This is a little story I wrote up recently, and felt I should share it in here. And also comment a bit about how it came to be. And a few minor spoilers are below.
In short, it is a romance. As recently I have been wanting to write more "period pieces", one of the decades I had never before written about was the 1940's. Being quite literally one of the "Last of the Baby Boomers" (I was born 4 days before that era ended), it of course had a big influence on when I myself grew up. And always having a love for the music and other things of that era, I spent some time immersing myself into it. Researching clothes, movies, and other things.
And having been both stationed in the Bay Area and having lived there myself I was more than familiar with the landscape. What bases were where, the ships made and where the construction was located. Both of my grandmothers were among those that when their husbands or fiancée went off to war, they went to work to support the effort as they could. One in Seattle, the other in Long Beach.
But although there is obviously elements of nostalgia in the piece, I also try to prevent some aspects more or less as they were, "warts and all". And there are things that may make some uncomfortable in reading some segments. I also knowingly took some artistic liberty in the writing. During WWII, the US Navy was still mostly segregated. Blacks normally served as either messmen, or as stevedores (dockworkers loading and unloading ships). And not to put any down, after all Doris Miller was such a messman on the USS West Virginia when he won the Medal of Honor. But I did not want some of my characters to be messmen, so I made the choice to put them into supply.
Additionally, I did want to make it as accurate as I could, but blacks were also largely segregated to Carriers and Battleships, occasionally Cruisers. And this was a problem, as the loss of one of those ships was a huge deal during the war. So I had one of the ships be a Destroyer. We lost over 80 of those, so it was not unusual for the loss of a Destroyer to go almost unnoticed when it went down.
And also, realize the year and age at the end. When Sally gives her prayer at the end, it is 1969. Which means that her grandson is of the perfect age where if he also takes up the "Family Tradition", he will likely be in the service in 1989. Just in time for the Gulf War. So while it does try to end on an optimistic note, knowing in realty that her prayer was ultimately not answered in a way she wanted.
Advanced Wordsmith