For our “Beyond the World War II We Know,” documenting lesser-known stories from the war, and to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the end of the war, we asked the actor Tom Hanks to write about the complicated narrative of the conflict — and its aftermath.

In the spring of 1939 — “Before the War,” as folks of that generation would say — the New York World’s Fair began a gloriously naïve celebration of “Mankind’s Progress” and visions of America’s future. President Franklin D. Roosevelt opened the fair in a ceremony that was, no lie, broadcast on television. In fact, there were early versions of TVs on display at the fair, along with state-of-the-art railroad trains, airplanes, ocean liners, Crosley radios, a giant typewriter and the new Ford sedans fairgoers could drive themselves on the “Road of Tomorrow” — an upbeat adieu! to the Great Depression, to what was the first act of many American lives.

If you are a Boomer, born in, say, 1956, the adults you grew up around all framed their lives in a three-act structure, told like a biopic, narrated by an All-Knowing Chorus who bids us to, please, clear our minds of all we have seen and learned since 1945. To comprehend the full experience of World War II we must forget all we know.

In Act I (Before the War) most families did without — without enough food, without an extra pair of shoes, without going to a dentist. A father’s job, if he had one, might allow a life within modest means when modest means was an accomplishment. Act I was characterized by a quest for progress: huge dams were built; federal programs improved lives; mass communication was as simple as listening to a radio; and the art and technology of motion pictures provided a cheap but wonderful escape. At the same time, a child with a common cold could die of pneumonia in a few weeks.

Before the war, Americans faced one-thing-after-another-obstacles as the country was crippled by widespread poverty, overt racism and institutionalized discrimination. And yet, the 1939 fair proved that we the people remained bent on forming a more perfect union — and a better world.

As in all drama, bad omens abounded. At the 1939 fair, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany had halls of their own. The Japanese hall — a replica of a Shinto Shrine — was “Dedicated to Eternal Peace and Friendship Between America and Japan.” Poland was represented, but within five months of the fair’s opening, its borders had been redrawn by Germany and the U.S.S.R.; by the end of the fair, there was no Polish pavilion because there was no longer a Poland.

By then, Germany had been operating its concentration camps for years. With Italy’s help, the nations of Europe and whole peoples were enslaved by Nazi terror. Imperial Japan had established a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” a cleaned-up name for what was actually an imperialist undertaking that included horrors like the Rape of Nanking.

Act II (During the War) began on a day of infamy just before Christmas, 1941, when Americans learned our Navy had a base at Pearl Harbor (in Hawaii, the dispatches felt obliged to add) which had been devastated by attacking Japanese planes. The pledge of eternal peace and friendship with America proved to be as permanent as what it was at the fair — writing on a wall.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Tom Hanks’ latest movie, which he stars in and wrote, is “Greyhound,” about the Battle of the Atlantic, available to stream on Apple TV+.