Oral History Program Harry Valentine Jones Interviewed by Ian Glasmann 12 November 2011 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Harry Valentine Jones Interviewed by Ian Glasmann 12 November 2011 Copyright © 2011 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. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Harry Valentine Jones, an oral history by Ian Glasmann, 12 November 2011, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Harry Valentine Jones circa1944 Harry Valentine Jones circa 2011 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Harry Valentine Jones. It was conducted by Ian Glasmann, at Ian’s home, on November 12, 2011. In this interview Harry discusses his experiences in the Salt Lake Valley during World War II. IG: Mr. Jones, tell me how old you were when the War took place. HJ: I was almost twelve years old on December 7, 1941. IG: Where were you living at the time? HJ: Bacchus, Utah, a residential village owned by Hercules Powder Company, located on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley near Magna Utah, and the Kennecott smelter. IG: What was your initial experience in the war? HJ: On this particular day, an old friend who was then superintendent and general manager of the Hercules Powder Company, Harry Valentine Chase, was visiting my father. His home office was in Trenton New Jersey. He would always visit my father when he was in town, because my father was resident engineer for Hercules Powder Company in Utah and they were close friends. Mr. Chase was sitting across the table from me and my father was to the left of him at the head of the table. Mrs. Chase was next to her husband. Well, the telephone rang, and as I remember, it was probably around one o'clock. I don't know the exact time, but my father answered the phone and said, "Harry, you're wanted on the telephone. Your office in Kenvil, New Jersey has something very important for you." Mr. Chase got up and answered the phone and I watched his composure 1 as he talked. He sort of melted; he leaned backward into the bookcase, and paled slightly. He set the phone down and he said to my father, "Olly Oliver , the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor. I must return to New Jersey immediately." Mr. Chase and his wife then departed. At that moment, everybody at home or in the area stopped everything and went to the radios. Sure enough, the information was coming in bit by bit that we were being attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in this ‘sneak attack,’ as it was called. I remember that very plainly, this treacherous ‘sneak attack’ perpetrated against our country. At that moment, I felt, recognized, and actually was sort of gratified by the instant mobilization of not only a country going to war, but an attitude. Everybody wanted in on the act, and we sat all afternoon, and all the next day listening to that radio bring in reports of what was happening in Pearl Harbor and in other parts of the world. I was a young boy, but I felt the impact of what was happening. I was shocked and I think all other Americans were shocked just like me. There was almost an immediate, intense attitude to get your guns and go to war. That was instantaneous. IG: You mentioned how the whole country seemed to come together amidst the war. How, within your immediate family, or do you have any stories about brothers or brother in laws? HJ: I had one brother in law, he's dead now, Jerry Gingras. He was in the flight with the famous Cullen Kelly, who supposedly dove his plane down into the Japanese ship in the Philippines. Jerry was in that squadron, and he was the third plane that was going to take off from Hickam field. He told me that he Kelly did not go 2 down the ships funnel. He said that he Kelly made it back over the airport and was shot down over the field. Jerry actually witnessed that. Jerry was in the third plane to take off from the field. As they were taking off, a Japanese bomber hit them with a bomb and it killed the forward crew. Jerry and the tail gunner lived through that attack, but Jerry, in his escape from that field, was shot through the chest by a Japanese soldier. It was a Japanese doctor that saved his life. He then joined other prisoners, and together, for some reason, escaped that death march. The Japanese loaded them all aboard two freighters and shipped them to Tokyo Harbor where he spent four years loading Japanese ships with coal. His family never heard from him, nobody, not anyone heard from him during that following four years. His tale of the miserable three day trip from the Philippines to Tokyo was most distressing. They were forced to sit in each others lap, with legs extended; no food, no way to rid body waste and no food, water, or fresh air. I had another brother in law I just buried. I dedicated his grave -- Farrell Hatch. He was with the U.S. Army. He fought in the South Pacific. We had several young men, close relatives, who gave their lives in the war. One example that was really a heart breaker and affected me was my brother in law’s brother, Ray Jensen of Manga, Utah who enlisted into the Air force. He was just four years older