Then and Now pictures: IJMUIDEN Holland

[Bill Murray]

Thank you so much for those photos, Alex.

There are some discussions going on just now on some other military history forums on the question "Is the interest in the History of WWII declining?".

I gather that some forums have seen a decline in new membership, a loss of older members and fewer posts in the last years.

The general consensus seems to be that the younger generations, more or less 40 years of age and less, have little interest in this period of history and in the
US at least, little teaching of that era in the schools.

Photos like yours can be shown to children or grandchildren, at least in areas like the Netherlands, and you can say, "This really happened and it happened right here". In the case of Americans, at least for areas where battles took place, we are sort of limited to Hawaii but on the other hand photos of battle areas in Europe and Asia where we mostly fought, one could say, "This really happened and your grandfather was right there where the photo was taken".

I am doing a very small similar project for my kids and grandkids. I was born in China in 1940 in the Peking American Hospital and we lived in the Russian Legation Apartment #5. I have photos of the apartment from my Dad's archives and photos of the hospital today from the internet. I am now corresponding with both the hospital and the now Russian Confederation Embassy to see if I can get photos of the hospital in 1940 and the Legation Apartment today.

A sort of micro, very personal, Then and Now for my family.

I hope you can post more such photos here, they have a lot of value to the preservation of the history of the time.

Bill

[maple_leaf_eh]

Originally Posted by Bill Murray

...

The general consensus seems to be that the younger generations, more or less 40 years of age and less, have little interest in this period of history and in the US at least, little teaching of that era in the schools.

...

I hope you can post more such photos here, they have a lot of value to the preservation of the history of the time.

Bill

I agree, but where does history stop? A few years ago I spoke at a high school leaders' conference. The topic was peacekeeping, which I expanded to talk about the continuum from peace to war. I had a series of slides and thought things were pretty clear. One kid asked what was the war in Bosnia about. I had to take a breath and remind myself these kids were little children when it was hot. My response was to call it blind nationalism. He was satisfied and no one made me sit down.