Part 4: "The Home Front" Transcript

[narrator]   Utah World War II Stories: The Home Front was made possible in part by:
The Stephen G. and Susan E. Denkers Family Foundation
The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation
The Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund  and…
The Willard L. Eccles Charitable Foundation.
Additional funding was provided by:
The Stewart Education Foundation
The C. Comstock Clayton Foundation
Kennecott Utah Copper
The University of Utah
The Utah Humanities Council and…the contributing members of KUED.
Thank you.

Emmett “Cyclone” Davis:  Really the driving force of winning at war was the civilians here in the United States, when they all reacted to what they had to do, and they changed their jobs to build airplanes and to build ships and to build tanks.  And you know, in 1942 we couldn’t build automobiles so we started building tanks and to give those American boys something to fight with.  And so when you get a whole nation all pointed in the proper direction, you know, they couldn’t do anything except achieve victory.

Barbara Tanner:  You were willing to do whatever you could to save those boys, and of course we didn't know for sure if we'd win the war, but everybody felt positive we would because, after all, we had great confidence in America and we were working and sending all kinds of materials over.  But there were a lot of precarious times in that war.

Gayle Macey:  But it was a real effort on everybody’s part, because we, we knew that we had to fight a war to keep our freedom.

[narrator]   There’s not just one story of World War II…there are as many stories as there were men and women to fight.  Over 70,000 Utahns served…and for each one in uniform there were thirty men, women and children back home willing to change their lives to create a means to win.

Rick Randle:  As the United States entered WWII, everyone in Utah found themselves swept up by world events and thrown into extraordinary circumstances.  The government called for sacrifices large and small.  Rationing of food, gas, and raw materials, and a massive increase in production of munitions, tanks, ships and planes all played a great part in our victory.

Hello, I’m Rick Randle.  Tonight KUED proudly presents the last of our four part series, Utah WWII Stories.  Utah citizens share their remarkable stories from the Home Front.

Gayle Macy:  Before December 7th, I was a young teenage girl just having a great time playing with my friends in the neighborhood.  I was only 14 at the time and when Pearl Harbor was bombed we were in church, we came home from church and we heard the news on the radio and it was like it was in our own backyard—we were so devastated.

Norma Day:  I grew up in Monroe, Utah, and at the time of Pearl Harbor our postmaster's son was on the Arizona.  Everybody felt kind of like it was someone in their own family because, you know, this was so unusual.  You didn't know people who had been killed in a war.

Gayle Greetham:  I didn't at that time know where I was and particularly didn't care.  However, you know, like all children who are twelve years old, I was immediately unhappy with the Japanese for having done that.

Howard Randle:  I was thirteen years old when the war started, so I came home and listened to President Roosevelt give his day of infamy speech and called my friend on the phone and we talked about the war and we decided that we could beat those Japanese in about two weeks.

Rick Randle:  So you thought that it wasn't going to take that long?

Howard Randle:  No (laughs)

LauRene Buswell:  We were at Brigham Young University when the war broke out and we were on campus at the time.  Everyone around us, we were aware those men were wanting to get their names on the list and  go wherever.  It was a very patriotic time.

Norma Day:  All the men and, well the boys in my class then were eager to go.
LauRene Buswell:  And it was a heart-rending situation for parents to have their boys leave and and yet they wanted to.  Those who were 4-F's because of health or whatever,  felt bad.

Howard Randle:  That was the day when certainly all of our lives started to change.

Dean Hurst:  Ogden's Railroad Depot, of course was a crossroad of the West.  Trains routing through east and west, north and south for that matter, came through Ogden on the infamous 25th Street. 

Don Buswell:  It was the busiest place you can imagine—one train after the other full of soldiers both directions.

LauRene Buswell:  I remember fellows with their packs on their shoulder and everyone was busy going and coming and everyone was so happy as laymen to greet them, even though they didn't know them personally, to welcome them or say goodbye to them or wish them luck.  It was a heart-warming experience.

Dean Hurst:  It was a nostalgic time.  There were so many farewells.

Gayle Macy:  One time my husband was being transferred from California to Florida and the trained stopped in Ogden and he sent me a letter later and he said, "Oh I wish I could have gotten off that train.  If I would have had fifty dollars I would have got off that train and I would have come home and taken a risk of getting thrown in jail."  He said, "They wouldn't let me off of the train.  They kept me on the train."

Dean Hurst:  25th Street was finally labeled "off limits" and the MP's and the SP's patrolled that.  They didn't act fast enough and there weren't enough of them because you have a train to unload with two or three hundred soldiers or sailors going east or west, and it was pretty hard to control, but it was wild and wooley.  And one of our favorite diversions as a teenager was to park our car on 25th Street and watch the girls work the streets.  It was open and about and the reason that Ogden developed such a reputation. 

LauRene Buswell:  When I boarded the train my father shook his finger at me and said, "Don't you let any of those soldiers convince you to go anywhere with them, or eat dinner with them or anything."  (laughs)

Barbara Tanner:  I remember the evening that I thought I was probably going to deliver and I sat on the steps of my mother's house and it was a dreadfully lonesome feeling.  I knew that there was this possibility he may not come back and I knew I might have two children and have to support them.

Gladys Breinholt:  I was going back to stay with my parents and they told him that they would be going to port of embarkation.  I went down to the train where they were loading and along with hundreds of others said goodbye to him, and that was hard and that was the last time I saw him until the war was over and he came home.

Barbara Tanner:  And then it was a week or two before the baby was due that he got orders to go overseas and it was a real surprise and shock.  We had about two days I think before he had to leave.  Then I didn't hear from him again for over a month,  and he couldn't tell me where he was so I didn't know.

Gladys Breinholt:  He was never free to tell me where he was or what he was doing and which battles he was in or anything, but you know listening to the news and knowing what he did, I often could guess.

Barbara Tanner:  They wouldn't let me send any message to him either.  I had a number.  You always had a number where you could send any kind of information, but it wasn't like a telephone call, and you didn't know where the number was going, you know you just had a number and it was suppose to reach him.  So finally we got this short telegraph that we could send information and you were only allowed to say… I think it was ten words you could use and so we just said, "Mother and Susan doing fine" or something like that… we mentioned Susan because then he would know it was a girl.

Barbara Tanner:  You know to a person that's away from home and doesn't have any information, it's terribly important to them to know personal, you know, information.

