What do you think of first when you think of New Orleans? Mardi Gras? Bourbon Street? Cajun and Creole cooking? The Saints? Those are all iconic representatives of the city, so it’s understandable that you wouldn’t think of the National WWII Museum. In fact, if you’re like me, you may not have known there was such a place there, but according to TripAdvisor rankings, it’s the No. 1 attraction in NOLA, the No. 3 museum in the United States and the No. 8 museum in the world.

Thanks to my brother- and sister-in-law, who served as our knowledgable guides on our recent visit to the Crescent City, my husband and I were introduced to this magnificent attraction, first founded in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum and designated by Congress as the official World War II museum of the United States. My husband was a history teacher, and each of us had parents who served in the war, so we were eager to explore the five expansive pavilions which house the many immersive exhibits and artifacts. The museum also proved to be the perfect place to spend a chilly, windy day indoors.

We arrived just as the museum opened at 9 a.m., successfully avoiding long lines and school groups. Located on Magazine Street in the historic Warehouse District, it offers onsite parking as well as access via bus lines and the streetcar. We entered the Louisiana Memorial Pavilion to purchase our tickets, walking in to a soaring lobby featuring a landing craft, or Higgins boat,      (built in New Orleans) and a transport plane suspended overhead.  

One of the features that makes a visit to this museum more personalized and immersive is the Dog Tag Experience. Each visitor receives a “dog tag” with the admission ticket and boards a train car (as if you were a recruit heading off to boot camp) to view a brief introductory film. Here you scan your dog tag and are given the identity of a real-life individual whose wartime experiences you will follow throughout the exhibits. As you tour the galleries, you check in at Dog Tag Stations to learn your person’s story. Not all are sailors, aviators or soldiers; some worked in the factories that supplied the troops, broke code or otherwise worked to support the war effort. Mine was a young American girl who was living in the Philippines with her parents when the war started and who was held captive by the Japanese until the end of the war. This is a brilliant way to bring that era and the people who lived (and died) then much closer to home.

We stayed about four hours and didn’t experience everything we wanted to. We never stepped foot in the U.S. Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center, which exhibits some of the planes, tanks and other armament of the war, nor did we view the one-hour, Tom Hanks-narrated 4D film, Beyond All Boundaries. All of the exhibits we did tour told their stories with recreations, dioramas and tableaux, oral histories and film. You are immersed in settings from a Pacific island Japanese cave system to an American home with ration coupons and blackout curtains, from a snowy European battle scene to a German pillbox on the Normandy coast. Here and there were volunteers, some of them veterans, who offered additional information and insight.

I couldn’t recommend a visit to this museum enough, and I certainly hope to revisit on my next trip to New Orleans to take in what I was unable to on my first visit. I’d like to check out the performances in the Stage Door Canteen and maybe even take a tour and ride on Lake Pontchartrain on the restored combat-veteran PT-305.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor