Oral History Program George L. Mitton Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 16 December 2016 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah George L. Mitton Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 16 December 2016 Copyright © 2018 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 The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ 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: Mitton, George, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 16 December 2016, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. George Mitton 1945 George Mitton 10 December 2016 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with George L. Mitton. The interview was conducted on December 16, 2016 his home in Provo, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. George discusses his life and his memories involving World War II. Leland Rands was also present during this interview. LR: It is December 10, 2016. We are in the home of George Mitton in Provo, Utah, and we are talking about his life and his experiences during World War Two as he grew up in Northern Utah for the World War Two in Northern Utah Project. My name is Lorrie Rands and Leland Rands is with me. George, thank you very much for your willingness to sit down and talk with me. I appreciate it. Let’s just go ahead and start with when and where were you born? GM: I was born in Logan, Utah, August 10, 1927. LR: Were you raised in Logan? GM: Yes I was. The first few years my parents lived in Tempe and Phoenix, Arizona, but in the third grade we moved back to Logan and grew up there. I attended the college after High School, and after being in the service. LR: Okay. What did your parents do? GM: My father was the manager of the Borden Milk Factory in Logan, where they manufactured evaporated milk. LR: And your mom? GM: My mom was a housewife, and a good one, I’m grateful for her. 2 LR: And what were your parent’s names? GM: My father’s name was Samuel LeRoy Mitton, usually called Roy, and my mother’s name was Johann. Her maiden name was Johann Smith. It’s J O H A N N kind of an unusual spelling. If I’m right, it's from her grandmother’s spelling in Scotland. Looks like a man’s name, but anyway, that’s how she spelled her name, and she was born and raised in Smithfield, Utah. LR: What do you remember about growing up during the Depression? GM: That goes back even to the Arizona days as a young child. I remember how my father was then employed in Tempe. He was an assistant manager of the Borden plant there, and we lived in a small company house near the plant. I remember well the main highway, east and west. It was a two lane highway, passed by the plant which was just about a half a block away from our house. All day long we would see cars going west to California from places like Oklahoma, going out to try to find work in the West. I remember many times my mother would prepare a sandwich for someone who would come to the door and say they were hungry or willing to do work around the home or something if they could just have something to eat. I remember that very, very much. It was obviously a difficult time for many people. LR: So was your father transferred back to Logan? 3 GM: Yes, he started in a plant in Logan, even in his teenage years. His father, Samuel B. Mitton, and his uncle, Lorenzo Hanson, began an evaporated milk business in about 1905, early in the century. They built this factory and started that business, and later on they sold the business to the Borden Company of New York. So dad worked for the Borden Company all his life, I think forty-seven years he worked for the Borden Company. Later, after going from Tempe, he went back to Logan, and then later they transferred him to Modesto, California and into Oregon. My wife and I ended up living in Oregon. My wife and I met in New York, when I was attending Columbia University. She was an operatic singer. We met in church in New York and later moved to Oregon. We thought we’d rather raise our children in the West than New York. LR: I can understand that. So going back to when you went back to Logan, you said you moved back there when you were in the third grade? GM: Third grade, middle of the year sometime. LR: So what elementary school did you go to? GM: It was called Woodruff Elementary School, it was on the corner of First West and First South Street in Logan, it’s no longer standing, there’s other buildings there now. LR: Okay. So as your living in Logan, you’re in the third grade so you’re about eight or nine, about 1936. Do you remember, were things getting any better Depression wise as in Logan? 