(Letter from Wooley Macy)
Dearest Gayle, I received your letter today and it sure was good to hear from you again.  I sure hope the time will hurry and come so that I can get home and see you all again.  Boy Logan High sure is going to town in football.

(Letter from Pat Patterson)
Dear mother and dad, I know you've been worried about me but you must also have found out before now my status.  The entire crew escaped injury and are safe now, all prisoners of war.

(Letter from Ray Matheny)
Dear mother, dad, Maureen and grandma, I hope you received my other cards.  I would appreciate some big Hershey with almonds chocolate bars.

(Letter from Pat Patterson)
Also send candy, chocolate and saccharine and a good pipe or two.

(Letter from Ora May Hyatt)
Dearest folks at home, Ten months ago today Elaine and I joined the ANC… I was surely surprised and happy to hear about Genovieve's baby.  Thanks for the pictures and the clippings.  Your letters always breathe of home and I love them so.  Lots of love,
Ora May.

Lots of love, Sergeant Wooley.
Your loving son Raymond.
Above all don't worry at all.  Everything is OK, and the treatment is swell, more later, love Gayle.

Don Buswell: When we got mail that was something different—sometimes you'd get two or three bags of mail you know because we hadn't had mail on a ship for months, and these fellows got pretty discouraged when they didn't get anything from home.  They were real happy when they finally did get some mail.

LauRene Buswell:  We would buy the stationary to send and it had a red, white and blue edging and it folded a certain way so we couldn't write a very long letter.  I hadn't thought about that, but that was a proper way to mail a letter to him.

Gayle Macey:  All of his letters that he wrote to me were actually monitored—they were actually read before they were sent.  I had one letter where a whole paragraph is cut out—the things that he said about going overseas that they didn't want me to know.

Norma Day:  Someone censored the letters and would cut out or black out words that you weren't suppose to say.

Don Buswell:  One of my jobs on the ship was to be the censor of any mail that went off of the ship.  Most of the men were very careful about what they said.  They were instructed.  They couldn't tell them where we were, what we were doing, any of our plans, anything about that.  They could write a homey letter you know, but no military advice at all.

Jean Fernelius:  Before he ever left to go out, we had set up a code and so he was able to tell me quite a bit by using this code, so I pretty much knew where he was quite a bit of the time.  When I'd read the paper, I knew if it was effecting what was going on with him.

Don Buswell:  I had this one fellow, Robert Scwartzbach.  He would try me with every letter.  He'd send… in his stuff, he knew that I was censoring and they wouldn't get through, but he exposed every secret that he knew about and I'd have to send them back to him and have him write them again.  He had a little fun with me you know.

LauRene Buswell:  I don't recall any of my… well there might have been a word or two, come to think about it,  I think there was a word…

Rick Randle:  That's because your husband was doing the censoring.

LauRene Buswell: (laughs)

Gayle Macey:  Well after Pearl Harbor of course everyone knew we were in war.  The President declared war and so everybody was involved in it.  Everybody--not only those who went to fight, but those in the community.

(Newsreel)
Here's a plan that's fair and square.  Everybody get their share.  No more griping anywhere.  Get the point Mrs. Brown?  One for you and one for me.  It's as clear as ABC.  Share alike for victory.  Get the point Mrs. Brown?  That's what a rationing plan is for…

Gayle Macey:  We knew we had rationing then because we weren't prepared to go to war.  Our country had to cut back on everything.

Barbara Tanner:  It all came kind of naturally in a way because we'd all gone through the Depression and it was still really depression days until the war came.

(Newsreel)
She gets hers and you get yours.  Get the point Mrs. Brown?

Gladys Breinholt:  There was a shortage of everything almost because as I said everything was being used to produce things for the war and for the soldiers.

Barbara Tanner:  There was still that very frugal attitude toward most things so that having to be rationed during the war didn't seem like any great sacrifice to me.

Howard Randle: Being 13 years old I didn't make that many sacrifices myself but I started working at my dad's grocery store on about 3rd South and 8th East, Randle's Market.  Produce wasn't rationed, but meat, milk and canned goods were all certainly rationed.

Maurine Draper:  We had sugar rationing and all of these things had different colored stamps.

Howard Randle:  They had two ration books; I think it was a red one for meat and a blue one for canned goods.

Verna Van Etten:  We'd get so much a month and we'd tear one of these little stamps out and we'd take it to the grocery store to get butter, sugar and meat.

Rick Randle:  One of the interesting things there was trying to check people out.  We had one little adding machine that we would add the totals up and then at that time they had little tax tokens, they had aluminum tax tokens so we had to figure the price, the ration books and the tax tokens and make change for them.

Barbara Tanner:  And we had meat rationing and I remember worrying, and I used to send packages over sometimes too to supplement the food that I thought maybe Norm wasn't getting, but then I found out later, being an officer he got to eat in the officer's quarters and they ate pretty well, and I think (laughs) they ate better than we did.

Norma Day:  When I was in the Navy we had everything that they… but I used to go to Shipp's store and buy soap and other things and send to my mother.

Rick Randle:  Because she couldn't get them where you could?

Norma Day:  Because she couldn't get them.

Howard Randle:  I think the ones that had the biggest sacrifices were the older people.  A little old lady, Mrs. Wilson, use to come into our store.  She was between 80 and 90 years old and toddling around and she would come in and order a pound of butter and she lived alone.  Her ration book only called for a square of butter every two weeks, I think, and she would come in every three days and ask for a pound of butter.  I would patiently explain to her about the rationing system and she would nod her head and she would get it and three days later she would be in and order a pound of butter.

Verna Van Etten:  Margarine… it came in a plastic bag with a small pellet inside that was yellow color and you would kneed and mold the bag and it would make yellow margarine.  That's what we had because butter again was safed for the war effort. 

Gayle Greetham:  Candy was hard to come by.  Chewing gun was definitely hard to come by.  If you heard that somebody had chewing gum at one of the drug stores, you hot-footed up there and got some.

Verna Van Etten:  Leather… I remember my mother wearing canvas shoes.  For some reason that sticks out in my mind. 

