Oral History Program Kay Stowell Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 6 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Kay Stowell Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 6 June 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii 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: Stowell, Kay, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 6 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Kay Stowell circa 1940s Kay Stowell circa 1940s Kay Stowell 6 June 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Kay Stowell, conducted on June 6, 2017 in his home in North Ogden, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Kay discusses his life and memories involving World War II. Brooklyn Knight, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: It is June 6, 2017. We are in the home of Kay Stowell in North Ogden and we are talking with him today about his life and his World War Two memories for the World War Two in Northern Utah project. I am Lorrie Rands conducting the interview, and Brooklyn Knight is with me as well. I just want to say again thank you and begin with when and where were you born? KS: I was born 10 November, 1923 in the family home east of Rigby, Idaho, Jefferson County, if you want that. LR: So did you grow up in Rigby? KS: Yes, graduated from high school in Rigby. LR: So what was it like growing up in a small community like Rigby? KS: Well, let’s see, in a small town everyone knew everyone, it was during the Depression. I was about ten years old when Dad lost the farm because the cattle got the disease and had to be put down, so then we just moved around from place to place for a while, working, and growing gardens. He had rented a little piece of land and planted a big garden that we’d weed and harvest. The kids and I, all around the neighborhood, we’d get together and play games in the evenings, just outside games. Had to work, always had a garden to weed, always had some kind of chore to do. 2 After about 1938, Dad had the opportunity to go into the dairy business. There was two farmers that were milking cows and they wanted somebody to distribute it for them. So Dad made an agreement with them, he didn’t have any money but they supported him to get him started. Farmers would bring us the milk, we’d run it over a cooler and bottle it and deliver it round to the houses. Summertime, it meant getting up at five o’clock to try to get it all delivered before it got warm. Wintertime we’d wait a little later, so people would be up ready to get it in before it would freeze. We’d just set it in on the doorstep. It was kind of interesting, people would put a dollar out there, and we’d give them twelve aluminum chips. That would be for twelve quarts of milks. They’d put their bottles out the next day, and how many chips there were, we’d leave the milk for them. Worked out pretty good, never had any problems with kids stealing the money or anything. We finally bought a house there in Rigby, so we settled, and then Dad decided to build a milk house. He was born and raised in Old Mexico, in the colonies. So he said, “We’ll make some adobes and build a milk house.” He built some forms, six by twelve, something like that, then he hauled in a bunch of clay and straw and we’d mix it up like cement. We’d put it in the forms and make bricks, but we weren’t making them fast enough to keep him going. Finally he said, “That’s not working,” so we just put up the forms and poured them in like they do cement now, made walls that way. For the inside, he had the neighbor plasterer come in and put chicken wire on the mud, and coated it with cement. Made a good wall, because there’s a lot of moisture in a milk house all the time. 3 It worked out good, and kids would take turns delivering the milk and helping with that. We had roller skates then, and sometimes we’d take the roller skates apart and put wheels on a two by four to make scooters like your Razors nowadays, and we’d go over the sidewalks there on those things. Board up front to have something to hang on to, and that was back in the thirties. In the evening we’d play kick the can or Annie over or something like that around the street corner under the light. Never went fishing much. I remember one time. The canal went dry. So I went out there in the canals and found a little puddle with a big fish in it, so I got a fish to take home. Didn’t even have a fishing pole. The dairy finally grew into a big modern building, and plant, with pasteurization, homogenizing, and all. Originally we’d just run it over a cooler and then put it in a little container with a nozzle on the bottom, push it down on a bottle of milk to fill it, go to the next one to the next one then cap them by hand. So finally we got the machine that would do everything, and we had a tanker truck, covered routes in Rexburg, Rigby, and