JOANE JACOBS: The unabashed patriotism at the National World War II Museum is startling — and refreshing.

We also visited the National World War II Museum, which opened in 2000 as the D-Day Museum and kept on growing. There are lots of testimonies from men and women who served in the military or on the home front, lots of artifacts, fancy visuals and a “4-D” movie, focused on the American experience in World War II.

I was startled by the old-fashioned patriotism: The museum tells the stories of the “good war” in which we were the good guys and the Axis powers were the bad guys. There is no soul searching, no “interrogating” the narrative. Japanese-Americans were interned — but volunteered to fight and became heroes. Blacks were treated as second-class citizens — but worked in defense plants and served bravely. Bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed a lot of civilians — but it ended the war without a bloody invasion. And so on.

Most Americans probably don’t know the role Andrew Jackson Higgins and New Orleans played in D-Day and the rest of the European theater, which is a real shame.