Memories of World War II

Prologue:

As my “class” of engineers approached the end of our careers, we retained an interest in things technical.  We naturally turned to computers, after all, we had grown up with them professionally (or perhaps, it was the other way around). 

To stay in touch, a group of us began communicating via e-mail, using the fledgling internet.  As we retired, our numbers grew.  At the time of these communications, there were perhaps 40 ex-McDonnell Douglas Aerospace engineers corresponding regularly.  These reminiscences of World War Two were triggered by the following message on December 8, 1995:

Don Black, Laguna Beach:

Yesterday was Pearl Harbor Day - Dec. 7. How many of you folks are old enough to remember that? Probably very few. I had just graduated from high school and signed up with the Army Air Corps as a cadet. One of the smartest things I ever did. Resulted in five years of excitement and adventure. Don’t regret a moment of it.

I was enchanted by the responses, and thought they should be preserved.  They are in chronological order.  I restricted my editing to spelling, layout and other technical issues.

As you’ll see below, most of us were very young when W.W.II began.  Thus there are no war stories.  Don Black, the instigator, surely could have told some, except for modesty.  He went through pilot training and won a commission in the Army Air Corps.  He flew in the Pacific Theater, and amongst other things, flew “the hump” hauling supplies to the Chinese resistance. 

Memories of World War II

Dan Remel

I remember Pearl Harbor as my father and a number of relatives and neighbors were there on Dec. 7, 1941.  My father was on the Tennessee at the time.  The Tennessee was hit by a couple of bombs and suffered minor damage.  Lucky for my father as his post was in the boiler room and most likely would not have gotten out. 

My uncle was on the Arizona but was transferred to another ship Dec. 6th.  He was a hero and decorated for shooting down 2 Japanese planes and he wasn’t even a gunner. 

The Pearl Harbor bombing was on my 6th birthday.  Another interesting thing about my uncle; he was a Jew and was sent out of Germany in the 30’s by his parents as they could see what was happening there.  He was sent to a good Protestant family in Milwaukee and raised a Christian.  Charmed life!  He was still a German citizen when he joined the US Navy at 15.  I guess that they didn’t ask for proof of age or citizenship then. He remained a German citizen until he tried to retire.  He couldn’t retire without some sort of congressional approval. I don’t think he ever became a citizen. 

My father also joined in the 30’s at 15.  There are other stories about my uncle (such as, captaining munitions barges up and down the deltas in the heat of the Vietnam war) but, I won’t bore you anymore.  By the way he never saw his parents again.  It is not difficult to guess what happened to them.

Doyle Lockwood

I was 13 at the time of Pearl Harbor, and was visiting my sister, who lived on a second floor apartment.  (In Hallandale, Fla - do you remember where that is?)  I remember her calling to me and saying that the Japs had attacked Pearl Harbor.  I didn’t know where “Pearl Harbor” was, but soon found out. 

 I lived in Ft. Lauderdale during the war.  I remember black out practice, air raid drills (my dad was a block warden), brown outs (the top half of each car’s headlights were taped over so the German subs couldn’t use the light from the cities to silhouette coastal shipping), the thunder of naval gunfire at sea, at night (we never found out what had happened), Grumman Avengers flying over my house day and night  (that is probably what got me interested in aviation.  We lived under the traffic pattern of the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station), My buddies brother was a B-26 Marauder pilot (and survived the war!).

 My microscopic contribution to the war effort was as an airplane spotter.  None of us really thought Germany was going to bomb Ft. Lauderdale, but the Army Air Corps had a spotter post on top of the tallest building in town, no doubt to keep track of their own planes.  While Don Black was coaxing C-47’s over the hump, my job, at times, was to sit in a little shed, on top of that building, and report any passing aircraft to the Army in Miami.  “One bi, high, seen, Uncle Peter 862, East, three, Hudson” meant a single plane, twin engines, at a high altitude,  seen, by post UP 862, it was east of the post by three miles and it was a Lockheed Hudson.

 Two weeks before I turned 17,  the war ended.   I was working for a newspaper at the time.  The news came in over the wire and within 10 seconds, horns started blowing!  The radio people must have been reading right off the teletype.

  A few weeks later, my high school history teacher said something like, “The trouble isn’t over yet.  The Soviet Union is going to be a big problem.”  That lady sure knew what she was talking about!

Flint Smith

I remember Pearl Harbor;  I was a seven year-old farm boy in Massachusetts.   I remember that on Sunday afternoon (Dec. 7th) there were interested adults around the radio in the living room.  Someone explained to me that the Japs (nobody ever called them Japanese) had attacked Pearl Harbor and I didn’t know where that was.  They explained it was on Hawaii which was waayyy out in the ocean.  I don’t remember who it was that did the explaining.  I don’t think it was my dad, it might have been my sister’s boyfriend who would have been 16 or 17.

I also remember that at dinner the next day (Monday) we were listening to President Roosevelt’s speech.  (we called lunch “dinner” so this took place at noon when I came home from school a mile away).  I imagine it was live because I don’t think they had tape recorders in 1941, did they?  I don’t remember the “day of infamy” line but I remember that my father explained that the US was declaring war against Japan.  I thought we were ALREADY at war and he explained about congress having to agree to it and all.  I recall that he turned to me and said, “This is a day you’ll remember the rest of your life.”  A self fulfilling prophesy. I can even remember the table was in front of the window at that point, not in the center of the room.  Vivid !!!

We had some practice air-raids during the first year.  We tacked blankets over the windows of the farm house and went around with candles.  It was fun!   I recall Lew Randolph, a man a mile up the road who was an Air Raid Warden, came to the door and said he could see a teeny weeny streak of light but he didn’t think it could be seen from an airplane. 

We had a plane make an emergency landing in our big 20 acre field.  The pilot said he was on a training mission and got lost and ran out of gas.  It was late in the day on a Sunday afternoon and he flattened a lot of oats.  My father said he figured the guy was really off visiting his girl someplace or other  because he was REALLY  worried about getting in trouble.  The next day somebody came, fueled up the plane and flattened some more oats taking off.  It was exciting to me but my father had other thoughts.

