Deane Kingsford Deane Kingsford July 2, 2013 Oral History Program Deane Kingsford Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 2 July 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Deane Kingsford Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 2 July 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Kingsford, Deane, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 2 July 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Deane Kingsford. The interview was conducted on July 2, 2013, by Lorrie Rands. Kingsford discusses his time in World War II and his memories of 25th Street. LR: Today is July 2, 2013. We are in the home of Mr. Deane Kingsford talking about his remembrances of the Ogden canteen, his time in WWII and his memories of 25th Street. Thank you, Mr. Kingsford for allowing me in your home. Tell me about where you were born and what brought you to Ogden. DK: I was born in Ogden and my family lived at 33rd Street and Washington Boulevard, which used to be clear out in the sticks. It was a street that went down to the city dumps, so the pavement on Washington Boulevard stopped at 36th Street and there was a dirt road that went out to where the hospital is now. A lot of people don’t realize that Ogden wasn’t very big, but it was still the second largest city in Utah. I think the population was something like 140,000. I went to Washington School and then to Ogden High School. I was a good student at Ogden High School and my sister and I graduated together by virtue that I happened to be home when they had the graduation ceremony. So, when I took my cap and gown off I was in uniform and that made me feel good. Realizing that I would probably be drafted anyway, by volunteering beforehand I had a choice to be in the Army or Navy and so forth. I chose to be in the Navy and they sent me to Farragut, Idaho, which is just a hop, skip and a jump from the Canadian and United States border. It was during the winter and it was cold up there. While I was there, my brother and one of my teachers were in the 1 barracks right next to me, so I got a chance to see my brother. A lot of my friends that I went to Ogden High with were there as well. From there, they sent me to Chicago where I was taught all the information about how to be a code operator for radio at the University of Chicago. It was pretty good duty. We were in a barracks that was a fraternity house and it was like a big donut. In the center was a big yard. The food was absolutely fantastic and they took us down to an old church building to learn code and all of that information. After learning the code they sent us to Schumacher, California to a military dispersing unit. Everybody would go through Schumacher, which was southeast of Oakland, California. I’d go up every morning to see what the schedule was and who got drafted into what unit. I met a guy who said, “Are you from Ogden, Utah?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m from Ogden too and I’ll give you this good deal called beach battalion. They’ll just give you a rifle and you’ll walk up and down a section of the beach in California to make sure that there are no Japanese that have landed there.” I listened to him even though I should have been very suspicious. I signed the papers volunteering for duty in beach battalion. In those days, beach battalion was a volunteer outfit just like the Navy Seals. We were a very close-knit organization. All of these books that I have here are training manuals and list every guy that was ever in beach battalion. It was a very special unit. They had been to North Africa, Sicily, Salerno and Normandy. Then they came over to the United States and according to the system that was used then, they were a very unique outfit and some of the 2 guys like me were talked into it. We were the 400th unit, which is now called the Seals. After getting in this outfit, they shipped me from Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California to a camp that’s now been overrun with beautiful homes in San Diego. I have trouble remembering the name of that, but it was just an outgoing unit that you’d stay at for three or four days. They put me on an APD, which is an Attack Personnel Destroyer and I left Sand Diego. We didn’t get out hardly beyond shot space and we had an emergency call for a ship that had been attacked by a submarine and we went out. Somewhere between Pearl Harbor and San Diego, we came upon this ship that was guarding a couple of ships that didn’t have any guns or anything on it. We followed them into Pearl Harbor, which was the dispersing point for all of the ships that were going out into the Pacific area. We had problems when we went after this ship and our engines were in as tough shape as the ones that we were going to help. We went into Pearl Harbor and they had all of the ships ready to go if there was an invasion. While I was there, I was injured and my hand was put in a cast. They wanted to cut my thumb off because I had broken my thumb playing basketball. We had a good outfit there and learned a lot and trained a lot and then they had what they call an incident at the Westlock. Westlock was kept very secret. It was an invasion fleet that they were going to use in the Pacific area. While we were there, they had a terrible experience similar to what happened to Pearl Harbor. Westlock was pretty damaged and I have books entitled, “The true experience of the story of Westlock.” They lost more people than they did at 3 Pearl Harbor when it was attacked. A lot of the information I’ve documented