than I. I wanted to enlist, but I was too young. Anyway, Ray graduated from high school and he entered the Air Force. After he graduated from flight school, he came home to Magna, Utah where I was helping my brother in law build his house. Ray came up to the house, and he looked so sharp in that Air Force uniform. I watched him as he walked across the room. I 3 would have given my eyetooth to go with him. Three weeks later he was shot down over Germany and killed. I had many close friends and relatives who gave their lives for the cause. People gave a lot at home too, you know, but the impact of that dreadful day, I think, actually ended up being detrimental to the Japanese movement. It immediately mobilized our country and the people who wanted to defend it. IG: So you were having all these relatives going over to fight and some of them were passing away. What was going on at home with you? What were you doing? You mentioned how you wanted to be in the uniform. HJ: The first thing that happened after the shock of Pearl Harbor was that people were getting in the motion of doing whatever they could for the cause. I had one sister, Grace, who went over to the rationing office where they gave food stamps and other rations. My brother, Oliver Jones Jr., was a superintendent of the Hercules Ammonia plant in Pinole, California and they were rolling into action. We were out in the foothills of the Oquirras Mountains, and at my age, there wasn't a great deal of populous in the Valley. You had the main Salt Lake City area across the Valley on the East, and then you had the smelter and the mines on the West side of the Valley. But in between, it was mostly farmland. Within a few weeks, the government had constructed an ammunition factory in the Valley, and they were manufacturing .50-caliber ammunition and all other explosives used in the war. This was in the Salt Lake Valley between the Oquirras Mountains and the Wasatch Mountains. There is about a twenty mile distance between these two mountains. Salt Lake City was on the East side and Magna – 4 Bacchus, where I was at, were on the West side, along with the Hercules Powder Company and the Bingham Copper mines. This factory was practically built over night. At night, my young friends and I would sit on a hill and watch them shoot and test fire .50 caliber machine guns, mortars, and other arms into this huge field behind the factory. It was like the fourth of July. Every batch of ammunition had to be tested before it was shipped over seas to the military forces. The big thing that hit us was the construction of an army training base and today it is called Kearns, Utah. Kearns actually originated as Camp Kearns. That was a training facility for new recruits, and they were bringing people in from all over, drafted and enlisted, where they would go through basic training. It was a big camp with tents, buildings and all sorts of training facilities. As a boy in Bacchus -- which was a beautiful little village with thirty one houses with lawns, walks and curbs -- the army would bring in a company of soldiers about two or three times a day. They would be on their twenty mile march, or their ten mile march, whatever was on at their training facility. They always liked to come to Bacchus, because they could lie on the lawns and take a break. They would come in and my friend Spencer Aimes and I would set up a lemonade stand. We would sell these soldiers as much lemonade as we could. Well, the commanding officer told us not to do that service anymore. He said, “Because you people were rationed, you only get so much sugar and other commodities. Those soldiers get loads of everything they need.” He told us it was a wonderful thing to be hospitable to them, but he advised us not to continue. We sort of backed off of our service, but we still had a lot of interaction with the soldiers. They were 5 fellows from all walks of life, some very wealthy, some very poor, but they were all in the game to do whatever they had to do. All of them were shipped out. As they went through that training, they were put on trucks and shipped away. Do you remember the dancer Gene Kelly? IG: I've heard of her... HJ: No, it's a man. IG: laughter Okay, then no. HJ: Dancing in the rain? That kind of thing? IG: Oh, okay, yeah. HJ: He was one of those soldiers that came through camp Kearns. I never knew him personally, but a fellow who later went to medical school was a friend of mine, and was in the army with him, and told me that Kelly was in his unit at Kearns. IG: Wow! So, I'm fascinated by this idea of rationing, because we obviously don't do it so much anymore. HJ: Rationing became very strict. An example, not only were they rationing food, like you could only buy so much sugar, and so much of other food, but you had have certificates (stamps) for all of it. But the one that I liked the most was the gas stamp, where you could buy gallons of gas. My Dad, in his position, as general engineer, and my brother in Pinole, California with the Ammonia plant could get gas stamps as they needed because they traveled back and forth on business. I had the opportunity, now and then, to be able to go with