Doyle, I did some airplane spotting one day.  It’s fuzzy in my mind but I think it was in connection with the Boy Scouts.  I remember I was helping a grown man because I was interested in planes and knew their silhouettes and it was some kind of a one-day exercise.  We waited a long time and finally a single-engine plane flew past real low and we only got a glimpse of it.  I was disappointed.  I guess we flunked but I don’t think anybody really cared.

A fun thing I remember was the paper drives.  Because I had a horse and wagon available from the farm, we used that to go door to door picking up papers.  I got to drive.  It was a grammar school thing and a whole lot of my classmates would join in.  When we got the wagon full, we would unload it into the school basement and my dad would take us all into Montana’s store for a piece of penny candy.   We collected tons of newspapers.  I remember there was a photo around somewhere of us proudly standing on a wagon full of paper.  The following clipping was in the local paper.

  ***************************

   HOUSATONIC

  Old Dobin Does His Part for Salvage

              Boys Have Use of Horse And Set Record

Housatonic - Reverting to the horse and buggy days, pupils of Housatonic Grammar school Thursday and yesterday collected four tons of waste papers and a large truckload of tin cans, thereby setting a new school record for paper collections in the town.  The four tons were slightly more than the amount obtained in all other public schools combined.

 Miss Helen Mogan, principal, says school Committeeman Henry Smith donated his horse and wagon.  The novelty of driving and loading brightened the collection prospects for two full days.  His son, Flint Smith and Marcel Touponce drove the horse.

 Besides this outstanding record, Miss Mogan announces the children bought $1952.75 in stamps and bonds during the fourth war loan which is another school record smashed.  In the paper salvage Bryant School in Great Barrington was second with two and a half tons.  Dewey School and Searles High together accounted for another ton of paper.

      undated clipping

  *************************************

 We went to a big auditorium in Pittsfield one day and my father was awarded a “Big A” flag for outstanding production in the field of Agriculture.  General Electric in Pittsfield won a Big E flag that day, I think.  What did the E stand for??   I

Wayne Cribb

I remember some events occurring before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  When I was 5 living in Sheboygan Wis. I remember seeing a bunch of low flying twin engine bombers with British markings flying overhead. Thinking about it now I guess we were providing planes to the British before we were attacked.  Also I remember the older boy’s talking about a submarine dock at Green Bay.  I would guess this was just young boy talk, I suspect there was never one.  Anyway we talked about walking along the beach to go there.  After a mile or so we got tired and gave up.  We only had several hundred more miles to go but what do five year old’s know about distance.

At six we had moved to Hannibal, Mo.  My father was a radio station manager.  He set up the first a.m. directional station west of the Mississippi.  I faintly remember when the bombing at Pearl occurred.  My father was quite upset.  He tried to volunteer for Military intelligence (a contradiction of terms).  The government said he could better serve in the radio business.  Anyway his brother went in the service and fought the German’s in North Africa.  I can’t imagine those poor souls inside a tank on the hot desert playing real life and death games with the great German General Rommel.  I remember going to movies and the cartoons depicted a wolf with Hitler’s mustache.  The Japanese were usually weasels with horn rim glasses and big teeth.  Everybody knew who the enemy was.  The fight was for real and our survival depended upon the outcome.  We pulled together as a nation.  I  remember food stamps, cars with no bumpers because the war effort needed the chrome, rubber tires were rationed.  I remember air raid exercises, all lights out, etc.  Who would bomb Hannibal??  Mary says they had air raid exercises in Aurora, Mo. when she was a little girl.  Aurora is less than 1000 population but they had air raid practices anyway.  In Hannibal during the war I clearly remember they had a bunch of German prisoners held in Hannibal’s only sporting park.  Thinking about it now I don’t have any idea why they were there other than it was a large area with high walls for security.  I remember looking down from a hill near by and seeing hundreds of the prisoners of war milling around.

The above memories are very distant now.  I remember clearly when the war was over.  I remember reading about the atomic bomb.  There was no question in anybody’s mind that use of the bomb saved lives in the long run.  The Japanese were fierce fighters and in the island campaigns they fought to the last man.  Just talk to some men who were there.  I can’t imagine what the loss would have been to take Japan using conventional weapons.  Also, I think having seen the destructive power of these weapons has been a dampening factor in their being used again.  I do clearly remember watching the funeral of Franklin Roosevelt on television.

Dub Egbert

.In addition to remembering my second grade teacher leaving class in the middle of the day when she got a telegram saying her husband had been killed and not remembering Pearl Harbor, I also remember having the shit scared out of me when a covey of P-38’s came over the hill from the west and flew over the town at about 500 feet!  What a noise!  They turned and did this several times.  Later my dad said one of the pilots had a girl friend in town. 

I remember seeing a lot of planes in the air; there was a Army flying base 20 miles to the west where they trained guys to fly; there was an auxiliary airbase just north of town where they shot touch and go’s. I remember hearing my mom say “another plane crashed today.”   I remember my grandpa who lived in Cimarron (5 miles to the east) coming over to Ingalls, KS to tend a victory garden that we planted.  I remember not having chewing gum, however the lady who owned the local movie theater in Cimarron was always chewing gum.  My mom often said, jokingly, that she thought the lady got the gum off the bottom of the theater seats. 

My brother and I were coming down a mountain in Colorado when we heard some people beating on wash tubs at a cabin at the foot of the mountain.  Later my mom said they were doing so because the war in Japan was over.  This summer I visited that cabin... the wife of the son of the owner of the resort we stayed at in Almont Colorado way back then, now lives in that cabin - she is 86 years old.  That lady worked her ass off at that resort - her husband was a drunk and the most he did was deliver ice to the cabins for the ice boxes.   She dunged out all the out houses (no indoor plumbing) and other labor intensive duties. 

I remember after the war a DP (displaced person) came and lived in our town.  He had a sponsor in town; he did not speak English and as kids will do, we made fun of him. He looked like some poor lost soul.  