Idaho Falls. LR: That’s really cool. You mentioned that your father grew up in some colonies. Can you talk about that for a minute? KS: He was born in Colonia Juarez. There was an academy there that they went to, and it’s about 150 to 200 miles down into Mexico. LR: So what brought him up here? KS: The Mexican Revolution drove them out, Pancho Villa. There was rebels like that in Mexico fighting, and my Great-grandfather, grandfather and Dad were all 4 there. The rebels kind of took their horses and cattle, so they finally decided they’d take what they had and leave. They put the families on the train and sent them up to El Paso. Dad was nineteen I think when he left, driving a bunch of cattle out along with him. So then they settled down in Arizona, but Dad’s sister married a doctor that was in Pocatello, and his two younger brothers had a farm up there, but they didn’t like it, they weren’t doing too good. So his sister talked Dad in to going up and taking over the farm. Before that, he was doing trading down in Southern Utah, Green River, south down through that area. LR: What was his name? KS: Eugene. LR: Your mother, where did she originate from? KS: She was born in Richfield, and that family moved down to Colonia Juarez, and that’s where they met. They knew each other there, but they didn’t get married until after they had come up into the states. LR: That’s an interesting story. Going back to your childhood in Rigby, where did you go to school? KS: It was all in Rigby. Rigby elementary school, which was a square and I think it was three stories. I remember smelling the old oil on the wooden floors that they put on them. Sister Call was one of my teachers. Junior high school was just another block or two away, then high school was next door to it. So I just went through there. LR: So what year did you graduate from high school? KS: 1942. 5 LR: Okay. What do you remember about Pearl Harbor Day? KS: Well, not too much. Heard about it on the radio, then we talked about it quite a bit after that with the family there. LR: How did that affect your small town, your community? KS: Well, quite a bit. The National Guard had a unit stationed there at Rigby, and they were called up to active duty. A lot of the fellows had to leave, and were called right in soon afterwards. I turned eighteen in 1941 just before I graduated. When you turned eighteen you had to register for the draft, so I registered for the draft, and then after I graduated from High School, that summer I went up to northern Idaho. I worked in the forest weeding because there was an invasive vine called Blister Rust that was killing the pine trees, and we’d go through and dig those out. I spent the summer doing that. When I come back from that, in December, I went down to the recruiting office and said, “I want to go to Aviation Cadet School,” so they signed me up. I didn’t get called in, at that time, that was in December. March the next year was when I went to basic training. LR: That would have been 1943 when you went to basic, where did you do basic? KS: Lincoln Air Base, Lincoln, Nebraska. LR: How long were you there? KS: Let’s see, just two and a half months, I think. From there I went up to Wayne, Nebraska, a little college town about like Brigham City. I spent May and June and July there. They didn’t have room for us in the main training areas at the time, so they put a lot of these small colleges to use, to learn some of the basics of aeronautics and multi day life. From there I went to Santa Anna Army Air Base, it 6 was pre-flight training. It was incredible. Ground school and drill, calisthenics and drilling. Firing range and everything. I was there for six weeks. Back up to Wayne, Nebraska. I was engaged before I left home. Amy, was going to school in Ucon, which is ten miles from Rigby. The last two years of high school she wanted a change so she came to Rigby, and that’s where I met her. We were engaged, and she came out the third of July, 1943 and we were married at Wayne. When I finished pre-flight school, they sent us to flight school at Thunderbird number two in Scottsdale, and she came out there and started following me from camp to camp. LR: What was her name? KS: Amy. LR: Was it nice having her follow you? KS: Oh yeah, there were three or four other wives that she would hook up with, and one of them had a car so they were able to get around. So it was nice having weekends with her. LR: So how long were you in Scottsdale, Arizona? KS: Well each one was about ten weeks. We’d go to primary training, then we went to Lamar, California for basic training for another ten weeks. Then from Lamar we went to La Junta, Colorado for advanced training for ten more weeks. LR: Were you learning to fly airplanes, or what were you learning? KS: Yes, learning to fly and continuing with ground school subjects, like navigation, weather, aircraft identification. LR: What were you flying? 