NORM HATLEY

By Kathleen Converse

I looked across the bright orange cafeteria table at Norm Hatley.  He smiled back at me with a look of sincerity and friendliness.  From the moment we started talking, I could see the memories flickering in his eyes as he began to relate his experiences being a Whitman County farmer during World War II.

Norm Hatley was born in Pullman, Washington.  His father was a Civil War veteran and had the youngest son of any of that war's veterans.  The Spokesman Review published an article on them with a picture of Norm's father holding him when he was a baby.  Unfortunately, Norm's father died when he was very young, so he never really got a chance to learn about his father's experiences in the war.  He remarked that a lot of people who fought during any war didn't like to talk about it after they came back.  He lived with his mom in Pullman and helped her on the farm while attending High School, which was held in Gladish.

As he glanced around the cafeteria, he began asking questions about our classes and was astonished at how much had changed since he was in school.  While some of the activities he participated in such as football and FFA were still the same, things such as the classes we take, the length of our classes, having tape recorders, computers, and a heating system were all completely different than what he remembered.  Of course the biggest difference was the war, which started while he was in High School.

The National Guard was the first option for young men in Pullman when the war began.  He had wanted to join the National Guard, but his mom wouldn't let him because she needed his help on the farm, especially in the summer when he would be going through training at camp.  The National Guard offered three dollars a month, which he explained with a slight smile was a lot of money back then.  Many of his classmates went off to the Pacific Islands to fight.  He paused before he told me that his friend's brother had died while fighting.  He explained how hard it was during the war to lose people you respected and admired.  A brief moment of sadness swept over us before he began talking again.

He graduated from High School in 1938 and immediately began farming.  He lived on a ranch eight and a half miles out of Pullman where he mainly farmed wheat and peas.  He also raised cows, milked them, separated the cream from the milk by hand, and then sold it.  On January 19, 1942 he married his wife, Rose, whom he met while she was working on her brother's farm.  One Sunday Norm went to meet her parents and to announce their engagement.  When he came home, his mom told him that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. 

Toward the end of the war he recalls being taken on a big Greyhound bus up to Spokane for a physical as part of the effort to recruit new people to fight.  He laughed softly as he told me that it was one of the dirtiest places he had ever been in.  He was told that he couldn't fight, but they wouldn't explain why.  However, he was determined to find out, so after several phone calls and a long wait he finally discovered he wasn't allowed to fight because of his eyesight.  Norm was amazed that his vision would keep him from being able to fight well.  He stopped to explain that without his glasses, he has trouble seeing things a few feet away.

There were numerous inconveniences during the war which made farming much more difficult.  During that time they were converting from horsepower to tractors, but they couldn't buy any new equipment.  Everything was rationed, such as tires, which were extremely important.  Once he bought a new set of re-treads for his car and before he even got home, a trip of less than ten miles, he had lost one of the caps.

Farmers used sweet clover as a fertilizer, but during the war years they were unable to grow clover, so they didn't have anything to fertilize their crops with.  There were also no fertilizers or weed sprays at that time, which made it harder to grow crops effectively.  Another big problem was that since everyone was off helping with the war, it was very hard to find workers.  He would try to find anyone who could help.  One of the workers he got was deaf and another had a wooden leg.  There was also very little electricity until 1941, so keeping food was a challenge.  In order to butcher one of their calves, they had to get permission from the ration board.  Unfortunately after that they were not allowed to get meat stamps because they could provide meat for themselves.

Mr. Hatley remarked that there were also a lot of skills he had to learn because of the absence of specialists who were off fighting or working in the shipyards.  He discussed how he took a welding class at WSU because welding was an essential skill.  There were few welders in the county who were not involved with the war.

Though lots of home front war experiences were about shortages, Mr. Hatley believed that there were a few benefits for the economy that resulted from the war.  A lot of inventions were made, such as synthetic rubber, nylon, fertilizers, and a variety of farm equipment.  During the war they couldn't make a lot of things because all of the supplies went toward making equipment for the war.  Another invention was a syrup made out of wheat which was, as Norm said with a laugh, "completely useless stuff."

Norm felt very strongly about the war and firmly believed that Truman should have dropped the A-bomb earlier.  While he was not for war, he thought that by dropping the bomb sooner it would have saved the lives of lots of people.

As our interview drew to a close, I realized I had not only learned about one person's life, but also about how difficult the war was, not only for the people fighting but for everyone who had to live through those hard times.  The war affected everyone no matter who they were, where they lived or what they did.  It was a very hard time in history that I can't even begin to comprehend living through.  However, through my interview with Norm Hatley, I learned a lot about what it would be like, and he gave me insight into one of the hardest times in history that our country has had to face.