I had an uncle that worked in a bomb factory somewhere in Nebraska.  After the war he brought home a number of thick books describing the bombs in some detail - the books were marked confidential - that stirred our imaginations.  I remember food, gas, sugar etc. stamps and that I had my own stamps; didn’t quite understand that even tho they were mine I did not have any say about them...hmmmm.

John Pearson

Boy, all your World War II reminisces sure bring things back!  Here are mine, from central Illinois. 

As for Pearl Harbor, I just remember everyone being upset.  I had no idea where PH was...  I doubt that most of the folks in my home town did, either.

Hey, Dub, I never knew one of those ration books was mine!  My extended family used to save up ration stamps for special occasions, and pool their extra stamps for the sugar for a birthday cake, or for canning peaches, etc.  This was my introduction to wheelin’ and dealin’ (and arguin’ and fightin’).  There were (at least) Stamps for Sugar, Stamps for Meat, and Stamps for Gasoline.  Meat stamps were red.  I think Sugar stamps were blue, and Gasoline might have been green.  I remember Kraft dinner was 11 cents and one red point.  I think there might have also been little red fiber board tokens for red points.  Does anyone remember? 

I do recall a sign in a restaurant sternly admonishing ice tea drinkers;

“USE LESS SUGAR AND STIR LIKE HELL!”

The local package liquor store occasionally got in a very special shipment — Hershey bars!  (From what I heard later, almost the entire world’s supply of Hershey’s must had been tied up in black market European commerce for the duration.)  Dad was on good terms with the manager of the store, and a couple of times we had a whole carton of Hershey bars all at once at Christmas time. 

Razor blades (single edged, back then) were very hard to get, and of only fair quality, when you could get em’. Dad had an automatic razor blade resharpener.  You put the blade in, closed the cover and turned a crank.  The machine stropped the blade on a revolving stone and flipped the blade over every few turns. 

Rubber was absolutely impossible to get, without some priority.  Our old family Ford ended the war up on blocks.  I believe the first things to go were the radiator hoses, then Dad swapped the tires for something else we needed.

I conducted my own scrap drives.  The wagon I loaded was one of those little red wagons.  I’d clean out garages for free.  I still remember some of the prices down at Cohen’s Junk yard:  Newsprint was one cent per pound, magazines were two cents per pound.  Scrap iron, tin cans and tin foil (actually made out of tin, back then) drew some heady price like a nickel a pound or so.  I’d be rolling in dough — thirty, forty cents a shot!  People also recycled grease and rubber bands.

Our town had a really good bus service to fill in for the lack of private transport.  Cost a nickel to go anywhere in town.  Along with ads for business, some posters on the overhead in the bus were patriotic.  One I recall was a cartoon of a really tough looking US Soldier firing a machine gun.  The ammo belt was filled with tin cans that turned into bullets as the belt got closer to the gun.  The message was, recycle to help the war effort.   Made me feel good about my junk hauling.   Then there were the slogans everywhere — “A slip of the lip can sink a ship”, “Uncle Sam wants you”, “Is this trip necessary?”.

There were some terribly funny and entertaining propaganda movie cartoons put out by Disney and others, poking fun at the Germans, Italians and Japanese.  I have tried very hard to get copies of those cartoons.  But they were/are so politically incorrect that Disney won’t release them, and hardy acknowledges they ever existed.  Disney just mumbles something about Donald, Mickey, et. al. doing their part to support the war effort.  I did run across one of those cartoon cell displays in a Disney store that showed Donald Duck working as a forced laborer in Eastern Europe — scenes from one of the best war cartoons.

The comic books of that era were something else, too.  The Japs sorta looked like yellowed weasels.  They all had buck teeth and wore wire rim glasses.  The Germans were usually green complexioned, and very brutish looking with those Hun helmets.  It was easy to tell the bad guys. 

My mother took a job with the local National Enameling and Stamping Company factory, making brass 40 mm AA shell casings.  A regular Rosie the Riveter type.  NESCO also made illumination grenades.  It was necessary to test samples of these grenades.  This testing was pretty simple, a guy took some grenades out to the city dump and set them off once in a while. 

My mom brought me home some rejected shell casings and a couple of expended grenades (The grenade’s two piece shell just popped open and the flare inside burned.)  I was the envy of all my chums.  The grenade’s half shells just pressed back together, and the firing mechanism still worked.  It could be cocked and reassembled.  A couple of cap pistol caps could be slipped in there, and the thing would give off a satisfying pop when you pulled the pin and released the safety handle.  They were great for playing “war”, but I sure scared the hell out of one of my veteran relatives, when he was home on leave. 

There was a family named Cantrell, that lived just south of my grandparent’s farm.  I can recall the three Cantrell boys hiking past our farm on Saturdays to meet their buddies, the Ping boys, and hitch a ride into town.  They walked about 3/4 mile one way, to and from a road intersection north of our farm barefooted, with their shoes hanging around their necks, to save the shoes.  I don’t know if shoes were so hard to get, or whether they were just so poor, they had to scrimp.  It was a hard walk.  The road was rough, sharp gravel. 

Those Cantrell boys were all of an age where they all went into the war fairly early.  I was visiting my grandparents when one of the boys came home after completing 25 bombing missions over Germany.  He was a waist gunner in the Army Air Corps.  He came by to say farewell the day he was leaving to go back for another 25 missions.  My grandparents were very upset after he left.  30 years later Grandmother told me that when he left they had wished him well and looked forward to seeing him next time.  “Oh no, Mrs. Jones”, he said, very matter-of-factly, “I won’t be coming back.  It’s just not possible to last very many more missions.”  He was right.  He died over Germany.  But he went back anyway.

One Sunday, our next door neighbor’s son’s picture was on the front page of the color section of the Chicago Tribune.  He was a member of a Navy assault team.  The picture showed him going ashore on some miserable little island in the Pacific.  The man in front of him was down and the guy behind him was slumped over, in the process of falling.  He told me later that his column had just been raked by machine gun fire when the picture was taken, and nearly every second man in the column had been hit.  My neighbor just happened to be in between bullets. 

