Recalling the home frontat World War II museum

NEW ORLEANS — A rusted fragment of the battleship Arizona sunk at Pearl Harbor, a woman’s munitions-plant uniform and ration books all tell the complex story of life on the home front in a new exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

“Salute to the Home Front,” which opens Saturday, explores the bitter fight about entering the war, racial and gender prejudice, and the development of the atomic bomb.

The 10,000-square-foot exhibit begins with the years after World War I. The peace treaty that ended the war in 1918 was “punitive and did not really solve the social and cultural ills” that led to the war, according Owen Glendenning, the museum’s associate vice president for education and access.

Gas had been a major weapon of World War I, and people feared that gas bombs might be dropped in civilian areas.

The exhibit’s Main Street USA has a newsstand, a theater marquee and a store window filled with propagandistic wares such as Victory bobby pins and a charm bracelet of military service insignia.