my Dad in the car and drive to Pinole, California. I recall my first experience after the war broke out when we were driving down through the Bay area of Pinole, and all these huge 6 aircraft balloons were put in the air. They were expecting possibly an air attack in that area. I'd see army trucks with machine guns, and soldiers in the back, and tanks and other military arms. That was so peculiar to me, because just weeks before all that military activity, it was just native land and everybody was sound asleep. Then suddenly, we were mobilized. General Motors, I understood, retooled their plant. They produced something like one thousand TBM Torpedo Bombers during the war. That was the story all across the country. Factories were retooling and building war materials at an unbelievable rate. IG: That is very interesting. As you got older and progressed, and the war progressed after that initial shock of the attack, how did you feel about the war? HJ: Well, that's sort of a difficult thing. You know, we lost good friends and loved ones in that war, but you had the good sense, or the decency to respect the fact that they had given their lives for us, for the country. So there's always a very strong dedication, for lack of a better word, to the cause. Many of these fellows were older than me and I know we lost one guy in a submarine that went down, and a couple others were killed. It was a time when you were accepting that loss for the sake of our country. There was tremendous loyalty. I wish we still had that. There was that dedication, give it all, because it is our country, type thing. I think that feeling sort of carried everybody. I don't think you looked at things as a wasteful loss. There was a heroic element, so in every loss that we suffered, and I know a lot of young men that didn't come back that were just a little older than I was. You were thankful for them, and for the service they gave. In fact, so much 7 so, if I might just speculate a little bit here, I think the Japanese really put their foot in their mouths, so to speak, when they projected that sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. Not only were we fighting for our existence, there was also a spirit of revenge, for lack of a better word. Let's get those dirty little devils, you know. When the atomic bombs went off and we blew half of their country apart, there was no real serious regret for that. There was no, at least this is just from me speaking as a person, Americans say, “Oh gosh, we had to do that because what they did to us.” I think it was more, “We got the dirty little buggers back.” For a moment, I don't think that lasted long, but it ended the war and if we had had to invade Japan, we would have lost thousands of men. So, it was sort of a catch22, you're glad it's over and you're glad that they ‘got it’ at the same time. IG: Being in Utah, did you see anything from the Japanese Interment camps that were similar? HJ: Yes. When I used to travel with my dad, it was sad to see. I do not think the average American really realized what was happening there. Those Japanese people were taken out of their homes on the West Coast. They were as good Americans as anybody else, but yes, I saw internment camps. They would throw up these temporary tents and barracks and they were large, big areas. I'm trying to remember where some of those were, but I know they existed. I know there was one in western Utah. I think in Nevada there was one, but I can't tell you exactly where they were, I just remember going by them. IG: Tooele? 8 HJ: Yes, I think there was one in Tooele. They were internment camps and what they would do is just screen off a big area and it was under guard. In fact, the ones in Tooele, they would let those fellows work. I remember now, that comes back to me, they let some of those out on passes. They would work for different farmers and then go back into the base and as the war progressed that became less confined. Then we also had a prison camp up in Brigham City, Utah. They had German and Italian war prisoners there. In fact, I was living with an Italian family in Magna, Utah near the end of the war. There were two brothers and we were very close friends. They would have Italian prisoners come down and cook on weekends. IG: Really? HJ: Yes, they could check them out of the prison camp and bring them to their homes. You never ate food like that in your life. Those Italians would have wine and Italian meals. We looked forward to the weekends when these Italian friends would come to town. Now, I can't say anything about the Japanese on that issue, because most of those interned in Brigham City were German and Italian prisoners of war. IG: So you could rent an Italian to come to your house? Is that how it worked? HJ: No, you see, Mr. and Mrs. Falvo were native Italians, they were immigrants to this country, so they spoke the language fluently and they were Italian. They had an Italian attachment to old Italy. What they would do, is that they would just go to the detention camp and would check the prisoners out by name and identity. Then, they had to be back by a certain time, so they would usually get them