PART TWO

Pullman High School

Southeast County

Women and Men at Home and Abroad

People From Both Near and Far

 

I had a very difficult time trying to figure out in what order to put all these stories.  It seemed right to put the groups of interviews done at the schools in Parts in the order they occurred, but what about the order within each Part?  Some people were unable to get to a school to be interviewed by a student.  Where should those stories fit in?  It turned out each Part fell together differently.  This one got divided into Women and Men, each in alpha order, with all the Pullman people included, both those interviewed by students and those interviewed by me.  There are also other people in Part Two, ones who live in Albion, Colton, Moscow, and Bearcreek, Montana.  (Bearcreek?  Montana?  I'll burn that bridge when we get to it.) 

 

Anyway, there are twenty-four stories in Part Two; the ones with by-lines were written by students in Craig McCormick's Sophomore Honors English Class at Pullman High School.  Many of the stories include the feelings and expressions of the students who did the interviews and wrote the stories.  When I first got their papers from Mr. McCormick, I began to wonder if we had laid too much on those young people, but as I continued to read I realized what a tremendous experience they'd had, a once in a lifetime moment.  And I believe the kids knew it too.

 

Now then: when I initially spoke to this first lady about doing an interview, she kept telling me she would bring books the kids could look at, but she seemed very hesitant about actually talking with a student.  She finally agreed to do it.  I was amazed at what came out of that meeting. 

 

Florence Broderick

By Kim Meinert and Nichole Lovrich

 

There are many stories about life during the Great Depression and World War II.  Many of these stories are told in various forms such as books and movies by those who experienced first-hand the pain as well as the victory.  Some of the tales have become famous.  Most of them, however, have not.  We are here to share with you one of those many untold stories.  It is the life of a woman who is seventy-seven years young, Florence Broderick, more commonly known simply as "Cookie Grandma."

When Florence sat down with us at the yellow table with orange chairs typical of a public high school, she had with her a bundle of papers browned with age and an old, tattered Sad Sack cartoon book, as well as more recent clippings all neatly stacked and arranged to fit into a sturdy red folder.  She carried with her the persona of a woman much wiser than us, yet one who welcomed these two teenage girls to look into her life as thoroughly as can be done in an hour and a half.  We leafed through those priceless fragments one by one, and soon it dawned on us that this was not going to be just your average interview assignment.  There was a paper signed by President Roosevelt, a telegram nearly sixty years old, as well as other antique documents not found in your average antique shop.

There were going to be emotions to be dealt with, as well as cultural barriers to cross.  Although the three of us sitting around the table are all from the same country, thus have very similar cultures, it was apparent just from looking at the memorabilia in front of us that Florence had struggled and overcome much more than we had anticipated.  We immediately threw aside our prepared interview questions, as it was quite obvious that they were not going to suffice.  Getting started was slow at first, but soon we were talking with each other a mile a minute about life "back then," and before we knew it, an hour and half had passed, and sadly, it was time to stop.  Here is just a small portion of the interaction between a woman and two girls who, based upon their experiences, hold very different perceptions of the world in which they live.

Born on May 10, 1924 in Bossburg, Washington, Florence Louise Peterson was the youngest of seven children born to Lena and Ole Peterson, Norwegian immigrants.  When Florence was just a toddler, her parents moved their family to Colville, Washington where she and her siblings attended public schools.  Although she grew up in the 1930s, Florence wasn't even aware that there was a Great Depression.  We must have had very obvious looks of bewilderment on our faces when Florence told us that, because she quickly gave us an explanation.

"When I was growing up, I just assumed that everyone was poor. It never occurred to me that it could be any other way."

Thinking back on it, we shouldn't have been at all surprised that she was unaware of the Great  Depression.  The fact that Florence hadn't realized she was living during a depression is the same thing as young people today not realizing that they have been in an economic "boom" until about a year ago, when there was no longer a surplus of energy.

On August 14, 1943, Florence did what every high school girl dreams of (including us!)  She married her high school sweetheart, Robert Lowry Keough.  With a smile on her face, Florence added that she and Robert had been good friends and then dated throughout their four years at Colville High School.  Only two months after Florence became Mrs. Keough, her new husband joined the U.S. Navy Reserve and became a member of the South Pacific Theater of Operations.  Robert served as an Aviation Machinist's Mate, Second Class while he was in the Navy.

On September 20th, 1944 Robert drowned at sea along with the pilot and crew on their torpedo bomber, SqadVC66.  The cause was a mid-air collision during the Halmahera Campaign.  Robert Keough was highly decorated and commended for his outstanding service in the Navy.  He received the American Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, Silver Wings with three Bronze Stars, and the Presidential Unit Citation Ribbon Bar and Star.  Also, Robert's unit as a whole was recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross.  In an envelope dated September 30th - ten days after Robert had died - Florence received a telegram from Randall Jacobs, Chief of Naval Personnel, informing Florence of her husband's untimely death. 

Florence also received in the mail a large parchment paper rolled and carefully placed in a tube that was signed by the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  This prestigious document was sent to her as a testimony to Robert's valiant efforts to defend freedom.

We were amazed to hear from Florence that there were never any anti-war feelings or disgust with the government from her or anyone she knew.  With a warm, reminiscent smile, she added, "Everyone supported the war.  There were no hard feelings, just pride and hope, mostly.  But, like I said, it was a different era."

On May 16, 1947 Florence got remarried to Robert (Bob) W. Broderick, and changed her name to Florence Louise Broderick. Bob had just finished serving in the Army for five years as a truck driver with the 161st infantry in Guadalcanal.  Florence discovered that Bob had been a friend of her first husband during high school.

Florence had been employed at the Signal Centers of both Fort George Wright and Geiger Field since graduating from high school in 1942, after she had spent three months in training at the Spokane Telegraph School.  Because her husband's job at the Harms-Rofinot Chevrolet Company, now Camp Chevrolet, was enough to support them both, Florence gave up her Chief Operator position in 1947 as soon as she was married.  Florence was finally ready to settle down and raise a family.

"I didn't have any children with Robert, my first husband, and I wanted a family. I was just happy to have another opportunity," she said. Between 1952 and 1961, Florence and Bob had four children, two girls and two boys.  In 1963, the Brodericks moved their family to the nearby city of Pullman, Washington, where Bob was employed at Brown and Holter Chevrolet as Parts Manager.  Bob had just recently taken a promising job at  Washington State University when he suffered a fatal heart attack on September 20, 1970.

Florence was left with four children to raise, ages ranging from nine to eighteen.  Being teenagers ourselves, we can't even begin to imagine having to raise four kids by ourselves.  But somehow, Florence managed to do it.  Because she was a single mother supporting a family of five, she took a job at Myklebusts in 1971.  Florence worked there as a sales clerk until the store closed in the late 1980's and she retired. 

Florence now has eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. 
Her oldest granddaughter enjoyed Florence's abundant cookie jar so much that she gave Florence the nickname of "Cookie Grandma," which now all of her grandchildren and many of her friends like to call her.  Florence has enjoyed many things during her retirement, some of which include crocheting, oil painting, being a member of the AARP (American Association for Retired Persons), and helping out with the local Senior Center scrapbook.

We discovered that just because someone has retired and raised all their children, it definitely does not mean they aren't busy.  Florence also has played an important role as a member of Women of the Moose, an organization that helps needy children living in the community.   While Florence worked as a teletypist transferring coded messages from one base to another, she asked various service men and women and civilians to write a short message, or even just sign their autograph in her book of Sad Sack political cartoons compiled from Yank magazine. 

"It [the purpose of Sad Sack cartoons] was a way to kind of take the tension off of everything and to put a little humor in the war," she said. 

When she allowed us to flip through the pages of the small red book, there was a satisfied glimmer in her eye as we giggled over the comics.  The people whose signatures cover the inside pages of the small book have come and gone. They all had their own story to tell, and Florence patiently listened to them.

"I've never really talked with anyone about my own history because it's very painful.  Bob and I didn't talk about our past much while he was alive but I thought it was time, and this interview seemed like a good idea."  

A good idea to put it mildly!  We enjoyed so much learning about just how hard Americans worked two generations ago to preserve freedom and to make sure their  grandchildren had an affluent country to grow up in. We now understand much more about why and how things worked, as well as the many aspects of our lives we take for granted. 

Many stories are forgotten, lost, or misplaced.  Florence Broderick's bittersweet story, however, is still alive and has now been told to be remembered forever. And just remember, Florence, you'll always have us as your second set of granddaughters.

 

These next twelve stories are about women who did amazing things, took on tremendous responsibilities, kept the home front going, moved all over the country and even to foreign lands, all to do what they needed to do to support the war effort.  I know you are going to like these ladies.  If you met them all at once, I wonder if you could pick out the one who welded ships?  Repaired airplanes?  I am awe-struck at what these women did at a time when women didn't DO these things.  They had all been raised through the Great Depression and had learned how to make do and use whatever they had on hand.  Those lessons stood them well when the nation's young men went to war.  They were able to step in and make the difference.  Listen to their stories and watch for the reaction of the students who wrote about them. 

 

EDITH CURTIS

By Kate McElwain, Emily Moers, and Anna Wagoner

 

Upon walking into English class on the day we were to interview survivors of World War II, we three felt as much of our class did – apprehensive at conversing with a stranger, wondering how to fill an hour and a half with questions, and bewildered as to what we should ask.  Relieved to discover that the three of us would share an interviewee, we dutifully trooped down to the cafeteria, a more peaceful environment.  Edith Curtis, a sweet lady with an infectious chuckle, soon laid our fears to rest.  She came equipped with an outline of what she felt might interest us.  She explained that her daughter had encouraged her to create a written document of her memories, and this interview had prompted her to begin to do so.  Hardly a peep was heard from us throughout the period, so well had she organized her thoughts.  We sat back and absorbed her story, taking as many notes as we could while learning that our lives are not so different from those of two generations previous, at least before the war interrupted everyone's lives.

Edith grew up in Orono, Maine and was a seventh grader when World War II began.  She attended a small school that housed six grades in one building; her graduating class had forty-one students.  Edith’s family of six learned to make do with what they had.  Due to the many young men enlisting in the military, Edith had no trouble finding work.  Her father was not allowed to fight in World War II, as he was too old and had a family.  Instead, he became an airplane spotter and head of the Victory Farm Volunteers.  He recruited high school students and college girls to work on farms to aid the war effort.  He received a ration card for gas, but was not allowed to use that gas for personal reasons, although he treated his family by taking them along on war business.  Once they traveled “way down east” to Washington County on the Canadian border.  After spending all day picking blueberries, the family waited in the car while Edith’s father attended a meeting.

There were many ways families were limited during the war.  Each citizen was allowed two pairs of shoes per year.  Edith wanted “tenny runners,” but got Buster Browns instead.  At the year's end, the shoes were run through with holes, a constant reminder of the war.  Tires were also rationed as was meat, though not chicken or fish.  Lamb chops were “such a big treat, and so expensive,” that Edith was allowed to chew the meat right off the bones.  Coffee and sugar were also rationed.  Edith's  parents were grateful when Edith turned fourteen so they could drink her ration of coffee.  Extra sugar rations were awarded for canning and “Victory Gardens” were encouraged.  She and her family canned hundreds of quarts of vegetables and blueberries.   Local girls cut up vegetables to ready them for canning in a large canner at the town hall.  "We used powdered milk that was just the same as it is now, only even harder to get the lumps out,” explained Edith. 

Girls began to wear shorter skirts.  Material was scarce.  When the chicken feed was delivered, Edith begged the driver to select sacks of matching color and pattern.  Three sacks made a dress, two made a broomstick skirt.  Children at that time received no allowance but worked for their spending money.  A major source of income was baby-sitting, or “keeping house” as it was called then.  Younger children did not generally accompany their parents to weddings, funerals, movies, or other such outings, so sitting jobs were readily available. 

At school each morning, Edith and her classmates saluted the flag, or at least they did until the war started.  When the war began, it was decided that saluting the flag was too much like Hitler’s salute, so instead the students put their hands over their hearts.  Next they had the Lord’s Prayer, and then the principal read some passages from the Bible and told of any job openings that might be available. 

Even though younger teenagers weren’t able to fight in the war, they all contributed in their own ways.  One boy in a nearby town made a big difference.  He was down by the water one day and saw two men getting out of a boat anchored in a nearby cove.  He overheard them speaking in German and reported it to the authorities.  The two men were arrested and later found to be Nazi spies.  Laughing, Edith related how when the boys team from that town came to play in Orono, all the girls flocked around the boy asking for his autograph.  He was a local hero.

Kids across America, as well as in Edith's town, saved their money to buy Savings Stamps on a regular basis to help the war effort. On one occasion some American pilots had been captured in Japan and were questioned about which air craft carrier they had flown off of.  They had agreed they would all say it was the Shangri La, a made-up name at the time.  When the United States decided to build a ship named the Shangri La in honor of those pilots, the kids in Edith's school elected to dedicate all their savings stamp purchases to the building of that ship.

Classes in her school competed against each other in scrap metal and War Bond drives. The winning class got an ice cream party or was dismissed early.  For fun, churches got together and put on different activities for the kids in their youth groups such as sleigh rides and dances.  On Christmas Eve, they all caroled and visited the sick and the poor, bringing them baskets of food and toys.  Movies were a special treat costing only ten cents for kids twelve and under.  Newsreels of the war were very popular.  Saturday matinees were either a western or a kids’ movie, Shirley Temple being a favorite. 

Edith was a Girl Scout and she saved her money every year so she could go to camp In the summer.  At one of those camps, they found out the war had ended.  “We all started cheering, shouting, singing songs, and everything,” Edith remembers.  She canoed across the lake to where her parents were to tell them the good news.

 Later in Edith’s life, she married and had four daughters. Her youngest daughter was killed in a tragic motorcycle accident a few years out of high school.  Yet Edith has a happy outlook on life and is a woman fun to be with, one to whom you could listen for hours.

We learned of a woman’s life that ran parallel to ours – similar but on another plane.  We could relate to her adolescent feelings of awe at the cute trumpet player in the school band.  But we became aware of our distinctly different realities when Edith continued that the boy was later killed in action, his empty chair left as a reminder of him.  After learning for so many years the historical points, the dates of battles, and the number of people killed, it was a wonderful feeling to be able to picture the personal aspects of World War II.

 

ALMA DRUFFEL

By Lyndee Giese and Stefany Larsen

 

On Monday May 7, 2001, we walked into Mr. Craig McCormick’s class not knowing fully what to expect. We had been preparing for weeks to interview older individuals about their experiences during the Great Depression and World War II, and now the day had finally come after once being postponed because of a fire in the school.

After the bell had rung, our teacher went through the list of individuals who were able to attend that morning.  After several minutes we, Lyndee Giese and Stefany Larsen, learned that we would have the privilege of interviewing Mrs. Alma Druffel of Colton, Washington.  When everything was arranged for the rest of the students, we began to walk around the room in search of our interviewee.  After only a moment of searching we saw a beaming older lady dressed in a bright red suit jacket.

"I believe this is her,” Lyndee whispered, and of course it was.

We decided to take our interview down to the high school cafeteria. There we began to learn the story of a wonderful woman and her experiences in our country during a significant time in history.

Alma was born the daughter of farmers in Colton, Whitman County, Washington.  She was the oldest of six girls and was only nine years old when the Great Depression hit.  Being young and in a rural community, Alma described how the Depression seemed to just pass her by. Her family was able to provide themselves with anything they needed. Cows provided milk, cream, butter, and meat, they raised a big garden, and they canned their food.

“We were never hungry,” Alma told us very matter-of-factly, “We didn’t feel the Depression like the people in the city.”

This part of the interview surprised both of us to a certain extent.  While preparing for the interview, we had done quite a bit of research about the Depression and the World War that followed.  We had always assumed that everyone in the country had gone through difficult times, but as we talked to Alma, we were able to see another side of the story and understood that some suffered more than others.

Alma stated, "I do think the Depression was not hard on me, a nine year old, but it definitely was for my parents.  Although we never went hungry we did without many other things.  I remember mother saying later, when we asked her about those times, that they had not any idea where the money would come from for our next pair of shoes.  My parents kept all those worries away from the children, I am certain of that."

When we asked Alma about her experiences during World War II, she enthusiastically began her story again.  Alma was a Senior in High School when Pearl Harbor was bombed.  She was in the middle of preparing for her Senior High School play for which she had two performances that day.  The afternoon matinee went on without delay, but between the first performance and the second evening performance the bombing was announced.  The next day at school, Alma recalls a school-wide assembly was held where everyone listened via radio to the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, declare war. 

Alma admitted to feelings of fear, but she was also overwhelmed with feelings of patriotism that were rapidly growing throughout the country. She remembers several of her male classmates were ready to leave right away to enlist.  This, she said, her teachers discouraged, as there were only a few months before school was out for the summer, and all the young men who were seniors were encouraged to wait, which they did.

Being in a family full of girls, Alma told us how no one in her immediate family had to go to war.  Her father, as well as many other farmers and their sons in Colton, were exempt because they were thought to be serving their country through raising food on their farms.

However, little did Alma know that her future husband would be her friend, a man who had enlisted in the United States Air Force and was preparing to serve his country as a dental technician in Panama.  Paul Kirpes had been a classmate of Alma’s at Colton High.   Alma told us how she wrote to her future husband every day that he was gone to war. 

