Mementos, 1

In the poem’s third stanza, the speaker mentions “the war and those two long years / Overseas” (Lines 13-14) in which he saw “the Japanese dead in their shacks” (Line 14). The conflict mentioned is World War II, and the specific front he describes is that between the United States and Japan.

World War II began on September 1, 1939, and lasted in Europe until the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 8, 1945, although the Japanese surrender did not take place until a few weeks later on September 2. There were a few shifting alliances during the years of the conflict, but the two main camps were those of the Allied powers (the United Kingdom, Soviet Union, United States, China, and their allies) and those of the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan, and their allies). Up until the end of 1941, the United States remained out of the conflict, engaging in some wartime manufacturing as a business venture but without launching any military involvement of its own on either the Allied or Axis side. Things changed on December 7, 1941, when Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The attack led to the United States declaring war on Japan, and, shortly thereafter, on the other Axis powers as well. This theatre of the war became known as the Pacific War. The conflict culminated in the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, which led to the Japanese surrendering a few weeks afterwards.

Snodgrass evokes the war only briefly, but this mention illustrates the disruption of his life. The speaker is sent off to war while he's still courting the woman in the photo, so this part of his life is put on hold while he fights in the war. He uses the rush of a blossoming relationship to ward off the horrors he experiences. Though the relationship doesn't survive the marriage, the photo was still a powerful talisman for the speaker while he was overseas, and he uses it to “[p]rove it had been, that it might come back” (Line 17). In the last line of the poem, the speaker states that after choosing to keep the photo, he “will find that it's still there” (Line 24). This last line echoes the idea in Line 17, suggesting that not only will he simply come across the photo again but perhaps he will also find the part of him he left behind in the war that still held on to those easy “ideals” (Line 12).