Howard Randle:  We didn't have any problem with the rationing, people understood the rationing.  What we had problems with was cokes.  (laughs)  So what we tried to do was keep them for our best customers, and so we would limit them to one six-pack of coca-cola, You would get people riding around to each little store in the area picking up as much coke as they could buy and my uncle almost got into a fistfight with this guy when he told him he would only sell him one six-pack of coke.  He turned to him and said, "Well you're a Nazi!" (laughs)

Norma Day:  I know there was gasoline rationing, but my father never owned a car so we didn't have to worry about that. 

Gayle Greetham:  If the family wanted to take a ride on Sunday it was only if you saved up enough ration stamps for your Sunday trips. 

Howard Randle:  It wasn't much.  I think the A-rationing was three or four gallons a week.  They had three types of rationing stickers that you'd put on your car—and A, B and C.  A was the least amount of gas just for the general public running around, B, I believe, was for business owners, and C that was for war plant workers.

Barbara Tanner:  A lot of people had vegetable gardens and they'd share their vegetables.

(Newsreel)
Here they are… America's answer to the war crime food problem—victory garden.  From coast to coast you and your neighbors have done a magnificent job of getting down to earth and coaxing out of it the very last vitamin and mineral vital to the nation's food supply.

Mont Michelson:  Everybody during the war was encouraged to have a victory garden to raise some of your own food and to provide a means not only with some of the food, or a lot of the food being diverted to the services, but also it was much cheaper if you had your own victory garden to sustain yourself.

Barbara Tanner:  We saved everything.  We even saved string.  Mother would roll up a ball of string and we'd keep adding string to it.  We'd take string to the grocery store.

Verna Van Etten:  I do remember saving string and I have no idea why.
Norma Day:  And the foil, you know, you weren't suppose to throw foil away.  You put it in a little ball and turn it in like you do newspapers now.

Verna Van Etten:  When gum came in a five number pack, the gum was wrapped in white paper and coated in aluminum foil.  We would peel that off and saved it until it was in a big ball.  I have no idea whatever happened to the string or the foil but I knew we had to save it.

Gayle Macey:  We collected tin cans.  The tin cans were used to make curettes to put morphine in for the soldiers. 

Howard Randle:  And the scrap drives, the young guys would go around and collect tires and metal for the scraps drives for the war effort.

(Newsreel)
Saving is as easy as squandering.  You give us the scrap.  We'll turn it into tanks.  We'll turn it into planes.  We'll turn it into jeeps.  We'll turn it into guns.  Then our fighting men will have enough and on time.

Howard Randle:  We'd go out and pick up any old tires and junk that we could find if we could get something to haul it in which wasn’t very… you'd use a wheelbarrow sometimes.

Rick Randle:  And there was a shortage of rubber I think too.

Howard Randle:  Oh a terrific shortage of rubber.

(Newsreel)
If we don't get rubber we'll have to stop making good tanks.  Because we haven't enough rubber for our tanks, we have to use steel treads.  We also need rubber tires for jeeps and planes.  They require a vast amount.  We can't dream up new rubber for them.  We must rely more heavily on scrap rubber, your scrap rubber.  Much of it lies idle in the home.  People still haven't got the habit of salvaging old rubber.  See what you can find in medicine chests, hot water bottles.  In the kitchen you can dig up ice trays.  Around the house pick up all sorts of rubber accessories.  Some of us haven't rubber.  Practically all of us have fats.  Fats make nitroglycerin for shells.  With fats our housewives can add to our armaments instead of to our garbage pails.  Save the grease from cooking.  Deep fats. Pan drippings.  Broiler drippings.  The housewife strains this into a tin container holding at least a pound.  She keeps this in the ice box until it is full.

Howard Randle:  The women kept their grease and fat and I'm not sure what they did with it.

(Newsreel)
…She takes it to her butcher.  He acts as collector of fats.  He buys it from her at the fixed government price.  The fats then go into the making of nitroglycerin and the nitro from two pounds of fat means five shots from an anti-tank gun.

Gayle Macey:  You know we sort of got into it in school.  We talked about it a lot.  We bought saving stamps.

(Newsreel)
If we are to win this war, every penny that can be spared must go into war savings stamps and bonds.  That's why you'll see the minutemen wherever you turn.

Mont Mickelson:  And all over the city were these huge posters of Uncle Sam to buy war bonds and I bought some that I could afford at the time and I'm sure everyone else did.

Howard Randle:  They'd have the big rallies to buy savings bonds and the kids would pay ten cents for a saving stamp. 

Verna Van Etten:  I remember in school our teachers would sell red or dark pink stamps that we pasted in a small book and when they were finished then we could save them for ten years or whatever the time was and we could turn that in then for a war bond totaling $25 and it originally totaled $18.75 but when you kept it for that ten years it was $25.

Dean Hurst:  One of the unique things they did that kind of tied into the dearth of male students at Weber College was that we would have auctions where we would collect either war bonds and/or stamps and then have some of the most popular girls and boys in demand and you would put them up for auction.  And I remember I had a friend who, not of my own doing, but was able to get me a number of books instead of stamps.  I was bidding big-time.  I was up in the hundreds for a date with a young lady who would never have gone with me in a hundred thousand years.

(Newsreel)
"Gosh, my last pair… now what will I do?"  "Buy another pair foolish."  "Are you kidding?  You can't get silk for love nor money."

Rick Randle:  What about silk stockings?

Verna Van Etten:  Oh, there was no such thing (laughs).

Norma Day:  You couldn't get nylon.  They were using the nylon for parachutes.

Gladys Breinholt:  The ones that you bought were stretchy rayon or something.

Norma Day:  We called them Navy nylons and they were gross… a kind of cotton-ish.  And they even had a kind of orange tint to them, and they called them, we called them Navy nylons. 

Howard Randle:  You'd go downtown and you'd see two-block lines of women standing in line for that long to go in and buy a pair of nylons at the clothing store.
Gladys Breinholt:  Anytime you saw a line gathered in front of a store or something, you'd almost always go get in it, no matter what, what it was they had that day that you could get you thought you needed it—could use it pretty soon if you didn't need it right at the moment.

Verna Van Etten:  They had leg make-up and they would paint with an eyebrow pencil a seam up the back of the leg and that's what they had because there were no silk stockings.

Howard Randle:  One woman I saw drew mesh stockings (laughs) on her legs.  I understand it now because I know women better than I did then.

