Oral History Program Ruel M. Eskelsen Ruth Eskelsen Quinn M. Eskelsen Interviewed by Virginia B. Eskelsen 7 December 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Ruel M. Eskelsen Ruth Eskelsen Quinn M. Eskelsen Interviewed by Virginia B. Eskelsen 7 December 1971 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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 Kelley Evans, 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 All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Eskelsen, Ruel M, Ruth, and Quinn M., an oral history by Virginia Eskelsen, 7 December 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Ruel M. Eskelson, Ruth Eskelsen, and Quinn M. Eskelsen. The interview was conducted on December 7, 1971, by Virginia B. Eskelsen. The interviewees recount their feelings, attitude, and experiences connected with Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1971. VE: Today is December 7, 1971, which is the thirtieth anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. I can remember the day quite well. I was a young girl and living on Long Island in New York. It was a Sunday much like any other Sunday. I was attending church services with my family and we heard the news from our minister. I don’t recall any movement or outcry, people turned and looked at each other and aside from a whispered comment, there wasn’t even any talk. What was there to say? Even as a child I could remember a tenseness of the preceding months. I could remember the adults discussing if America would or would not go to war. And it seems that I felt that as the days slipped by and America did not get involved, our chances for peace got better and better. We hurried home and turned on the radio. I can’t remember details, but I can remember members of the armed forces repeatedly being asked to leave football games and join their units. It was a quiet, solemn day and no one knew exactly where we would go from there. In the months following we learned food rationing, gasoline rationing, standing in long lines to purchase nylon hose for instance. We had blackouts and air raid drills. In the beginning it was felt the war would be over very quickly, but it wasn’t that simple of victory. I asked some members of my family to tell where they were and what they were doing on that day. The first is my father-in-law. Dad, where were you on December 7? RME: I was stationed in California. I was in command of the battalion of field artillery. And we had decided to go to the beach with some friends on that particular day, and it was there we learned that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. As to my reaction, we had had the instructions previously that in the event of any attack from any source, we were to immediately report to headquarters and make ourselves available for any emergency that might arise. And we reported back to headquarters, our families were all sent to their homes, and we began to make preparations to defend the coast. We didn’t know how serious it was going to be, but, uh, we had to make plans and in this respect we were not entirely without plans either. We had drawn up plans and had them coordinated and approved by the war department for defense of the west coast. Our plans called for leaving San Louis, and moving in to the Los Angeles area where we went into what was known as the mobile reserve, and we were in the vicinity of the Monrovia. And from there we organized the defense of the coast from the Mexican border to Santa Maria. VE: In the following days, what were your actions in the defense of the coast of California? RME: Well it’s obvious that the extension of the area that was to be defended was too large for one combat team, which consists of one regiment of infantry and one battalion of field artillery. A total of about 3,500 men. So, hence, we were placed in the mobile reserve which means that we were so organized that we could move to any threatened area that might present itself. Now the thing that’s vital in the defense, or in the military action of any sort, is communication, roads, and control of the civilian population. And these were the things that we were particularly interested in. We immediately began the survey for battery positions and the battalion positions. We began to drop plans for handling the movement of our force from our camp to the various areas that might be intact. We began to make plans for handling the civilians, and we began to make plans for the organization of our sources of supplies and so forth. Now it is, of course obvious also, that we had to have supplies concentrated in various places and that required a network road, so that we could move them without being obstructed by a civilian truck. So the civilians had to be cut into the picture that in the case of emergency, they could use only certain roads. There’s one interesting aspect of how we intended to plug some of the roads so they couldn’t be used by the enemy, and that would be to rush civilian automobiles and heavy road equipment into the various artilleries along the highway, so that they would jam in case they began to move military personnel in ports. Now there’s one point that I would like to point out that I don’t believe that I have mentioned previously, and that is our supplies. We had no tents, no cover for the men, they slept in the open and as I remember, it rained all of the first ten days that we were there. And the men dug holes underneath the trucks and made the best use of whatever shelter they could and it was several days before this was straightened out so we could get the men under cover. We had some illness, but in a general way, they came through in pretty good shape. The ingenuity of the American soldier always presents itself in an emergency of this kind. Now, um, the main object of the defense was the vital installations and the beaches that were particularly applicable for the landing of the men in the ports. And here in was the, um, points where the greatest part of the organization of the defense was concentrated. VE: A little while ago, dad, you were telling me about your ammunition. Tell that story now. RME: Well it, uh, ammunition is part of a battle as far as artillery is concerned, and as I remember we had sixty rounds of nineteen eighteen shrapnel, and that was all we had to fight with. If the drops had come in in ports we could have fired that and then we’d have to take to our small arms. We did have the little small arms ammunition. But the people of Los Angeles were alerted and I think every person had a weapon, had it ready, and I particularly remember of talking with my wife, Bessy, and she said if those jets land here, I’m going after them with the butcher knives. She said make me so damn mad that I believe I could do it. VE: I know that you were mobilizing full war, but can you tell me exactly how you felt when war was declared? RME: Well we were in the army and the senior officers of the division, this wasn’t entirely a new thing. We had all been in combat in World War I or the greatest part of it. So we expected a war, we knew what had to be done in the event war was declared, and we were psychologically prepared to go to work and get our organizations ready to fight. VE: Next I’ll talk to my sister-in-law. Ruth, where were you on that day, what were you feeling, what were you doing? RE: Well, I was living in Anaheim, California, which had been my home all my life, and the first recollection I had is listening to our radio and hearing the president announce in such dramatic terms the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and I can remember, my mother and I, and my sister crying and feeling very strong emotion. And, uh, then I can remember that we started to think about doing the things that they were instructing us to do, like make blackout curtains for our homes and uh, we would hear off and on, rumors about sighting of Japanese Uboats of the beach, and I remember one very sad, um, my girlfriend called up and we were very close and she was in tears and had um, told me that their Japanese gardener was being sent to a relocation center. And they had been so close for so many years, he’d been their gardener for many many years, and some such beautiful flowers, camellias and he was just a beautiful gardener and they were just such close friends that she just could not comprehend them sending him and his family to some relocation point. And, uh, that’s about all I remember. VE: The next to speak will be my brother-in-law. Quinn, where were you on December the 7, and what were your feelings on that day? QE: Well I was living in Brigham City with my aunt and I was a senior in high school. The rest of my family was in California with my father, who’s in the service already, and uh, I don’t recall exactly when I heard, or what the circumstances were about the attack on Pearl Harbor. But I had gone to church that morning, and I think that it was sometime after church that I heard about it. My first reaction to it, as I recall, was how ridiculous it was for the Japanese to attack our Navy, and I was certain that it would just be a matter of weeks until our Navy would defeat the Japanese Navy. It wouldn’t very long until, uh, we could defeat the Japanese. I think I thought about my first feelings of this many times after I was in the service. By, uh, early 1945, I, uh, received my training and was sent over seas and was in one of the last battles of the Pacific war. And planning on Okinawa was a long two weeks from the time they attacked Pearl Harbor till we finally did defeat the Japanese.