The National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey (NGMMNJ) at Sea Girt is pleased to announce its “New Jersey in World War II” exhibit, inspired by the Ken Burns documentary series “The War.”  In conjunction with the screening of the series, the museum has partnered with New Jersey Network (NJN) by sharing some of its trove of oral history interviews.  NJN has posted excerpts from the interviews of three World War II veterans, which may be viewed at www.njn.net/television/specials/war/oralhistories/.   The NGMMNJ's oral history program is affiliated with the Library of Congress and has holdings of more than 300 interviews with war veterans from WWII to the present.  Summaries of many of these interviews are available on-line at www.state.nj.us/military/museum/oralhistory.html

      The museum's exhibit commemorating New Jerseyans at war includes an “Arts and Letters of War” display featuring the work of Newark Evening News war correspondent Warren Kennet, “Newark's Ernie Pyle,” and the first journalist ashore at Normandy; William Foley, formerly of Edgewater, whose wartime sketches as a rifleman in the 94th Division led to a postwar career as a professional artist, and combat photographer Albert Meserlin, formerly of East Orange, who spent the final months of the war as General Dwight D. Eisenhower's personal photographer, a position that gained him a ringside seat at the German surrender in May, 1945.

      The exhibit also relates the story of Sergeant Curtis Culin of Cranford.   Culin's idea of attaching steel prongs to tanks to cut through dense Norman hedgerows, a creation dubbed the “Rhino Plow,” materially aided the American breakout from Normandy and gained an accolade for “Yankee ingenuity” from General Eisenhower.

      The display also highlights the wartime history of Sergeant Culin's outfit, the 102nd Cavalry, New Jersey National Guard, which landed at Normandy on D-Day plus two, was the first American unit into Paris, and ended the war in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, as well as the story of the 44th Division, proclaimed “New Jersey's Own” (with a little New York help) in the pre-war National Guard.  The 44th fought its way from France into Austria and captured the famed Wernher Von Braun of V-2 rocket fame.  In the postwar years Von Braun became the father of the American ballistic missile system and moon exploration program.

      New Jersey 's home front is evoked with images of scrap drives in Asbury Park , the South Amboy Red Cross Women's Motor Corps and the New Jersey State Guard, which replaced the National Guard when it was called to active duty. Artifacts on display include souvenirs brought back by New Jerseyans from the front, including rare items like a Japanese winter uniform worn on Attu and Kiska islands, a German paratrooper's camouflage smock, an Afrika Corps pith helmet and a rare Sturmgewehr 44, the world's first “assault rifle.”

      The exhibit is part of an ongoing museum series on the role of the Militia and National Guard in the larger history of New Jersey, which will include permanent and topical temporary exhibits.  In addition to its exhibits, the museum serves as a source of information on New Jersey 's military history for public and scholarly research.