, expert on World War II history in the Philippines; Sig Unander, Claire Phillips expert; and Dr. Meredith Veldman, historian at Louisiana State University.
Every history author should have a few brilliant, well-read, historically inclined friends. Mine are Bob Blomquist and Ed Sketch. I’m honored by their friendship and grateful for their willingness to review and comment on the nonnarrative portions of the book.
A new friend, Dr. Robert Messer, associate professor emeritus of 20th-century US history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, put his heart and soul into providing me with valuable food for thought regarding the war’s beginning and end, then agreed to review the entire manuscript while thoroughly answering many questions along the way. Our communications made me sorry I missed the opportunity to hear his lectures, as they must have been quite fascinating.
I’m grateful to the following people who agreed to review the most potentially disturbing material and who provided me with many valuable insights: Dr. Alex Baugh, teacher and author of The Children’s War Blog; Katie King, teen bibliophile extraordinaire; Pat Miller Mathews, MLS, former book reviewer for The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books; Lesley Munro, MAEd, head of history at Homewood School in Kent, England; Ana Peso, MS, library and information science, and MEd, librarian at Glenbrook High School in Northbrook, Illinois; and Samantha Shank, teen history buff and blogger at Le Chaim on the Right.
My brilliant husband, John, got off easy this time around: he had no French-to-English translation work as he did with all my previous books. But I’d like to thank him for being an invaluable sounding board and for reading through the finished manuscript before it went off to the publisher. I can’t imagine doing otherwise.