My brother was seven years older than me.  By this time, he was frantic to get into the war, as only a teenager can be.  One day the Navy showed up at our house to take him away, when he didn’t report for duty.  Art had gone down and signed up.  Catch was, he was only 15. I think the rule was that with a parent’s permission you could enlist at 16, otherwise you had to be 17.  Mom ran the Navy off with a broom.  Art didn’t get to go to the Navy until he was 17, and VE day occurred before he got out of post boot camp training at Great Lakes.

The thing I remember most about the atom bomb was the newspaper headline “US uses Secret Weapon”.  I had no idea what a secret weapon might be.  I was attending a summer school wood shop class, because my parents both worked.  The Junior High Principal came by and explained the idea of a secret weapon to us, and how devastating it had been.  The prevailing attitude was “serves ‘em right”.

Earlier that year, my mother’s cousin, Paul, had been home on furlough, after fighting his way through North Africa and Europe in a tank.  He was on his way to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan.  He told us that when he hit the East Coast he had been issued an all new outfit of clothing and equipment to take with him to the Pacific.  He didn’t want his folks to know, but the new gear included a burial shroud.  I figured he was down right elated about the bomb!

VE and VJ day both triggered big celebrations, both planned and spontaneous, in our little town.  I remember seeing newsreels of the celebration in NYC, and recall noting that they did it right.  Just like us, they threw rolls of toilet paper and confetti out of the upper story windows as the parade went by.  Only difference was, their toilet paper had time to unroll before it hit ground.

There was a fictional account of the invasion of Japan written, based on intelligence estimates and the battle plans of both sides.  The book is “Light as a Feather”.  I can’t remember the author, but it read pretty good.  I’m glad we didn’t have to do that.  I know the revisionists have been hard at work, claiming that Japan was tottering on the brink of collapse, but the fact is the Japanese military was still confused and wanting to fight, even after the second bomb.  They thought the first bomb was some kind of a trick pulled off with lots of incendiaries.  We had already burned several cities and killed lots more people with conventional attacks.  After the second bomb, and lengthy explanations by their physicists, there were barely enough believers to allow the emperor to surrender. 

Well, those are the things that flashed through my mind as I read your recollections.  I appreciated your thoughts and stories.  Thanks again.

I think it explains a lot about our generation’s attitude towards the Jane Fondas and Bill Clintons of the world.

Steve Bufty

I guess I was a lot younger than the rest of you old farts out there when W.W.II broke out.  I was only 3 1/2 when Pearl Harbor was bombed, but I do have a lot of very young memories from during the war.  Some of these have already been touched on by others, but we all have our own unique perspectives.

While visiting for a week with my aunt and uncle and 2 cousins in the Bronx as I did every summer, I was out in the middle of the quadrangle between several apartment buildings watching/helping some of the neighbors working in their “Victory Gardens” ... neat little rows of marked and nurtured vegetables.  From a very young age, I was technically and mechanically inquisitive.  This guy was tending his “crop” with a standard-size cubic foot radio crackling away on the sidewalk.  He saw me staring at the radio and walking all around it ... I was looking for the cord!  He opened it up to show me that it was a “Portable” operating on a battery about the size of a small cinder block.  I was impressed!

I have some spotty memories of air raid wardens and blackout curtains.  On one occasion that peeks out of my primordial memories, I was half way between my row house in Southwest Philly where I grew up and a friend’s house about a block away.  The sirens started wailing, the gas street lights had been turned off, the streets were black, all the houses had their shades drawn, I started running, and bumped smack into a giant Air Raid Warden.  I remember looking up at this towering figure wearing his hard hat and I still picture him as some kind of a caped super hero not unlike Captain Marvel (what ever happened to Captain Marvel - Shazzaaamm).  He reprimanded me for being outside during an air raid, and I ran all the way home crying.

Collecting things for the war effort was fun.  We also saved our bacon fat and then took it to the corner butcher shop for the war effort.  I never could figure out what they needed bacon fat for!!  Now that I think of it, what was a little Jewish kid doing with bacon fat anyway???  To Mom, it was contraband, but we were very very reformed so it was tolerated except on Saturdays.

Another collectable for us “guys on the block” was to rummage around in the trash and scavenge along the street for gum wrappers and cigarette packages.  We would spend hours peeling off the paper and making big balls of “tin foil” to be turned in along with the bacon fat.  Was it really tin foil back then or hadn’t people learned yet how to pronounce that new material called al-you-min-i-um?!

Speaking of tin, one of my chores (which I took great pleasure in as a small boy) was to cut out the bottom of our used tin cans, peel the paper label off the can, place both the top and the bottom lids inside the can, and then SMASH them flat.  Every couple of days or so, it was my chore to take these flattened cans to the collection site on a vacant lot a block or so away.

About halfway through the war, (’43, I was 5) my father was killed in a non-war-related incident. Mom always said he died of a “condition of the heart”.  It wasn’t until years later that I found out that the “condition” was that there was a knife sticking out of it!! (but that’s another story). Somehow he was affiliated with the Coast Guard ... maybe something like the National Guard ... but only on a part-time basis.  I don’t really remember him very much at all.  Anyway, after his death, I very distinctly remember finding his service pistol in a cabinet in the living room.  Mom found me sitting on the living room floor trying to figure out how to put a bullet that I was clutching in my little hand into the gun.  Needless to say, I never saw that gun again.

By war’s end in 45, I was all of about 7. I’ve always been a “collector” of stuff. Our primary means of transportation was the local trolley car.  We would pay the conductor 5 cents and then get a “transfer” to connect with another trolley.  I had a thing for collecting the used stubs from the transfer books.  Why? I don’t know!  But by War’s end, I just happened to have a huge shopping bag heaping full of these stubs from which I had removed all the staples. Not fully comprehending what all the screaming and horn blowing and shouting and celebrating was all about on that August day in ’45 (it was August wasn’t it), I retrieved my treasured bag of transfer stubs, climbed the top of the outside fire escape of a nearby apartment building, and dumped the whole bag of “confetti”.  What a thrill for a little kid to do something like that and not get in trouble for it!!