7 KR: It was starting with the first one on the left there, the biplane. That was the thunderbird plane, the Stearman PT-17, that’s where we learned to fly. Then when we went to basic training BT-15, we’d learn how to use it, navigation, formation flying, and night flying. Halfway through basic I went to a twin engine which is the third one over there, flying a twin engine. That was a UC-78. Anyway, there was thirteen months all from when I started basic training to when I finished flight school. LR: So this was 1944 when you finished flight school. KS: April 15, 1944, yes. I was class 44-D. LR: So when you were all finished with your training, where did they send you? KS: Italy. It was interesting. Usually they send you to another field where you’re going to be flying your combat aircraft, bombers or fighters, whatever your assigned to, for another three months of training in the combat aircraft. But they come up with a graduation day after we were all there waiting for our orders, and they got down to the last fifty in our class, and they said, “We don’t have any orders for you. You’re going to have to wait here a while until we can get something arranged.” Anyway, they finally come and give us a six day pass. They say, “Go home, give us a number where we can reach you.” That was in Colorado, so I went back to Rigby. My wife was with me, so we went back by bus, and a couple of guys from Salt Lake, who were my buddies, came too. I got there that day and I got a call that night to go back. There was an April snowstorm, I tried to catch a plane from Pocatello to Salt Lake, the snow storm kind of messed things up. I did get into Salt Lake, maybe a little late, but I couldn’t get on to La Junta, because there 8 wasn’t any seats left on the plane. The other two fellows were in the same fix, so we got on the train and went to La Junta on the train. The officer met us at the train and said, “Here’s your clearance, sign this clearance from the base and get on that other train, you’re going back east.” “What about our luggage?” “We’ll get it to you,” so they sent us back to Patrick Henry, Virginia, and processed us for overseas. They said, “We need some copilots over there, you can learn to fly when you get there.” So I went from flight school overseas. LR: They sent you right to Italy? KS: They sent me to Naples. We were there a couple of weeks deciding where to send us. Some went to a B-26 unit, I went to a troop carrier unit, flying C-40s. One of the other fellows went to the ATC, Air Transport Command. So they split us up. There were the five of us that started out, some from Salt Lake, me from up in Idaho. We went all the way through training and overseas together, then they split us up a little. LR: What unit were you attached to? KS: 64th Troop Carrier Group, 35th Squadron. LR: What air force? KS: 12th Air Force. I went from Naples down to Sicily, they were stationed in Sicily at the time, so that’s where I ended up. I got there and they had one or two airplanes, the air echelon and all the others were in India on temporary duty, but they were expected back in a week or two. So that gave me time to qualify in the C-47, I got on this courier route every day, I could go up with Ed, as a co-pilot, and learn how to fly the airplane. That worked out. 9 LR: So what were some of your duties? KS: We were kind of a cross between a combat support and combat. We would train paratroopers, we took some paratroopers out for their practice jumps in Sicily, getting ready to go for the Southern France invasion. After that we moved up to Rome, an airfield south of Rome, and that’s where we got ready to go for the Southern France invasion. I went over there in May, and we moved up to Rome in June. Then that invasion was in August, the sixteenth of August. We took British paratroopers in then. LR: Do you know what invasion that was? KS: What did they call it? I don’t remember what they called it. I got the whole readout of the plans for the French invasion, somewhere in here it would say what they called it…Operation Dragoon! LR: Okay, so how long were you in Europe? KS: I think it was fifteen months, and then another three months down in the Caribbean, on the island of Trinidad, while Japan was waiting to surrender. LR: Let’s go back just a little bit. You were still in Europe when Germany surrendered. What was that like? KS: It was a great day. We looked forward to that. The theory was we were closing in, from Normandy up on Germany, and Germany had a lot of troops in Italy and Southern France. The allies were afraid that they would try to pull all those troops out of there to defend Germany. So that was one of the goals of the Southern invasion, to try to keep the German troops isolated in Italy and France. Then they were afraid some of the others would go