out 9 on the weekend, like on a Saturday and then take them back up on Sunday. Saturday night was a great night, because of their cooking and their partying you know, but they were good people, those prisoners. You know, we had many Japanese people, not the prisoners, living in Magna. They were well liked and they were never intimidated by any of us, or any people involved with the war, because of the fact they were Japanese. They were just good people. I think the only Japanese people that were actually interned were off of the coastline. I don't think locally any body was forced into those camps. I think what the government did, was take those on the West Coast and move them off the coast with the philosophy, or the theory, that they could avoid any kind of spy activity. However, when you take groups of people, you are going to get the good with the bad. I'm not so sure there wasn't some questionable activity, but not so wide spread, in my own opinion, to justify removing those people from their property. They lost their property, they lost their homes, and they lost everything by being in those internment camps. That's a black mark on it really. IG: Yeah. I'm going to digress a little bit, I want to return to this energy going on at home. You were bringing prisoners of war to cook for you, you were setting up lemonade stands, what other kinds of activities... HJ: No, the men I was setting up lemonade stands for were American Troops. IG: Of course, but was there something bigger going on in these communities to promote the war, something like what GM was doing? 10 HJ: A lot of people were enlisting in the services and a lot of people were moving into the factories that were created, and moving to the west coast, air craft factories were -- you know Rosy the Riveter, well that came out of that type of thing. It was pretty hard to escape being involved with the war. You might not be physically involved, but you were buying war bonds, or you were out canvassing neighborhoods for donations for the entertainment of troops, like the USO clubs and all that. There were a lot of drives going on to raise funds for the war effort, so everybody was in the game. It just depended on what part you were playing. The biggest sacrifice was from those people who sent people off to war, because there was a good chance they were not coming back. IG: How many sisters do you have? HJ: I have ten. IG: Ten sisters. You mentioned Rosy the Riveter, were your sisters involved at all? Did they go off to factories? HJ: Yes, Grace worked down at the food stamps things, where you would buy sugar and all other commodities. My older sisters were on the west coast already. Farrel, he was married to my sister Grace. The one with Cullen Kelly, he married my sister Sammy Dorothy Jones. Barbara, she was the one next to me, she was pretty much home with me. She was young. She was only three years older than I was. If I went down the line, I could tell you all of it. Some of them were actively involved in the war effort. They lived through it, rather they were involved. My oldest sister Marie who was probably the kindest person I've ever known. She was sort of like a second mother. She spent her life treating the prisoners of war 11 that were brought back to the hospital in Los Angeles. It became such an obsession with her that I think it really took her down physically and mentally. She spent all of her time there, and the wounded, they were terribly wounded. Leg's blown off, hands blown off, you know they were mutilated and she wouldn't stay home. She'd go to that hospital and she would work twenty four hours a day. No matter what they'd try to do to get her to stop, she just went. She finally succumbed and passed away. IG: These were war prisoners, or were they US soldiers? HJ: These men were our own troops that were shot up in combat. There was a big hospital down by -- I think it was Azusa, California. It was a big hospital and they would bring all these wounded soldiers, sailors, and marines and they would treat them in this hospital. Well, my sister Marie was a volunteer to take care of them, while they were in the hospital and it just became an obsessive thing for her, where she couldn't stay away from it. She had to be there all the time. I think mentally and physically it took its toll on her. IG: That's tragic. How old were you towards the end of the war? HJ: I was sixteen. IG: So, you were in high school at the time? HJ: Oh yeah. IG: Do you remember what the feeling was like around your high school? HJ: Let me tell you a little story about that. I was a pretty good trumpet player. In fact, when I was in the ninth grade I was selected to the state high school symphony orchestra, but I never really took it serious. My dad did, but I didn't. Well anyway, 12 Mr. Marchant, who was the principle of our high school during the war contacted me and said, "Harry, I want you to go out in front of the high school and every morning when they raise the flag, you’re to play the colors. I said I didn't want to do that. He said, “No, you're gonna do it”. So anyway, it was gonna happen. I'd go out there and when they began raising the flag -- this is during the war, this shows you the attitude of the people -- as I played the colors they lifted the flag and every student stopped, faced the flag, put their hand over their heart and pledged allegiance to the flag. You don't see that today, but man that was a big thing. So the comradery that existed in that high school during those war years was total dedication to the cause. Many of those guys took off as soon as they could to the army, navy, or the marine corp. That's where we lost one student in the submarine service, and one guy I was telling you about, Jensen, who was shot down and killed. We lost a lot of students out of that area. I just can't remember them all, but the attitude was ‘let's get in there and do our part.’ It was a solid, loyalist movement to ending, to winning that war. Personally, I don't think we will ever see that again, but that was the theme at that time. IG: Were these kids that were under the age of eighteen dropping out of high school, or were they seniors who had reached eighteen? HJ: Well, technically speaking they had to be eighteen to go into the military, but there were a lot of those guys that were younger than that and they were getting into the service. They were leaving high school and going. Maybe they were of age, I don't really know. Other than a few that I associated with they were probably legitimately old enough to enlist. I remember if a man wanted to go into 13 the army and he was reasonably of the age, he could get in one way or another, even if he had to lie, or give a false birth certificate. They would do that and nobody was really looking at them that close in my opinion. If he was an able body and he wanted to fight and defend the country, which was the theme. It was a proud moment for all of those people. IG: So, did it impact you in your military service? Did the war impact you to join? HJ: In a way. I joined the marine corp. I was in the officers school, went through that, but then that was later on and we were out of the war. I was in college and the FBI came along after I had been in the Marine Corp. I was subsequently hired. I got tangled up with the FBI and they offered me a position as a special agent. I served twenty six years in the FBI as a special agent. IG: How did you ultimately become sheriff of Davis County? HJ: When I retired out of the FBI, I was teaching Utah peace officers at the college, and Brandt Johnson, who was the sheriff of Davis County, asked me if I would be his chief deputy. Well first they made me president of the Utah Sheriffs Association, so I was President of that for a short time. Then, Brandt asked me if would be his chief deputy, so I did. I was there for five years as a chief deputy then I became sheriff and I was sheriff for three years. IG: Do you have any other stories about the war that you want to share? HJ: I think the big thing about the war that I remember is the solidarity, the movement of the people of this country and the willingness to give not only their substance but also their lives for that purpose, which I don't know would happen today. The war was an experiment in human suffering on one side of the coin, but on the 14 other side of the coin it was also a remarkable way that the human being can muster himself into an organization to defend himself when he has to. I don't want to say that the war was a good thing, but I think there were a lot of good things that came out of that war. When they dropped the bombs on Japan I don't think there was very much sorrow suffered by the people who had given their lives at Iwo Jima and all those other places fighting their way back. There's sort of an underlying movement there that's hard to explain. We can call it loyalty, or fear, or sacrifice, or something, but it was a united effort to preserve the constitution of the United States and to ward off a vicious enemy. Although the war probably had a lot of terrible things happen, say the prosecution of those airmen who bombed Tokyo off of that Aircraft carrier, the B-25s didn't think they would get the plane off the deck, but they did. It was an experience that will enhance our history as long as we are an American country. IG: Do you remember -- going back to the backlash against the Japanese with the internment camps -- what were your feelings and the feelings around the community in reference to the Nazis and what was going on with Hitler's Germany? I know the bombing of Pearl Harbor obviously had a huge impact, but was there much talk about Nazis? HJ: Yes, a lot was talked about it. Nazi Germany fell to sort of another -- well, you looked at them as the three nations -- Germany, Italy and Japan, the axis powers, that's who we were fighting. They sort of grouped that all together, but the European effort was a different thing entirely than the Japanese one. The Japanese was a sea battle, and when we took out those Japanese aircraft 15 carriers that sunk, literally sunk, the Japanese movement. Germany was a movement from North Africa all the way into Europe and so, although it was fought on two different fronts, they were all grouped into one war mentally by the United States. One movement