But, “I wrote to many boys,” Alma said with a grin.  Alma was able to recall little of what her husband and others did during the war.  She told how the letters she received from the soldiers had to be screened, so the young men were extremely cautious about what they wrote.  She was often unaware of their location and the majority of the activities that they were participating in. 

After high school ended in the spring, Alma stayed at home for a year to help her mother around the house and to help her dad by driving a truck in harvest.   After that year, Alma began to consider her options for college.  She decided to register at Washington State College (now Washington State University) and major in pharmacy. She explained that pharmacy usually was not a major for girls, but as the war had taken many of the young men, it was not an issue anymore.

Alma spent her first year at WSC in a fraternity house because all the dorms were filled with Army recruits who were finishing their final year of study before they left for the war.

“So, when I tell my kids that, they think, 'Wow, mom lived in a fraternity house,' ” she added with a chuckle.

Alma remembered the soldiers walking around campus in formation, not being able to communicate with anyone on their way to class.  There were times when she was able to socialize with the soldiers during USO dances at the armory.  After the soldiers had finished their studies, however, the dances ended, as there were very few males left attending the college.   After the soldiers left, the women were able to move into the dorms again.

Again, as in the Depression, Alma herself was affected very little by the war.  Her entire family was able to stay home, and, living so close, she was able to see them often.  Alma did know others who were not as fortunate as she.  She described to us the gold stars hung in the windows of homes where mothers had lost a son in the war.  Alma said she remembered several gold stars in the Colton area.  She told us also that she could only imagine how hard it must have been for those who lost sons, brothers, fathers, or husbands in the war.

Alma went to work at Corner Drug after graduating from college. She later worked at White Drug for a total of twenty-six years, but “I raised a family first,” she added.  She went on, then, to proudly tell us about her four children and her husband, Paul Kirpes, who she married after college.  Both Alma and her husband continued to farm after the war.  Though cancer claimed Paul's life in 1978, she still holds the happy memories of the thirty-one years they had together.  Alma remarried four years later to John Druffel.

Alma’s experiences lent a hand in helping us understand what World War II was like for many people. We would like to thank her for taking the time to share her experiences with us.  We enjoyed listening to her stories and hope she is satisfied with the summary we have made about her life during the Depression and the War.

 

Both Alma Druffel and this next lady are on the Board of Directors of Council on Aging & Human Services.  When I asked them to come in for an interview, neither blinked an eye.  In fact, Win ended up on the front page of the Daily News along side Celia Fockler (next after Win), who was wearing her welder's mask.  Win was holding up a model of an airplane and wearing a T-shirt her family had gotten for her.  The shirt showed a giant picture of the Flying Fortress, an airplane she worked on during the war.

 

Winnifred Elwood

By Claire Kohler

 

I enter our English room for first period with feelings of trepidation and apprehension.  Today we are supposed to interview someone who has survived the Depression and World War II, someone who had an active part, however big or small, in helping with the war.  We have been assigned partners to interview, and we have discussed the correct way to interview someone without making them feel like a "bug under glass," with every aspect of their lives being poked and prodded and examined in minute detail.  We have been advised to "learn about the person, not just study them," but the difference is completely beyond me.  All I am aware of right now is the fact that I have to interview a seventy or eighty year old woman without any knowledge or experience of how to do it.

I enter the classroom and look around. There are about fifteen elderly people sitting in our seats, looking almost as nervous and apprehensive as we do, talking in subdued voices while they study us.  In a few minutes, we are all paired off and told to go down to the cafeteria where the acoustics are better and there is more breathing space.

The lady I am going to interview is named Winnifred Elwood.  She is short, with gray hair and big green eyes peering out from behind her glasses.  I like her immediately, and this feeling of goodwill makes the interview infinitely easier.  She speaks softly and shyly and stops to consider the question I¹ve asked her before answering.  After we pick a table and get settled, I cautiously start with the basics, not sure how my questioning will be received.  I am lucky, however, to be paired with a person who is easy to talk to and willing to tell me about herself without holding anything back.  As we get to know each other, the questions flow more freely and it becomes more of a conversation than an interview.

Winnifred Elwood was born in Northport, Washington in 1919.  She grew up in Creston, a little town about sixty miles west of Spokane, Washington, where she attended a K-12 schoolhouse.  Win, as she prefers to be called, is the third of six kids; she has two older brothers, two younger brothers and a younger sister.  She graduated in 1936 with the twenty others in her class, the biggest class on record to attend that schoolhouse.  After graduating, she worked on farms and did odd jobs while she saved up the money to go to college, but as her brothers were drafted and sent off to fight in the war, she felt she had to contribute to the war effort, too.  In the fall of ¹41, she started trade school for the army.

The trade school where Win went for three months was located in Eugene, Oregon.  She learned about planes and how to repair them, and in 1942 she was sent to Spokane Army Air Depot at Galena, which is now Spokane International Airport, to repair bomber planes with a group of other girls and a few young boys who were too young to enroll in the army.  There were many different levels of repair for the planes; all were highly specialized and required very exacting knowledge of the plane.  Win worked at Galena for two-and-a-half to three years installing superchargers.  Turbo-Superchargers are heavy, circular pieces of machinery that blow air into the cylinders of the engine.  To install the supercharger regulators, the women had to slide into the wing of the plane on their stomachs and screw the piece into position.  It was hard, greasy, dirty work, yet when I ask if she had fun I get an emphatic "Yes!"

As she is remembering these years, Win¹s eyes are turned inward, and I can tell she is more focused on her memories than on me.  The day shift and the night shift were alternated every month.  As she recalls the hard times on graveyard shift she gazes at me seriously with her big green eyes and then she suddenly smiles up at me shyly as she remembers the parties and fun times she had.  Win was a part of the United Service Organization, or USO, a social club that provided the G.I.s somewhere to go for recreation.  She attended dances, potlucks, and skating parties, and she went to the hospital to socialize with the soldiers there.

In 1944, after she was done repairing planes, Win attended Eastern where she took a junior college prep course.  She admits she was really interested in Botany, but in the 1940¹s there were only a few areas in which women could major, and Botany was not one of the options at Eastern, so she chose Education instead.  In 1946, she transferred to WSC in Pullman where she was able to get a degree in Botany.  She met Lewis Elwood in German class at WSU, and they got married in 1947.

Today Win lives in Albion with Lewis.  They have five children and six grandchildren, ranging in age from junior high school to twenty-two years old.  She still loves the great outdoors and plants, but since she suffers from an illness called Guillain-Barre syndrome she hasn¹t been as active as she would like.  Guillain-Barre syndrome, as I understood from Win¹s description, attacks the coating on the nerves so signals from the brain can¹t be transmitted to the muscles.  Guillain-Barre left Win almost completely paralyzed and she was in the hospital for about three months.  But she has regained an amazing amount of mobility and balance, and although she uses a cane to get around, she doesn¹t lean heavily on it.  She likes to quilt, too, suggesting no small amount of patience.

I am extremely impressed by this little lady sitting in front of me.  When I asked her what she felt about war today, she replies, "I don¹t think we [the whole world] are trying hard enough to find a prevention."  She does not relish the fact that she helped to kill millions of innocent people, and she almost feels guilty for having so much fun during the war.  She has shown me that history, a subject I have never particularly enjoyed, can be interesting and fun. 

Thank you, Win.

CELIA FOCKLER

By Daron Deonier

 

At first, I was very apprehensive about the assignment that had been looming over my head for the past three weeks.  Ever since the very day it was announced that we would be interviewing people who had lived during World War II, I had been questioning my abilities.  I had not questioned my abilities as a writer; more in question were my abilities to communicate with a stranger, with whom I had nothing in common.  The thought of interviewing a complete stranger about her life, especially someone who lived such a different life than I, was more than a little bit frightening.  I walked into my English class on a warm Monday morning and felt strangely intimidated; for there sat a large group of elderly citizens that we would soon be interviewing.  But my intimidation soon turned to elation as I was introduced to Celia Fockler, my assigned interviewee.  Her bright smile quickly quieted my fears and put me at ease.  Well, enough about me, it is time for you to hear about a woman who has an amazing life story and an even more amazing personality.

Celia Fockler, affectionately referred to as Sissy by her friends, was born in 1922, the middle child of her family.  Her two brothers died at a terribly early age, one passing on when he was three days old, the other dying upon being born.  Celia and her sister were stars in their hometown of Rainer, Oregon.  They sang on the radio for a furniture store's commercial.  Celia was an active young lady who enjoyed swimming, biking, dancing, and the outdoors.  She competed on the school track team, running relays and competing in high jump.  Celia’s athleticism was not limited to track; she also played basketball.  She grew up with a very caring family, which included a strict father.  He was a very loving man but kept a close eye on his daughters.  When dating became an issue, her father was known to come looking for his daughters if they were not home on time.  The two sisters had a signal with their father for inviting dates inside: if he lowered the newspaper, that meant yes; if he kept the paper up, then the boy didn’t have a chance.

When the war came to fruition, Celia decided to help the war effort by moving to the Oregon coast to be a ship welder.

At this time in her life, Celia was twenty-one years old, earning a dollar twenty-five an hour, working seven days a week.  Her daily attire included a heavy helmet, metal-toed boots, and leather clothing, which were all required welding attire.  Knowing nothing about welding, having no previous training, Celia faced a big challenge.  She started the first three weeks of her welding career on the morning shift, as a worker on the tack crew, welding the sides of ships.  After those short three weeks, she was moved up to work on the regular welding crew.

The job was not only extremely physically challenging, it also tested her inner strength.  Women in her work place were faced with a great challenge: proving they could do a man’s job.  The women welders were under constant supervision and scrutiny; a supervisor was always close behind.  Celia had to work twice as hard to prove herself.

"Sissy" was the name monogrammed on her leather work jacket, which she wore proudly.  Knowing that she was being a contributing member of society was fulfilling to her.  Celia also found her job to be exciting; it was an outdoor job where she met and learned a lot about people.  She formed many close, enduring friendships during her years at the Oregon shipyard.  Being the young, dynamic woman she was, Celia had her share of fun.  Working the morning shift at the shipyard allowed her to have a great nightlife.  Celia went dancing nightly with her friends. During the war nearly everything was rationed: food, gas, coffee, and most importantly, shoes.  A self-proclaimed shoe-a-holic, Celia traded her liquor rations for dancing shoes.

Upon the completion of the war, Celia’s life became very different.  She had met her future husband, Stewart Fockler, at an Oregon shipyard.  Before meeting Stewart, Celia was forced to take a lengthy ferry to get to her workplace.  Stewart had a car and worked at the same shipyard that she did.  He offered to give her rides to work, so I guess you could say it was love at first drive.  Stewart was a native of Pullman and moved back to Pullman in 1947 with Celia in tow.  When Celia moved to Pullman, she was less than impressed.  The hills were rolling and barren, there was no ocean, and there were no trees or mountains in sight.

Celia soon found her calling in Pullman.  She began working for the university as a cook for the football team.  Celia continued to feed the Cougs for the next twenty years.  She has seen many Rose Bowls and still remains a Cougar fan.

It was on her husband Stewart’s very ship that the treaty of Tokyo Bay was signed.  Sadly, Stewart died in 1994 due to lung cancer, likely caused by welding fumes.

Celia feels that her generation was forced to grow up rather quickly and at a young age learned to survive day by day.  This lifestyle has contributed to her life philosophy. 

"You should look to the future and live each day for its worth."

Celia definitely practices what she preaches.  At seventy-nine years of age, Celia stills goes rafting with her family, she has parasailed numerous times, and she has gone ballooning.  With all these adventures you’d think that she’d be out of ideas, but she has not yet fulfilled her aspiration to jump out of an airplane.

 

This next story illustrates how the war invaded the private lives and plans of both men and women, even those still in school.  Sylvia's story includes a look at college life during the war.

 

SYLVIA GLADHILL

 

Sylvia Helper Gladhill was born in Henry, Illinois in 1926 on November 7, the same date the Soviet Union chose to yearly celebrate the October Revolution with parades and festivities.  One of her earliest vivid memories is about three years later when her father came home from town, white faced, to tell the family there had been a "Panic on Wall Street" and people were jumping out of windows.  President Roosevelt later changed that expression to "Stock Market Crash" in his on-going attempt to still the fears of the nation.  The Helpers and their five children stayed on the farm and lived through the ensuing Great Depression with relatively few problems.

When Sylvia was about fifteen, she and her family went to church one December Sunday in 1941.  They had not listened to the radio that morning, but after dinner while her parents rested Sylvia decided to dust mop their front room.  She turned the radio on low while she worked and then heard the news.  Her thought about the Japanese attack was, "This means war.  I can't imagine just letting them do that!"

That evening her family attended a Marshall County concert of choral and band music.  Her mother sat next to a mother of six sons who was understandably very worried.  As it turned out all six came home, after many years of waiting and concern.  Sylvia's younger brothers were too young to go to war.  In that respect the war didn't impact her at all as her father was a forty-five year old farmer with five children.

What did impact her family was sugar rationing.  Her mom, cooking for a family of seven,  learned to be very inventive.  Canned goods were rationed too, although there generally was a feeling among farm people that it wasn't necessary since most folks grew and canned their own.  Shoe rationing did cause a problem with five children with growing feet. None of the children were able to have gym shoes.  They had just one pair so there was "none of this business of letting them air out," according to Sylvia.

Clothing was a constant challenge too.  Sylvia's mom had trouble finding yard goods due to price controls and scarcity of available goods.  Yardage manufacturers were allowed to charge more for table cloths than they were for yardage suitable for making clothes.  So they made less clothing yardage and more table cloths.  People then had to buy the more expensive table cloths to make garments.  Gas rationing was a little easier on the Helpers since they got a bigger ration in order to operate their gas-run farm equipment. 

Sylvia graduated from high school in 1943 at the age of sixteen.  Things that were different due to the war included her country school not being able to publish a year book and not having class plays.  Students were encouraged to take math which was helpful for navigation.  And they were told they could cut two weeks off the school year so the boys could put in more time at work on the farm or enlist early.

Sylvia started college at the University of Illinois the first week of October in 1943, two weeks later than usual because of the war.  Dropping two weeks from the school year affected her history class which skipped the chapter on the barbarian invasion of western Europe.  "I never have had as good a grasp on that subject as I would like to have had," Sylvia still laments. 

When the President of the University addressed her Freshman Class in 1943, he said, "Good Morning young ladies and you few gentlemen at the back."

University enrollment had dropped from twelve thousand to about eight thousand students.  The ratio between men and women had gone from four-men-to-one-woman to four-women-to-one-man.  The men on campus were almost entirely engineers in Navy officer training programs.  They had a Diesel School where the men learned about engines and a Signal School where they studied radio.  There were also Army men who were studying language and history so they could man the occupation forces that would be needed after the war.  There was a clear understanding that once the Nazis were removed from German urban infrastructures they would need to be replaced quickly in order to begin rebuilding Germany and France.  However, late in 1943 those Army students were yanked out and put into the Infantry as replacements.  While they were on campus those military men were housed at the ice rink, which was not iced over during the duration.  Later vets were housed there while attending classes on the G.I. Bill of Rights.  Sylvia recalls sitting in the Natural History Library studying in the late afternoon and seeing Navy men marching by on their way to dinner while singing "cleaned up" military marching songs.

Most of the girls Sylvia knew dated military men.  Her friend Vivian had dated a young man who had gotten quite serious about her.  She was well educated and the boy was from the hills of Tennessee, yet they had been attracted to one another.  When he went overseas they continued corresponding and he had asked Vivian to marry him when he returned.  Then his letters stopped coming.  Some time later the Dean of Women got a hand-written letter from the boy's mother saying her son had been drowned when his troop ship was sunk by a German submarine. He had told his family about Vivian and so his mother had made the effort to locate her and let her know what had happened.  The Dean told their housemother, who gently broke the news to Vivian.  It was then, when she saw her friend's sorrow, that the reality of war came close to home for Sylvia.

Sylvia lived in a cooperative house in which the girls had assigned duties.  Sylvia's job was buying their food.  Since sugar, meat, and canned goods were rationed each girl had to bring her ration books to school.  By May of 1945 sugar was one of the few food items still rationed.  Some girls' sugar stamps had all been used while others had not.  So the fair way to divide the remaining stamps at the end of the school year, it seemed, was to cash in all the stamps for sugar and divide the sugar evenly among the girls.  Sylvia did that, carefully dividing the sugar into twenty little paper sacks.  The very next day sugar rationing ended!

Sylvia was still in college in 1945 when the Japanese surrendered.  She lived in a house next to a gas station at the time and clearly recalls hearing the "Ting!  Ting!  Ting!  Ting!"  of the gas pumps all day long, as people filled their gas tanks for the first time in almost five years.

 

This next lady serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Council on Aging & Human Services.  I have attended the Board's meetings for well over a year now and have yet to see one fail to be run with military precision.  Alberta Hill and I reorganized Kate's paper in order to add some detail she and Alberta did not discuss.  Here is the composite version.

 

ALBERTA HILL

By Kate Hutchinson

 

Alberta Hill was born in Payette, Idaho in 1918 and grew up in Emmett.  She graduated from the University of Idaho in 1939, then taught Vocational Home Economics at both Hailey and Preston High Schools.  Her teaching in family and consumer sciences was interrupted by world events that followed Pearl Harbor.  Hill had been teaching High School since the fall of 1939, continuing through June of 1943.  "We anticipated after all the men teachers had been called to service, eventually women would be needed too.  I didn't want to quit until the end of the school term in June and also wanted to be assured there was someone to take my place before I enlisted."

