Oral History Program JoAnn Taylor Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 30 August 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah JoAnn Taylor Interviewed by Alyssa Chaffee 30 August 2017 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: Taylor, JoAnn, an oral history by Alyssa Chaffee, 30 August 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. JoAnn Taylor 30 August 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with JoAnn Taylor, conducted on August 30, 2017 in her home, by Alyssa Chaffee. JoAnn discusses her life and her memories involving World War II. Brooklyn Knight, the video technician, is also present during this interview. AC: Today is August 30, 2017. We are in the home of JoAnn Taylor, speaking with her about her life and her experiences during World War II. My name is Alyssa Chaffee and I’m here with Brooklyn Knight. My first question is when and where were you born? JT: I was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho, 1929. AC: What are some of you memories of being a child in the depression era? JT: You know, I don’t remember a whole lot because my family, we were out in a farm. We were not too effected by the Depression. I had heard about it and my father was very frugal but we never had any problems. AC: Okay, what did your father farm? JT: Well, he farmed outside of Idaho Falls. But I was the youngest of eight children, well my twin brother and I were. By the time we went to school he did not farm anymore. So I don’t remember a whole lot about him farming. AC: What did he do after he quit farming? JT: He was a director of the bank there in Idaho Falls. He did own some property and rentals and was kind of a business man. AC: You said you were the youngest of eight children, so what was that like? That’s a big family. 2 JT: Oh, it was wonderful being a big family. I had a twin brother so we were very close. By the time I got in school, my older brother and sister had left home by then. AC: Okay, interesting. How far apart were each of you in age? JT: I think my brother was fourteen years older than I was, and then I had a sister, I think she was twelve and a half or thirteen. Then another was about two years younger, and another about two years younger than that. We came along five years after the youngest one at that time. AC: So after your father quit farming, did you still live in Idaho Falls? JT: Yes. AC: Was it a farming community as well? JT: It was pretty much a farming community. AC: What were your parents’ names? JT: My parents were Jim and Ida Bennett. AC: Jim and Ida. Do you have any memories trying to make ends meet during the depression? JT: Not really. But my father was a frugal person so we really learned to economize. He had no problems with it. My mother was frugal as well because that was the depression years. BK: How did they seem frugal? Did they make your own clothes? Or what was it like? JT: Well we never wasted a thing. I mean we didn’t waste water, we had to be very careful. Only fill the bathtub up that much when we took a bath. This was the time when you cleaned up your plate because those starving kids over in China were 3 starving. I don’t know how my plate effected them but we were told that. The clean plate club. AC: I’ve heard stories of people saving even bacon grease, did you do that as well? JT: Oh yes. We saved the egg shells and that may sound funny, crushed them up and gave them to the chickens. It would give them calcium and whatever the eggs started getting kind of soft shells we knew that they needed more calcium. So we would crush up the egg shells and they would eat that. BK: So you had chickens, what other animals on the farm? JT: Well we had cows and horses. Not much else. Well we had pigs for a while. I remember that. We stayed away from the pig pen because they can be kind of mean. But those were all before I was school aged. By the time I was school age my brother had taken over the farm and we moved away. BK: When did you start school? How old were you? JT: Six. Didn’t have Kindergarten in those days. AC: What school did you go to? JT: I went to Hawthorne Elementary School, Battle Junior in Idaho Falls, and Idaho Falls High School. AC: Back to your childhood, what were some of the things you guys would do for fun during the Depression? JT: My father liked to take drives a lot, but gas a rationed. Sometimes he would have a little extra, so we would take some rides up in the hills east of Idaho Falls and wander around. We did a lot of that before the war and then we curtailed it then. 4 There was a big family so we all entertained ourselves. Had lots of fun, I had a twin brother and we just did everything together. AC: I like that. So you were twelve when World War II started. Is that correct? JT: I think that’s true. AC: What do you remember of the day Pearl Harbor was bombed? JT: Oh, I just remember coming down the stairs and my folks were sitting there with the radio on. Of course we didn’t have T.V. then. They were just horrified. I didn’t know what was going on and I just remember everybody was so upset. I didn’t understand it until later on. I knew there was a war on and I knew we were involved a little bit in the European Theater at that time. AC: So you were pretty well aware of what was going on over in Europe before Pearl Harbor? JT: Yes, pretty much. Those days, when you went to the movie theatre you saw the news reel. That’s the only time we got pictures of what was going on. Our radios, probably twice a day we got the news. Not like it is now where it’s every fifteen minutes. I just remember my dad had come home and he had to listen to the five o’clock news. There was a fellow by the name of Kaltenborn. I don’t remember what his first name was but he had a very distinctive voice. My dad always had to come home and we had to listen to Kaltenborn. He gave a very good description of what was happening. But that’s how you got your news then. AC: That’s interesting. How did that effect you hearing about the war in Europe? Did you ever think that they would attack America? 