was all three movements. I remember as a boy we would wait for the paper. We didn't have instant communication that we have today. We would wait for that newspaper on Saturday, because it had all the troop movements, and I remember the paper would have a swastika where the German army was at, and they would have an American Flag where the Americans were. My dad and I, we would follow that war effort all the way up through North Africa all the way up to Germany, and the same with Japan. Japan was more of a knock out game, you know. We had the battle where we saved Australia, as Australia almost got into the middle of that, the Guadal-canal thing, and all those islands had their own little history to them. You could follow who they were, which island they were taken. It was sort of like looking at a crossword puzzle, you know, just where are we today? What movements are we going to make? There were a lot of heroes made who were young men who gave their lives for this country. Those aircraft battles were unbelievable. IG: You mentioned looking at a crossword puzzle, what other communication was going on at the time besides newspaper, were you guys listening to radios? HJ: Yes, the radio news would come out, but it was all after the fact a couple days, unless it was some humongous event that took place, like the end of the war where they dropped that bomb. That was a big big thing. The communication sort of grew up with the war. I mean new inventions were coming and new means of 16 communicating were being developed. It was still a catch up type thing. You were never up front like you are today. Today you turn on the radio and you’ve got instantaneous news. Then, you had to wait a day or two until things came out, and I remember we had a show every Friday in Bacchus and we had a little theater there. Well we would wait for the news, because the first thing that would come up on the screen would be the great newsreel. Then they would have all the shows of what happened during the preceding five days or seven days, where we bombed and where our troops moved and what was going on politically. So, you were always behind the action, you were always at least two days behind the action, sometimes a week. That way the folks back home and myself, we would be following movement a week after it happened, or if you want to hear the news they'd broadcast it, but you were never with it. You were always a little behind it. IG: With that, was there any thing you saw with the local people running for office that would use the war, or propaganda for their cause? HJ: No. To be honest with you I don't think so. My mother was a Democrat and my father was a Republican and they cheered each party during Election Day. IG: laughter Fun home? HJ: We never saw any fights at home laughter , but that's one thing, the solidarity, that was not going to be disturbed. You wouldn't dare get out there in front of your house and wave a swastika flag. You wouldn't make it through the night. Nor would you do anything else that collaborated with the enemy. We had some movements in the United States when I worked for J. Edgar Hoover. He picked 17 up spies off the East Coast landing on boats and that. They were all heroic movements and they weren't known to the public, but they did come out eventually. It was just a movement of everybody doing their thing to end the war. To be a winner in the war, not just end it, but to be a winner. My wife's brother was a Merchant Marine and that was a scary thing. Those ships were escorted and escorted in great numbers, and I remember one time I was in San Francisco with my Dad, and this is hard to believe, but that entire bay area, as big as it is, was filled with victory ships. I mean there were hundreds and hundreds of them and they were waiting to go out on convoy to wherever they were going. They were probably going to Japan, the islands, or to Germany, somewhere. I don't want to get off the subject with you, but that was one of the greatest things the Americans did. You ever heard of a victory ship? IG: No. HJ: The victory ship was built in something like four days, and that's what introduced the ability to manufacture sections that would fit separately. They would bring them together to manifest a ship. I'm trying to think of the guy who invented that system. He was well known, but I'm having a short circuit here. Anyway, they were producing those ships, turning them out four or five a week. It was unheard of before and that's what gave us a great edge in the war, because we could take our productive ability in the country and put it into these ships and ship it anywhere in the world in just a few days on these huge convoys. So the German submarine service really concentrated on knocking those ships off, and they were successful, until we started finding their yards and bombing their subs. So 18 there were those kinds of things that developed. A lot of terrific engineering feats were achieved during that war time period, mainly just because the need. They had to have them. I wish I could think of that fellow’s name that invented that system. Oh well, but that gave us the edge in that war too. That's