(Newsreel)
Fifty-four million men and women… more Americans than ever in our history are working today more and more on war production jobs.  Now thirteen civilian workers back up each man in the fighting forces.  This is total war-- everybody's war.

Norma Day:  I went to work at Remington Arms.  It was out on Redwood Road and I guess 17th South.

Doug Howard:  My mother in-law who was a dainty little thing, you know she was really something.  She'd never done anything like that in her life but she figured that it was her patriotic duty to do something for the war effort and she donned her pants, her slacks and off she went to work out there.  She didn't know what the heck she was doing, but she was helping and they assigned her to inspecting bullets, tracer bullets.

Norma Day:  I think that everybody was happy to be working there and I don't think it was because you couldn't find another job, it was just a nice place to work and you did feel like you were doing something to help.

Rick Randle:  And they worked, as I understand 24 hours a day.

Doug Howard:  Twenty-four hours a day seven; 24/7, three different shifts.

Norma Day:  There was a sign that said, "A slip of the lip can sink a ship."  So you see we really weren't supposed to talk about what we were doing there.

Doug Howard:  I don't remember how many people were employed out there at the arms plant.  There was 30-caliber, a 50-caliber and I'm not sure.  I think there was another one out there that they made these bullets.

Norma Day:  I worked in the 30-caliber building.  I was assigned to this clip machine and if I'm not mistaken we would hand-feed the bullets one at a time into this slot and then a gal would pull the little crank down and it would clip the bullets into a clip.  Then after I left that clip machine is when I was soldering the lids on cases of ammunition.  Because after they left the clip machine then someone put the clips in bandolier.  And after they were in these bandolier, and in the boxes, then we would solder the lid on those boxes. We'd write little messages with our names.

Rick Randle:  Inside the box?

Norma Day:  On the lid.

Rick Randle:  On the top of the lid?

Norma Day:  On the top of the lid after we finished soldering it.  I don't think we were supposed to do that but we did and, hoping that some of the soldiers would see it.

Rick Randle:  What kind of messages?  Do you remember what the messages were?

Norma Day:  Oh, "good luck" and then we'd write our names and I don't think we put our addresses because that would have been a bit too much.
Maurine Draper: There wasn't too much to do in Manti.  We fished and we went out camping a lot.  It was a little town of 1500 people at that time.  I worked at the Manti parachute plant, just off of Main Street.  They hired people from as far south as Escalante and maybe St. George.  They would hire whoever they could get.  They were making a lot of chutes at that time.  They were nylon and the employees who were cutters would cut the parachutes.  I think there were three pieces… and they would sew them together with two needles, they would inspect them, go to the four needles and sew the seams in for the shroud lines that would go down through the middle of the corn needle machines.  Then they would  run the lines through them and go to another operation.  I worked different shifts.  We’d get off sometimes at 10 or 11 o’clock at night.

Rick Randle:  Well, did you sign your name on those parachutes or anything?

Maurine Draper:  No they wouldn’t let us do that.

Rick Randle:  So you couldn’t write any messages?

Maurine Draper:  No, no, no… they wouldn’t allow that.  There might have been a few girls that sneaked a few notes in but we weren’t allowed to.

Rick Randle:  Tell me about this letter that you got.

Maurine Draper:  I got a letter to the The Parachute Company of Utah, Manti, Utah, April 17, 1943.  Dear Mrs. Olsen, the company has been advised that sergeant J.F. Dowers of Hobbs Army Flying Field recently made a successful emergency jump in standard parachute number 42193130, which was made here in the Manti plant.  You will be especially glad to hear of his safe landing because you worked on this particular parachute.  We are proud, as I am sure you will be, that your work has saved a man who is prepared to give his life in defending you and the rest of us on the home front.  Yours truly, Parachute Company, Colonel Fauntleroy.  I felt a lot of pride working for the parachute company. 
Rick Randle:  The thing that scared me was the air raid drills at school where we had to get under your desk…

Verna Van Etten:  Oh yes.  I was very afraid.  I came from a large family.  I had four brothers and three sisters and I remember my mother being terrified.  How was she going to make sure where all of us were so she could gather us all up and make sure we were close to her?  I remember air-raid tests.

Howard Randle:  Some nights it would be a black-out night and you’d have to put up black-out curtains over the windows.

Verna Van Etten:  We would have to hang quilts at the windows in order for no light to be able to come through the windows in order for the enemy planes to see us. 

Howard Randle:  They had air-raid wardens that would come around and check, you.  They would walk the block and if they could see any light, you’d be dinged.

(Newsreel)
Remember, there may be bombers up there looking for a target so it’s “lights out” Mr. Jones.  “All lights out!”

Rick Randle:  I remember I was in elementary school and at one time they told us the Japanese were sending bombs over by balloons and to not pick up or touch anything.

Howard Randle:  Well that was another scare.

(Newsreel)
For the past several months since 10th March, long-range free balloons released in Japan carried explosives to the North American continent.

Howard Randle:  He said that the Japanese were sending bombs by balloon and I guess they had actually found a couple in Utah so they put out warnings not to touch anything.

Rick Randle:  Maybe a booby trap that you’d find.

Howard Randle: Maybe a booby trap.

(Newsreel)
It is believed the main purpose of the bombs was to start brush and forest fires.  But attacks were so scattered and aimless that they constituted no military threat.

Rick Randle:  To a little kid it, it scared the heck out of me I’ll tell ya that.

Ted Nagata:  The government didn’t call us.  They didn’t send us a letter.  They merely posted these signs on telephone poles.

Kimiko Tazoi:  They told us you could carry what you could take with you, suitcase, duffle bags with everything of your possessions. You may store your furniture or have somebody take care of it.

Ted Nagata:  This includes homes, cars, real estate and of course that couldn’t be done in a year let alone a week.  The government said they would provide facilities to store these items, but you had to take sole responsibility if they were to be lost or stolen or damaged.  Our family did put all of our personal possessions into these government warehouses and we, like all the others, lost everything.  Some of the internees were farmers from Orange County and many of them lost their acreage so can you imagine what a hundred acres in Orange County would be worth today?  They lost it.

Kimiko Tazoi:  The Japanese would say, shi kata ga nai, you know you just do what they tell you because you’re a native of the U.S.A. and they were not against the U.S.A. either because that’s their home since they left Japan.  We just got prepared and did what the government told us to.

