Located in the Personal Courage Wing on the first floor is a large room devoted to World War II. This room contains WWII aircraft and other military static displays. On one side of the floor is the Quonset Hut Theater. There is a placard hanging in front of the hut that highlights the history of the Quonset hut during the war and it reads:
Life On The Land
Reality could be quite different from the sometimes-glamorous images of military aviation. U.S. airmen often lived in tents or in versatile, easily constructed Quonset huts. Wartime climates ranged from the sub-arctic frigidity of the Aleutian Islands off Alaska to the sweltering heat of South Pacific islands.
The population of the U.S. armed forces grew dramatically during World War II, and housing became a problem both at home and oversees. Quonset huts provided some relief. They served not only as dormitories, but also as mess halls, briefing rooms, and administrative offices--some were even built on U.S. airfields in Great Britain and Italy, augmenting the more permanent facilities that were overcrowded or battle-damaged.
Wherever they were constructed, Quonset huts were quickly made semi-comfortable with stoves, card tables, and personal possessions. Airmen longing for home typically decorated the walls with photographs, calendars, and souvenirs. In the European Theater, some fighter pilots etched swastikas on their huts' walls or doors to record the number of German planes they destroyed. The most popular decorations, though, were pictures of "pinup girls," who, GIs said, reminded them of what they were really fighting for.
The day our family visited this museum there was an oral presentation given by a Holocaust survivor of World War II inside the Quonset Hut Theater.