And enlist she did, along with three hundred and thirty-eight thousand other women who served in World War II.  She joined the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), which changed later in 1943 to WAC or Women's Army Corp.  The women in the WAAC had the choice of being discharged if they didn't want to be in the WAC.  Hill stayed in.

She had Basic Training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.  "The WAAC sent anyone with Home Economics in their resume, at either High School or College level, to Cooks and Bakers School for four weeks.  After that I was sent to a Baker's Specialist Course.  There was some talk of my enrolling in Officer Candidate School, but the Army had recruited too many people to Officer Training," Alberta explained. 

Hill had taught for four years and she sat in Cooks and Bakers classes with two Home Economics graduates from Oregon State College, one who had taught nine years and the other a Dietitian major; a WSC (WSU) graduate who had taught three years; and several other Home Economics majors.  Their Cooks and Bakers classes were taught by a woman whose emphasis had been in Clothing and Textiles and the Baker Specialist teacher had demonstrated food equipment in department stores.

Hill's training completed, she was assigned as a Baker in a WAC company mess hall at Fort Benning, Georgia, baking for about one hundred women.  "We were often understaffed, due to poor leadership.  So in addition to my Baker job which ran from four am until noon, I regularly had to serve as first or second Cook on the noon to noon shift. I therefore worked an average of about twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for thirteen months."  Bakers and Cooks dealt with coal burning ranges and ovens.  They had to start their own fires and clean out the ashes, besides wrestling around twenty-gallon stock pots.

But Alberta Hill did get relief from that grueling schedule.  Unbeknownst to her, two women in her company who worked for Chaplains reported to their bosses about her long days and one of them got her transferred to clerical work, scheduled from eight to five.  She was assigned to the First Student Training Regiment of the Infantry School, doing S2 (Intelligence) and PR (Public Relations) clerical work.   The school was engaged in setting up and teaching classes for both officers and enlisted men on such subjects as transportation, electronics, and cryptography.

When she first reported as the Major's secretary in S2, there were three people working there, besides her.  A day or two later the Major asked her to stay after hours.  She feared she had been found wanting.

"Have you been busy?" he asked.

"No," was her honest reply.

"How many people do you think we need out there?"

"One," again her honest reply.

The next day when she reported for work, she was the only one doing so. 

Her work included mail checks for security clearance and later on she interviewed returning POWs.  The PR portion of her assignment had to do with outgoing information from the Regiment. 

"It was an interesting office.  We had officers coming in for training who were of equal or higher rank than those who were acting as company COs," she said.  Because of the rank of persons in those companies, discipline was handled at the regimental level, another responsibility of the office in which she worked.

While she worked hard, Alberta Hill of WAC Detachment #2 recalls some good and fun experiences.  And yet, the first Christmas she was at Fort Benning was the "most miserable" Christmas she ever had in her life.  Most of the women in her detachment were working at the Headquarters Office of the Infantry School as replacements for men who had been Regular Army in clerical roles.  Those clerks had been called to front line duty and some resented the women who were taking their jobs.  One WAC often could replace three male stenos, causing no small degree of hard feelings in the office.  "The men treated them awful.  Morale was down also because of miserable company officers.  And then on Christmas it rained ice.  I remember having to chip ice off of the garbage cans on Christmas day in Georgia," said Alberta, shaking her head at that vivid memory.

Her second Christmas there, however, was one of the best she ever had.  The situation had settled down for the women in her Company.  There were new officers, the women had gotten acquainted, and they found ways to make Christmas a happy time.  Both Protestants and Catholics attended Christmas eve services.  Some of the women set up two foot-lockers to serve as beverage bars for Christmas cheer.  On Christmas eve they got on a post bus and took gifts to women in other WAC detachments.  "The Jewish women on base volunteered for Christmas KP," Alberta smiled, remembering that kind deed.

Asked about recollections of funny things, Alberta told the story of an officer who decided the WACs were "not very military" since Privates, Staff Sergeants, whatever rank all were good friends and sat together in the mess hall.  Well, that was deemed improper.  So the officer had signs put up to separate the women by rank.  A KP crew decided to "support" the officer by also segregating the #10 garbage cans by rank.  They elaborately decorated one for high ranking officers, then more sparsely decorated ones on down the line, finally having NO can for privates, just a sign reading: "Privates: Dig a Hole and Bury Your Garbage."   So ended that official attempt to segregate the WACs in the mess hall.

Alberta Hill found great value in her military service.  When she enlisted she became a part of a group of people from a wide variety of social, economic, cultural, religious, racial, and moral backgrounds.  "I found I was not just looking at other people, but I was one of a diverse group."

Fun for Hill, besides sitting on her bunk and learning to knit along with most of her squad room, also included opportunities to travel while on furlough.  She saw Washington, DC, New York City, Atlanta, and St. Augustine. 

She also got acquainted with Columbus, Georgia, the city nearest Fort Benning.  "I was horrified at the black housing situation," she said of her first observation of racial discrimination as it was some sixty years ago.  That discrimination carried through into the opportunity to purchase goods on base or in town.  "I noticed it ran like this: white male officers, white women officers, white civilians, white enlisted, black military, and finally black civilians."

Alberta Hill's military career came to a close after V-J Day ended the war in August of 1945.  She was transferred to California by train where she was discharged in Marysville in February 1946.  She returned to Idaho where she decided to take advantage of the G.I. Bill for graduate study. 

She spent the summers of '46, '47, and '48 at the Square G Ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  She cooked, then was a maid, then the third summer ran the restaurant.  From then until she went to the College of Education at WSU in 1969, she pursued doctorate studies and taught at various colleges and universities across the country, as well as working for the U.S. Office of Education.  In 1974 she was named Dean of the College of Home Economics where she served full-time until 1983.  In the next two years she continued on a part-time basis, participating in WSU programs, including one in Indonesia.  She remains active in church work and continues to participate in professional organizations including the International Federation of Home Economics.

 

This next lady did her part in the war effort by working through the Red Cross to provide things people in war-torn countries needed, including our military men and women.

 

Gladys Martin

By  Albert Ding and Willie Morrison

Experiences during World War II were very significant and life changing for the people who fought and gave their lives for our country.  Too often in the past, we did not give enough credit to those people who stayed behind during the war times and kept our country running.  Gladys Martin was one of the many Americans who lived through the tough times and even managed to raise a family during the Depression.  When Gladys came to our school for the interview the atmosphere was rather uncomfortable as we were crowded into a corner of our classroom   However, with Gladys' smile, along with her open and friendly personality, we were quickly assured that we had nothing to worry about.  Thanks to Gladys' friendly personality, we were able to get a clear view of the hardships and the environment during the war times.

Gladys Martin was born in the year of 1912.  Life on the farm near the city of Pullman was relatively simple.  During her education, Gladys attended country grade schools and Gladish High School in Pullman, along with her other siblings.  When Gladys was sixteen, her mother passed away leaving her to take care of her siblings until her dad remarried two years later.  Already Gladys was becoming a very strong leader who would remain a leader throughout her entire life. 

Life still remained relatively basic until she was nineteen and met a young man named Herbert Martin.  Shortly after meeting the two were happily married in the year of 1931.  In 1938, Gladys' first child was born.  in very tough times.  A few years later in 1943, her second child was born.  Not long after her marriage to Herbert, the country had slipped into the age known as the Depression.  Our young generation cannot even begin to imagine what life was like during the Depression.  However, Gladys provided a glimpse of life during those difficult years.  Gladys recalls moments when a mere $35 was the only thing between her family and starvation.  She remembers that at one point she almost lost the $35, and looking back now she smiles, but the stress during that time was unimaginable.  Gladys also clearly remembers the times during the war when she had to shop in thrift stores for some basic necessities and how all United States citizens were forced to use rationing stamps.  Each person was given a book of stamps with a stamp for all the basic necessities that the country was short on.  Stamp books were given to each person in a family regardless of age, making these books very valuable.  Regardless of wealth, all people still received only as many supplies as their stamp book would allow. 

Gladys admits that life during World War II did not affect her
family as badly as some other families, in part because the number of stamp books that their family received every month was more than enough to provide for her family.  Gladys remembers instances where she gave away valuable stamps to friends that were not as well off, simply because she had more than enough for her whole family.

In addition to using rationing stamps, Gladys was lucky enough to be able to obtain fruits and vegetables from the garden at her father's farm.  Her father was very helpful during the war times, and Gladys is still very thankful for all the aid she received from him.  Gladys was able to preserve fruits from her father's farm by canning, and that was helpful for the difficult months ahead.  Since the war began, obtaining essential items such as sugar was only possible through the stamps.  At one time, Gladys remembers running out of stamps for sugar, making it impossible to can fruit.  Unable to wait the remainder of the month, Gladys traded some shoe stamps to her sister-in-law for sugar stamps.  She recalls that it was common practice for friends during the war to trade stamps to each other depending on what was needed.

When asked the question of how well people were informed during the war, Gladys explains there were only a few television sets around during the period of the war and most people ended up relying on the radio for news.  Several years earlier, during the Depression, no one had a television, and radios were the only source of information.  Thus, it was very hard to receive information until several weeks after it occurred.  Apparently the country as a whole was very uninformed of the war effort and what was occurring in other parts of the world.  For instance, the entire United States was not even aware of the wartime atrocities committed by Adolf Hitler until several years after the war.

Regardless of how uninformed the people of the United States were of the war efforts, families still heard about the deaths of loved ones through letters.  Deaths of soldiers was the only news about the war that really traveled quickly.  Gladys knew of two boys who were killed during the war.  One of the boys lived in Pullman, and the other boy lived in Albion.  Gladys expressed a great amount of sadness for those who had died.

People throughout the nation performed small tasks to aid the war effort in Europe.  Gladys was one of the people who aided the war effort by supplying considerable amounts of sweaters and rolled bandages.  During the evenings she would sit in the living room and wrap bandages using only a knitting needle and old torn up sheets.  Once she had finished rolling her bandages, Gladys would deliver them to the Red Cross.  Gladys was well aware of the Red Cross having a neutral status during the war; however, she never thought twice about the items being delivered to Germans instead of the Allies, she simply wanted to help those in need.  According to Gladys, most people who aided the war effort by sending supplies through the Red Cross shared her view that anyone should be helped no matter what side they were on.  Along with rolling bandages for the Red Cross, Gladys also knitted sleeveless sweaters for American soldiers, so they could stay warm during the cold nights of the war.

Gladys Martin was no soldier, no weapons specialist, and no wartime commander, but she was a hero.  She fought through hard times and came out of the Depression with a healthy family and a good home, not to mention helping others in need.  In the future, we will all pass on and be forgotten, but please do not forget her name.  Gladys Martin was a hero to be remembered, and we can all learn something from this excellent example of a hardworking, dedicated individual.

When news came over the radio that the war was over, Gladys made a big pan of fudge for her family because she knew she could finally get all the sugar she wanted.

 

The Dorothy Matson story was written by a student from Colfax High School wanting to earn some community service hours for a Leadership class. Rachel  did the very first interview and deserves full marks for stepping up to the plate and taking the first swing.  Actually, she got a double on that one swing.  Dorothy also told her about her brother who passed away shortly before TRIBUTE was published.  We include his story in memory of Dale Sevier, another Whitman County soldier gone to rest.

 

DOROTHY MATSON

By Rachel Morgan

 

As I walked through the rain and up the steps to Dorothy Matson's house, I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  All I knew was that I was there to listen to her stories about World War II and compile them into writing.  Her dog Nelson greeted me and then I met Dorothy.  As I took a step back into the past, little did I realize just how much I would learn.

Dorothy Matson was born in Pullman in 1920.  Pioneering, her parents came to the Pullman area early in their lives.  She says her dad came  "riding a horse and carrying his double barrel shotgun."  The "honest to by gosh barn" that she grew up in stood where her garage stands today.  She attended Pullman High School and went to beautician school in Spokane.  She used the skills she learned for a few years after she graduated until she joined the WAVES.

In just a few days, her life was changed forever.  With three other women, Dorothy headed east on a train that would take them from Spokane to New York to boot camp in the Bronx.  She told the story of her friend Nellie walking through the train saying, "We are crossing the Mississippi River" to let them know where they were. 

When they arrived at the Bronx, they were issued clothing, but Dorothy said they were able to keep their own civilian underwear, for which I'm sure they were very grateful.  "We learned to drill," Dorothy stated.  She quoted one person as saying, "We were drilled into a mud puddle and then he gave us hell." 

Her drill instructors were very strict she remembers, and she got into trouble once for talking in line.  Her punishment?  To clean the dust bunnies off the floor of one of the lady officers.  "There were dust bunnies everywhere," she remembers. 

Dorothy was stationed in Washington D.C. in the WAVES, which was the women's division of the Navy.  She says D.C. was "an interesting town." 

Dorothy went into the service soon after the war started and served until it was over.  A piece of information that I found interesting was the fact that diesel engines weren't allowed in the city of Washington D.C. because it would stain the marble of the buildings.  So she said they rode in vehicles or busses that weren't powered by diesel, or they walked.  While in D.C., they slept in barracks.  There were four to a cubicle, but she said they had the "nicest bunks with the latest movies."  They were given a clean sheet and pillow case every week, but they had to do their personal laundry by hand.  Dorothy even claims that the food was good.

Even though Dorothy went to beautician school after High School, she didn't use those skills in the service.  She went into communications, which she described as "very primitive."  The girls were called electricians and their work was very secretive.  They couldn't talk about what they were doing for close to two years. 

So what were they in charge of?  Dorothy says they just did what they were told.  They made spools of information for secret communication purposes.  She said the enemy would have had to have a spool to transcribe what the message was from ship to shore and shore to shore.  So the enemy didn't know where the allies were because of their secret code, but Dorothy and her people could figure out where the enemy was because they had a cryptologist decode the enemy's codes.  She said they sent the spools "especially to England."  Dorothy talked a lot about a woman named Miss Dillion who was in charge of getting these spools ready to send off to allied countries. 

What an exciting position to be in!  I can't imagine what it must have felt like to be a part of sending vital information about decoding to other countries and to not even have a full grasp on what you were even actually doing!  They had three shifts working every day and Dorothy said that they didn't leave their post until they were relieved by the next shift or they'd get in trouble.  She said they could talk more freely about what they were doing when their commander explained how everything worked.  Dorothy noted that once they started using tapes instead of spools, their work went much faster.  They then could tape ship to shore and shore to ship. 

They had to learn how to solder for their work and a man by the name of Eddy taught them how.  He was very dedicated to his work and when he died Dorothy thought, seeing him in his casket, that he should have been holding his soldering iron in his hands instead of his rosary beads. 

I was interested to know what they did for fun on the time they had off.  Dorothy said they often went to the small town of Friendship.  When they first got to D.C., she exclaimed, "We was poor."   Back then their favorite hang out was the "Pepsi Cola Place" as she called it.  There, they made records, bought a hamburger for twenty-five cents, and got a Pepsi free. 

One time, her friend Mary and she got off work at midnight and they decided they were just going to go downtown.  They ended up meeting up with a sailor and a soldier and walked around D.C. all night.  Dorothy said in the morning they all went to breakfast, put the boys on the bus, went back to the barracks, and never saw them again, but that was typical during wartime.  A fun time they had she says, and she'll probably never forget that night. 

Dorothy and her bunkmates spent a lot of time together and always got along great.  They went to restaurants and the Smithsonian Institute.  Once they even went to a Burlesque show.  She talked a lot about the seasons and the weather.  Springtime was "beautiful, just absolutely beautiful" with all the cherry blossoms and dogwood trees in bloom.  Everywhere they went they saw the sights and smells of a "glorious" spring.  In the winter, the streets and roads would get slick, sometimes with a skiff of snow over them.  Dorothy said it was cold a lot of the time. 

She told the story of when she and a friend were walking along and all the sudden, two Marines who were drunk that were walking in front of them just rolled off the slick sidewalk and down the bank.  She said it was pretty funny.  Some other boys came along and retrieved them, but I can just see them laughing at the guys.  What a sight!

Dorothy was able to stand across the street from the White House during President Roosevelt's funeral.  That was as close as you could get to the President's home during the war.  She said she liked the president and his wife and naturally felt sad when he died.  She thought they were "splendid people," and Dorothy believed he did the best he could while he was the President.  When asked how she dealt with it, she responded, "You just took it in your stride.  You went on."

Trying to do something fun every weekend was part of the routine in Dorothy's life at the time.  Once they visited George Washington's home and they even went to a Notre Dame football game.  She recalled it being a fun experience.  The group of six of them found the stadium to be very crowded, but once they found some seats, they rooted for Notre Dame all the way!

I asked her where she was when the war was over.  She said in D.C., and they heard about it over the radio.  So they all went into town, laid newspapers out on the curb, sat down and watched people get sloppy.  I was quite amused at that term but I didn't know what she was talking about.  She said it meant people unbuttoned and took off their uniform jackets, untucked their shirts, and threw their hats in the air.  In other words, they were allowed to look sloppy.  I can picture hundreds of people having a big party enjoying the end of war on the streets of D.C.  What a time of celebration - to get sloppy!