Ted Nagata:  But when they told us to dispose of our homes and our property, that gave us a pretty good idea that we weren’t going to be coming back soon.

Kimiko Tazoi: An Army truck came to pick us up and took us to a train station and put us on a train and we didn’t know where we were going.

Ted Nagata:  They gave us one week to get all of our possessions and line then up on this street where buses would take us to a temporary holding center.  Those temporary holding centers turned out to be race tracks ay the fair grounds and it was our unfortunate circumstance to be put into a horse stall.  Mercifully the government only had us stay there two months and then they found barracks inside the race track where they were building at the time…six months.  They put us onto a train, told us to keep all the blinds down.  The train took us to Delta, Utah.  There was a 16 mile ride from Delta straight into the desert and that was our first glimpse of Topaz. 

Gayle Greetham We didn’t really understand what was going on until we got there and saw the internees were.  I think that was kind of a jolt for everybody.

Raymond Uno:  Initially they told us that we were put into these camps for our own protection, but when we went into these camps there were barbed wire fences around with guard towers and the guns were not pointed out, they were pointed in.

Gayle Greetham:  When we got down there the camp had just opened, and there was no grass, no plants that I recall of any kind, no trees. 

Ted Nagata:  Topaz was divided into 42 blocks.  There were about 225 people per block and the bad thing is there was only one latrine and one shower facility for all 225 people.

Gayle Greetham:  It was tar paper shack basically.  There was no sheet rock or anything on the inside--it was the black tar paper.  I don’t recall that there was any lighting in there other than what hung from the ceilings They were pretty basic.

Ted Nagata:  There was electricity in the units but no running water.

Gayle Greetham:  Then when the really cold weather came the barracks had no skirting along the bottom so the wind blew underneath the barracks and made the floor very very cold.

Ted Nagata: In the summer time it got over 100 degrees and there weren’t any trees for shade, and the wind storms were a big item there, and the barracks were so flimsily made that the dust would just come right through the floors, and everything in your apartment would be covered with dust and nobody could eat in the barracks.  They all had to go to a central mess hall to eat.

Kimiko Tazoi:  And then we had our meals, just like the Army, You know somebody cooked for us and we could work as waitresses, you know help serve the meals.

Ted Nagata:  Boredom was a big issue because people who had worked hard all of there life suddenly had nothing to do.

Gayle Greetham:  There was a situation where, where married men, the older men had jobs.

Ted Nagata:  Many of the men actually got jobs in the Price mines and in the sugar beet farms.

Gayle Greetham:  Then there were people who were like fire wardens and I remember some of them were carpenters.

Kimiko Tazoi:  Sixteen dollars for waitress.  Nineteen dollars for administration and twenty one dollars as a block head.

Ted Nagata:  Many of them built gardens where they actually make things grow in that alkali soil.  I don’t know how they did it, but they had some beautiful gardens.  They built these beautiful dressers and chairs out of building crates and  many of them are still around. The government realized that we were not uh espionage agents.  We were not the enemy.  I mean we were just ordinary U.S. citizens.

Raymond Uno:  Our confinement in terms of the camp was exclusively within the barbed wire fences but then they eventually, as we were able to establish our own self-government, We had our own hospitals, our own social activities.  That gave us a little more freedom.

Ted Nagata:  To the kids it was a big adventure, hardly any school, and they could just run around and do whatever they want.  I mean we didn’t realize what was going on.

Raymond Uno:  To people that lost their homes and their jobs, and things like that, some of the older people were never ever able to rehabilitate themselves.

Ted Nagata:  The whole premise of this incarceration was because the Japanese-American people could not be trusted and they could very easily be espionage agents for Japan.  I mean if that was the whole thesis of it,  25 years after the war ended, not one case of espionage ever came even to trial against any of the 120,000 internees.

Don Buswell:  My mother worked out at the 2nd street during the war and she was acquainted with these Italian and German prisoners.  She really liked them and they were in the camp out there.  So I guess they, they were happy to be where they were. 

Dean Hurst:  It was out at the area around 2nd street.  It was initially enclosed with a barbed wire fence.  It was a POW camp and there were both German and Italian soldiers.  I never saw any Japanese there.

LauRene Buswell:  I know that during harvest time that people in agriculture could go to the 2nd Street Depot and they could sign up for prisoners for the day for hourly work. 

Dean Hurst: The unique thing about this was the Italians (if you study the history of the war where the Italian government had surrendered) was that they sent the captured prisoners of War to Utah because they didn’t know what to do with them.  They wore their uniforms so you could tell they were prisoners when they walked the streets. 

Barbara Tanner:  Oh I heard lots of stories about them because they were stationed at Hill Field and I had an aunt who was working there.  She was a chauffeur for the people and she’d come home and tell stories about how well they were treated and how some of these women were having affairs with them.  I’d get all kinds of wild stories, whether they were true or not, I don’t know.

Mary Sellers Gray:  Oh I use to walk up and down--they were in standing in order--and I would say “Oh you’re the best looking men I’ve ever seen.  Oh you’re so cute.  Oh you’re just a doll.”  They didn’t have any idea what I was saying.

Dean Hurst:  And I have to go one step farther and say that they were entertained many times by the local populace including young women.

Barbara Tanner:  And some of them even wanted to stay.  I understand because they liked the United States and they had preferred to stay here.

Dean Hurst:  My friend and I decided to enroll at Weber College here in Ogden.  There were approximately 400.  This varies with who tells it, but somewhere between 450 women co-eds and 50 men, so we had kind of a ripe field to choose from.  They decided to make the best of a bad situation and I suppose that’s one of the things that led up to the infamous polygamy prance.  There were a few of us who got together with the women involved in it too and thought it would be a great thing to have a dance.  They hadn’t had one for a couple of years.  We were ecclesiastical about it.  We went to scriptures and in Isaiah, the fourth chapter and first verse it says, “In the last days seven women shall take hold of one man saying come, let us be called by thy name.”  So we went that route.  Every fellow had to take every girl that asked him up to seven.  After seven he had the right to say no and then you just took whatever means of transportation you could.  I didn’t have that much trouble.  I could load six girls into my car.  Lawrence borrowed a neighbor’s milk truck, a little home delivery truck, and we had little red Sunday school chairs in the back that he brought his wives in.  The modus operandi at the dance was as you would take your turn dancing once with each wife so you would go through all six wives in turn then come back to the first.  It took a little time to do that and the girls were beginning to be bored, so they came up with the idea of having a girl’s choice and there were some good-looking guys there that had their full complement.  They had more than their seven and didn’t have to take anymore girls who wanted to dance with them.  They stood in line, tapped them on the shoulder.  I’ve always said the real trick of that evening wasn’t in how you spread yourself over the dances during the evening.  It was who you took home first and who you took home last.  So you got to the door, and taking your first  date up,  I looked back at the car and there were five little faces all pressed up against the window to see what the term of affection was going to be in bidding the girls goodnight.  What you did first you were probably going to be expected to do last, which was OK.  I don’t believe they could have ever done it again.  It wouldn’t have been quite the same…it was a little tongue and cheek but it was also a little bit of necessity and  everyone was a good sport about it.