4 GM: You didn’t see the kind of things that we did in Arizona, where people came to the door all the time. I was aware that since my Dad had constant work all the time, I could tell that other children were in more difficult situations, by the way they dressed and things like that. It was kind of an obvious thing. I remember something that occurred to me at the time, one of my favorite teachers, when I was in about the seventh grade, in the summer I went into Penney’s Department Store, and he was selling shoes. I remember saying to myself, “Why would a wonderful man like that have to sell shoes in the summer to get by?” I realized that I don’t think these people are paid what they were worth, even as a child I thought of that. My only impression of the people that taught me during those years was that on the whole they were very competent people. They could have had a job that paid much more than what they were doing then, and I’m very appreciative of the kind of teachers that I had in the elementary and secondary grade very much. That’s the observation that I made just as a child. LR: Okay, I don’t know how the school system worked in Logan during that time but, when you finished elementary school, did you go to Middle School? GM: They called it junior high school. Three years there. LR: What school was that? 5 GM: It was called Logan Junior High School. That’s where I was attending when the war started. I would be, I think in the ninth grade, final year there. LR: Okay, and where did you go to High School? GM: At Logan High School. LR: So, let me just ask you this; as I know that before Pearl Harbor there was a lot of talk about what was happening in Europe, but how did the news of Pearl Harbor affect you? GM: Well, I remember exactly when it occurred very vividly. It was a Sunday, and I was just a young fellow then, but I had been asked to be in a play in the church. We had a rehearsal that afternoon, and when we came home from our Church meeting in the morning, we turned on the radio, and we heard the news of Pearl Harbor. I remember how disturbed my parents felt about it, wondering where is this going to lead to. When I got to my rehearsal in the afternoon, all the adult people were upset about it and talking about it. They didn’t want to rehearse, they wanted to talk about where are we going with this, what will happen. That was my first reaction to it, so I guess I felt the same way they did based on their attitude. I was too young to fully appreciate what the possible ramifications would be. I guess it was the next day at school, we had a little loudspeaker in each room where the people from the main office could give messages or, in this case, they tapped into the radio, and we heard President 6 Roosevelt’s famous talk to Congress, where he said, “The day that will live in infamy.” Everyone has seen that repeated I think, and I remember how disturbed, how upset the teacher was at the time. He was quite disturbed, but he didn’t try to create that feeling in us, he tried to give us a feeling of confidence, to not worry about the future, things will work out kind of thing. One of my teachers, and I think of all the teachers in my life he was one of my favorites. He was a teacher of English I think, or journalism, things like that. I worked on the school newspaper, and he was our advisor. I admired him, but the thing I always remember him saying on that occasion was, “I don’t know what they’ll allow us to say to you in the future, but whatever you do as we go down the road here, avoid racial hatred.” I thought many times on that how perceptive that was, to give to us that thought. LR: Wow. That is insightful. What was his name, do you remember? GM: Harold E. Hall. He later worked I think in the Department of Commerce in Washington, and then in the Foreign Service. I think when he retired he was our number two man in the London Embassy. Quite a prominent person. LR: Would you say that overall most of your teachers helped the students find the sense of calm? GM: I believe that’s true. I certainly do. I think so. LR: How do you think they accomplished that, from your observation? 7 GM: Just by not showing too much alarm when they spoke about current affairs and so on. I think most of them didn’t get into that much because of their subject matter, but some teachers would be more inclined to do so than others. Hall was one of them like that. There was just a feeling of confidence that things will work out. I felt that as a young person. We soon found that there were things that would impact somewhat on our lives, such as when things began to be rationed; our clothing, some foods, gasoline and other things. It affected our lifestyle somewhat, but I think not too drastically. I don’t think we felt really deprived or anything like that. I remember as a young fellow, I was interested in photography, learning to do darkroom work and develop films and print pictures and so on. But oh, try to get film; it was so scarce during the war, and it was a disappointment. LR: So from your point of view the rationing wasn’t hard to get used to? GM: No, it wasn’t, and I don’t remember my parents complaining about it either. It was just a matter of fact. Wasn’t too drastic, really, the way it affected us there I think. LR: How many siblings did you have? GM: I had a brother and a sister. LR: Okay. Of all the things that were rationed, what was one of the items rationed that sticks out the most in your mind? 8 GM: I think our clothing. We couldn’t buy just anything we wanted. My memory of that’s kind of dim now, but I think the availability of clothing was restricted somewhat in terms of what you could find in a clothing store, you didn’t have the range of choices that you did later on. I really didn’t feel deprived about it, I don’t think. I really don’t remember people grumbling about it very much, other than a lot of them would feel like they wish they had more gasoline so they could get around more. But on the food and the clothing, I don’t remember people. Now maybe that’s just my age, maybe adults felt differently about it, but they didn’t convey that, and my parents didn’t convey any grumbling about it to me. LR: So as you moved into High School, did your perception of what was happening in the war change at all? GM: Yes, I got kind of interested in the news more as I got a little older and I used to like to listen to news commentary on the radio. Didn’t read all that much in newspapers, although we had a newspaper all the time, but I liked to listen to the radio commentators talking about what was happening in the war. I got interested in shortwave radio for a while, I don’t remember who introduced me to that, one of my colleagues there at school I guess. My parents bought me for my birthday a shortwave radio set. I used to like to listen to the overseas programs from London and even hear Berlin sometimes and Moscow and places like that, I got interested in world affairs a little bit, and that eventually helped me decide 9 to study political science when I went to college later. I was quite interested in trying to follow as best I could what was happening in world affairs, during the high school period. LR: I’m curious if you remember any of the scrap metal drives or the bond drives that they had? GM: I do remember bond drives. Scrap metal, vaguely. But I remember we very often found some advertisement or some activity that was urging us to buy bonds, and everybody was buying. I had a little savings book that I put stamps in that you buy, saving stamps, everyone was. I don’t know whether that raised a lot of money or not, it might have been more useful as a way of encouraging people to be more enthusiastic about the war and what’s going, something I can do to help. LR: So were you the oldest, or where did you fall in with your siblings? GM: I was oldest. LR: Okay. Did you ever feel this need to do something other than finish school? GM: No. LR: So going to school was what was important to you? GM: Yes. Some of the young fellows my age, I think they lied about their age and decided to go into the service at that time, which kind of surprised me because it wasn’t something I was eager to do. It looked like a dangerous thing, and that’s the kind of feeling I had about it. I soon became aware of 10 people I knew being called into the service, getting drafted, and some of the older people that I knew, like at church rather than at school, and other families I knew in the neighborhood. They took them away and some of them never came back. I was aware of that, it was a concern. But in my own family, I didn’t have any of my relatives that were lost in the war that way. We were very fortunate. But there were some people that I really cared about and respected that didn’t come back from the war. I was aware of some things as I went through high school, there was the concern, “Am I going to be enrolled in combat in a few years? How long will this war last? Will it ever end?” I remember one thing that they had, and I don’t know whether they still do or not, they had an ROTC program in the high school. I think they still have that at college level, I don’t know about high school. But we had a class that we went to that talked about military matters and fundamental things that would kind of help prepare you to go into the service later on. That was something that I thought about It was a sobering thing to think maybe one day I’ll be in combat, and I didn’t want to do anything like that. So it was unsettling from that standpoint, but I don’t think we worried a lot about it. We had other interests to keep us occupied. LR: So what were some of the things you would do for fun then, during that time? 11 GM: Well, of course we had things at school to do, normal things like sports and socials, things like that. I worked during that period of time for about three years at the movie theater in Logan, the Capitol Theater it was called. It was quite a nice theater by the way, it’s since been refurbished and renewed and it’s now known as the Ellen Eccles Theater in downtown Logan. At the time, I did things like ushering and doorman and changing of the marquee out front, advertising, and just various things that needed to be done in a theater. One of the first jobs that I had was working in a grocery on Main Street in Logan. In those days the grocery had to provide the service of carrying the groceries out to people’s cars because they just didn’t have carts then like we do now. So I did a lot of that work, helping people find the food they wanted and carrying it out, stocking shelves and so on, that was my first job. Now one thing I remember that I should mention during that wartime period was that in Northern Utah the schools would close for a week or two in the fall, so that we could go out and help with the harvest in the valley. Usually the sugar beet harvest, and I remember doing that two or three times. It was hard work for me, because living in a city I was not used to the kind of physical work that fellows that grew up on the farm did, so I remember I found that very difficult to go do. We did have that opportunity or, we were urged to do that, because apparently a lot of the 12 people that normally would have been doing that had been taken away in the war and there was a shortage of labor for that kind of thing. LR: Okay, so that would