Bill Bush

W.W.II - I remember Dec. 7th;  All the kids in the neighborhood came down to my house and we spent the day defeating the Japan Navy out on the front lawn.  I also remember the gas stamps (since my dad got extra because of being in the electrical contacting business), sugar shortage, collecting cooking fat and taking it to the market, blackout curtains, my dad was neighbor fire warren, victory gardens, barrage balloons, etc.

When the war was over, the neighbor hung a metal wheel rim from our big tree and we all banged it with metal rods to celebrate.

Mary Cribb

I thought I would tell you the few things I remember about WW II.  I should be able to remember more but my parents never wanted us to worry.  Little did they know not knowing was maybe worse then knowing.  First of all Dad had a education in engineering but was raised by a family near Hannibal (parents were killed and left he and his three sisters orphaned at the age of seven). His mother’s sister raised the girls but couldn’t take William as she didn’t have room for him).  To this day I still resented her for not keeping them all together.  He was the oldest and didn’t mind (so he said) and was still close with all of his sisters.  They adored him.

The family that raised Dad were in Franklin Five and Dime Stores.  When he was old enough he went into the Five & Dime even tho his education was in engineering.  We moved from Hot Springs, Ark. to Aurora, Mo. where at last he had his own store.  Then the war broke out.  Dad was older and not in the service and was drafted (I think he didn’t have a choice) on a top secret project which was later to be called the Manhattan Project.

Life in Aurora was quite different from most places. Our house backed the MFA (Missouri Farmer’s Association).  These people knowing our Dad was away took care of Mom, Nancy and Via.  Via was a farm girl that lived with us as Mom was running the store.  I do remember getting a spanking for pasting the redemption stamps on each flower on the bedroom wall paper.  I remember going to our Aunt Ann’s (Dad’s sister in Hannibal) and seeing four blue star flags in the window.  This was because all four of her sons were alive (Gold if they had died) and in the service.  My cousin Wm. Jr. was one of the pilots that made it through Pearl Harbor. 

Another memory was we had a mini farm and I had this Bantam Rooster named Primadonna.  She rode on the handle bars where ever I went in Aurora.  She and I found a horse loose at the edge of town (Pop. 900) and I was so worried that the Germans would find him and eat him that Nancy and I tried to hide him in our garage.  Mom found out and the men at the MFA found the grateful owner and returned him.

The thing I remember most while Dad was working the Manhattan Project was the kids saying my Dad ran off from us, or that he may even be dead.  We  got letters from him and several times we met him for a few days in Tennessee or Texas.  I never could understand why Mom and Dad always wanted me to go to bed early when we were on these trips.  We were always in a one room hotel room!  Dad was also in Arizona for his work but we never went that far to see him. 

All in all I was a very lucky kid to have been in Aurora as the town kept an eye on us.  I remember well the day the war was over as all the church bells in the valley rang for hours.  My Dad always seemed troubled by the Manhattan Project.  He never wanted to talk about it.  I remember when he came home Truman sent him a gold pen and a certificate that was never worn or hung up. He would only say it was a job that had to be done.

Joe Cefali

Dec. 7, 1941, I was seven years old in Los Angeles when Pearl Harbor was bombed.  Everyone thought Los Angeles would be bombed next, and invaded, and everyone was terrified.  A family friend decided to take their children into the mountains and suggested that I go with them.

My dad enlisted in the First World War and was drafted into the Second World War at age 45.

Marilyn Whiting

Boy you guys sure brought the memories flooding back. I remember W.W.II very vividly. When war was declared we were living on Westminster Ave. and our house sat where the Guard Shack for the Amo Depot is today. The Navy came and told us we had to move immediately and they even found us a house and helped move us. We moved to Hammond Street which backed up to what is McDonnell Douglas now.

I used to go with my little brother to watch all the activities at the Depot and all the military people coming and going. At the time there was very little between the back of our house and the Depot and at night we could see the Sentries making the rounds of the fence. They use to run us off on a daily basis. 

It was all rather scary to a little kid and I hated it when we had the blackouts. My dad was also a block warden and they met at the gas station at the corner of Hammond and Westminster. At the time my dad was working at Terminal Island and would bring all kinds of things home in his thermos like sugar, butter, coffee and Spam.  On a good day he would bring ham and sugar both home. He was working on the dry docks and they would clear the ship and throw all kinds of things overboard. My dad’s car was a 36 Ford.  The driver’s seat pulled up and there was a toolbox under it, which was used for more goodies. Now don’t get the impression my Dad was a bad guy, he just knew all that stuff was going in the garbage and it would feed his family so he took the chance. 

My mother worked in Long Beach at a pickle packing plant (no I’m not making that up) the plant was close to Douglas L.B. and it was always fun when we went to pick her up at Midnight because we got to drive under the camouflage. My brother and I would usually fall asleep on the way over, but as soon as my mom got in the car we knew it was her from the vinegar smell.  I guess you could say that our main diet during the war was Spam, pork and beans and PICKLES. Can’t take them to this day. Isn’t it strange the things you remember. I hadn’t thought about that for years and years.

At night I was always very scared so my parents would let us have the radio on real low .  We got to listen to Amos and Andy or the Shadow which really scared the beegeez out of me.

I had a Uncle that was a foot soldier in the Army and he was wounded and captured by the Germans. We didn’t know what happened to him for a long time. He was held prisoner of war for over 2 years. I can remember the Army coming to tell my Aunt who was living with us that he was missing in action, but I thought they were there to arrest my dad for stealing sugar for me.

By the way, my mom told me recently that the Navy paid us a whopping $350. for the house and lot!! See, some things with the government never change.