Ruby Whitehead:  I started at Camp Kearns as a civil service person driving for the officers and personnel different places in the city where they were assigned to go.  John Agar, the movie star, was stationed in Camp Kearns.  He got assigned to go to the Old Mill Club to make arrangements for dance activity for the soldiers.  I was assigned to take him up there.  When he came out he tapped me on the shoulder and he was so excited, he says, “We got it, we got it!”  And that was kind of a thrilling experience for me.  His wife was Shirley Temple and she came up to be with him for a little while.

Alan Jackson:  I met John Agar at the time he was in the hospital at the same time I was, and I met Shirley Temple.  She and I has a chance to go around to different wards and perform for the inpatient soldiers there.  She was dancing, doing her routine and her comical things for the soldiers.  And I’d come out and do my little tap dancing, hand acrobatic dancing, and they’d give me a little tray and I’d spin it around on one finger… and then I’d get up and tap dance on my hand.  I had leather pads with taps on it, and I’d get up and tap dance with my heels up in the air for ‘em, playing around.  It was fun. And then here come Dean Martin.  I could not out- sing him but I could out-dance him. 

Howard Randle:  The way you got your news during that time was over the radio and in the newspaper. 

Norma Day: You know back then you didn’t have television or anything and the only time we would see what was going on was the newsreels in the movies and or on the radio.

Howard Randle:  I remember Ed Murrow and  H.B. Kaltenborn.  My dad would listen to them every night, so we could hardly miss them.  But the most exciting thing to do was to go to the movies and see… they always had a newsreel where they would show the week’s news and they would show the soldiers, the fighting men and the tanks rolling and the airplanes going. My mother would come out of there with tears in her eyes thinking of her two sons.

Barbara Tanner:  What was really terrible was listening to the radio every night, keeping track of what was happening to the men overseas.  Then always they’d have somebody who had been killed from your own home town or somebody you knew.  You were always listening to see if some plane had been shot down that might be, well Americans, but also neighbors and people you knew because sometimes it would be somebody’s brother or somebody else’s son and you knew a lot of these people and it was heart-breaking.

Gayle Macey:  When I turned twelve years old I started noticing boys and I thought Wooley was about the handsomest guy I had ever seen, so we were friends and when he went off to war we corresponded back and forth as friends.  I had no idea that he was going to participate in D-day.  There was no way that he could tell me that.  He was on Omaha Beach, the bloody Omaha.  It was nine days later when my husband and two other servicemen were detecting land mines and he stepped on an Italian box mine and it blew his leg off.  The two soldiers with him were killed,  I guess from the shrapnel, but he survived that and that’s when he flew to England and then he came home to Bushnell Hospital to recuperate for a year.  Bushnell Hospital was in Brigham City and was an amputee hospital for all of those men who were amputees.  I didn’t know of any other injuries.  It was mostly amputees.  And I remember the day that my sister and I went down to see him at Bushnell Hospital.  He was (laughs) a big man, he was six foot three and weighed about 200 lbs.  When we saw him at Bushnell he weighed about 146 and he just looked terrible.  He smelled awful.  I looked at him and I knew that right then and there that I was going to marry him.  I knew it the minute I saw him, although he grabbed my sister and kissed her first.  They played basketball in their wheelchairs.  They played volleyball sitting on the floor and they had a bowling team and they would bowl on their one leg, hop up the lane and throw the ball.  I was involved in a lot of those activities.  Celebrities came there, Gary Cooper came there with his wife, Alan Ladd came there.   They built a golf course there and Bob Hope came there to dedicate the golf course. 

Mary Sellers Gray:  They had everything there.  They had the theatres, they had a PX.  Bushnell was a fabulous place.  There were six of us who went as student nurses up to Bushnell and we were called cadet nurses.  They had a lot of amputees there, just wards and wards of them.  And I was assigned to one his name was Ralph Yamaguchi and I used to take him to the movies.  I’ve known several people that went through that area and I said, “Will you see if Ralph Yamaguchi is still there?” because we got to be such good friends.  Then there was another patient that would never talk to anybody.  I’d try to talk to him and he’d just ignore me.  He was really mean and gruffy to everybody.  And then he had to go to surgery and have his stump revised and we got him right from surgery and so I went down to take care of him out of this operating room.  He reached out and held my hand and he said, “Oh I’m so glad you’re here!”  And I sat there and bawled.  I just cried and he said, “I’m so glad you’re here.”  And so I knew I’d touched him even though he never talked to me.  When he got out of the anesthetic he never talked to me again but I knew I had reached him on some level.

Gayle Macey:  Wooley had many revisions on his leg, on his stump and of course when he got prosthesis, he had a lot of trouble with blistering and soreness on his leg, but he never… he never complained, he never said why did this happen to me? No, he never did.  He always said everything is going to be OK.  I have one letter that he wrote to me from Bushnell hospital. 
(reads letter)
Dearest darling, gosh honey I can’t wait until tomorrow to write to you.  I’m going to do it tonight.  Gosh I’m sure glad you came down.  It makes me feel so much better.  Every time I see you I wish more and more that we were married but I guess the time will come.  When I came back into the ward all of the guys said, “So that’s your one and only.”  And I said, “yes” and they think you are really swell.  But so do I, only more so.  Gosh dear I can hardly wait until next weekend.  I just feel so different when I’m around you.  Boy I know what they mean when they say love is grand because I’m so much in love with you.  Well honey I must sign off because the lights are going out, goodnight.  All my love and kisses. Yours forever, Wooley.