up through Austria and go into Germany 10 that way through Italy. So about a week before Germany surrendered, they had the plan to make another big invasion of the Po Valley, the air invasion. We all staged down in a bomber base in Foggia, Italy. We were stationed there a couple of days to get things ready and rounded up, and that’s when they had me hooked up to a glider to haul into the Po Valley. After a few bridge games, they finally got around to the briefing on the invasion, and the night before we were supposed to go, they called it off. They had been working with some Germany Generals, and they had made an agreement to surrender, so we unhooked the glider and flew back home. That’s my unfinished mission. I lost the fridge game too. LR: What are some of your more memorable memories of that time in Europe during the war? KS: Well, the devastation of all the towns and infrastructure. We’d go from place to place, and mostly we’d be living in someone’s house that was abandoned, no glass left, no windows, we’d settle where we could. The civilian people were hanging around the camps, they were looking for food, begging for food, going through our garbage cans, little kids and stuff. We could go work with the people, we could walk around town- we didn’t worry about things in those days. The last place I was stationed in Italy was an airfield that was just outside of the factory town. The factory had built the houses for the workers to live in, so they were all alike. When we moved from Rome up to that base, they set up tents in the park. Some of us stayed in tents the first night, but some had gone out and found themselves a place to stay. The next day we just went around these places, and four or five of us went to this one house, and they had three extra rooms. It was a 11 couple with a nine year old boy; I think there were five of us that were staying there in three rooms. I had one to myself, they were all upstairs. So we just lived with them while we were there. When we left, the missus wanted to have a dinner for us. So we got some supplies and a few things from the mess hall for her, and we were sitting around the table, eating, just visiting, and we found out that whenever we’d come in at night, she’d know who was who. She could point to who it was by the noise, boom, boom, boom was this, tick, tick, tick was that, we had no idea she paid any attention. LR: That’s interesting. So while you were living with this family, would you pay them rent? KS: Yes, give them a little bit. Didn’t have to, but we did. LR: That was pretty common then, for soldiers to stay in homes? KS: That’s the only one I know of. I don’t know if any of them stayed in the tents or not. We just had the mess hall and motor pool and flight line where they would go to work. LR: That’s interesting. So you said seeing the devastation and stuff was difficult. Did there seem to be a lot of that as you traveled? KS: Well, most of what I saw was from the air. As troops moved up the valley, we’d take airfields, and we’d start flying supplies into it, gasoline and food, uniforms, and whatever they needed. We were seeing everything from the air. It was low, we’d fly only 1000 feet from the ground or so, that was all, so we could see everything pretty good. There was this big old railroad marshaling yard that had 12 been all bombed, ripped all up. Bridges and roads destroyed, so we were just following behind that most of the time. LR: After Germany surrendered, how much longer were you in Europe? KS: I think three or four weeks, just long enough for them to retrofit the aircraft. They put belly tanks in our C-47s, in the cargo area, so we’d have enough fuel to fly across the ocean. Their plan was to get our twin engine planes, our C-47s back home, and have the B-24s and B-17s bring troops from Europe across the Southern Atlantic into South America, Georgetown and that area. Our planes would pick them up there and take them into Florida. Waller field on Trinidad was the main maintenance base. I was there for three months because I was the maintenance test pilot. Every plane that would come out of maintenance, I would have to take it and check everything out, the engines, radios, everything, before we’d send it out and around. So that’s what I did for three months. LR: So were you on Trinidad when Japan surrendered? KS: Yes. LR: Okay. You wouldn’t have been in a position to see the atomic bombs going off then, because you were on the other side. KS: That was a bigger day than Europe. LR: I’m sure. After Japan surrendered, were you able to go home? KS: It took me about a month to get home after that. LR: Did you get a discharge? KS: I did, I got discharged from the air force then, but I signed up for the reserves. LR: So you went back to Rigby? 