In the late 1940s the British people seemed preoccupied with family and children to an unprecedented degree. A similar revival of family life occurred in other European countries, testimony to the common legacy of the war years, during which private life had been broken apart by death, forced separations, constant anxiety, and unaccustomed privation. But the specific form of postwar familial ideology in Britain reflects the complex circumstances, cultural traditions, and mood of the nation. Everywhere the faces of smiling, responsible parents and healthy, carefree children gazed out from advertising billboards and National Health posters, symbolic of the nation's “social capital” and a better future. Widespread concern about low birthrates helped to strengthen domestic and mothering images of women; magazines and radio espoused the ideas of a growing phalanx of child-care professionals; and government social policy redefined the reciprocal obligations of parents and the state, reflecting a new “social democratic” conception of family as the basic unit of society and the chief incubator of citizenship and community values.

Apart from the intrinsic value of understanding the fate of Japanese workers during the war, Japanese labor history in World War II also gives us a non-Western point of comparison for studies of wartime labor in the West. To facilitate that comparison, we should consider government policy, the response of the labor movement, and the conditions of workers during the war. In Japan, labor and economic history periodization of World War II does not conform to the European and American conceptions. For the Japanese, the war began with the outbreak of the “China incident” in 1937; Pearl Harbor, traumatic as it was for the United States, only marks the beginning of a new stage the Japanese call the “Pacific War.” It is not surprising, then, that Japanese labor history begins its wartime phase in 1937. In fact, to comprehend changes during the 1937–45 war, at least brief mention must be made of earlier developments.

In a 1982 review article, Theda Skocpol asks the question, “What makes peasants revolutionary?” She analyzes the conclusions of authors who endeavor to explain what leads peasants—a stereotypically powerless group—to engage in collective action that challenges the economic or political status quo. The above example suggests a useful paraphrase of the question: was Stathoula's case exceptional, and if not, what made a Greek working-class woman during the 1940s revolutionary?