Tom Nelson

The descriptions of W.W.II have been very interesting and memory refreshing.  I remember wardens, blackouts, air raid drills and other routines that we endured.  I recall saving bacon fat, newspapers, tin foil , tin cans and other things like many of you described in your memoirs. One thing that I remember saving that no one else has mentioned were soap scraps.  I also remember rationing and the red fibrous tokens.  ( I have no recall of what the tokens were for).  When I went to England in 1954 (USAF),  they were still suffering under the rationing system.  I think it ended that year.  The rationing of gas was no big deal for my family because in those days the public transportation in Los Angeles was excellent and there weren’t so many people and cars.  Jeanette, her mother and father, and brother, lived on a farm/ranch.  Other family members (uncles, aunts, etc.) didn’t.  She remembers that other family members treated their house as a gas station.

Although I was too young to understand and don’t remember very well, the Japanese attack on PH occurred in the middle of the night (PST).  I recall my mother herding us into the hall of our house.  I don’t know how she knew that the attack was happening.  The hall was in the center of the house and purportedly the strongest place in the house.  That is where we went whenever there was an air raid drill too.

I remember the anti-aircraft gun emplacements along the palisades of Palos Verdes.  I also remember hearing the firing of those guns during their exercises and air raid drills.  We never knew whether we were really under attack or not.  Jeanette says that she remembers having nightmares about the Japanese invading their house.

I remember my uncle and one of my cousins going off to fight in the war. When my uncle left he gave me all of the spare change that he had left, 11 cents.  That was enough to buy a loaf of bread in those days.  My cousin worked at Douglas Aircraft, hoping to avoid the draft by working in an A/C factory.  It didn’t work.  The Douglas badge was similar in  those days as it was when I started at Douglas in 1957.  Families that had members fighting in the war had small banners that they hung in their windows.  The banners had stars in the center of them.  Each star represented the number of family members in the service.  If that/those family members were killed in the war, some feature of the banner turned black,  I think it was the border, but I don’t remember very well.

I remember my Japanese neighbors mysteriously disappearing early in the war.  In those days, I didn’t understand why.  They were very nice people.

Jeanette remembers many establishments (business’s) with signs posted “Closed for the Duration”.  The duration lasted an awfully long time.  Now that she mentions it, I remember it too.  She also reminded me that when the air raid practices occurred at school, we had to crawl under our desks.  If we were on the playground, we were herded into the auditorium to crawl under the seats.

I remember traffic signals that were mechanical and were on poles on each corner of an intersection.   When the signal changed a sign would appear out from the housing.  The sign said “go” or  “stop”.  This type of signal disappeared in favor of signal lights that hung from a cable over the middle of the intersection.  The metal from the old signals was used to support the war effort.

My great uncle, who fought in W.W.I, used to tack up maps that were published in the newspapers in his garage.  These maps would show the front lines and activities of the war.  He had quite a history of the progress of the war.

I remember playing war with my friends in the open fields near my house.  (In those days there were lots of open fields in LA, especially WLA where I lived.  Can you believe it?)  We always had trouble determining who were going to be the bad guys.  Sometimes we fought against an imaginary enemy.  We dug fox holes and made bunkers. The fields were full of weeds.  We would pull them, being careful to maintain the dirt clods around the roots.  They made great hand grenades because of their ballistics.  Also, when they impacted the target, the dirt clod would shatter like an explosion.   After the war was officially over, we kids continued it anyway.  We had some Japanese move back into the neighborhood and we had some Germans living there too.   We made them be the bad guys.

For some reason, the end of the war didn’t leave a big impression on me but I remember a false Japanese surrender, several months before VJ day.  Jeanette vividly remembers the end of the war.  When she heard the announcement on the radio, she dashed out the back door to shout it out to her father.  In her excitement she tripped over an exposed root of a fig tree and sprained her ankle.

Something that a lot of people don’t know is that the Japanese attempted to penetrate our coast with mini-submarines.  Those subs got in real close.  Many of them were sunk accidentally when they ran into underwater obstacles.  I think they were used for reconnaissance but they were all armed.  (I don’t remember what they were armed with.) When I was going to college, I met a veteran who was a member of a team that recovered some of those subs.

Flint Smith

Ruth was trying to find a WW II photo of her in the Victory garden and instead came across an envelope from the Office of Price Administration to her grandfather.  It contains his fuel oil ration for 1945 and a pamphlet of how to use it.  The reason it’s around, of course, is that the war was over and rationing was discontinued.  We also have earlier stubs but no stamps for those years.  The pamphlet says:

********************

         YOUR FUEL OIL RATION FOR THE YEAR

         It must last until September 1946

HERE’S WHAT IT IS .....

There are two kinds of coupons.  Gallon coupons are worth the number printed on them.  Unit coupons are usually worth 10 gallons a unit.  OPA may raise or lower this unit value whenever more or less oil is available for home heating.

HERE’S HOW TO USE IT ....

Unit coupons are divided into five periods.  they can only be used after the date on which they become valid. Gallon coupons are good all year.  They should be saved for making change and helping your oil dealer deliver a full tank load when you need oil and have only one or two valid coupons left.

SAVE FOR SUMMER HOT WATER

*************

HELP YOUR DEALER HELP YOU

Although he is doing his best, wartime conditions have made it tough for your dealer to deliver fuel oil.  Your dealer is short of help.  His trucks are wearing out.  He has trouble getting tires.  Here is what you can do to help him make deliveries to you”

1.  Place your order for “summer fill-up” as soon as you receive you new ration.

2.  Do not request special deliveries.

3.  If you do not deposit coupons with your dealer, place orders in advance.  Be sure that you have coupons enough to cover each delivery, and be sure that someone is at home when a delivery of oil is expected.

4.  Budget your ration wisely so that you do not run out before the end of the heating period.

******************************

One of the panels has the following, indicating that the emphasis is now on the Pacific war.

*******************:

FUEL OIL IS OUR STRONGEST ALLY !

America and her armed forces are burning one million barrels a day more petroleum than on December 7, 1941.  Distances in the Pacific are vast.  Shipping lines stretch far longer than in the Atlantic.  And our fighting fleet today surpasses the fleets of all other nations combined.  This great armada lives on fuel oil. 