Norma Day:  You had a little flag, it seemed like a little silk flag with stars on it for the number of children and people you had in the service and mother had that in the kitchen window with four stars for my three brothers and for me.

Gladys Breinholt:  And of course there was occasionally one of the blue stars was changed to a gold star which meant that the person had been killed.

Joan Gould:  My mother and father kept asking me to find out what I could.  Was he missing in action, was he on an island somewhere,?  I wasn’t aware of much besides being a nursing student.  I knew my brother was in the Pacific and of course that worried me quite a bit, but I don’t think I had the full realization of a war at that time.  But I soon learned.  But after that when I decided to go into the Navy and I was on my way to the train, the radio came on with the information that my brother’s ship had been sunk and he was… never saw him again. Oh I haven’t thought about that.  Where I was stationed to work was called SOQ, that’s Sick Officer’s Quarters and an officer came there while I was there and his name was Lieutenant Bates and he told me that he had been on that ship and that my brother had died and that I should tell my folks.  He was a very nice man and but he was really quite mentally disturbed over the whole thing.  They had gotten off of the ship and there were not enough rafts to go around for everyone and so some of the people were swimming and hanging on and whatnot.  You know so many of them just died and one was my brother.  Lieutenant Bates then wrote a letter, a very nice letter to my parents. 

Ray Matheny:  Forty-three letters and telegrams came to my mother and father in Los Angeles with notification that people in the East Coast had received radio broadcast from Germany giving my name and my serial number, and their names, my parent’s names and address, that I was safe and a prisoner of war.  It meant a lot to my parents.

Pat Patterson:  Well, when I went into the service I promised my mother that I would write often so my first letter went out about the 2nd day of November and the next one that I wrote was the 6th of November and that was the first one they received.  It told that we were prisoners of war and that was their first direct information.  My mother had gone all those months without a word, but the one letter that finally shows how tough a strain that was, and that is the one I’ve chosen today to read.  She wrote it to my sisters who were in a different town.
(Pat Patterson reads letter)
Dear Edith and Doris, We are all excited in knowing that the prisoners were liberated and yet I get so burdened at times.  Knowing the suffering and loss of prisoners over there it just seems I can hardly wait not hearing anything from him since they moved them.  The last letter was December 17th and at times it’s almost unbearable.  Just when I get my hopes and courage up high, then someone throws a wet blanket.  I do pray and trust God.  If it wasn’t for him I’d be crazy, I know.  This winter has been more of a nervous strain than anyone knows, yet it’s no wonder I forget everything I should remember.  I’ve been ashamed of myself sometimes like I did about Mrs. Cole.  I forgot to ask her about her only son who is pretty safe.  I wonder how she would feel though, if she hadn’t heard a word from him in five months and I would hear every day they were killing the prisoners and starving them and marching them, freezing their feet etc.  I don’t want to pity myself, but all I want for Mother’s Day is just your prayers that God will give me strength and courage, and bring my precious boy home!  Love mother.

Gaye Macey:  They sent a telegram to his parents when he was hit saying that he had been injured and that there would be letters coming.  Well, when he wrote home to his mother and father, it said, “I guess you’re wondering what I’m doing.”  He said, “I’m fine. I’m fine.”  We had no idea what his injuries were.  This letter that he wrote to his folks will kind of give you an idea of how positive he was and how he never got down.  He says, Dearest folks.  Well, here it is Wednesday and time to write you another letter letting you know that everything is OK and I’m in good health.  My legs are coming along swell.  I am in a hospital over in England and everybody treats me swell, so please don’t worry.  Maybe it won’t be long before I am back in the States.  The war news looks very good, so let’s pray it won’t last very long.  Boy, I sure would like to get back to my outfit in France.  They sure are a bunch of swell fellows.  They were with me when I got hurt and they sure felt bad, but I will see them after the war.  I received the Purple Heart yesterday and sent it home.  It sure is a pretty medal.  Just in case you want to know pop, I was with the first bunch of fellows that hit France on D-day.  It was pretty tough—something I never want to see again and as soon as I can forget it the better.  I lost some good pals that day.  They were the kind of guys that would stay by a friend through anything, And I dare say this folks, if I had to go through the same thing again I would do it because I am fighting for a real cause.  I have the most wonderful parents in the world and also the best brothers and relatives, and I want to live in a free country.  I hope you are all in good health at home.  Please don’t worry.  Please tell everybody hello.  Goodnight and may God bless you all.  Keep smiling. 

Roy Tew:  I did one thing that I have regretted.  The war ended and I didn’t write a letter right away and tell my folks I was safe.  My mother walked the floor, you might say, for several days before she found out that I was safe and I didn’t even realize what was happening.  I knew I was safe but I felt so guilty that I didn’t write home immediately because she had to suffer. 

Howard Randle:  It meant as much to me as it could that the war was over.  My own personal situation—I would have gone in had I been old enough I suppose, because servicemen were heroes. (laughs)

Gayle Greetham:  VE Day- I can remember that pretty distinctly.  I took a bus downtown and boy it was wild.  If I remember right I was 15, and the servicemen who were stationed in Kearns and Hill Field and Clearfield, were downtown.  I mean it was one big party.  There was a conga line right down Main Street right from the Brigham Young monument.  Yeah, I remember that.  I mean they were all dancing down Main Street from the monument down.  I don’t know how far they went.  They must have got at least to Fourth South. 

Gayle Macey:  When the European war was over—that would be VE Day, we were just so thrilled and of course we didn’t have television then so we couldn’t see anything but we would go to the movies and they would show it on the newsreel.  They would show the celebrations of everybody in the country and how people were, you know, gathering together.  Thousands of people in New York gathered together and celebrated and hugged each other and they just couldn’t celebrate enough.  It was a marvelous, marvelous thing. 

