[Andrew Ellis Troubio]

That's kind of one of the points of the setting. The PCs are people that start to ask those questions. It all ties in to the where and the what of the White Light

Basically, the White Light occured and people have trouble remembering stuff before that. They know they were in The War, but if you asked them to name a specific town or what their Sgt.'s last name was, they would have difficulty remembering. (The game borrows heavily from Dark City here.)

The core book also has a big reference list, but its mostly detective fiction and film rather than history books. IIRC, this was written by some folks late of AEG and shares a lot of the strength and weaknesses of their other pseudo-historical settings like L5R and 7th Sea.