happen for about two weeks? GM: One or two weeks, I forget now which one it was. I think it might have been a two week period. LR: So this was every year during the war, that you would do this? GM: Yes, I remember at least doing it twice, I don’t know whether it was three times. It might not have been for the whole time of the war, but for the latter part there. LR: So I’ve heard that harvesting beets, like you said, it's hard work, but it also requires a funny looking… GM: Yeah, you have a knife with a hook on the end and the hook goes down into the beet and you lift it up and you hold it in one hand while you whack off the green top and then you throw it into the truck. It’s heavy, so you’re lifting something several pounds, throwing it all day long. You get pretty tired when you’re a young fellow like that. LR: Especially when you’re not used to doing it. GM: In the summer we also went and helped with the thinning of the beets. You put the seeds in the rows, and there’s more sprouts come up than you want, so you have to go out and thin out part of them so there’s room for them to grow. I did that, I think twice during the summer time. 13 LR: So, would you just go to some of the surrounding communities around Logan, like Smithfield? GM: Yeah, and in the Valley. I think they used school buses if I remember right, to take us out to the fields. LR: I have a question about your working at the theater, with the war going on, did there seem to be more people going to the movies? GM: I think so. It was very popular. LR: Do you have an idea about why that might be? GM: No, what you have to remember is I grew up in during the time when all the technology was developing. For example, in my first recollection, radio was new. That was a wonderful fascinating thing. I could remember in Arizona as a child, we had a radio, and lot of people didn’t have radios, and in the summertime, they would open a window and put a radio out and people would sit on the lawn and listen to the radio. What a marvelous thing. We take it pretty much for granted now, but it was a remarkable development at the time. I remember my father getting a car radio, and whoa, that was a fascination for everyone. My Dad bought the first six cylinder Chevrolet in Tempe, Arizona. This is about 1931 or so. The same is true of the movies. Of course, the same year I was born, 1927, was the year the first talking picture with sound came out. So it was still very new, and it was quite a fascinating thing for people to go to the movies. 14 LR: Do you think maybe it was a distraction or a way for them to get news as well? GM: Yes, within the movies then you always had a newsreel, and you had good pictures. When I was working there I would see that quite a bit, and the greater part of it was war news, taken from the war theaters. LR: Do you remember any of those newsreels that stuck out in your mind? GM: Not too much. I remember there was one newsreel that had some very gruesome things where the Japanese were chopping off the heads of Chinese children and others, I don’t know why they ever left that in because it was so stark. I remember one woman came out vomiting after she saw it. That was very unusual. Usually we had it so you didn’t see anything too disturbing. LR: Interesting that they left that in. GM: When I worked in the theater, I would see a lot of people in uniform who were up at the college being temporarily trained for some purpose or another. We saw German prisoners of war were held in Logan, at the fairgrounds. LR: Really? GM: Yeah, we had, towards the end of the war, quite a few German prisoners of war were being held there. LR: Okay. Do you know what kind of training the soldiers were receiving at Utah State? 15 GM: I don’t remember now, I probably did know, but I don’t remember. Something that the college specialized in, I think. LR: The German POWs, did you ever interact with any of them? GM: No, I remember driving by with my Dad, near where they were. You could see them there, the place was fenced off I believe. I don’t know that they interacted really with the peoples in Logan. LR: Okay, so it was different than in Ogden GM: I don’t think it was very long. I remember when the Japanese people were put in, what do we refer to them as? LR: Internment camps? GM: Internment camps. I remember I had a young Japanese girl in my class in junior high, and she had to leave. We are very critical of that now, but as I look back, there was a lot of uncertainty as to whether the people were loyal. No way to determine which ones were and which ones weren’t. It was considered kind of an emergency situation to cope with it. That’s the way they reacted about it. In retrospect, is was way unnecessary probably, and those people suffered as a result of it. But I would rather imagine those that were really patriotic Americans would say I understand why they had to do that, or why they felt they had to do that. It was a mistake, but you can see in the urgency of the time, why they would take measures that drastic. We were worried about actual invasion on the West Coast at the time. That’s the recollection I have. 16 LR: I know that some of the more prominent members of the Japanese community, the more prominent they were the more likely they were to be shipped or sent to the in internment camps. GM: I don’t know about