Dorothy, who was a Second Class Petty Officer when she retired from the Navy, is also very proud of her brother, Dale Henry Sevier.  Dale was an automobile mechanic for many years when he came home from the war.  He served in North Africa and was at the landing at Normandy.  Dale was a tank mechanic.  He kept the tanks' motors running and also kept them moving off of the barges when they landed.  He went clear through the war without a scratch in spite of being shot at while landing tanks. 

Dorothy said she'd never forget something he once told her.  "If you've fixed one motor, you can fix them all no matter what the size."

She also told me her favorite story of his.  When he was in Europe he had a Czechoslovakian girlfriend.  The men on the base often put on dances for the G.I.s and the girls in the area, and Dale was charged with providing transportation for the young ladies.  One evening when he was getting ready to leave to pick up the girls, he discovered the only available jeep and truck were both in use.  There was nothing to do but to transport the girls to the dance on a tank.  Can you just picture a whole bunch of girls trying to find a place to sit somewhere on that tank?  It must have been quite a sight.

Dorothy laughed as she told me what an officer later told her brother.  "Sevier," he said, "I don't care, but the Captain said not to get out on the highway with a tank anymore."

Dale Sevier was awarded the Bronze Star.  The Citation he received with the medal reads, "For meritorious service in connection with military operations against an armed enemy from 18 November 1942 to 1 May 1945, in North Africa, Sicily, England, France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany.  The technical skill, ingenuity, and alacrity with which Staff Sergeant Sevier discharged his responsibilities as Motor Mechanic and Motor Sergeant, despite hazardous combat conditions and lack of repair parts, contributed materially to the efficiency of his organization throughout the North African and Sicilian Campaigns, during planning and training periods, and in operations on the continent of Europe.  His unswerving devotion to duty exemplifies the finest traditions of the service.  Entered military service from Pullman, Washington."

I was privileged to see his Bronze Star up close along with his dog tag and other medals.  As I looked at those pieces, thoughts ran through my head.  So many people sacrificed so much during World War II and now I take my freedom for granted too often.  How truly grateful I am for the men and women that served our country.

As my time with Dorothy came to a close, I asked if she had any advice for young women going into the service.  "It's an experience," she said.  "It depends whether you want to go to college or join the service." 

Dorothy still happily resides in Pullman with her dog Nelson.  As I look back on the stories of Dorothy's life, I am grateful that I was able to be a part of hearing about her life.  There's so much of the war that is forgotten and yet there's so much that we need to remember.  I am thankful for people like Dorothy who are willing to serve their country and share their stories with others.  I hope these stories are never lost and I am so grateful for being a part of this writing project.  Thank you Dorothy for the things you have learned and shared with the rest of us.  May your story and your brother's never be forgotten!

 

Here is some insight into the life of the occupation forces after the war ended, how teachers were drawn into the national effort to re-establish Germany, and a good look at how to ride a camel.

 

ESTHER PETERSON

By Kathryn Kastrinos

 

Many people reflect on battlefields and fighting when they hear of World War II, but while interviewing Esther Peterson I got a glimpse of a whole other story.  Esther Peterson is a woman with many stories, many stories that unlock her background and her motives.

Esther was an ordinary elementary school teacher until she got the letter of her life.  In this letter, she was informed that she was being recruited to teach at a military base in Germany shortly after World War II ended in Europe.  Feeling honored, she accepted the chance and went to Germany to teach Occupation Force officers' children.

Esther grew up in the serene state of Kansas with the dream of teaching.  She got her first teaching job at a rural elementary school, teaching second to eighth graders.  After a few years in front of the same class in the same room she was ready for something new.   While wondering what she wanted to do, she received that letter recruiting her to teach at the military base.  Being only twenty-nine years old, she was very eager for the chance and gladly accepted the offer.  She immediately was sent a one-way boat ticket to Heidelberg, Germany.  In Heidelberg, she would be teaching at the Heidelberg Military Base in front of a third grade class.

After a few weeks of packing and getting ready, she arrived in New York City.  Awaiting her arrival was the magnificent USS Henry Gibbins, a U.S. Navy troop ship.  Since it was August the weather was beautiful throughout the trip and it was a sight she will always remember.

Upon arriving in Heidelberg, she was shown where she would be living for the next year.  Her new home was called a "billet" and was fairly small, but suitable.  Actually it was the Alt Heidelberg Hotel.  After becoming more comfortable with her new setting she went over to the school where she would teach for a full year.  It was located in an old hospital building over five stories tall.  She was shown to her classroom and immediately wore a smile across her face.

There were two third-grade teachers and they each had thirty-nine students.  After six weeks, another teacher was hired and for the rest of the school year they each had only twenty-six students.  Some of the children had never been to school before since they had lived all of their lives on military bases.

At this point I was curious if Esther felt any awkwardness, being on a military base.  She said, "Heidelberg wasn't as severely affected as many other bases.  I was glad that I still had the opportunity to help war-stricken children, but in a nicer area."

After a semester's worth of teaching, Esther traveled around to Tunisia and Algeria in North Africa where she got to ride a camel, and also to lower Southern Germany.  In Southern Germany she watched the Passion Play at Oberammergau, which is a very famous play and is very special to see.  She also visited the American Military Cemetery in Belgium, one of the biggest in the world.   She was also involved in playing the organ.  Every week, all year long, Esther took organ lessons in the nearby church.  She stated the organ helped her pass by some of her more lonely days in Germany.

"The instrument really helped my state of being, it definitely helped me get through many of my days."

Later in the year Esther became the choir director of a Military chapel near Heidelberg at the 130th Station Hospital headquarters, in addition to her duties as a school teacher.  She enjoyed the interaction with military personnel in that position.

I think Esther Peterson is a very courageous woman, especially during that day and age.  I was locked into her every word while talking to her and I realized that the aspects of war aren't always horrible.  Some places, like Heidelberg, were barely affected by the massacres that were happening all around them.

After her teaching time and a few weeks of traveling, Esther returned to the United States and decided to return to Pullman, Washington.  She still lives in Pullman and enjoys every day of her life, still remembering part of it that was lived out in a far away country.

 

Families were terribly wrenched by the war, some having several men and/or women go into the military service.  Mary Redlin's family was one of those.  When I first talked to her about sharing her story she mentioned her mother, then began to weep.  After all these years, the pain of war is still apparent on many faces.

 

MARY REDLIN

By Jessica McCain and Sarah Weber

 

On the morning of May 7th, 2001, students entered their English classroom with a bit of anticipation and unease. Several elderly people from the so-called "Greatest Generation" were waiting patiently for the long awaited World War II interviews.  Every student nervously listened for their name to be paired with their interviewee.  After the uncomfortable introduction, the initial stress was lifted and the interviews were underway.

Mary Ellen Graham was born on May 4, 1928 on a small farm in Minnesota.  She was raised in a family of six consisting of two older brothers, one younger brother and two loving parents.  Life, at first, seemed easy for the Graham family, even through the horribly troublesome times of the Depression. They owned a very productive farm from which they harvested numerous fruits, such as apples and plums, plus many vegetables.  They also had many farm animals, which enabled them to have a ready supply of fresh milk, eggs, and meat.  However, life on a farm required hard work to be taken on by Mary and her brothers because her father had heart trouble after a bout with the flu in 1918  during World War I.

Richard, the oldest brother, affectionately known as Dick, responsibly handled most of the workload while Hugh, the second oldest who is now deceased, Mary, third born, and Robert (Bob), the youngest, carried out their farm duties as well.  The siblings were each one year apart, yet they got along surprisingly well.  Life on the farm was laid-back and enjoyable with the knowledge that they were sufficiently supplied in major necessities for their survival.

World War II began when Mary Graham was only eleven years old. Although Mary did not fully understand the war situation at the time, she recalls certain memories from that era.  During World War II times, the government would ration nearly everything, from food to gasoline, in order to better stabilize the nation's economy.  However, farmers were guaranteed unlimited gasoline from the government in order to ensure that their land would continue to be successful in food production.  This stability in farmers was seen by those less fortunate and was coveted.  Mary's mother was always very generous to those in need, inviting them in and feeding them a healthy meal before sending them on their way.  However, most of those whom Mary's mother helped were humbled and would often offer a helping hand in exchange for their meal.  All in all, farmers were better off during war times because they were able to support their families through hard work and dedication to their farms.

Once Mary reached the age of fourteen, her brother Dick enlisted for the war at only seventeen. Dick joined the Marine Corps and trained at West Point, after which he was sent to work with the crew of an aircraft carrier. Here he guarded whiskey, took part in abandoning ship routines, and helped build a new, smaller Independence after the original was used for target practice for the Atom Bomb and was sunk. 

Hugh enlisted in the war when Mary was sixteen and fully enjoying her adolescent years.  She was enrolled in town school, otherwise known as High School, and was in a graduating class of only eight.  Mary attended many school dances, which were held every Friday night.  Although she was greatly delighted in her High School years, she still worried about her brothers in the war and wrote to them each and every week.  Hugh was in the Army and was stationed in Washington, DC as a typist, therefore never faced combat because of his advanced typing skills.  He was also never forced to march in war because of a past fracture to his foot bone that had caused the bone to fully dissolve. 

Bob narrowly escaped the war because it ended before he had reached the age of seventeen in 1945.  However, he did enlist even though he had developed a hernia and was doubtful of his acceptance because of his disability.  He later fought in the Korean conflict.

Once the war had ended, much of the burden was lifted from citizen's shoulders although many thought the war to be full of propaganda and false glories.  Yet, people still were glad to be over with the struggles of World War II.  After Mary had turned eighteen years of age, she left home to find adventure in a different way of life.  She headed to New York City.  There she attended Queens College where she majored in Home Economics and breezed through her classes because of her natural ability for learning.  After college, Mary became a radio operator, earning $110 each month. 

It was on one of her work encounters that she first met her husband, John A. Redlin.  They met at Northwest Airline where they both worked.  He asked her out to coffee.  Mary accepted the invitation but later stated that the coffee was horrible.  However, John appealed to Mary because of his piloting and civilized manner.  She fell in love and married John in 1949.

John and Mary Redlin moved seventeen times in only nine years because of the constant traveling conditions inherent in working with the airlines.  They finally settled in and began to raise a family which grew to accommodate six children: four daughters and two sons.  As their children grew, they each chose a different lifestyle.  Four of her children moved to Washington state to pursue their careers, and Mary followed, settling in Pullman which she grew to love, and where she lives today.

 

The Moscow Pullman Daily News ran an article and an editorial about our writing project.  After reading those pieces, this next lady's daughter called us and asked if we would like to interview her mother, a WAC who had gone to India during the war.  We did indeed, and she did have quite a story to tell.  Dorothy passed away not long after TRIBUTE was published.  I had the privilege of reading the following story at her Memorial Service in Pullman where her friends were touched again by her life.

 

Dorothy Reed

By Brian Emtman and John Moody

 

We sit expectantly waiting as our teacher reads the list, listening for the name of the World War II veteran we have been assigned to interview for this project.  As students and veterans are paired up and sent off to discuss life during the Great Depression and World War II, we remain seated, having not heard the name of our interviewee.  Finally, the last name is called, and one more student and veteran leave the room.  We approach our teacher to ask why we have not been paired up with the man we were originally assigned to interview and are informed that he was unable to show up.  So, he leads us down to the cafeteria, saying that we will have the opportunity to interview someone else.  It is here that we meet Dorothy Reed.

Dorothy Reed is a woman with thousands of stories to tell, starting back in her childhood days when she was growing up in rural Idaho.  Reed is a woman who is limited by a wheelchair but still looks like she has the strength to do anything she wants to do.  With a monstrous tape recorder set in front of her, she begins her story.

She was born in Lewiston, Idaho in 1917, then attended grade school in Kamiah.  She attended high school in Clarkston, to and from which she walked several miles every day.  Unlike many high school age children of her day, she was able to get a job.  Her work at a dime store brought in important extra money.  This was very helpful, since at that time the Great Depression was well underway.  She recalls that at one point, her parent's savings totaled twenty-five dollars.

After high school graduation in 1935, Reed attended a business college.  She then moved across the country by herself and went to work for the government in Washington, D.C.  She was there when World War II broke out. Later she rejoined her mother in California and took a job in a shipyard as a welder, which paid ninety-five cents an hour.  Soon after taking the job, however, a man came out into the shipyard while she and the other welders were working and asked if anyone knew how to type, as they were very short on typists at the moment.  At the time Dorothy could type one hundred twenty-five words per minute, and she said so.  From then on, she worked in the office typing documents for the company, receiving a raise every time the welders did until she was earning one dollar and thirty-five cents an hour.

In 1944, however, her mother decided she would like to move back to Idaho.  This return might have been in response to Dorothy's younger brother being shot down over Burma where he was serving as a fighter pilot in the China-Burma-India theater of the war.  There was not much work available in Idaho, prompting her to join the Women's Army Corps, or WACs, in Spokane, Washington.  After attending basic training in Des Moines, Iowa, she was sent to Stockton, California where her excellent typing abilities landed her a job that mainly involved typing the certificates for soldiers who advanced in rank or passed flight training.

After a while, Reed was sent to New Hampshire where she participated in shipping soldiers overseas.  Then, as a turning point in her life, she was sent across the Atlantic toward the great European continent.  She and some other WACs traveled by plane over the Azores to land in Casablanca.  She recalls that they were stuck in Casablanca for a week with hideous drinking water that came in a bag.

"Champagne was the only thing we could drink without making us have diarrhea," she recalled while we cringed at the thought.  However, while she was there she took a tour and had a chance to view what she called the "pastel colored houses" of the city.

On her way to Karachi, India, the pilot flew the plane low over the city of Jerusalem, where Reed remembers how she could see the incredibly narrow and crowded streets of the city.  She then transferred planes in Karachi and flew to the city of Calcutta, India where she again worked in an office, this time keeping track of  the soldiers at a large military base.

Reed remembers that the base was like a modern day warehouse - large and spacious.  The people working there were fairly isolated and were required to have escorts every time they left the building.  Reed was in Calcutta in August, when what she and other war veterans refer to as "the bomb" was dropped over Hiroshima, ultimately ending the war.

Nine months had passed since Reed had joined the army and it was time to go home.  When Reed and others were on their way from the base to the airport in Calcutta the enemy opened fire upon them.  "It was the closest we got to anything of a war as far as I was concerned," she recalls.  When we asked about what the locals were like, she responded by saying, "They carried umbrellas instead of guns!"

We then, with confused faces, asked who were the people who were shooting at her.  "They were the ones that were carrying the guns," she replied with a bright smile. 

On the way home, they visited the Taj Mahal, where she witnessed the local people doing some very strange things.  The Ganges River runs behind the Taj Mahal and there she saw many large sea turtles being fed infant human babies as sacrificial food. 

After what seemed like a long plane ride, they landed in Texas and were shipped over to Washington, D.C. for "some stupid reason," as she put it.  Reed was finally moved to Great Lakes Naval Training Station north of  Chicago for her honorable discharge.

"So where did you move to then?" we asked.

"I stayed in Chicago."

"Really?"

"Yep . . . for forty years!"

"And what did you do there?"

"I got married."

During those long forty years Reed was married to a man who had also participated in the war.  Mr. Reed was a radar man for the Navy and was primarily stationed on the aircraft carrier Cabot in the South Pacific.  He was there when the Atomic Bombs were dropped. 

Reed and her husband had two daughters and five grandchildren.  After forty years in Chicago, in 1985 Reed and her husband became residents of Clarkston, Washington.  And as a most recent turning point in her life, her husband passed away in November 1999, which compelled her move to Pullman, Washington, where one of her daughters now lives.

Our interview came to an end with both Reed and ourselves talking about what an amazing life she's experienced.  The life of someone of our generation is not even remotely comparable to the life of a World War II veteran.  Through the experiences they had, whether in front of the enemy or in the struggle to defend the world from the enemy, the people of that generation have been given some sort of patriotic characteristic that we don't have.  It's these people who value freedom the most and live their lives to the fullest.  If Dorothy Reed had not experienced the Depression and the War, it is guaranteed that she would be a much different person than the amazing person she is now.  Obviously, her aiding in the War was meant to be.

 

Looking at a recent picture of Frances Scheiler and her first five great grandchildren, it is hard to imagine what life was like for Frances during World War II.  Hers is a chaotic story, yet one that is familiar in pattern to that of many women who came of age during the first half of the 1940s.

 

FRANCES SCHEILER

Frances Koeniger Scheiler was born in Georgia in 1913.  Her father, a German-born man, had left home when he was young and immigrated to America, never looking back.  It wasn't until Frances was a young adult that she was able to contact her family in Germany, only to find some of her relatives had been lost in combat in World War II.

Frances went to work for American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) in El Dorado, Arkansas in 1930 when she was not quite 18 years old.  She started as an operator working with a "bunch of plugs" which she learned to manipulate very quickly. 

"I was very fast and it was easy for me because I had a good memory," Scheiler said, a look of pride on her face.

The kind of equipment she operated had a big board which rose in front of her, and a lots of pairs of cords.  One cord was to plug into the line the caller rang in on.  She would say "Number, please," then plug the other cord in that pair into the line the person asked for.  All the lines in town were marked on the board, but Frances had their places memorized so she could quickly plug the caller into the right line. 

When AT&T began to switch over to dial phones, Frances put in for a transfer to Detroit, then moved to Chicago, then to Little Rock, then back to Chicago once again where she met her husband.  Jim Scheiler had been headed toward New Mexico and had stopped in Lake Charles, Louisiana to visit a friend who, coincidentally, was married to a friend of Frances.  Scheiler saw a picture of Frances on their piano and asked who she was.  Told she lived in Chicago, where he was from, he was determined to contact her when he returned home. 

