Abstract
Roughly one million American servicemen married foreign women while serving abroad during World War II. After the war, these foreign “war brides” immigrated to the United States en masse. “Journey of Love” is an oral history-based research project that explores the overseas wartime social relations that resulted in six of these wartime marriages, and the postwar experiences of these brides living in the United States. After secondary research in the historical literature on World War II and war brides and a review of oral history theory and methodology, interviews were recorded on audiocassette tapes and a digital recording device with six women who immigrated to the United States from five different countries: Great Britain (England), Australia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, and the Philippines. The resulting interviews were transferred to CD and deposited, along with either full transcripts or finding guides, as an archival collection at the Department of Special Collections and University Archives at California State University, Sacramento. There they will be available as a resource to scholars interested in World War II war bride history and twentieth-century immigration history. This thesis relates the broader history of American war brides, analyses the experiences of these six women, and provides a detailed account of the process of creating the “Journey of Love” oral history project.