that. LR: That’s interesting though that you remember that. So it was kind of sad to see her go. GM: Yeah. LR: When you graduated from High School in 1945, were you worried that you were going to be drafted? GM: Well, yes. I was worried about it, what would happen. My birthday came up in August, but the war ended in August. So I had to register for the draft, and I was very quickly drafted because they hadn’t stopped drafting people even though the war had ended. The planning was still underway, “What do we do now? We have all these people overseas to bring home, activities going on that had to be manned.” So they still drafted and I went in October of that year, and they put me in the Air Force. I was trained there in photography. They at first sent me down to Sheppard Field, Texas, for basic training, and then up to Denver, to Lowrey Field, where I went to the photographic school, and trained in all aspects of photography, laboratory work, and aerial photography. I didn’t ever go in the air with it, but we were taught the basics of how to process the films and that sort of 17 thing. After that they assigned me to a photographic laboratory in Washington, D.C. to work. I’m sure it was classified at the time, but now it’s long since passed. We were making copies of aerial photographs of Russian territory that the Germans had made. Captured German photographs of Russian territory. I assume at the time we probably didn’t have any aerial photographs of Russian territory. It was a different size than our aerial photographs that the Germans had, so we were copying it to our size so that intelligence people could make use of them. That was something that I did for several months, until the word came around that anybody who wants to go to college can be released from the drafted situation they were in. That’s what I wanted to do, so my father went to the college registrar in Logan and got a letter from them that they would admit me, and I was out of the service within a few days. In fact, my discharge papers said I served one year, one month, and one day. I always remember that. But it was a strange during that whole year I was in the service, you had no idea when you were going to get out, and then that came along. I didn’t see anything like combat, and I have no complaints, but I would rather have been home continuing my education. The result of that, though, has been very remarkable, because the GI Bill came along and it helped me get through about two-thirds of my college costs, so I can’t complain. It paid me well, it was wonderful. 18 LR: The photographs that you were categorizing, they were just aerial photographs of the Russian territory? GM: Cities, primarily. LR: So was it inside Russia, or outside? GM: No, it was inside Russia. The Germans had taken them. German photographs were very well done, very clear, nicely developed and everything. LR: Did your time doing that, did it help influence what you wanted to study in college? GM: No, I don’t think so. Now, at one time I had mentioned to you earlier that I was interested in photography during High School, I thought I might like to be a photographer, have a shop locally, a portrait shop or something like that. That did enter my mind, and I think because I had that interest, that’s why they sent me to photo school. As a matter of fact, when I went in with a group at Fort Douglas in Salt Lake when I was drafted, I think there were maybe two-hundred of us in the group. I was the only one that went in the Air Force, because they apparently had a need for people in photography. All the rest went in the infantry or the Marines. So I went alone down to Shepherd Field for my basic training, with two other fellows who had enlisted, and I think they had to enlist for three years in order to ensure they would go in the Air Force rather than the infantry. 19 I remember they were always coming to us when I was in the Army, it was then called the Army Air Force, they were always coming to us, urging us to sign up for a three-year period, to ensure that we stayed. I never did that, but then I remember when they started letting us out, some of those who had signed up for three years were grumbling. They thought that they had been kind of mislead into signing up for more, but that was kind of amusing. But anyway, on the whole at the time I would rather have been home and pursuing what I wanted to do, but I can’t grumble about what I was called to do. It was never anything too burdensome for me, and a lot of it was quite interesting, get acquainted in Washington a little bit, that sort of thing. LR: So you studied political science at Utah State? GM: Yes. LR: When you finished that, you decided to get your Master’s degree at Columbia? GM: No, I stayed there and got a Master’s at Utah State, graduated there in 1953 I think it was. The first job out of college I moved to Olympia, Washington, and worked at a research organization that was doing studies of state and local government there. I worked there, I think for two years, and then decided I’d go back and maybe work on a Doctorate, so I went back to Columbia University. I never did finish the Doctorate, but I did a lot of the course work. I got involved in working, one thing or another, 20 and I kind of lost my interest in that. I was going to get into teaching as well as working