He called her ten times, asking for a date, but she was seeing someone else at the time.  When that man stood her up one evening, she decided the next time Jim called she would go out with him.  It turned out later he had told a friend, "I am going to call her once more and if she tells me no, that's it." 

She said, "Yes," they went out, and were married six months later. 

Life might have been a simple "and they lived happily ever after," had it not been for World War II.

They married in 1938 and shortly thereafter headed for New Mexico in a new 1938 Chrysler, not knowing Jim would soon be drafted.  While traveling in the southwest they saw a ranch they believed could easily become a Dude Ranch, a popular enterprise in the 1930s due to the western films being produced in that decade.  It was near Route 66 and a range of mountains.   Jim and Frances were anxious to get away from Chicago and start a life away from Jim's family's deli and grocery business, so they put everything they had into the property.

It was while he had worked for his family's business that his name was changed from Reinhold Scheiler to Jim Scheiler by a salesman who couldn't remember his real name.  He started calling him Jim and it stuck.  By the time Frances met him everyone called him Jim and it wasn't until after they were married that she found out she was married to Reinhold, not Jim.

They had barely moved onto their ranch when Jim was drafted into the Army and they ended up losing their property because of his having to report for induction.  When he was drafted Jim took Frances, who was on furlough from the telephone company, back to Chicago and reported to an army base in West Texas.  Not long after that Frances made what she calls the shortest telephone call she ever made in her life.  With great difficulty she had managed to connect with Jim in Texas only to burst into tears when she heard his voice.

"I'm going to have a baby," she sobbed, then hung up the phone.

She then went back to work at AT&T and, as with so many young service wives at the time, she found housing with other people so she could afford to live on what she could make and what Jim could send home to her.  In those days a pregnant working girl could only stay on the job about five months.  So Frances ended up staying with family and friends.  Jim was only able to visit her once.

Meanwhile, Jim, who had been drafted under the quota of the town near their ranch in New Mexico, discovered if he had been living in Chicago, he likely would not have been drafted since there were so many single men there eligible for the draft.  And, the Navy shipyard he had worked for as a leadman in Orange, Texas wanted him to return to work there for the Navy.  Since the Navy had first call on Jim, and would not release him to the Army, he was able to get out of the Army and return to Lake Charles, near the Texas border.  He arrived there the day before their first of three daughters was born.

Frances again took furlough from her telephone company job and they moved in with some friends who also had a small baby, making the living quarters extremely cramped.  After a short time, that shipyard sent her husband to Everett, Washington, again on a Navy contract.  So, Jim put Frances on a train to Chicago once again.  She stayed there until Jim was able to put together $100 to put down on a house.  Due to the price freeze on homes, they were able to buy it for a pre-war price of $3,000, later selling it for $7,000.  A few months later Frances moved west, with her little girl and another baby on the way. 

Things finally settled down for Jim and Frances Scheiler.  Her reputation on the telephone switchboard gained her opportunity to do vacation replacement work at the shipyard where Jim maintained steady work for about six years.  Since it was a government installation she worked the telephone system, PBX, and wireless all in one little room, just one operator.  Security included a windowless room that had just one little opening in the door.  She had a safety bell she was to ring in the event anything untoward should occur.

She had occasion to ring the bell one day when a man sat down in a chair right outside that door.  He lit up a cigar and the smoke was drawn through the hole in the door into her unventilated, secure work room.  It made her so sick she finally had to ring the safety bell to get someone to come help her get rid of the man and his cigar.  She hates cigar smoke to this day.

When the shipyard folded after the end of the war, Jim Scheiler went to work at Hanford where the Atom Bomb had been built, then got a job in Colfax and moved Frances and their three daughters to a little house eight miles out of town, a house that featured one bedroom, a screened porch, and no plumbing.  Frances smiled as she described the galvanized tub set on their kitchen counter and the step stool leading up to it, an arrangement they used for baths for two years.

Jim and Frances and their family then moved to Pullman where they remodeled a one-hundred-year old house, then built a new house next door, meanwhile starting a heating and sheet metal business.  Frances still lives in her house in Pullman, where she enjoys gardening.  She no longer is moved by the wiles of war.

 

Our attention now turns to some of the retired warriors living in and around Pullman.  I met this first gentleman late in the interview process and at the same time got acquainted with Company E of the Washington State National Guard.  There is a story about that Unit in Part Seven of this book.   Like many of the people interviewed for TRIBUTE, Lester said he has never talked to his children about his wartime travels.  Perhaps this short story will open that line of communication.

 

LESTER BISHOP

 

Lester Bishop was attracted to a poster published in the fall of 1940.  It read,

"Enlist Now in the National Guard of the US

For one year of Active Duty

Ages 18-45

Join Company E  161st Infantry at Pullman

Before September 16

Serve your Country now with men from your Home State."

 

What attracted him then, at the end of the Depression, was money and an opportunity to get out of Pullman and see some of the world.  Also, he was a student at WSC (WSU) and if he joined the National Guard, he wouldn't have to take ROTC. 

He didn't think seriously about war, or fighting to defend his country, although now he realizes Japan was on a collision course with the United States and they could not be impeded.  Japan had already taken Manchuria in 1931and China in 1937 and was extending in all directions.  He recalls President Roosevelt going to Chicago, the heart of isolationism, to deliver a speech in which he described Japan as having a contagious disease called "Aggression."  He said we needed to quarantine that kind of disease, thus his speech became known as his "Quarantine Speech."  That speech was followed by a U.S. embargo on further petroleum exports to Japan in 1939.  Japan had been buying 90% of its petroleum needs from the United States.

Charles Lindbergh was also speaking out in 1939 and early 1940 saying the wars in Europe and Asia were not our fights and we should stay out, that Hitler was not really all that bad.  The British at that time were not so upset with Hitler and were even inclined to take his attitude about Jews. 

"Things were not so different as they were in World War I," Bishop stated.  "The entangling alliances of Europe remained the same.  We as a nation were determined to stay neutral.  Why then was the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941?  For one thing, it would have cost a lot to move it.  And Roosevelt was hoping to delay the inevitable.  We had stolen Japan's Diplomatic Code Purple from the Japanese Embassy in New York City and knew what they were thinking.  We didn't have their Military Code until June of 1942, but Nimitz knew when the Japanese fleet would be at Midway and knew something was happening there." 

It was within that context of uncertainty and reluctance to commit to war on either front that Lester Bishop enlisted in the Washington State National Guard on August 2, 1940.  He was called to active duty on September 16, 1940, for one year.  After a cursory physical that said he had a pulse, he reported to Fort Lewis.  (A history of the formation of Company E and how it ultimately meshed with the 25th Infantry Division is found in Part Seven toward the back of this book.)

Bishop went through the soggy winter-weather training session the west coast of Washington state provided, then after a year of training and maneuvers he boarded a train on December 6, 1941, intending to travel to San Francisco, then be shipped to the Philippines to temporarily bolster the few troops there.  His one-year enlistment had been arbitrarily extended six months by the US government so he would be in the Philippines long enough to finish out the eighteen month long commitment he now had to Company E of the Washington State National Guard.  The next day, as they neared Dunsmuir, one of the fellows on the train, who had a Zenith wave magnet radio hooked up, heard some startling news.  The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Bishop's destination changed immediately.  Although the military machine didn't quite know what to do with those three thousand National Guard men, it was clear they wouldn't be going to the Philippines.  Once he got to San Francisco, his first assignment, in the meantime, was to guard Fleishacker Zoo which fronted on the ocean beach in San Francisco.  He finally moved through a port of embarkation on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, had his shots, got his dog tags, and shipped out along with three thousand Guardsmen plus however many sailors, heading for Honolulu on the Matson Line ship, the Lurline.  He was on one of three Matson ships sailing in convoy that had been outfitted quickly to carry troops.  They built bunks four deep in the swimming pools on board.  The men of Company E had fresh water showers, hot water, and the Matson cooks and stewards aboard to provide three good meals a day for the four and a half days it took to make the crossing. 

"We were the first expeditionary force to leave the United States in World War II," Lester noted. 

When he arrived on Oahu, he left the comfort of the Lurline and was loaded into a little box car so cramped he could neither sit nor stand.  Delivered to the Schofield Barracks at midnight, he was allowed no light. Only blue flash lights were permitted to protect them from being targets in an air raid.  "They were clearly anticipating further attacks," he commented.  He was shown to a bunk in a cement three-story barrack, spread out mosquito netting, and settled down to have his first experience with bed bugs.  The next day they had to strip all the mattresses, treat them with kerosene, and put the legs of their bunks in cans of kerosene which pretty well took care of the problem.

Bishop spent a year in Hawaii, some of which was devoted to building barbed wire defenses on the windward side of the island in anticipation of a Japanese landing.  It was during that year that Company E  became part of the 25th Division, and received training that changed them into a fighting force that left Hawaii December 6, 1942, ready for war.  All bets were off for the duration as far as his enlistment for one year was concerned.  He was in the Army until he "should be separated at the convenience of the government."  Lester Bishop was headed for Guadalcanal.

Lester started Christmas day of 1942 having Navy beans for breakfast.  Three days later he landed on Guadalcanal at Henderson Field, which is still there.  "The First Marine Division had been greatly reduced in securing Guadalcanal and had also taken malaria rather lightly.  The Japanese owned most of the world's supply of  quinine and the German development, Atabrin, hadn't appealed to the First Marines," Bishop noted.  "When we went in we took malaria seriously, began to drain swamps and exert some control over the mosquitoes.  However," he said, "Even with our approach to malaria, we experienced a seventy percent casualty rate from the disease." 

Bishop went on to detail the 25th Infantry's approach to preventive medication for the dreaded disease.  "I was issued four Atabrin pills a week and was to take half a pill a day, and a whole pill on Sunday.  They were distributed before mess by an officer tossing the half pill into my wide open mouth.  Most of us took the pills, but some guys wanted to contact malaria to get a two week vacation and a hospital bed to sleep in.  They would hold the pills in their mouths, then spit them out.  When the brass finally figured that one out, they made us fill our canteen cup half full from a Lister bag of water, and they watched while we drank water after taking the pill."

While Bishop never fired a shot in anger on Guadalcanal, he did survive three hundred and one air raids while he was there and saw spectacular displays of search lights, tracers, and distant bombings while never being close to hand to hand action.   He and the other Company E boys learned to dig fox holes to protect themselves from direct hits.  When bombs hit they spread shrapnel out over level land and foxholes kept them below that level.  He recalled one soldier from the Bronx who had determined he wouldn't be digging a foxhole, because, he said, "Woik is fa suckas."  After the first close-up air raid Lester heard the distinct sound of sand being rapidly and repeated moved by his New York comrade who even built a coconut-palm roof over his foxhole.  One young fellow dug a hole so deep he couldn't climb out of it.  The war had indeed surrounded Lester Bishop.

His next combat action was on New Georgia where his first duty was to bury forty-seven dead Americans.  From mid-July until the end of October 1943 he saw serious combat in the steamy jungles of that island.  The government chose to issue him a camouflage suit, one of the most uncomfortable pieces of equipment imaginable.  It was one piece and zipped from the top down.  "Picture what that meant when you had to urinate.  You'd have to take off all your equipment and zip all the way down.  We all cut a fly in them and since our underwear had long since disintegrated in the humid weather, that worked out all right.  You do adjust," he said, and we agreed that Americans have an uncanny way of making do with what is handed them. 

Bishop added proof to that concept in his telling of how he and his platoon of nineteen men survived in the jungle with only an occasional food drop, most of which landed in trees they couldn't get to.  Lester and the men tried to make the best of it.  "We had terrible food.  All dried, no fresh food of any kind. When we were out on patrol we had no stove, no utensils, nothing.  We ate C rations. We were able to hack off small hunks of mahogany from dead fall trees and that made a fairly hot and almost smokeless fire.  We cooked Vienna sausage on sticks over those open fires.  Some times we would get K-rations that had ten meals in them and some peanuts.  The guys counted them out so each one of us got exactly the same number of nuts.  The C rations had one of three meals: meat and beans, hash, or stew; plus a biscuit, some powdered coffee, some chocolate and some lemon power, and four cigarettes and a little bit of toilet paper.  I got so I couldn't keep the meals down.  I'd eat them, but they would come back up.  I lived on biscuits and lemon powder."

Once they had trekked the twenty miles from Munda to Bairoka Harbor the company kitchen caught up with them and the level of food improved.  They then had canned lambs' tongue, which the company cook would simmer in catsup, skin and all.  He and his platoon were then put out on a trail block about five miles from the rest of the company, too far away for the company to feed them.  Lester then became the platoon cook.  He learned to cook rice in a helmet.  "The first couple of times I did that the rice was green from the camouflage paint, but after awhile that burned off," he smiled.

He also, five miles out in the jungle, created an oven he used to bake strawberry and raspberry tarts from a sweetened basic biscuit mix and jam that came in their rations.  The oven was a forty mm shell case made of aluminum, one that had held perhaps eight to ten shells used for anti-aircraft guns.  The case was about a foot square and two and a half feet long.  One end was solid and the other end was held in place with a sort of screw attachment with a rubber gasket on the end.  After one or two uses the gasket had burned away so the oven no longer produced a burned rubber smell. 

"We were able to build a rack for the oven to hold it in place over the fire.  I was able to bake tarts, but was never able to do a pie crust," he lamented.

In July of 1944 Lester Bishop was due to have his name put into a merit drawing from which a few names were drawn.  The ones drawn would be rotated stateside.  His friend Clink Lockhart drew the names at company level and Bishop's name was drawn to go into the Regiment drawing.  He declined to go to that drawing, knowing he never won anything, but to his surprise his name was drawn and he was able to return to the States in 1944.  It was assumed he would stay in the service, possibly to be sent overseas again after six months stateside.  He was sent to Texas where he came down with malaria and so was not allowed to go back overseas for six months, even though he had asked to be transferred back to Company E, 161st Regiment.

From Texas, he was sent to Louisiana, still on active duty.  From there he was sent on a War Bond tour.  He and some other combat veterans traveled the country encouraging people to buy bonds, which they could do for the price of admission to see and hear their heroes who had survived the war in the Pacific. 

When he got back to Pullman he returned to school, taught in Rosalia for a time, farmed, then worked at WSU as a Hydraulics Technician, retiring in 1982.  He married Maxine Krueger and they raised two children, a boy and a girl. 

 

Lewis Elwood served in the Military Police.  He stood closer to General Douglas MacArthur than most men or women would ever dream of doing.

 

LEWIS ELWOOD

By Nicole Burda

 

My classmates and I filed into the English room which was filled with many unknown faces.  We were each supposed to interview someone who had lived through World War II.  I scanned the room, looking, guessing whom I was to interview.  I wondered which person was Mr. Elwood and what his story was.  Well, I was soon to find out.  We introduced ourselves and headed down to the cafeteria to conduct our much anticipated interview.

Lewis A. Elwood was born and raised in Colville, Washington.  He grew up with a younger brother named John.  Lewis and John had a two-year age difference and were not very much alike.  John had the tendency to abuse alcohol.  Their father was a trained woodsman and taught Lewis the trade of cutting down trees.  Even during High School, Lewis was part of the ROTC.  He attended Washington State College (now know as Washington State University) where he studied physical science for one year.

Lewis was moved around in the military from company to company throughout the war. As Lewis was shipped off to California, his kid brother, John, was assigned to an entirely different outfit.  He served as a lifeguard because he was a very good swimmer, helping people from their landing craft in the water to the beach.  While John was lifeguarding, Lewis was assigned to Fort Ord in California.  There he disassembled all the pool tables in all of the recreation rooms at the fort which was being converted and prepared for the war.

Lewis highly enjoyed his next assignment.  He rode and strolled along the beautiful beaches of California, from Monterey to Salinas.  Lewis, along with a sergeant, looked for entertainment sources for the new troops that were being shipped to the fort.

“But then one day I made a smart remark which got me transferred to the Military Police that led to all kinds of fun,” Lewis commented sarcastically.  The Military Police were training for overseas duty, so Lewis had to spend hours marching around old roads that were part of Fort Ord.

As part of the Military Police, Lewis was sent on a train across the country to New Jersey, on to a liner back through the Panama Canal, and then to his final destination, Australia.  Once reaching Australia, they docked and marched three miles to bunk in the middle of a racetrack where they nearly froze.  Lewis and his company then moved to some huts in Brisbane.  Here he guarded a stockade of prisoners.  There were many different uses for the prisoners from gathering garbage to working outside.

One of Lewis' fond wartime memories is of the time when he got to stand guard outside General Douglas MacArthur's office. 

After years of working to make our country a better place, Lewis A. Elwood returned to his home state, Washington, on a steamer, but not before the steamer broke down and wallowed in the ocean for a day and a half.

Lewis now resides in Albion, Washington.

I asked him, “Why did you decide to live in Albion?”

Lewis responded with a chuckle, “Ask Mrs. Elwood.”

Lewis really enjoys living in Albion. “It’s a nice, small town, and a good distance away from the city,” said Lewis.  The commute from his home to his school was just the right distance.  Lewis completed his schooling at Washington State College. He received his bachelors degree in Physical Science.

Lewis met his wife, Win, in German class. They took a liking to each other and decided to get married.  Their German teacher was very fond of Lewis and Win and supported their decision.  Lewis and Win have four daughters and one son, all living in Washington.