13 KS: Yes. LR: What did you start doing after you got home? KS: Well, I had a nine-month old daughter when I got home, so I had to go to work. I started working at different jobs. Like my wife said, I was still immature, still a kid, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t feel like I wanted to go to school, so I just started working jobs until I got into industrial firefighting at the National Engineering Lab near Arco Idaho. LR: What would you do? KS: Firefighter. LR: I have a vision of the John Wayne movie, the oil rigs, but that’s not what you were doing, right? KS: No, mostly it was just inspecting buildings, keeping fire extinguishers up, make sure they’re all good, fire alarm systems, keeping the equipment ready. We had a few little experiences there, not too bad. It was worse when I come out here for Thiokol. Spent about nine years there, then came down here, went to work for ATK, or Thiokol at that time. I’ve been twenty-seven years with them, as a firefighter. LR: That’s what brought you to Utah then, to work at Thiokol? KS: Yes. LR: Where did you guys first live, is this where you’ve always been when you came here to Utah? KS: Well, when I moved down here? We settled down a block west of here. LR: So basically it’s been in this area. 14 KS: Yes, house down here on the corner, 1050. We’ve just been here fifteen years. Fifty-six years that I’ve been in the area. LR: So what year did you come to work at Thiokol? KS: 1961. LR: Okay, so this was kind of at the beginning of the space race and all that. What was that like, working at Thiokol during that time? KS: Well, most of the fires and things we had would be little propellant that burned so fast, by the time we’d get there we’d just protect exposures, try to contain the fire. We also operated the ambulance for the area and had a few incidents where we needed ambulance runs into Malad, into Ogden, or different places like that. Only had two or three really good fires, one was a little over a million dollars. They didn’t lose any people in that one, though. We lost a whole row of buildings. LR: I went with my husband and children out to one of the test firing at Thiokol, when they were firing rockets there. Would you be present for things like that? KS: Yes, we did. Usually the burn would start some brushfires out there, we’d go put those out, but we’d always be nearby when they did those test firings. I saw a lot of those. LR: Working at Thiokol through that time. I’m looking at it from a historical point of view, those were some amazing times. KS: Okay. While I was working for the fire department, we did a twenty-four hour shift, three days a week. So I only had four days a week, and I had my other job going with the reserves. I was with the Idaho National Guard when I moved down here, and while I was there I went to helicopter school at Ft. Rucker and learned 15 how to fly helicopters. Then I went to instrument flight school down in Oakland, California for three months, and flight instructor school up in Fort Lewis, Washington, near Tacoma for two weeks. So I’d go to little schools like that to keep things going, and then I’d have to get so many flying hours a month to keep qualified for flying. So I got extra days to get time to do that. I was head of a transportation company for a couple of years down there in Salt Lake, so that took a little extra time, keeping that going. LR: Did you come down to the air national guard here? KS: No, I left Idaho to come to work for Thiokol. I never was with the air national guard, I was always in the Army National Guard, the Army aviation. LR: So you were never with the Army National Guard here in Utah? KS: Yes, I finished up with it. When I was first down here I was with the Army Reserve, which was Sixth Army, I got promoted to Captain, then came up for Major, got passed over, third time, that says you’re out. If you’re not qualified for promotion by the time your time comes up, they drop you. I hadn’t kept up on my educational qualifications, I had to much fun flying. So I just had a few years to go before retirement, so I reverted to a Warrant Officer, went to the Army National Guard in Utah. Warrant Officer still had flight status, so I took my retirement there. Rotor blade with those things on, that’s what the unit gave me when I retired. Didn’t have all that on it, they just gave me the rotor blade, so I could fix it up like that. They did have the little engraving on it, and my wings. LR: Was your unit ever called up for Vietnam? 