to get the Doctorate. The first job I had there in New York I worked for American Airlines, in the general office in New York, in the office that conducted their relations with the Civil Aeronautics Board in Washington. To prepare for hearings that were conducted in regards to route structure and fares and tariffs and things like that. I did that for couple of years, and then we moved to Oregon where I worked for state government in Oregon for about twenty-five years. LR: You said you met your wife in New York through your church. Were you both going to the same ward? GM: Yes, we were, and this is kind of interesting. I had heard of my wife, she was a singer, and she was the soloist for the Tabernacle Choir when they toured Europe in 1955. In fact, if you look back there you’ll see a picture of the Choir in front of the Eiffel Tower, and the woman in the white dress in the front is my wife. I had been on a mission, and I didn’t mention that I broke my attendance at Utah State to go on a mission to England from 1949 to 1951. When I was working in Olympia Washington, I heard the choir was singing over there in England, and so I being interested in visiting people that I knew on my mission, and I was still single and free to travel, so I spent about three weeks over in Europe. I heard her sing at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I hadn’t met her. 21 Here’s an interesting coincidence. Before this happened in 1955, when I was at Utah State, one year I worked as the associate editor of the student newspaper and with the yearbook as a photographer, taking pictures that appeared in the yearbook. My wife was engaged to sing a concert. She came up from California where she lived, and gave a concert at Utah State, and they sent me over to take her picture. I remember being impressed with her and her singing, but I didn’t really meet her. That picture is in the yearbook, and later I remembered who she was when I heard her singing in Europe, and again I met her in New York in church, and we got acquainted. So it’s interesting that that happened, I did take that picture. LR: So you were married in 1955? GM: No, we met in 1956, and got married in 1957 in the Salt Lake Temple. President David O McKay married us. He had met her on the choir tour, at one time he said to her “When you decide to get married, I’d like to do your ceremony.” So we took him up on it. LR: I have a question about when you were in England on your mission. I realize it was four years after the war had ended. GM: The aftermath of the war was still very prominent. Lots of rubble all around in some places. One of my first assignments was in Bristol, England, and there was a lot of buildings that hadn’t been cleared of rubble yet. I remember going down to Plymouth, England, to help the missionaries 22 down there. We would go down and speak at their meeting or something, and work with them, visiting door to door as we did as missionaries. I’ve always remembered this interesting pattern there. Plymouth was battle damaged, they were hard-hit during World War Two, and as I go down the street meeting people from one door to the next, one would say, “Oh, you young men, and your religion, if only everyone was religious like you. We wouldn’t have had this terrible war we had.” Go to the next door. “Oh, religion.” Then they’d blame the war on religion, the differences and so on. What impressed me was the completely different reaction of people on the cause of the war, how they differed. Some thought it was because people weren’t religious, others thought it was because people were religious. It was kind of a strange thing to me. You did see a lot of people still talking about the war quite a bit as you go talking to people. The one thing that comes to mind that I might forget to tell you about in high school days. Towards the end of the war, the Japanese had launched some kind of an idea they had, balloons with explosives and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about that. The balloon thing. I remember we had an assembly where all the students in high school were called together to tell us that this was happening, and they didn’t want it to go into the newspapers or on the radio, because some of the Japanese we knew who would be aware of it. “So go home and tell your parents about that, but tell them not to talk about it. We don’t want the Japanese to know 23 that we know that we are aware this is happening. But if you see such an object, you’ll know what it is and call the authorities.” I remember that happening, yeah. LR: You didn’t ever see a balloon, though did you? GM: No, I don’t think they ever got that far in. It wasn’t very successful. But at the time we were concerned about what might happen. LR: That’s interesting. Thank you. So, I just have another question about your time in England. How was it different? Being from America where we weren’t as affected by the war as Europe was, was there… GM: There was still a lot of the effect of the war when I was there in 1949. Certain things were still rationed. I had one egg a month, I remember that, and most of those came all the way from New Zealand or some place, so they weren’t very fresh, and it came by boat. Clothing was rationed, certain foods were rationed; meat and cheese. We all had ration books for a while I was there, but I think that was terminated before I left. But it was quite obvious, and you’re aware that people, clothing was drab, and so on. When I went back to visit England later, when I told you about when the choir was there in 1955, my first impression was “Wow, this place is much more prosperous than it was when I was here before.” I could see a great difference, in the way people were dressed and just in every way. that was a more prosperous place. LR: Was it nice to see that difference? 