“I have lived the life of Riley,” Lewis says very contentedly.  Lewis chose to take an early retirement and has lived off his pension.  Someday he would like to return to Australia to visit old friends and the beautiful countryside.

A word of advice from Lewis to everyone, “Let me tell you.  Don't get into the alcohol business.  It spoils your life.” Lewis is eighty years old but moves like someone half his age.  He has not let alcohol control his life.  Listen to Lewis’ advice.  He is very wise through his many years of experience.

 

Next is a story that could be told of many Whitman County men during the war years, men who stayed home to raise food to feed the military machine and in that process had to deal with all the problems incumbent in rationing and shortages.  As this book was going to press, Norm lost his life-long companion, Rose.   She did get to read this story and was pleased by it and proud of her husband. 

 

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.

 

A couple of weeks after I asked the Senior Center folks to help out on this writing project, a man walked by me and kind of off-handedly said, "I was on a PBM in the Pacific," and kept on walking.   I thought, "Hmmm.  Next time maybe I'll get his name."  Well, we got more than his name, as Matt will tell you.

 

BOB HEMPHILL

By Matt Nunamaker

 

I am here to tell you a story about an interview that I was part of recently with a wonderful man, Bob Hemphill.  When my class took on this assignment, I was overjoyed to get Bob Hemphill's name since he was actually in the service and had served overseas, which I found very interesting.  Bob was born in 1926 in San Angelo, Texas.  Bob liked it in Texas quite a bit, since he spent most of his life there.  He was in high school when America entered the war.  He can remember how everyone joined in the war effort back then.  He and other students would go out and collect scrap metals to be used in the war.  Bob also remembers how everyone seemed to be for the war.  He told me there was not an ounce of anti-war sentiment.  Like any other young man, he had aspirations of going off to war, and admits to naturally being a little excited.  From the beginning Bob had decided that he would want to be in the Navy.  When he turned eighteen and graduated from high school, he was off to enlist in the Navy.

It wasn't until 1944 that Bob entered the armed services, and when he did he was immediately sent off to Memphis, Tennessee for his Aviation Ordinance training.  However, he only spent six months there.  After Memphis, it was back to Texas to Kingsville where he earned his Aviation Gunnery Wings.  Bob was going to be a gunner in a patrol  bomber.  For his final portion of training, he was sent to a Navel Air Station in Corpus Christi, Texas where he joined a flight crew.  When I asked Bob if he had any interesting or funny stories about training, he mentioned that while he was in training they started running low on fuel and had to cut back.  He recalls the slightly nerve-racking feeling he got when the engines would cough and sputter in mid-air.

Once all of his training was finally over, Bob Hemphill was shipped over to San Diego, California to join a PBM flight crew.  Although a PBM is a bomber, as Bob explained to me, they are too slow and vulnerable to be used in offensive actions, so they are mostly used in search-and-rescue as well as in patrolling.  Bob was put in the nose gunner position, right at the front of the plane.  Initially, he flew patrol missions over the coasts of California, going about halfway out to Hawaii.  But Bob also got sent to Hawaii for more patrolling and was later sent to the Philippines. 

While in the Philippines, Bob's crew flew air-sea rescue missions.  He said it was very difficult since all they could do was just scan with their eyes.  They had no special technology.  While his plane never found anybody or saw any action, Bob still enjoyed flying.  When I asked him if he was ever afraid or got tired of flying, his answer was "No."

Bob loved flying in the PBM, although they sometimes had difficulties.  The PBM that he was on landed and took off from water.  While it was easy to take off in choppy water, when the water was calm the PBM would have to taxi around in circles for a bit of time to chop up the water.

The most remarkable part about Bob and his crew on the PBM was probably the fact that they sometimes flew for twelve to fifteen hours straight.  Fortunately, they had bunks on board and could take turns rotating shifts so that they did get some breaks.  The friendships were strong among Bob's crew.  I could sense that he really liked his experiences and enjoyed flying in the PBM.

When the A-Bomb was finally dropped on Japan, Bob and his crew were relieved.  Just prior to the bombing, they were scheduled to go in as part of the invasion force to the main Japanese islands.  While the A-Bomb was a catastrophic event, Bob pointed out to me that he may not have been here today if it wasn't for the dropping of the A-Bomb.

Bob Hemphill doesn't believe war is to be glorified or that it is a great thing necessarily, but he does believe that when needed, America does need to assert its power.  Bob told me that his two year stint in the service was a very good experience for him.  He said it was very maturing and definitely made him grow up fast.  Bob thinks all boys, and even those girls who wish to, should serve.  He thinks it helps them to grow up and prepare them for life.  Bob did warn me, however, that when you join up you must be ready to let someone else start running your life for you and tell you what to do.

After the war, Bob continued to serve out his two-year service with the Navy.  Once he was done with that, he went to college at Texas A&M.  He got married to a girl he knew from high school.  They have two kids, a boy and a girl.  Over the years, Bob was in a few different professions.  For quite some time he was a rancher, which was a family business.  He was also a contractor, building houses, and at one point he was a banker. 

Bob retired and moved to Reno in 1990.  About three and one half years ago he and his wife moved to Pullman since his daughter was getting her doctorate in archeology at WSU.  His son went into the Navy just as Bob did, however he followed a more scientific career and ended up being trained in the field of lasers.  The Hemphills are active members in the Pullman Senior Citizens Center.

Bob recently went to the Pena Air Museum at Tucson, Arizona.  The only remaining PBM known to Bob is located there.  All of the rest of the PBMs have been destroyed or scrapped.  Bob mentioned to me the book called Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw.  I was familiar with the book since I've read it.  In part of that book, three of Bob's old training crew members are pictured and one of their stories is included.  He just thought it was kind of an interesting coincidence since he never kept in touch with any of his old crew members. 

Bob Hemphill never loved war, but he loved contributing to and serving his country.  Bob really is a part of the Greatest Generation and men like him shall never be forgotten.

 

Gil Low started to shake his head "No" when I first asked him to sit for an interview.  But then when I asked if he would just talk about how the Navy had changed since he first enlisted, he agreed to do that.  And  he even asked me if I wanted him to wear his uniform.  I thought, "I can't wear clothes I bought last year.  How could he wear his uniform?"  When I asked him about it he said, "Why, of course I can wear my uniform!"  And he did.  Fit great, looked sharp, and got a lot of attention both at the school and at the Senior Center when he showed up for lunch the day of the interviews in full dress blues.

 

GILbert  LOW

By Liyang Chen and Chad Tang

 

At first glance, Chief Petty Officer Gil Low seems striking in uniform, but he is like any other World War II veteran dressed in uniform.  Like many other Americans during the era, his childhood was spent on a farm, and when World War II came, he bravely served for the United States in the Navy.  However, what sets him apart from others is his glowing patriotism for his country and his seemingly boundless expertise in military knowledge.

As he recalled his childhood to us, he seemed nostalgic.  He shared with us his account of his experiences.  "During the Depression, we didn't have much, but we weren't really poor, either," he stated.

He lived on a farm four miles away from the school he attended.  He recalled that it took an hour to walk there.  But the walk earned him a good education.  He liked to spell and went on to win first place in a state-wide spelling bee.  Living on a farm, he worked hard when he was young, made his own games and toys, and grew his own vegetables.  "Nobody had anything," he recalled.  "There were lots of work projects that people did including WPA jobs that paid one dollar per day.  Money was definitely worth more back then.  Here, teenage boys were being sent into the service, there people stood in line at soup kitchens.  Overall, it was a good life.  Everybody helped everybody else.  The kids took care of grandmas and grandpas." 

"Kids now have a different life," Mr. Low further noted.  "They have different music, games, and life.  You can't say one generation is better than the other."

Jumping ahead in time, he then described to us an account of his life during the war years.  Young boys started to sign up for the draft when they were of age.  It was mandatory to sign up.  Most people signed up and some tried to go to Canada and England to serve in their military forces.  But in December 1941, when Pearl harbor was bombed, Gil remembered that everybody went to war with no hesitation.  Young men everywhere volunteered.  People who couldn't go into service went to factories to work.  Women participated in the war, too.  Gil called everyone who fought bravely in the war a hero, and we're sure he himself is a hero as well.  Unlike Vietnam and Korea, which many opposed, World War II was a popular war.

As a young boy, Gil Low's dream was to join the Navy.  When he became a young man and able to serve, he eagerly joined.  For the first several weeks, he had to endure boot camp.  Instead of working with submarines, he chose to go into the field of aviation.  He worked on an aircraft carrier called the Hornet.  He stayed in the Navy for a total of thirty amazing years, shown by seven gold strips on the sleeve of his uniform.  He wasn't drafted.  He actually volunteered to serve.  "So," he says, "there is nobody to complain to but himself."

Gil Low feels that he has accomplished something in his life, and he has.  "I had a good life.  There were some battles that were good, some were bad, and others just flat out horrible.  But all of them meant something.  People today aren't patriotic.  Back then, if we saw the American flag, we would all stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  That is another difference between me and young people today."

He served in the Navy for three decades so it is no coincidence that he knows so much about it.  "At first, minorities couldn't be anything.  They were, in fact, treated like dirt.  They could be nothing more than a simple worker on a ship.  Roosevelt and Truman changed things for the better.  Prejudice was then banned in the Navy.  Now, instead of a cook, baker, or steward, anybody can become anything.  It just depends on you."

One story Gil Low tells is about when his right hand was injured in an explosion.  The doctor on duty told Gil he would have to remove two fingers from his right hand, a prospect that Gil was not at all happy about.  As he mulled it over, another doctor came through sick bay and stopped to talk to him.  Turned out the man was an orthopedic surgeon, and according to him so was his father and his sister.  He told Gil he thought he could save his hand and told him how he would do it.  Gil agreed and has a right hand today to prove the surgeon was right and deserving of Low's gratitude.  Gil commented that in the rush of war often doctors had to do what was easiest just to save lives and move people on.  He sees himself fortunate that the right man came along at the right time.

From looking at his uniform we could see that he has seven gold stripes.  Those hard-earned stripes represent the number of years he served without causing any trouble.  "I was always good.  Never drank, never smoked, and never caused trouble."

Gil Low is a very accomplished man.  He bravely volunteered to serve his country in the Navy in World War II, the Korean War, and in Viet Nam.

Low's final comment about his life in uniform was, "Despite all the downfalls, life in the military turned out to be… fun."

 

Where were you when Pearl Harbor was bombed?  Here is a story about a man who remembers very well where he was.  He was in Hawaii at Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941.

 

ROBERT OHNEMUS

By Josh Zhang, Jameson Root, and Morwan Osman

Robert ‘Bob’ Ohnemus was a survivor of Pearl Harbor.  He is one of the veterans of World War II, a war that claimed millions of lives and also caused much damage.  Along with many other lovers of the United States, believers of freedom from oppression, and people who had a passion for justice, Robert was in the armed forces, fighting and serving in the name of America.  And he survived the Pearl Harbor bombing - a date which, as Roosevelt said, “will live in infamy.”  His story will enlighten those of the younger generations and help us understand just what sacrifices people made for this country and for us.

Robert Ohnemus was born on September 18, 1916 in western South Dakota.  While growing up, he lived on a ranch fifteen miles from town and worked on the family farm.  As he grew older, the Great Depression swept the United States into poverty and hunger.  Amazingly, Robert’s family did not go hungry.  This was due to Robert’s father who took good care of the family.  But this is not to say that Robert and his family did not go without hardship.  A drought struck the area where Robert lived during the Great Depression, and his family had a hard time raising crops.  The family tried to raise chickens and sheep in addition to cattle, but there just wasn’t enough water.  Still, Robert and his family survived through the Great Depression without going hungry.

When war was stirring in Europe in the late 1930’s, Robert grew tired of working on farms.  There had to be some easier way to make a living, he thought, than assisting in farm work!  So, there was a choice for young Robert: either go to Alaska to make a living, or enlist in the Navy.  Robert thought that if he went to Alaska, he would be stuck there for a very long time.  The only other logical move was to join the Navy, so he officially enlisted early in 1939.

“To this day, I still believe that the Navy is the best service out there,” he says, “I’ve always had a soft spot for the Navy.” He started off training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center.

The war at this point, around 1939-1940, did not directly involve the United States, so Robert didn’t really know what to think about the war.  People like Robert were young, having fun, doing their duty, and not caring about other people’s problems.  Later In 1939, Robert was chosen to serve on the U.S.S. Grebe, a converted minesweeper/tugboat.  Robert’s ship sailed to Honolulu in 1940, where it stayed for a couple of years.

Then came the day.  December 7th, 1941.  The date that will live in infamy.  The day that inflamed the United States into entering World War II.  Pearl Harbor. 

It wasn’t a particularly special day at the beginning.  The Grebe  was on cold iron, without power, and Robert and a friend were doing laundry for themselves and twenty-five other people.  They were getting paid fifty cents per person for the job, which was a good deal back in 1941.  They had strung hot water lines to the dock and he was wringing out some clothes when he heard a big bang. 

"My first thought was that an ammunition magazine had blown up on another ship.  Then there were more explosions and some old sailor yelled, 'Japanese,' " Ohnemus recalls.

Then they saw it.  Everyone in Pearl Harbor saw it.  An enormous squadron of Japanese airplanes literally clouded the air like locusts, approaching Pearl Harbor fast. The steady humming of the plane engines filled many hearts with fear, but like most, Robert was more awe-struck than fear-struck.  His ship was located across from Ford Island where the famous battleship row was located and it was on that area the Japanese torpedo planes and high-level bombers concentrated, and where the USS Arizona still lies, overturned.

 Rushing along with other fellow sailors, Robert tried to get the USS Honolulu untied from the dock so she could get underway.  Then orders were issued to flee the area.  As the sailors were running for cover, an armor piercing bomb exploded along side of the Honolulu, damaging the dock next to it. 

That day nineteen ships were sunk or damaged, 2,403 Americans were killed, and 1,178 others wounded. 

After Pearl Harbor, during the fall of 1942, Robert headed south toward New Zealand on the USS Grebe.  They were trying to pull a merchant ship which had gotten caught on a reef.  The Grebe got caught on the reef as well and was lost.  The Grebe crew was assigned to an oil tanker, the USS Pasig, in New Caledonia.  The Pasig was used as a fuel dock for Navy ships as they began the battle northward toward the Japanese homeland.  From the USS Pasig Robert was sent to the East Coast, to the USS McCoy Reynolds.  He finished the rest of his six year enlistment doing picket duty off Okinawa, then was discharged in 1945.

Robert’s troubles were not over after the service.  He was in Portland, Oregon, but since there was a long strike there, no work was available for him, so he struck out for Kellogg, Idaho, where his brother worked in the mines.  Since Robert had gone to auto body school in Portland, he had some knowledge of automotive repair.  He stopped in all the areas along the way before he reached Kellogg, finally pulling into Pullman.  The next day after he arrived in Pullman, he started working in an auto body shop.  He worked there until he retired, from 1945 to 1981. 

To this day, Robert still reminisces about the war.  He remembers experiences he had on the ships. “Gets pretty wild out there, especially during those storms. You sailed nine months before you were back on land again!” He thinks that World War II was as justified as any war could possibly be.  But Robert Ohnemus' overall long-term view on war remains: “Foolish and devastating!”

 

Well, we finally caught up with Roger Spencer and sat down with him in Craig McCormick's classroom.  I had told the kids I would start the interview, just to kind of get things rolling, and at some point I would ask David Kahn to come sit down and finish it up.  The students had been instructed to have some questions ready, but  I had noticed a blank sheet of paper in front of David, so I was a bit apprehensive.  But, not to worry.  Roger took off telling his story, being well rehearsed from his stint with the journalism class.  Then David moved front and center.  I wish we could reproduce the entire one hour conversation he had with Roger Spencer, but the following will give you an idea of how it went.

 

ROGER SPENCER

By David Kahn

 

I've never really cared all that much for history, maybe because I've never been able to remember historical dates and figures, or maybe because a lot of the details never seemed intrinsically interesting.  In describing the A-bomb, for example, a fairly typical description might involve the exact time and date when the weapon was first deployed against Japan, the amount of energy released by one explosion, and the area affected by one bomb.  However, in all honesty, I don't really care about that stuff.  My answers to the issues addressed in those questions would be 1945, a lot, and big, respectively.

Another description of the A-bomb's history (one that wouldn't put me to sleep in the first five seconds) would describe what the bomb really did, i.e. caused the world to open its collective eyes and see the fragility of life, along with the realization of how much destructive power humanity had at its disposal. 

Instead of hearing the fine details of A-bomb history, I had always thought that it would be interesting to talk to someone who had worked on the Manhattan Project.  I'm curious about their moral concerns with their task, one that affected the entire world.  Because of this curiosity, I was very interested when I learned that the subject of my interview, Roger Spencer, worked on biological weapons during WW II and I was fascinated by the perspective that working on weapons of mass destruction gave him. 

Being raised on a family farm in Kansas gave Roger a love of animals and led him to consider pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. Eventually this interest led Roger to graduate from the University of Wisconsin and earn a Ph.D. in Veterinary Pathology.  After the war, Roger was able to fulfill one of his ambitions by becoming a professor of veterinary pathology for several decades, as well as serving as Department Chair at Washington State University for eighteen years. 