Barbara Tanner:  And it’s funny… where our little boy…of course he reacted very strongly when I told him the war was over—when the European war was over.  And I remember him saying, “Well, my daddy can come home!”  I remember when he went overseas the first time I  went to the railroad station and there were all these other people there and our little boy was there and of course Clark was there and Norm’s Uncle Obert was there and a couple of friends and my sister and my sister-in-law.  We were all there to say goodbye to Norm and I just felt so terrible, and I didn’t want all of those people there.  I just wanted the moment all to myself.  I shared it with everybody who was naturally concerned too, but I felt kind of cheated that everybody was there and I remember going down to the railroad station just crying and feeling horrible.  So when he came back I didn’t want anybody else to go.  I told my mother she couldn’t go and I left Clark home and the baby home.  I left everybody and I went down all by myself, which now seems kind of crazy, but I just wanted that moment all to myself.  And it was funny because after we hugged and everything and kissed and all he said, “Well, where’s the baby.  Where’s Clark?”  And he expected everybody else.  And I was there all alone. Anyway, we went home shortly and everybody else was there to greet him later.

Jean Fernelius:  When he left he had beautiful black hair.  It was kind of kinky back here and it was just beautiful and when he came back and I saw him he looked liked he was a little older with that gray hair up in front where he’d had his pretty curl, and he of course he was older in his actions.  Now we were just kids to begin with but that changed him.  I guess we grew up when he was over seas.

Howard Randle:  Everybody was happy cuz that was the first step.  We knew that when VE day came, I mean it was a relief, but I don’t think there was a huge celebration.

Rick Randle:  The war was still going on.

Howard Randle:  The war was still going on and they were just going to move the servicemen in the Army and the Navy to the Pacific.

Barbara Tanner:  I didn’t expect Norman to have to go because he had so many points that I thought he had time to stay.  But I remember the atomic bomb and there was a mixed feeling as far as I was concerned.  I thought that would end the war but I was also horrified.

Gayle Macey:  You know when they dropped the atomic bomb I just, as I remember I wasn’t thinking too much about the horrible thing that would cause.  I guess I was just so glad that the war was over that I wasn’t thinking about that as much.  But afterwards,  when we got through with our celebrating and we thought of all the devastation that had caused it sort of, it was hard.  It was hard to realize that happened to so many people.  We wished it could have happened some other way but from what I understand, it actually saved the lives of many more people.

Gayle Greetham:  I’m sure it was a tough decision for President Truman, but I think it was the right one because if, I’m afraid if we’d invaded Japan it would have been really bad.  I don’t think the Japanese people would have given up and it would have cost a whole bunch of people’s lives if we had gone in there.

Howard Randle:  When we heard about the A-bomb being dropped it was just unbelievable and fantastic.  I remember hearing about that and thinking, oh boy, maybe this war is going to be shorter.  And then they dropped a second one and  the war was over just in a few days.

Gladys Brienholt:  Well, I was really excited of course when the war ended, that was what we prayed for the whole time he was gone--that it would soon be over and that he would come home and that we could live a normal life again.  That’s what you wanted most—just to be able to go to work and come home and be, be a family and do the normal kind of things.

LauRene Buswell:  Don and I were on the train with his parents going to get his release when we heard about the war being over.  Coming back home everyone was just super elated.

Howard Randle:  VJ day was something we had looked forward to for four and a half years.   I was 16 at the time and  headed downtown and from 1st South clear down to 6th south on Main street it was just packed with people, and they were all smiling and joyous and greeting each other.  These servicemen were kissing the girls.   I was too young for that unfortunately.  We saw the famous Life Magazine cover of the sailor kissing the girl.  It was just like that.  They got really excited and they started grabbin’ all the women and given ‘em a kiss and said, “Hey the war’s ended!” and giving them hugs and it didn’t matter if you knew them or not they just kind of went crazy. 
I remember everyone being extremely happy and everyone was banging on pots and pans and drums, and uh you’ve never witnessed anything like that before or since, or I haven’t or I don’t think this country has.  It was just one huge glorious smile on everybody’s face and uh mixed with relief that the war was over.

[Rick Randle]   When I was just six years old, I remember my two older brothers leaving on trains to join the Navy.   In the process, they linked arms with thousands of Utahns who stepped forward to face the dangers of a nation at war.

The pride I felt, putting on a smaller version of my brother’s uniform and snapping a salute to the family camera, was a nation’s pride…felt by millions of families and loved ones across the nation. The confidence of knowing we were all in this together. . .the certainty that we were fighting a just war. . .and a sense of awe that so many citizens would step together as one.

We’ve talked to more than eighty Utah men and women who answered the call of their nation. Through the many hours of listening to these stories in our series, we have been touched by the so-called “average American” doing so many extraordinary acts to shape the war. . .

I will never forget them. . .

The men from our state who suffered during the Bataan death march, but walked out of prison camps with their heads high four years later. . .victorious.

The Utah navigator on the famed Doolittle raid who was the first to bomb Tokyo. . .

The pilots and gunners who manned bombers over Europe. . .the terror of thirty seconds over a target. . .and the battle for survival when some were shot down and taken prisoner.

The paratrooper who jumped behind enemy lines in Holland. . . Watched his best friend die in his arms, and fought his way out because there was a job to be done.

The young wife expecting a child, husband at war. . .sitting alone on a porch, weeping softly to herself. . .her tears of the memory just as real sixty years later.

I’ll never forget meeting with Japanese-American veterans, some who said goodbye to their families in government internment camps to fight for freedom in Europe and throughout the Pacific.

I’ll remember the soft words of a dignified gentleman. . .who at one time was a fresh-faced kid on the island of Iwo Jima. . . ignoring his own horrible wounds to save the lives of his buddies as a corpsman.

And I’ll always carry with me the story of the sailor whose ship was torpedoed after delivering the atomic bomb in the pacific. . . And the horror of spending days adrift in the water as schools of sharks attacked him and his pals. . .

I’ll remember each of these Utah world war two stories. . . Because, in my heart, I consider each of the 70-thousand Utah veterans of that war a hero. . .for serving their country and standing strong in the face of danger.

This is our history. Crafted by the service and sacrifice of a generation. . .
at home, in the factories, in the air, in the jungles, on the beaches and at sea. They did more than win a war. . . They gave each of us a future.

We must never forget. . .

[narrator]   Utah World War II Stories: The Home Front was made possible in part by:
The Stephen G. and Susan E. Denkers Family Foundation
The George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation
The Cleone Peterson Eccles Endowment Fund  and…
The Willard L. Eccles Charitable Foundation.
Additional funding was provided by:
The Stewart Education Foundation
The C. Comstock Clayton Foundation
Kennecott Utah Copper
The University of Utah
The Utah Humanities Council and…the contributing members of KUED.
Thank you.