16 KS: No. I was afraid we might one day, but we were a transportation, repair, and maintenance company. We had semi vans and one with radio equipment, one for hydraulics, one for engines, and sheet metal we could move into a field and be ready to operate. But we never got called up at that time, twenty-four years without being called up. Now they get called up every other year. LR: I wish my husband could say that. Having lived in this area of North Ogden as long as you have, how has it changed over the years? KS: When we moved here, 2600 Washington Blvd. was a dirt road. There was a post office and little milk depot down at the end of the street. Barker’s Service was there where the intersection is. I’ve seen it more than double in size in fifteen years, maybe tripled in size. I knew most of the mayors. LR: Where did your children go to school? KS: I guess all three of them graduated from the old Weber High, the one where Shopko’s at. Weber High used to be down there, 12th and Washington. LR: I didn’t know that’s where the old Weber High was. Where is it now? KS: It’s in Pleasant View. LR: How many children did you end up having? KS: Three. Two girls, one boy. BK: What were their names? KS: First one was Saundra, then Lorin, and Lana. LR: You weren’t there for Saundra’s birth, you were overseas. But you were home for the other two, right? KS: Yes. 17 LR: At least you were there for some. Is there any other story you’d like to share before I ask my final question? KS: Well, thing is, we had a lot of varied missions. One time, we had the call for a VIP, they wanted an airplane to fly General Alexander, who was the commander of all British troops in Italy. He wanted to go up and inspect his troops on the front line. So I got that assignment to fly him up there, and I had to wait overnight to bring him back the next day. Another time I got to fly a couple of VIPs to Paris for some kind of conference, so I got to walk around Paris for three days. Most of the time on our combat missions, which is going to be about ten percent; they are mostly combat support, but combat missions. That’s where you fly behind the lines for some reason or another. After the invasion of Southern France, after we kept supplying those troops, they got about into Germany when they pulled us back into Italy. When Italy surrendered, their army formed small groups to fight against the Germans, and they were called partisans. They would send word what kind of supplies they’d need, and we’d pack them up, and fly out to whatever the designated place was and drop it for them. So that was our main mission for our squadron, to keep them supplied. If there was a little village out somewhere, it was easy to find, but if it was a place up in the mountains, which several of them were, these were harder to find. We normally fly at 150 miles an hour, but we’d have to drop to about 1000 feet above the ground and slow down to about 90 miles an hour in order to make a successful drop. So there we are at low altitude and low speed, don’t know what’s beneath you, and we’d couldn’t unload it on one pass. The 18 crew chief and radio man had to push this equipment out. So we’d sometimes make three or four passes to get them unloaded. At night time, up in the mountains, it gets a little scary. This one time the drop area was in a valley below the mountain top, we would drop and come around here, bunch of tracers fly by, circle around, try to drop again, bunch of tracers fly by. I don’t know who was shooting at us, maybe it was some mad Italians, I don’t know. I liked the day drops, because when you got through, you could fly over and see how good you were at hitting the target, at nighttime we would just drop and hope for the best. LR: Would you ever hear if you were successful at your drops? Would you ever know? KS: No, there was a couple of times that I took a Special Forces guy with us. He would parachute in. We would drop supplies and he would drop in there, and he’d get his information from those Italians and make his way through the lines, more information and stuff. LR: That’s an interesting thing. KS: When we weren’t doing that, we’d fly air evac missions. We would go over to Florence, hospitals over there near the front lines, bring out patients and take them back to better hospitals in Rome and Naples. I flew forty or fifty of those kinds of missions. Carried thirteen littered patients. We’d pick up a nurse wherever they were stationed so we’d have a nurse in each plane. Sometimes we’d fly three planes in to get a load. LR: Always seemed busy. KS: Always had something to do. 19 LR: So my last question is this, how do you think your experiences and you time in World War Two affected the rest of your life? KS: Well, it’s made me appreciate the things that I have a lot more, knowing that you can’t take them for granted. You can lose them so quick. Those people, the civilians, lost so much, over just a couple of years’ time, their whole lifetime gone. Other than that, respect for the country no matter how bad we thinks the politicians are, I still have a lot of respect and pride in the country. I feel like it will be alright. Got a lot of things we’re going to have to work through, but I think we can do it. LR: Well, thank you, Kay, for your time. I really appreciate it. This has been fun.