Prior to the war, Roger worked on brucellosis, a disease that affects cows and humans.  When the draft began in earnest after Pearl Harbor, Roger Spencer was deferred due to his being married, but the military was in need of more men in 1944 and Roger was up for the draft; so he volunteered in the Navy.  He applied to Officer Candidate School, was accepted, and began his officer training.  Originally, the Navy planned to have Roger aid in an invasion of the Philippines, but once they learned of his scientific training and knowledge, the decision was made to put him to work producing biological warfare weapons. 

During his research for the military, Roger worked on developing agents of anthrax, rabbit fever, and brucellosis that would be deadly to humans.  At the same time he was becoming a better scientist by learning from his co-workers. 

While biological weapons were never used during WW II, they still raise a number of ethical questions.  All weapons are designed to kill or injure people, but biological weapons generally do so in a particularly nasty fashion, such as suffocating their victims. 

One of the questions I brought into this interview was "What justification, if any, would warrant the use of biological weaponry?"  While I expected Roger not to be very gung-ho about using biological weapons nor to be completely opposed to them, I was still pleasantly surprised by his well thought-out response. 

Although he said,  "Weapons of mass destruction now make war so terrible it's hard to contemplate," he resisted making any extremely general statements on whether weapons of mass destruction should ever be used.  Instead, he dealt with the question point by point, saying that there was a need for us to protect ourselves, and that in this case, what we were protecting ourselves from was worse than what we were prepared to protect ourselves with. 

Roger certainly didn't feel that using a great force would be justified for anything other than a great reason.  He cited the wars in Korea and Vietnam as being "terrible mistakes" where the United States overstepped its bounds, resulting in many unnecessary deaths.  "Instead of having a duty to protect other countries," he said,  "We should have a desire to, but we can easily go too far." 

Roger's other answers also impressed me with the depth of his thought on the issues I was asking him about.  I put a great value on the philosophical personality that constantly questions its actions, even if the conclusion is different from mine, although in this case I take a certain amount of pride in thinking along the same lines as Roger for the most part.  Roger said that a main cause of war is world leaders being overly macho.  To me this means that those leaders were acting on impulse rather than thinking it over.  I can't help but think that it would be safer to have more people like Roger in positions of leadership.

 

When Stanley Holloway and I talked about an appointment to interview him, he told me, "Come at three.  We have tea at three.  You'll like that."  That invitation, and his wife Margaret's charming British Empire accent, gave me a hint that I was in for a treat.  I had the best cup of tea ever, poured from a pot wearing a tea cozy, and a great conversation with the tea-brewer and a man you may have seen on TV.

 

STANLEY HOLLOWAY

 

In 1995 CBS Reports presented a program titled Victory in the Pacific narrated by Dan Rather and General Norman Schwarzkopf.  One of the people interviewed on that presentation is a resident of Pullman and a retired Marine, Stanley Holloway.  He summed up one of the tensions of the war against Japan in a simple statement: "They didn't care about dying and I cared about living."

          Holloway began living in 1919 in Roy, Idaho, a small town about nine miles from his family's homestead.  Roy had a store, post office, and a meeting house where dances were a popular form of meeting.  The family moved to Dallas, Oregon when he was still young.  "We became fruit tramps," said Stanley.  "We picked berries, lots of berries.  The only fruit I had seen up until then was rhubarb."

          He graduated from High School in 1935, then briefly attended Linfield College in McMinville studying in Business Administration.  When the depression thwarted his college career he moved to Farmington in 1937 to work as a farm laborer.  "It was a lovely town," Stan remembers.  "There were poplar trees everywhere.  It looked like a forest.  There was a dance hall, a store, and three churches."

His next move was to Seattle to work for Bonneville Power.  He was returning to Seattle from visiting his family, then in Amity, Oregon, when he heard some startling news on the car radio.  "The darned Japs had bombed Hawaii," he said, "and I was rarin' to get after them." 

He enlisted in the Marine Corps in Spokane, was inducted in Seattle, then boarded a train to San Diego for six weeks of Boot Camp where he was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 10th Regiment, 2nd Division.  That unit was to change names through the years but the same men stayed together for the duration.  "We changed names as we changed weapons," explained Holloway.  "We started with 75 millimeter Pack Howitzers, then we had 105s, then later we became a 155 Howitzer Battalion.  Today we are called the Forgotten Battalion."  (There is an article about the Forgotten Battalion in Part Seven of this book.)

Stan expressed a remembered disappointment felt on his arrival at the Boot Depot in San Diego.  "I was a flag waver," he said, "and I figured they would be glad to see us.  But we were treated like we were not even dirt.  Our abilities didn't mean a thing.  They just wanted to get us ready to go to war."

And go to war he did in 1942 aboard the USS President Hayes.  "I was seasick every day, but that was no excuse for light duty," he said shaking his head.  After zig-zagging across the Pacific they stopped to refuel near the Tonga Islands.  Their ship was fueled by a tanker that came out to meet them without escort.  "Brave men," he noted.

The Hayes landed at Tulagi where Marine raiders had gone into Guadalcanal earlier to take a Japanese air strip they later named Henderson Field.  The raiders had met extensive resistance.  The men on the Hayes followed them in, doing mop-up duty and moving to wherever the Marines needed expert artillery fire.  Holloway was with a unit that developed expertise in survey procedures, calculating range and deflection, establishing gun positions and target areas, and determining how to control a given area.  When asked where he was trained for those specific tasks, he replied, "Right there."

"One thing I remember about Tulagi," he related, "was watching the USS Washington and the South Dakota line up and level the Jap transports attempting to come in to the island.  Soon after we had landed, we were sitting up on a cliff one night with ringside seats watching a terrific sea battle.  There was a nice little harbor there, but all that was there were PT Boats.  Then the Navy showed up and put on quite a show."

Stan was pleasantly surprised when I told him one of the gunners on the USS Washington during that battle was a St. John boy named Norm Zorb, also a Marine. 

"Really?  A Marine from St. John?" he said.  "I always thought they were sailors!" 

"No.  Those were Marines out there putting on that show."

"Well," Holloway smiled.  "Well, well."

While Holloway's Battalion went into their initial battle on Tulagi with five hundred men, there were only seventeen of those men remaining at the end of their tour of duty.  The rest had been sent home sick or injured, or were dead.

From Guadalcanal Holloway went to New Zealand for about nine months, since Army forces had relieved them on Guadalcanal.  It was there that his best friend met and dated a young New Zealand woman named Margaret Stewart, a secretary with Universal Pictures, to whom he introduced Stan.  Soon his friend got sent home and Stan, who remembered hearing his friend repeat Margaret's phone number, called her, and they started dating.  They continued their friendship by mail when he shipped out on November 21, 1943 for Tarawa. 

After what he termed simply, "a terrible battle," he was sent to Hawaii, the big island of the chain, to await replacements for the dead or sick they had lost at Tarawa.  The Seabees built tent decks and regular streets for their whole outfit so they were able to quickly establish camp on the Parker Ranch on the north end of the island.  "The Parker Ranch was the biggest cattle ranch in the world," Holloway noted.  They were there a short time, then once again headed west, this time to Saipan where they were told they were going in to take the island. 

"We began to get control right away," Stan said.  "Battleships came in, turned sideways, and leveled everything on the island."

After Saipan, he moved on to Guam, which was a different kind of battle.  "We were not there to destroy everything because there were civilians on Guam.  Some General in Hawaii had told us not to destroy the population"  They did however set up guns to fire on targets and received naval and air support.

After that battle he again was sent to Hawaii.  After four years of duty, he had earned enough points to be sent home.  "The rest of the outfit went on to Iwo Jima, which was pretty nasty too.  I was left as rear echelon to send up supplies.  The Marines got control of Iwo Jima, although a lot of them were eliminated.  Our little unit was stranded in Hawaii,"  he said.  But not for long.  Even though he and the rest of the men in Hawaii were due to go home, they received orders to proceed to Hickam Field on Oahu, Hawaii to be sent to Okinawa.  Their papers were routinely checked by an alert Master Gunner Sergeant who recognized they should be heading east instead of west, and put them on a ship for San Francisco. 

"We got to the Golden Gate home alive in '45," smiled Stanley.  He then took a train to San Diego to be discharged.  It was about then the first Atom Bomb fell on Japan.

Then ranked Assistant Property Sergeant, he received an Honorable Discharge.  But then, about a year later, he received a notice from the government that he had been overpaid thirty dollars for his career with the Marines.  This was an overpayment on the starting pay of twenty-one dollars a month which had gone clear up to sixty dollars a month by the time he was discharged.  He ignored that first letter, but then received a second one telling him the MPs would pick him up and put him in jail if he did not return the money. 
          "I went to the bank, got a money order, and gave Uncle Sam his thirty dollars back," Stan grinned. 

Holloway had other matters on his mind.  He had asked Margaret Stewart to come to the United States and marry him and had put up a five hundred dollar cash bond to secure her transport.  There was one small catch in that process.  It seemed Margaret could not book passage and board a ship until the bond was posted.  And Stanley could not post the bond until she knew what her port of entry would be.  That issue finally cleared, she sailed on a ship half-full of cargo, the other half filled with passengers.  Heading for Amity, Oregon where Stanley awaited her, she sailed from New Zealand, across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal, and up the east coast.  Unable to land in a US port due to dock strikes, she finally got off the ship at Halifax, Nova Scotia.  She then went to New York to make train connections across the county and decided to spend a week looking over the city while Stanley and the Red Cross tried in vain to find her. 

Margaret and Stanley married in October of 1946 and raised two boys and two girls.  They farmed in Farmington for twenty-five years, then both worked at WSU until they retired.

In the mid-1990s their son Clyde saw a picture in the Smithsonian magazine, a picture of the Marines landing on Tarawa, and recognized one of the men standing by a sea wall.  It was his dad.  That incident was written up in an article in the Oregonian which led to Holloway being interviewed for the Victory in the Pacific documentary, which effectively chronicled his life as a Marine in World War II.

 

George Scott was one the first people I interviewed.  In fact it was because he couldn't get to the general interviews at the school that I decided to jump in and participate at the really tough level, that is, listening and writing.  George told his story with a twinkle in his eyes that only left when he would tell me a story, then add, "But, don't put that in the book." 

 

It was as I talked with George that I began to realize we were stirring up memories that we of later generations need to know about.  They are, however, memories of events that once again take a toll in the telling, a toll  on the lives of those who first lived through those events sixty years ago.  Thanks George, for teaching me much more than your story.

 

GEORGE SCOTT

 

As a young man, George Scott hitched-hiked his way west from his home in South Dakota to Portland, Oregon where he got a job in the dairy business in 1937.  He moved to Spokane, Washington to attend Barber School and then worked as a barber in downtown Pullman until 1940 when he got a letter which opened with the familiar "Greetings."  He had been selected for service in the Armed Forces.

He first reported to the draft board in Colfax.  George and seven others were the only ones to make it through the first physical.  Although he wore glasses even then, his vision was not a problem to the draft board.  He was later issued glasses and even little round glass pieces to fit in his army-issue gas mask.  Next he was sent to Spokane where he and many others were lined up in nice even rows, raised their right hands, and were sworn in.  They were given a few days to get their personal matters in order, then reported for rail transport to Fort Lewis, a military staging base just south of Tacoma, Washington, where he was assigned to a Medical Training unit and received Government Issue or G.I. clothing. 

From there George was put on a beat-up old train headed for Texas, in the middle of July, in a wool uniform.  They ran out of water on the way, although the toilets didn't work very well anyway.  They got some relief when they pulled into Lubbock for a stretch stop, then proceeded to Abilene, the closest town to Camp Barkley.  George said, "From the cool Northwest to Texas in July was an experience!   And we got yelled at a lot, but it didn't hurt us."

Once at Camp Barkley the first time they turned out, their Sergeant asked, "Where the hell did you guys come from, Alaska?" as they stood sweating in their wool uniforms. 

He dismissed them to get into summer uniform, then George's three month Basic Training began in earnest.  He remembers red dust and thorns being the Central Texas landscape he had to crawl across on his belly to keep below the constant fire of machine guns.  George recalls machine gun fire both produces a real sharp snap and moves fast, particularly over an obstacle course.  After Basic Training, he was bunched up with others who, like himself, had been assigned to a medical unit and they were shipped to Camp Livingston near Alexandria, Louisiana.

Camp Livingston offered new terrain, according to George.  There were swamps, humidity, and rain, the kind of rain, he recalls, where he could see a cloud coming and all of a sudden the sky would fall in, most frequently it seemed while he was on a forced hike.  He learned quickly to roll his pack so his rain coat was handy. 

George and the other medics in his unit were assigned to an Infantry Unit headed for Wales, then on to Western France.  They shipped out on the Sythia, a refitted English ship converted to carry troops.  From the U.S. to England they slept in hammocks which had been hung over tables at an angle that cramped their legs all during the twenty-one days and nights  they steamed across the Atlantic.  Once they were attacked by German torpedoes, but the only damage done was to a couple of freighters on the outer edge of the convoy.  George Scott, a Sergeant by then, was in charge of a section of men.  As a non-com (non commissioned officer) he was required to keep order on the second level in the hold.  When the German attack was announced his men quickly followed "clear the ship" directions they had been drilled on when first boarding the ship.  Putting on their Mae West life jackets as they moved,  an activity which was a daily occurrence, they ran up gangways to their designated area in just two minutes, which suited their old English Captain who was, as George remembers him, "pretty stern."

When they arrived at the docks in Gurock, Scotland, near Glasgow,  they were barged from the ship to shore where they were greeted by a bagpipe band.  Sergeant Scott, not usually a bagpipe fan, remembers that greeting as "The most beautiful bagpipe music I'd ever heard." 

After the concert they were put on a train to Blackpool Park in the midlands of England.  There they set up a hospital, shelters, and cook tents.  Each man was issued a folding cot, two blankets, and, once again, wool uniforms.  George remembers falling out, or lining up for roll call, in cold, foggy weather.

With a twinkle in his eye, George described meeting some people who lived in Malvern, the town closest to their base.  The girls there liked G.I.s and regularly came to dances.  On holidays he was invited to the  homes of a carpenter and a policeman, parents of some girls who had become friends of his.  Special Services set it up so those going to visit local people could go to the Army kitchen with a pass to get canned goods, like peaches or apricots, to take with them since they were expected to bring something along to help feed both the host and guests.  George recalls fondly having real nice conversations with the people he met, several of whom he corresponded with for a number of years.  "They were good people," he said, "Very good people."

Scott was next sent to North Wales to a resort town on a North Sea beach.  There were many hotels there which had been put to use to house military personnel, and about five hundred English girls who were working for the Food Ministry and sponsoring social activities.  George recalled with a slight frown, "The American Nurses didn't like the G.I.s mixing with the English girls," then he smiled broadly.  "The English girls were a lot more fun!  But we had to learn to live with those Nurses," George then chuckled.

Then in August of 1944 George Scott moved again, this time to Utah Beach which had just been secured.  Balloons, or Blimps, held aloft cables to keep German aircraft from flying over the troops as they walked in single file over the beach.  When they were well ashore the troops were trucked through lots of dust to Le Mans and then sent by details to get materials off the shore to establish a hospital.  Forty-eight hours after landing they were functioning as a hospital, an accomplishment George is rightly proud of.

One assignment stands out in George's mind.  As a barber, he was called upon to prep patients for surgery, particularly head injuries.  A German prisoner of war was brought to the hospital in Le Mans, a badly injured patient.  George had to remove his hair so the Bird Colonel in charge of brain surgery could proceed.  The prisoner's skull appeared to be a pulsating mass of jelly, very difficult to work on.  But George did his job, the Colonel did his, and the man survived, as did the vast majority of their patients.

On a lighter note, George recalls the pretty Nurses who used to date "fly boys."  As the pilots would come in from raids they began to make a practice of buzzing the hospital to let the nurses know they were back.  This made the patients nervous, causing some to leap out of bed and do themselves harm.  The Colonel soon declared, "No more passes."

The Unit then moved and set up another hospital, this one in Nancy in a stable once occupied by the horses of the French Mounted Army in Eastern France.  Clean-up was a problem, but one George Scott did not have to deal with.  He was then transferred from hospital duty to an ambulance unit.  He also set up a barbering unit in an Army tent.  He was assigned an assistant, a German prisoner, who gave him a set of hand clippers that came home with him. 

When George had earned enough points to put him in a status that allowed him a ride home, he shipped out from Western France on a converted freighter, this time with bunks to sleep on for the five hundred and sixty men on board.  Just before he headed for the States he got to visit Paris along with an Italian buddy from Brooklyn.  They toured the town including some Red Cross canteens that served sugared coffee, a rather poor way to end twenty-seven months overseas, according to George's taste.

He landed in New York in November where, for the first time in his military career, he volunteered for duty.  As a non-com he took charge of getting all the appropriate baggage off the wharf, onto a train, and headed for Detroit by way of Canada, then on to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin where he mustered out on December 3, 1945.  He and his men didn't lose a single piece of luggage.  He was given first class railroad fare to Fort Lewis, where he had started out, and speaks of being treated royally on the train.  People picked up his check for meals, twice those people being "little old ladies" who were glad to help a serviceman in uniform. 

George Scott took a train from Fort Lewis to Pullman and went to work the day after he got home at the same barber shop where he was working when he got his letter from the President.  He eventually opened a three chair shop of his own on the WSU campus which he operated for twenty-five years, making many life-long friendships as he cut and styled hair.   Now retired for many years, he and his wife Genevieve continue to live in Pullman.  Some, but not all, of those twenty-seven months of his life have become fading memories for him.  But what he did made a lasting contribution to the lives of the many people he helped.