The American invasion fleet of  800 ships which successfully moved in on the Japs in Iwo Jima burned enough fuel oil to make a train of 10,000 gallon tank cars extending 238 miles.

Oceans of fuel oil are fighting for a United Nations’ Victory.  War needs have first call.  Do YOUR bit to swell the tidal wave of fuel oil that is swamping the Empire of Japan.

*****************************

There was also a panel that said:

WATCH YOUR NEWSPAPER for Fuel Oil Consumption Rate

Then it shows a corner of a newspaper weather report

The Weather Today

Clearing and Colder

You should have used not more than 22% of your fuel oil allotment to date.

Many newspapers carry this information with the weather report on the front page — or it may appear with the ration calendar inside the paper

******************************************

 END OF PAMPHLET

Notice the official gov’t use of the term “Japs” and notice mention of a “United Nations’ Victory”.  It was coming into being.

On the back of the pamphlet are eight little cartoons of “8 WAYS TO CONSERVE OIL”

Another interesting document Ruth found is her grandfather’s federal income tax returns for 1942 and 1943.  In 1942, the header on the return says “INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX RETURN” while the 1943 return is an “INDIVIDUAL INCOME AND VICTORY TAX RETURN”. 

1942   Normal - 6%  after a $1200 personal exemption

1943  Normal - computed the same way.  But in addition there was a 5% surtax. 

AND

Victory tax (a separate column) of 5%

*******************************

It must have been pretty scary for adults; especially town people.  Planning your home heating so you didn’t run out during a cold spell must have been tough.  My father heated the old farm house with coal but I think that was rationed, too, wasn’t it?  If it got too cold, we could just burn more wood in the kitchen stove.  Now that I think about it,  fuel rationing was probably why we only turned on the radiator in the bathroom for short periods ...... like for the Saturday night bath.

I remember I had a ration book for food but my mother had control of it, of course. 

I have a 160K  JPEG file of the pamphlet and stamps if anybody would like to see them.  The stamps are green.  I tried to compress it down to a smaller file but by the time it got down to a 60 K file, it wasn’t really readable because the type was too small.  The original scanned image of stamps and pamphlet was 13 inches long.

Don Black

I am impressed with the ROF’s many recollections of WW II, and your interest in talking about your experiences. I think the most interesting account was Flint’s concerning the record setting paper drive using his father’s horse and wagon. I have trouble picturing Flint in that role, but I am sure it is an accurate accounting. Who would make up a story like that? Actually I relate to that very well. Some of my happiest childhood experiences were spending my summers (circa 1930/35) on my grandfather’s 300 acre dairy farm in Wisconsin. The only reliable transportation the farm had at that time was horse and wagon. Lots of wonderful memories of a simple and carefree life.

Even though I was about ten years older than you guys on Pearl Harbor Day, I can not remember the specific conditions under which I heard the news. I remember V/E day and V/J day very distinctly . On V/E day I was basking on the beach in Miami. On V/J day I was on the Army Air Corps base at Long Beach waiting to ferry a C-54 to India via the Pacific. It never happened. That was to be my “round the world flight”. I was quite disappointed, and felt that the Japanese could have held out for a few more days.

Doyle Lockwood

Comments on comments on WW-II:  I believe the Pearl Harbor attack was at 8:00 AM local time.  That would have put it around noon PST.

Re the use of the A-bomb.  John is right.  The Japanese surrender was, by no means, a certain thing -  probably not even a likely thing - without the use of the bomb.  There were many in the Japanese military that wanted to follow the samurai tradition and fight to the last man, woman and child.  Even after the bomb, it was a close thing.  The recording that the Emperor made, announcing the surrender, had to be smuggled from the palace to a radio station, to avoid interception by the Army faction opposed to surrender. 

Truman had no choice.  No Commander in Chief in his right mind would have withheld such a potent weapon, knowing that he would be condemning thousands of his own men to death.  Such an act would have been tantamount to treason and if the facts came out, would have led to his being tarred and feathered and hung by his heels like Mussolini.

Dennis Fitzgerald

I don’t remember the start of WW-II being as I am MUCH younger that the rest of you. I had two uncles in the service, my Dad’s younger Brother (Navy) and my Mother’s younger Brother (Marines) I remember them coming home with “exotic” gifts from far off lands but not much else. My dad was working at Oldsmobile in Lansing Mich. as a draftsman/designer and had a critical skills deferment. At that time they where making airplane sub assemblies and tank parts, not cars.

My dad had a keen interest in aviation and had written a weekly aviation column aimed at young people in the Lansing paper. He was in the Civil Air Patrol and was learning to fly. He had soloed but I don’t think he was ever a licensed pilot. He had a great collection of cutaway drawings of almost every airplane known to man. 

My mother had an Uncle that was a civilian running a store on Wake Island when the war broke out. The island was overrun by the Japanese and he spent the entire war in a Japanese prison camp. He visited us when he got out and by then I was old enough that I can remember his prison camp stories. They ate fish head soup and spent all of their spare time trying to escape, digging elaborate tunnels out of the compound. He gave my dad a copy of the book Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. The book was dedicated to those who didn’t make it back. Turns out that he was in prison camp with those that where captured and they had all signed to book beside their name on the dedication page under the heading “we’re back now” - a real collectors item. My dad gave me the book but I made the mistake of taking to my dorm room in college where it got ripped off.

Robert Kale

Some time ago I started to write my WW2 remems and it grew into something else-gave a copy to my daughter who said “I didn’t know you grew up in a ghetto” and encouraged me to write some more-haven’t yet but may do some more. So in response to someone’s comment-I think Pearson’s- here is what I got.

I find these WW2 memories just fascinating since they are mostly rural and small town experiences of persons whose family were in this country several generations.

My memories are as a kid in a Jewish ghetto (of course I didn’t know it was a ghetto then) in Brooklyn populated by immigrants and their first generation children. The kids were bi-lingual, Yiddish and English (some of us could even speak Hebrew since we all went to Hebrew school-after which we played basketball and stickball) while most parents spoke Yiddish at home and very little English. Yiddish was the language of the local merchants. Contracts tho were in English. I remember that because whenever my grandfather made a deal which was written, he would go out in the street and find a stranger who could read English and have that guy read it to him.

