What happened in Norway during WWII? A Gig Harbor author was determined to find out
Don Pugnetti Jr.’s first recorded interview about the Norwegian resistance during World War II was in 1978.
Pugnetti, who goes by Jerry, was a journalist at The News Tribune in Tacoma at the time.
Decades later, the Gig Harbor author’s book, “A Coat Dyed Black,” has been released.
“Looking at it from a journalist’s perspective, I quickly realized it was something that needed to be told,” Pugnetti said in a news release. “I knew virtually nothing about what happened in Norway during World War II, and I became determined to find out.”
Pugnetti thought he’d be writing nonfiction, but ended up producing a novel about the period.
It started with conversations he had with his father-in-law, who was a resistance fighter, he said.
“He didn’t want to talk about it much, but he gave me a few nuggets that really got me interested,” Pugnetti told The Gateway. “And, you know, Norway is often overlooked in the greater World War II story.”
“A Coat Dyed Black” tells the story of a Norwegian farmer who fights for the resistance after Nazi Germany invades the country. He trains in England, then returns to Norway and faces dangerous missions.
Pugnetti did interviews in Norway and in the United States, among other research for the book.
“There’s a significant Scandinavian population in this area,” he said. “There are so many people of Norwegian heritage.”
He said those he interviewed didn’t want to be named.
“They believed that their contributions were no more important than anyone else and did not want to be singled out,” he said. “… It was cultural, I believe, and I understood that and respected it.”
He said he thinks in the past decade or so, perhaps children and grandchildren are starting to take an interest in what happened.
A recent PBS drama, “Atlantic Crossing,” examines Norway’s role in WWII and follows the crown princess overseas during the period. Pugnetti watched it.
“I think there was a generation who lived through the oppression and the tyranny of Nazi rule in Norway that just, they didn’t want to talk about it,” he said. “... I think there’s a heightened interest. Now I may be wrong, I may be painting an inaccurate picture here, but that’s my sense of it.”
The 73-year-old worked as a journalist at The News Tribune for 18 years, from 1970 to 1988.
It was after Pugnetti’s retirement from journalism and public affairs that he returned to his WWII project and finished “A Coat Dyed Black.”
The book is available on Amazon Books, at Barnes and Noble, and on Bookshop.org and Indiebooks.org.
This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