 

Here is a story that is a bit different.  It tells of a man who, like many, made their contribution to America's strength by continuing in a significant career during the war years.  Horace Telford is a scientist who devoted his life to the research and development of a product that was important in the control of insects and disease during World War II.  He is in his early 90s now, in amazingly good health, his mind sharp and clear.  He lives in Pullman and is a regular participant at Monday and Friday noon meals at the Senior Center.

 

HORACE TELFORD

 

Horace Telford, one of eight children, grew up on a family farm in Idaho Falls, a short distance from Yellowstone National Park.  After High School he moved to Ontario, California to be near his older sister while he attended Junior College.  His life long interest even at that early age was Entomology, the study of insects.  He was a bit disappointed to find there was only one survey course in Entomology offered at Ontario, so he began to look for other opportunities.  He found East Texas Tech had several Entomology courses listed so he transferred there in the early 1930s.  He worked in a laundry to support himself while going to school.

After working with his dad on the home farm the summer before  his junior year he hitched-hiked to Utah and negotiated a transfer of his credits so could earn his Bachelor's Degree at the University of Utah, meanwhile working at a dairy.  The next summer he found employment as a biologist in a Bureau of Fisheries program and also enjoyed a great summer of fishing and camping.  He gained entry to a Master's program at University of Minnesota where he wrote his thesis on Syrphidae, or Hover Flies, and assured himself a Doctorate was well on its way.  His thesis was published as a bulletin, then several years later it was republished by a National Bureau of University editors and given national recognition.  That paper earned him a telephone call from the Dean at North Dakota who told him the paper was the "best damn report" he had ever read.

He lived in North Dakota for four years where he worked on  various projects with the State University of North Dakota.   Although the Dean who admired his writing offered Telford a teaching and research job at the University, Horace accepted a position with Hess and Clark, a chemical company willing to offer him twice as much money as had the University.  Scientists usually are prohibited from publishing their findings, but Telford would not take the job offered to him without full authority to publish, the one stipulation he agreed to being that new products needed to be protected by the government, a relevant concern during war time. 

Hess and Clark's project to develop insecticides for treating cattle sparked an interest in Horace and so it was as the war began in Europe he was doing research on what was a developing product at that time, DDT.  DDT was an insecticide that killed lots of insects, but was not hazardous to humans.  Others at Hess and Clark testing DDT along with Horace discovered it interfered in nature with regard to the food chain and increased in intensity as time went on.  Telford's research recognized that when animals were exposed to DDT through infected food they consumed, or were exposed to sprayed DDT, those animals developed tremors, which was how he was able to determine they were intoxicated. 

While in the early 1940s there was no chemical way to prove it was the DDT causing tremors in exposed animals, Telford was sufficiently convinced to publish a paper outlining his findings in a 1946 issue of a prestigious magazine.  Shortly after the article appeared Horace was walking down a street in New York City when he heard a newsboy on a corner shouting, "Don't drink milk!  Don't drink milk!"  All the newspapers nation-wide had picked up the story about his discovery that DDT traveled through grasses eaten into the milk of cows and goats, and assumed in print that DDT was dangerous to public health.  Within a few weeks DDT had been outlawed by the Food and Drug Administration.  The government stopped use of DDT because of what was perceived as a danger to animals, although there never was a case of sickness or death to warm blooded animals proven connected to DDT. 

Horace Telford's research contributed to a solution for controlling the spread of disease by killing lice on animals and human beings.  He found  that DDT added to paint used on buildings controlled lice on animals and people in those buildings.   DDT had been used extensively in the war years, from 1940 to 1945, in military applications around the world.  As disease began to rage through American troops in foreign lands, powdered DDT was employed very effectively to kill lice, known to be a common carrier of many diseases. 

Dr. Horace Telford received a Selective Service notice late in the war when he was twenty-eight years old and had a wife and three children.  He reported for his physical where he was rejected due to arthritis in his back. 

"I didn't have arthritis, still don't," Telford said, shaking his head in wonder undiminished after more than sixty years.  "But I didn't argue the point.  They refused me and so the next day I went back to my job and continued research on DDT."

After the war Telford and his family moved to Pullman where he started the University's first Department of Entomology which he chaired until his retirement at age sixty-five. He then went to Brazil where he served as an advisor to a university Zoology Department.  He consulted with them on how to set up the department, including the hiring of scientists and determining medical student requirements.

He and his wife then moved on to Florida when he was sixty-seven.  He led further research on insect control for fourteen years at Florida

A & M.  Now widowed, he finally retired again just a few years ago and lives a quiet life in Pullman, at rest knowing his contribution to the American way of life was played out studying insects that plague mankind and insecticides that control them.

 

Well, I guess it's about time to deal with Bearcreek, Montana.  Jaime von Baeyer had enjoyed a wonderful town reunion in Bearcreek.  She got to listen to a lot of stories and learned about her family and their life during the Depression and War-time decades.  She asked if she could submit a story about her family, specifically her grandfather, Voyo, who had served as a fighter pilot in Europe.  Sure you could, Jaime!   After all, you are a Whitman County resident, and that's what this book is about!

 

VOYO JOVANOVICH

By Jaime von Baeyer

 

Last summer my family attended the Bearcreek reunion in Bearcreek, Montana.  My grandfather, Voyo Jovanovich, was born and raised there, but now lives in Hayden Lake, ID.  The most pleasurable part of the trip was riding in the car with him and his two brothers, Pete and George.  Our trip lasted two hours, wherein I heard the most amazing and wonderful stories about the roots of my family.  Throughout, bits and pieces about the depression era popped up.  It made me curious, and I saw this assignment as a great opportunity to learn about that time in our history.  So, on with the story….

Bearcreek, Montana, 1920.  Nestled beneath the awesome peaks of the Beartooth range, tucked into the hills of a tiny valley, you find the birthplace and home of Voyo Jovanovich.  Son of Serbian immigrants, Voyo was born into a large and hard working family in a town made primarily of Yugoslavian immigrants.  English was spoken by only a tiny percentage of the population and old world customs prevailed.

At the time, Bearcreek was a booming and successful mining town.  The Smith Silver Mine employed most of the town’s population.  When the Depression eventually hit the West (around 1934), the mine, and, consequently, the town of Bearcreek were shut down.  Bearcreek’s residents survived the hard times due to the incredible generosity and kindness of Vlado Jovanovich, Voyo’s father.

Like many people of Bearcreek, Vlado was an employee of the mine.  Luckily, he held an important position in mine operations and was able to work two days a week throughout the entire Depression.  He was one of very few men to do so.  Oiling the machines and pulling up rock in the summer, and running the machines in winter to prevent freezing made surviving a little easier.  Vlado was also able to maintain his impeccable credit at the local surplus store so he was able to get large quantities of flour, salt, and sugar, even during the hardest times.  That access to commodities was what kept Bearcreek alive.  When Vlado bought goods at the store, he only took what was needed for his family and divided up the rest to give to the needy families in their neighborhood.  Along with other livestock, Vlado’s family also had eleven cows.

“Every morning, Mom, Mele, and I would get up and milk those cows.  My God, we had a lot of milk.  We took what we needed, then gave the rest to the Pekichs and the other families down our road.”

Everyone relied heavily on gardening as well.  Each family had a huge garden.  The Jovanovichs were no different.  They had a huge garden from which the surplus was also shared with the community.  Voyo himself spent his early teens in the newly formed CCC.  Although he had to lie about his age to get in, since he was two years shy of the sixteen years old requirement, he and his brother Mele, who was old enough, both became part of the Corps. The point was for the brothers to stay together, but Mele was chosen to feed the buffalo herds up by Great Falls, while Voyo had to fight the forest fires scorching the land in the north over the summers.

At this same time, Voyo was entering and going through High School.  Basketball was the town’s passion, especially during the Depression.   Voyo was a star on the basketball team, along with being first in his class all throughout High School.  He was voted class Valedictorian and as a result was awarded a full academic scholarship to Rocky Mountain Business College in Billings, Montana.  He successfully completed his education there and signed up for the armed services the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed.  His intention was to go on with his life, find a good job, and start a family, but when American soil was attacked, there was no other option for him but to sign up and fight for his country.  He was inducted when he was twenty-one and was able to become a pilot right away because of his extensive education.  He flew fighter planes throughout the war.

In 1943, while Voyo was overseas, a terrible tragedy struck back home in Bearcreek.  While blasting a new line for the Smith Mine, seventy-four men were killed.  The town was devastated, and many friends were lost.  Vlado, his father, escaped the disaster by a miraculous twist of fate.  A good friend of Vlado’s had a conflict with his shift and another activity.   He asked Vlado if they could switch shifts, so Vlado worked the night shift, and the friend took Vlado’s shift the next morning.   Just hours after Vlado got off his night shift, the tragic cave-in occurred.  Had he been working his normal shift, he would have been killed along with the other seventy-four men, leaving a non-English speaking wife and seven sons and daughters.

Voyo also told me stories of the weekends in Bearcreek. His house became a dance hall every Saturday night.  “Just about everyone in the whole town came to our house,”  he explained. 

Dancing and celebrating joyous occasions such as weddings were a few of the small joys during the Depression.  Regardless of how much (or how little) they had to spare, a wedding was cause for an all-out feast and celebration.  It was customary for the bride to dance with every man there, who in turn would pin money to her dress that would be used to start her new life.  A collection was also gathered, wherein everyone gave practically all that they had to support the new couple.

Even though the Depression saw very trying times and terrible conditions, the fact of the matter was that for those Yugoslavian and European immigrants, Bearcreek, even during the 30’s, was a paradise compared to the conditions they lived in back home.  Life in America was a blessing, even when times were tough.  There was always a helping hand when you stumbled, always a friend to help you through, and an extended family of 3000 loving, caring, hard–working, and truly beautiful people.  Voyo and his family were incredibly fortunate and truly blessed, no matter how you look at it.

 

This last story from the Pullman area is about two people who served in the military, Fran Fleener and her husband Sam.  It also contains a quick glimpse back at one of the pioneering families who arrived in Whitman County via the Oregon Trail and took up farming on land between Pullman and Palouse

 

FRAN AND SAM FLEENER

 

Fran and Sam Fleener have lived on the Fleener place for the entire fifty years of their marriage, raising five children out there between Pullman and Palouse.  They now have six grandchildren.  The Fleener family, according to Sam, lives on "one of the oldest chunks of cultivated ground around."  The Fleeners first traveled west by covered wagon on  the Oregon Trail, arriving in Oregon City in 1872.  Sam's grandfather, David Fleener, after serving the South in the War Between The States, started out civilian life as a stage coach driver, then switched to hauling freight, which he considered easier than dealing with people.  He eventually found his way to Colfax, furnishing a lot of freight to that newly developing town.  He frequently ran a route on the Indian Trail that became the road that runs past the Fleener home. 

"He had the choice of all the land around here, thirty miles in any direction, and he chose this piece.  Wood and water were close by, that's probably why.  Anyway, he claimed this piece by Pre-emption in 1874," is the way Sam tells it.

David's grandson, Sam Fleener, lived on the family farm until he joined the Navy to serve in World War II.  He started his training at Farragut, near Sandpoint, Idaho, in Gunner's Mate School, then was moved south, by train, to Camp Shumaker, a reassignment base near Camp Parks which was a Seabee training center about twenty to thirty miles east of Oakland.  He was then assigned to a five hundred square mile ammunition dump in Hawthorne, Nevada.  There Sam did such duty as testing powder to see if it was still "good" and tracking storage of all kinds of American, French, and British ammo.

"It is amazing how much material was produced and moved during the war years, how the US could replace everything so fast, from fuel to ammo to training new recruits," Sam said, still in awe of the system that won the war.

The Hawthorne site included mountains and hills where land mines that were older and out of condition were blown up.  They also set off some smoke bombs.  That ammo dump was, however, located a long distance from the atomic bomb testing grounds.  Asked if there were any "accidents" while he was there, Sam replied, "No.  But I heard of two or three fatalities that happened later on after I was discharged."

He was discharged in Bremerton and returned to the Pullman-Palouse area to once again farm the land.  One day he was on campus at Washington State College in Pullman (WSU) when he was invited by a friend to go into the Commons dining hall where he met a girl named Fran.  They sat down together, had some chocolate pie, and were married in 1951.

Fran Trocinsky was born and raised in Glendive, Montana.  After she graduated as a Dietitian from Iowa State College in Ames Iowa, she was serving an internship in 1944 when a fellow from the Army came by one day, recruiting women to serve Uncle Sam. 

"Do you want to go overseas?" he asked.

"Sure," replied Fran, setting herself up for an adventure of a lifetime in the United States Army Medical Corps.  She rose to the rank of First Lieutenant long before she was discharged. 

She first reported to Fort Lewis, Washington along with nurses, dietitians, and physical therapists from all over the country.  There she met up with a sergeant who, Fran laughed, "Must have done something really wrong to get himself assigned to training nurses, dietitians, and physical therapists to march."  When it came time to complete her Basic Training, her unit went on a "forced march," walking five miles in battle gear, bootees, and full back pack, as shown in the picture included in this article.  The only difference between what the nurses had to do and what infantrymen did, besides the distance, was that an ambulance followed along, as Fran said, "In case we should fall faint." 

They all made it, stopping only once to rest under some trees.  When they arrived at their destination they put up two-person pup tents.  Then someone showed up with some gas, so they all had to put on gas masks.  The next day they hiked back to their base, none of them falling faint on the return march either.

Under heavy prompting from Sam to tell the story about the shoes with bows, Fran said, "While I was at Fort Lewis, I was invited to a dance, which I had to attend in uniform.  I only had those old-lady shoes," she grimaced, "You know, the kind with square heels that you have to lace up?  So I went downtown and bought a pair of shoes with bows on them and wore them with my uniform to the dance.  Everybody looked, but nobody said anything," she chuckled.  Sam wore an expression that said, "That's my Fran!"

When she went home on leave to Montana, Fran was walking down town in uniform when a neighbor shook her finger at her and said, "You bad girl!  Your mother ought to be ashamed!"  Actually, her mother liked the idea of Fran being in the military, having been a mom who thought girls should get to do what they wanted to just as boys did, a novel concept at the time.

After Basic Training, she and some other women from around the country gathered at Columbia, South Carolina to await orders to ship out to a destination unknown to them.  About a dozen of them went to New York City where they were met by eight or ten officers, all men, who took them out for a nice evening including a Broadway performance of The Late George Ashby.  Fran enjoyed the time in New York except she found herself, again in uniform, having to be saluting constantly all over the place since it seemed every man on the streets of New York was higher in rank than she, she being only a Second Lieutenant at the time.

A few days later, in early-1945, she was put on a boat with sealed orders and sailed from New York harbor, seven women to a cabin.  When she opened her envelope she was delighted to learn she was headed for Karachi, India as a replacement dietitian in a military hospital to work with wounded men.

The women onboard the ship had guards posted around them at all times to protect them from the American soldiers they sailed with. That practice served also to isolate the women from each other.  "They stood and protected us from nobody," Fran said.  "This one guy named Johnny was assigned to guard us.  One day I told him I needed a picture of him guarding me with a rifle.  I sat up on one of those big ventilators that comes up out of the deck and told him to come stand next to me so my friend could take the picture.  'Why not?' he replied.  So my friend took the picture of him standing there holding his rifle,"

The next day she looked for Johnny and discovered he was in the brig.  He had been arrested for talking to her.  "The officers were dead serious," she commented.  "I never did see him again."

She sailed on to Karachi, appropriately guarded, then flew to Calcutta to assume her duties.  She was assigned a Sergeant to work under her, so she got to give orders she didn't have to carry out.  She was billeted in a mansion the Indian owners had been "booted out" of, a place that had marble stairs and elegant appointments.  She had a maid that did everything for her.  "I threw my pajamas on the floor, went to work, and when I came home they were picked up and put away.  It was like living in a dream world!"  She had the opportunity to visit the Taj Mahal, which she described as "just like a jewel."  She got to see it at evening time and still recalls clearly the beauty and serenity of that famous place.

"I was just so darned dumb," Fran admitted.   Once when her friend, who called herself Hedy LaBarr, made arrangements to go out on a double date, she invited along a young Sergeant friend.  When they all got together it turned out Hedy's friend was a General.  The Non-Com nearly sank through the floor.  The General was gracious, but the meal they shared was "short" according to Fran.  In spite of such seeming blunders, Fran said, "I got a view of the world that I hadn't had before.  It was a time of my life that just would not have happened if it hadn't been for the war." 

When she set sail for home, after about six months duty, she headed east, so she ended up traveling all around the globe.  She spent some time in San Francisco working at the Presidio, then went to Fitzsimmons in Denver, where she was discharged.  She eventually ended up working as a Dietitian at the Commons on the WSC campus, where she and Sam met over chocolate pie.  She married Sam and has lived on the Fleener place since.  She returned to school, earning a Doctorate in Special Education at the University of Idaho.  "Can you imagine a husband so wonderful as to help me go back to school and earn a Ph.D.?" she asked.  I didn't have to imagine.  He was sitting there just as proud of Fran as he could be.

 

That pretty well covers the people we interviewed who now live in Pullman and the surrounding area, plus Bearcreek.  We next headed for LaCrosse where we had more students ready to meet with World War II generation men and women.