with photographs and military pictures and so on. As you can see, my floor is loaded with photographs of some of the people that I knew and met like George Whalen and Paul Valentine. Some of the information I’ve got is stuff that nobody has ever seen. I kept it hidden away. My wife never got a chance to see it. They invited me down and presented me with 13 medals at the city and county building just one week after my wife passed away. Although she didn’t see a lot of this stuff, I think she knew some of the things and some of the places that I’ve been. When we got to Zamboanga, at the tip of one of the main islands of the Philippines, I saw the first casualties and atrocities of some of the people that were involved in the war. It was pretty hard for me to take and I still have nightmares of some of the things that I saw. I saw an American come out shoot a Japanese prisoner that was in handcuffs and blinders as he walked by a mess tent. It had a definite effect on me. I wasn’t used to that kind of stuff. We went to the old action in the Philippines and when we went into the Orient and into Hiro Wan, we were just east of Hiroshima and the admiral wanted to go in. He was kind of a photographic nut, that’s what we used to call him. The Chicago Press article that’s in the corner there was when he was awarded some of his accommodations. Every place that he went I had to go with him because he had to have a communication person with him at all times so that if he had to make a decision, it had to be quick and precise. I spent a lot of time with him and he and I ended up being the first two people to go into Hiroshima. He wanted to see what it was all about. We landed in Hiro Wan which was about 20 miles from 4 Hiroshima. He tried to go up there and the very troops that we landed stopped him and he said, “You can’t stop me, I’m an admiral.” The soldier who was probably just a buck private put his gun up and said, “It ain’t going make no difference because you’re not going by me. My orders are to keep anybody from going up.” So, the admiral came back to the ship and he was kind of put out. He said, “Well, they can stop me on land, but they can’t stop me on water.” He got a few of his staff together and we got into a BP Vogue landing craft and up we went. We went around to the water and landed it on the outskirts of Hiroshima. He took most of the pictures of Hiroshima that were in Life magazine and a lot of the stories that went with it. He was a darn good photographer and he had no idea what it would stir. They have had me talk about my experiences at different churches and meetings that they had for the military. My memory is, sadly to say, not as good as it used to be and I keep the stuff that I’ve got. There are pictures and I’ve got a flare pistol that I shot in the air when the war ended. I took the pistol off of the torpedo boat that was what they called a PT. It was a fast speed boat that had a couple of torpedoes on it and I think the President of the United States was on a boat like that. I didn’t have the ability to get photographs like the admiral did, so I made drawings. My drawings are there and I have drawings of the night that the war ended. They almost match in detail of what it looked like. I went to a lot of places. I went into Japan from both sides that they were trying to block the Japanese fleet in the Inland Sea. They had ships that were every bit as deadly as anything that we had. Every place we went to, we had to 5 get different money. They had a ritual in the service where every place you’d go you’d get to trade money. They had what they called a short snorter. You’d take the money and tape it together in a big string and when they tried to find out who was the old salt out of the group of Navy people. The guy that had the longest short snorter was the old salt. So, I had my short snorter and I got a lot of money down to where I got a one cent bill. Some of the bills are remarkably well-made so that they couldn’t be duplicated. I have a Japanese gun that I brought back and it’s got a folding bayonet on it. They’ve had me show that gun to a lot of folks. I have a trunk load of stuff out in my garage. I’ve got bayonets here on the floor and a code key similar to the type that we used. I use it to practice my code once in a while. Code is like speaking a language. Once you learn it, it stays with you pretty well. I can still sit there and thump out some pretty good messages. LR: So it’s like Morse code? DK: Yes, it’s Morse code. There are lots of pictures of George Whalen and me. He was a wonderful guy. I have some of the pictures of him when he was given the medals that he got. George was the kind of guy who could have been buried in a national cemetery, but he elected to be buried here in Ogden. They brought in the whole staff that normally buries people in the national cemetery. Occasionally, I’ll go out to his grave. LR: While you were a soldier during World War II, your mother worked at the canteen at the Union Station. 