what won that war, our manufacturing capability and our ability to deliver the goods where it had to be. IG: Explain to me what was going on where your Dad worked at the Hercules Powder Company. Did they get involved in any of that investment? HJ: The Hercules Powder Company was one of the major munitions manufacturing companies of black powder, nitro glycerin, and dynamite. Where we were, they manufactured nitroglycerine. In fact, one time years ago, not to get off the subject, but years ago that plant blew up and I lost a sister. She had a heart attack, but I don't want to get into that. To show you the attitude of the people, they manufactured nitroglycerine and black powder, and they manufactured dynamite. When the war started, all that munitions was geared towards weapons, bombs, and small arms. Hercules Powder Company was manufacturing the materials to compliment that and a lot of that was shipped between the plants. Hercules was a big company with plants all over the United States, but I can only speak for the western area, Utah and California. IG: Was there a lot of innovation that happened with that? HJ: The only innovation as far as they were concerned is the appropriate powder for the munitions that the government wanted. We had a major munitions plant right down in the Valley that were manufacturing mortars, rifle fire, gunfire, and other 19 weapons. I don't think they manufactured bombs; that was somewhere else. Nevertheless, that production was being sent to those plants as they ordered it. It was sort of like we created the nutrients for the thing that was going to go take place somewhere in the world. IG: What was the community like that was around the Powder Company? HJ: We sort of lived in a remote area in the Oquirass Mountains. Bacchus was a little village of thirty one houses and it was one mile from the company, from where they produced all these munitions. The fervor there was strictly just work hard. There was no influence there, or no drastic change because of the war. They just produced what the army wanted and the munitions manufactures wanted. This was a sophisticated area, there were certain things that go into certain types of weapons, but copper companies produced the copper, shells. Everybody was in the war. They rescheduled all their work to satisfy the war effort. There was a close relationship between government sponsoring things and ordering things, and these companies producing what they needed. IG: Did you spend much time traveling from the area into the Salt Lake Valley, or up into the Davis County area? HJ: I remember a friend, Harry Young, who owned a trucking company. Tires were very hard to get, but he would always get my Dad sets of tires for the car, because Dad was always going back and forth to California. Even those trucking companies were all war effort. Everything was regulated for the war effort. Effective, the only way you could travel was to have ‘A’ tickets enough to buy three gallons of gas. When that ran out, you would wait for a certain number of 20 days, get another ‘A’ ticket, so you were limited. I couldn't run up to Idaho whenever I wanted, or down to Southern Utah, because I had to see how many gas tickets I had, how much gas I could buy and how much gas my car would run on. Well, you actually became very careful. You budgeted everything you had. That was the effect on most people, even clothes. Everything was changing to support the war and it affected you that way, but other than that, I don't believe any of us really suffered an awful lot at home. IG: Really? HJ: I tried, I wanted to get in the service, but it wasn't going to happen at that time. Everybody wanted in. I think there were very few draft dodgers. IG: Did you know any? HJ: No I didn't, and I don't think I would have talked to them if I did know them. IG: What was your mother's experience if you remember? HJ: My mother was a real steadfast person. My mother was forty years old when I was born and they were among the first Welsh immigrants that came to the United States, so I was only a second generation immigrant myself. I think the attitude of the people who came here and those people who migrated to this country were exceptionally loyal. They had sacrificed a lot to come to this country and they were ready to defend it, and they did defend it. They were the first ones into battle. Even the Japanese, you know America had a Japanese company. I was just reading yesterday about the wind song Indians that they used to communicate. No one could understand the language, so they didn't have to worry about coding. Well, the Japanese soldiers of the United States, they were 21 loyal Americans. They fought for this country. I don't know if any of them were ever in the South Pacific. I know very little about them, but I know there were regiments of them that were fighting for the country. IG: That's interesting, well if you don't have anything else to say, I think we are hitting our time wall. HJ: No, I've tried to answer your questions the best I can. We live in a great country that's worth defending. IG: Thank you Harry Jones for giving me this interview. HJ: You're welcome. 22