24 GM: Well yes, I’d say it was, and not that many years either. LR: No. GM: I left in 1951, and came back in 1955, so a big change in just those few years. LR: Awesome. I’m going to skip ahead again. After you were married in 1957, you and your wife moved to Oregon? GM: We were in New York a total of five years, and then we married and moved to Oregon. We had two children by then, and we got thinking we don’t want to raise the children in New York. We’re both Westerners, and my father had been transferred to Albany, Oregon, where Borden’s had a plant, and we went to visit out there on our vacation. I decided to see if I could get a job there in Oregon. We liked Oregon, it was a nice place to raise the children, we thought, so I got a job with the Oregon state government. I first worked in the Governor’s budget office as an analyst, and then I worked in various capacities for nearly twenty-five years. Most of the greater part of the time I was involved in an agency that was doing long-range planning for educational services. It gave me a chance to work with Legislators and the Governor’s office and people like that all the time, and with the colleges and universities. I found it an interesting position. LR: After you retired in Oregon, did you continue to live there or did you come back to Utah? 25 GM: We lived there for a short time, but I had to retire early because I had a heart attack, and had to have heart surgery. I was very weak for a long time. I tried to go back to work and I just couldn’t cope with it. So we decided to move to Utah not only because it was where I grew up, but our children were settling here. They came to college over here, met spouses from this area, and decided to stay in Utah. We came here to follow where our children were, that’s why we selected Provo, and we’ve been in Provo over twenty-five years now since retirement. In Oregon, my wife taught vocal music at a college, and when we came here she had a private studio where she taught singing. That’s an example of one of her productions; she started a little opera company here, that’s HMS Pinafore there, and the cast. So most of those people were students of hers. LR: That’s cool she was able to continue to do that. Do you have any questions? LGR: Based on your experiences, is there any single piece of wisdom that you would pass on to generations that come after you? GM: That’s a hard question. I would repeat what my teacher said- avoid race hatred. I think that’s a very great error, especially when you see how well we get along with the Japanese and the Germans. It’s really an artificial thing, all this hatred that occurs at the time. Of course people get involved in combat and see horrible things, they’re bound to have hatred in their hearts as the result of some of the things they experienced, but I think that 26 is one thing that we should avoid. I don’t know what to say about my experience in terms of how to pass it on, except to say do everything you can to avoid future combat going on, that would be a blessing, because when you get right down to it, it’s the most foolish possible thing that mankind has, killing others off like this. There is no way to put it in language how foolish it really is, the trouble it causes, the suffering it causes for many people. LR: I agree. GM: But I don’t know what more to say really. It seems almost that war is the history of mankind, just one thing after another. LR: Well let me ask you one final question, to sum up this whole thing. How would you say World War Two changed and influenced the rest of your life? GM: I don’t know. I guess I continue to be interested in world affairs, what’s going on, perhaps more intensely than I otherwise would. I think it made me more sensitive to the troubles people have. To realize that everybody has hardships in their life. It’s a hard question to answer for me. I don’t know how it would have been if I had been in a different situation, I’m sure I would have a whole lot more to say had I been in combat or something like that. I do feel a loss of patriotism that we have now. That was very strong then, and continued to be for some years after, but recently we’ve drifted away from that. I look upon the younger generation now as being 27 unappreciative of what they have inherited in terms of the suffering that went on in the past that created everything that’s around them, they take that for granted. That kind of feeling. I don’t know what more to say about that. LR: No, what you’ve said is fantastic, thank you, and I want to thank you for the time that you’ve given us. GM: You’re most welcome. I hope I’ve been helpful. LR: Oh no, you have a point of view that no one else does, so I, I appreciate the fact that you took the time and gave us your interpretation of what you saw and felt, so thank you. I appreciate it. GM: You’re welcome.