6 DK: Yes, in fact, Mom had three people in the family that were in the military. The brother that was just a little older than me was in the Office of Strategic Service, which is a highly documented unit that helped in keeping secrets of war nature from getting in the wrong hands. My other brother, Richard, was a hospital foreman in an Oakland hospital a few miles away from Oakland, California. Incidentally, that’s where I was sent. It was an outgoing unit and I was sent there before I got into this unit and I got my discharge also from there. I’ve kept most of the photographs and the histories that have been written in book form by some of the family. I get a little bit broken up when I start through that stuff. It’s tough to take and the tears roll down my cheeks just like it was happening yesterday. There are my marine greens. I was in the Navy, but a lot of people don’t realize that the Marine Corps is part of the Navy. I had a lot of respect for the Marines and they respected us. We worked very well together. I liked all of those guys. They were all my friends. I’ve got pictures of me when I still had hair on my head and pictures of my family. With four of us in the military at one time or another, it was quite an experience. LR: Why do you think your mother worked at the canteen? Was it because all of your brothers were in the military? DK: Well, there were a lot of people that volunteered. In my window here, there is a little gadget sticking up that holds a flag. There’s another gentleman down a couple of doors and was an ex-Marine who has his flag up. I had a lot of friends that were in the military like Fosse Filega, who was a little boy when all that came down, but he was from the islands and he said a lot of that still rubs off. He 7 collects military things and I’ve given him a lot of my stuff. He’s been a good friend. LR: You have a great story of coming through Ogden and being able to see your mom while she was working at the canteen. DK: Everybody in the family was doing their thing. Mom worked in the canteen and would meet the trains. They had a huge system and they’d give the GI’s a cup of coffee or some of them wanted soda pop and donuts. Mom spent a lot of time there and she gave a lot of time for the military boys. She called them, “Her boys.” A lot of guys would break down and they knew they were heading west and they’d send them through Ogden down to Oakland. Mom would go there every day and everybody in our family gave a lot to the servicemen. It wasn’t unusual to come home to the GI’s at our house. My mother put in the hours and she’d come home and she had people stopping at the house. It didn’t make a difference whether they were wearing khaki or blue, they were GI’s and they were all good guys. My brother, Eugene, being in the OSS, had an address that was in Washington D.C., but I suspected that was just an address for his mail. They picked a lot of L.D.S. guys for those units because they knew when to keep their mouth shut and they were pretty trained individuals. I got a lot of stuff from George Whalen. I have one of his books and they only printed a few of them. When I say a few, I’m talking about maybe four or five books. I had so many people that wanted to borrow my book on the quiet hero that Mrs. Whalen talked George into getting a box-full of them printed. There are 8 not too many guys like that that are still living. They gave everything they have and then gave their lives. LR: There is a moment that you were able to surprise your mom at the canteen, do you remember that? DK: She was giving everybody a cup of coffee and she was not expecting me there. I was on a troop train and we stopped at the canteen. Before she even realized what was happening, I had my arms around her giving her a big hug and surprised her. She worked at the canteen for hours and hours and she was proud of it. LR: I have one last question for you. You’ve been more than generous with your time and I love the stories that you’ve told. My last question is; what memories do you have of 25th Street? DK: One of the memories I have is of the porters and waiters. These were good, honest hard-fighting African American people. They were wonderful guys. They took people into the one building that was on the south side of the street in the last building. In the basement, they had a place for the African American people and they had some wonderful times there. When different entertainers would come through on the train they’d have them over there. What do you call it when they just get together and have a great big music thing? LR: A jam? DK: Yes, like a jam. They were all happy people and wonderful guys. I knew a lot of them and they were good guys to team up with. By nature, they were big guys 9 too and when you’re as small as I am and looking for help, that’s the kind of guy you’d want to have help you. I got along well with those guys. LR: Did it bother you that they were segregated? DK: During the war, it wasn’t near as bad as I’d seen before. When things got tough and you were lying in the dirt, you were not checking to see if a guy is African American or happens to be a Mexican. You were just lucky you were not alone. You had people with you. I gave them the best shot I could and treated them like my mother taught me to do. She had a very kindly personality and lived a life where it didn’t make any difference whether the guy happened to be African American, Mexican or Native American. She was born and raised on a reservation in Laramie, Wyoming, so she got used to it and she could smile and hug those guys just as good as the next one. She had a love for people. I was so dog-gone young when I went in the service. I’ve got a picture of the whole company and I think I was the youngest guy in there. When you go in at 17-years- old, you think you know everything that’s happening in the world and then you find out there are lots of things you don’t. LR: Mr. Kingsford, I really appreciate your time and the memories that you’ve shared with me today. I look forward to getting this all worked up for you into a packet. DK: Well, how about that? 10