My parents, having come to the USA as young children and educated in public school, spoke Yiddish to my grandparents and many of our neighbors, but English was the language of our home until Grandpa & Grandma (Zida & Baba) arrived, which was daily as they lived nearby.

 Zider had to check Mom’s refrig. to make sure she was keeping Kosher. Mom was very pragmatic; respect Zida but feed the kids what they would eat. I was a non-eater. Somehow she knew when they were coming (I don’t remember Zider ever calling first) and hid the forbidden stuff before he got there. Do you believe this-even as I write it I find it hard.  He wouldn’t eat there if the house didn’t “keep kosher”.

This meant that Mom kept 3 sets of dishes and utensils-one for dairy-one for meat and a third for the high holy days. Of course some foods were forbidden to be in the house. That was the subject of his refrig. searches. After awhile Dad tried to discourage this practice but Mom would have none of that- so when Zida came over Dad went into the living room. Oh, the kitchen was the center of activity and Dad went to the living room to escape.

Funny thing about Mom -she would fight with the public school over what she thought was undue discipline-but when I came home from Hebrew school complaining that the rabbi hit me- she would say “The rabbi wouldn’t hit you if you didn’t deserve it”-and hey guys this rabbi believed in corporal punishment- he used a huge( it seemed huge then) ruler and bashed us on the open palm of the hand with it as punishment for not knowing our aliff, bes, gimmel, dollard (A,B,C&Ds). His approach was a variant of Mom’s “potch in tuches geyen kup” (a smack in the ass goes to the head). Eventually our family moved to LA including Baba, Zida and all their children including our family.

Enuf of that -now to the war-I don’t have any specific memories of  Pearl Harbor day-but I do remember other things-the most significant was the fact that my oldest brother was drafted into the army and my older brother joined the maritime service. Since they were 6 years apart my older brother was drafted early after the outbreak and the other entered the maritime service shortly before the end of the war.

My most vivid memories were the worry and anguish Mom and Dad endured while my oldest brother was in Europe. He was in training at Rutgers University to be a dentist (the Army needed dentists?) and then before finishing was sent to Europe as a corpsman. Many of my brother’s friends were in the service and there were many deaths and injuries.  Whenever the Western Union man was in the neighborhood everyone shuddered-and word traveled fast.

People put something with a star on it in their window if anyone in their home was in the service. The color of the star was changed if the service man lost his life or was wounded.  Many fathers were also drafted-My father had a draft card but was not drafted-he was 38 in 1941.

We were fortunate since my brother survived and was not wounded although he served on the front line with the Rainbow Division- I think of the 10th Army- to this day my brother does not talk of that time and I have been reluctant to ask. Dad kept a map of Western Europe on the inside of the pantry door on which he tried to keep track of where my brother was, using newspaper reports and letters-although the letters were heavily censored. There was also graffiti -the one I remember most was “Open a Western Front”-I did not know what that meant. 

I also remember that food was not easy to get-we had ration books- meat was near impossible as were dairy products-each family was allowed a specific amount of each but only with the ration books or were they stamps- do you suppose that’s were the S&H green stamps came from-does anyone remember those?

We even had a victory garden- trees do grow in Brooklyn. We had a little patch of ground (about 8 by 8 feet with a tree in the middle) in the front of the house which was closed off from the street with a low lying wall/fence and Mom and Dad tried to grow veggies. I cannot say we had great harvests but we did get some stuff from the garden. 

My father had a car that he used in his work and gas was always a problem. Every so often, the Dodgers would organize a newspaper or scrap metal drive and my friends and I would tie up bundles of paper or metal, get 20 cents from Mom and take the train to Ebbetts Field (Brooklyn’s Dodger Stadium)-turn the stuff in and get into the bleachers free for that day’s game. We used 5 cents for the train (subway) each way and the other 10 cents for food.

Mom also saved bacon grease and turned that stuff in somewhere for the war effort. See Steve we also had bacon even tho the kitchen was under Zida’s watch-we called it big grivena (fried chicken fat-yummy)-so Zida wouldn’t know if I slipped and said what I wanted to eat around him - I really thought that’s what it was-resourceful my Mom.

As I look back on these times- there was a sort great anxiety hanging over this community based on what people heard (most believed it was not true) was going on in Europe. This was a Jewish immigrant community with family (usually parents, brothers, sisters, etc.) all over Europe. Some adults apparently knew what was going on (others hoped it was not true) based on what they heard from family and friends. I think that is the reason my brother does not talk of the war since I know he went thru Dachow and maybe other camps. I know that my Zider & Baba lost their families (parents, sisters, brothers, etc.) there as I understand they were from large families. Some of them apparently made it to Israel -much later my brother was able to track some there.

When the war ended there was jubilation that lasted several days. Each block had a block party each on a different day with food/drink and much music -it seemed to go on and on and on. Tables and chairs were set up down the middle of the street at which we ate-the food and drink just seem to appear out of the houses and businesses. Musicians roamed the area and there was singing and dancing wherever they went. Needless to say much of the music was Yiddish.

I had an uncle (Dad’s brother) who was in the Navy in the Pacific and aboard ship when our fleet steamed into Tokyo Bay after the surrender-he said the sky was “black” with our aircraft and the fleet was enormous. He also said that on the way back to the USA all weapons aboard ship were dumped overboard- planes included.  Another uncle (Mom’s brother) was in the Army and part of a tank crew. Fortunately none were hurt.

Epilogue:

As you can see, for the most part, we correspondents didn’t suffer directly due to the war.  Rather, we were immersed in suffering, in that the adults all around us all suffered.  Friends and family were in danger, were being killed in combat, and in some cases murdered, by our enemies.

It was a tough time, but a time that brought out some of the best in our nation.  Personally, I long for the national spirit, purpose and faith in national destiny of that time. 

John Pearson

Another Note on WWII