5 JT: I didn’t. Until one time we had a black out drill. I remember we had to cover our windows and turn out our lights if we couldn’t completely black out the windows. We’d listen to the radio and they would have somebody up there flying over them and they’d see a light over here and then they’d notice people weren’t following the rules. They wanted it completely blacked out, so that if we were ever attacked here we’d be ready. That made me aware that maybe it could happen here. AC: So would the black-out drills be announced on the radio? JT: Yes, and in the newspaper. BK: How often would they have them? JT: I only remember twice that it happened. They just wanted to make sure people were ready in case we got attacked on this side. Of course, back then they didn’t have jet planes, well the only planes were the cargo planes. The troops were sent over on ships at that time. We had a batch of trains come through with these young men. If a group’s here and I belonged to a group here, we’d go down and serve coffee, doughnuts, whatever they needed, and take care of them. AC: You were in Ogden part of the war then? JT: No, I wasn’t then. I was still in Idaho Falls. I graduated from Idaho Falls High School. But I just remember them telling about it here, how the troops would come through and they spent days, hours, down there serving coffee and doughnuts. AC: That’s really cool. JT: I read a book about a town in Nebraska, and I guess the troops were coming through there all of the time. They spent hours taking care of them. I mean they 6 were going all over the country. It wasn’t quite like that here because it was a small place, but they came from all over Nebraska to help with that. I can’t remember the name of the book but it was an interesting book. There was a lady that lives here that was from that part of Nebraska. I talked to her about the book. But that was the thing, you went to the train stations and handed out whatever you could to the people coming through. Of course, Ogden being a real rail hub, had a lot of them coming through. Now it’s kind of a dead rail hub. AC: Did Idaho Falls have a railway hub like that as well? JT: No. They didn’t. It was a kind of spur off the rail road that went up as far as West Yellowstone. But it wasn’t anything like that. AC: Okay, so you’re just saying you knew people who worked in Ogden and would hand out the doughnuts and stuff? JT: Yes. Oh I went to a club here in Ogden when I moved here. They did so much before I ever became a member of the club. I just wore myself listening to what they did. But they spent hours down there handing out doughnuts, coffee, whatever they could. AC: So back to your time in the war, you mentioned the black out. Did they have a black out siren that would go? JT: You know I don’t remember. AC: Okay, I was just curious. JT: But they might have. It was well planned and well-advertised so everybody knew tonight is the night we turn off the lights and cover our windows. I think that was twice they did that. Just preparing us in case. I think they did have a siren. But 7 you know if it would have lasted longer we probably would have been attacked over here. As terrible as that atomic bomb was, it saved a lot of lives—ruined a lot too. AC: Definitely. Did you have any brothers that served? JT: No, I had two brothers—my twin brother and my oldest brother. He was a farmer they needed farmers and so he was exempt. Then my sister married to a farmer and he was exempt. Then my one sister’s husband went in and had arthritis so bad the first time he went out for a drill they discharged him, so he came home. Then my one sister was married to a fellow that was overseas. Well she met him at Galen field over in Boise. When he came back they got married and moved away. AC: What were some of the things your school would do to help with the war effort? JT: Well, we collected grease. We would put it through a sieve to strain it, and turn it into the butcher and they would use that, but I don’t know what for. Then we collected tin foil and stuff like that. I don’t think we had aluminum foil so much then but every piece of gum was wrapped in tin foil. I remember driving downtown, we were sitting in the car and this Japanese person come down the street and he picked up a piece of tin foil that had been used on a gum wrapper. I remember I said, “Oh he’s collecting the tin foil.” Mother said, “Ya, he’ll send it back to Japan and then well get it in bullets later.” AC: Oh my goodness. JT: That was just what she said. I don’t know what he said. But they did send it back. 8 AC: That’s really fascinating. Was there kind of a sense of fear towards the Japanese in your home town as well? JT: No, not like there was nationwide. I rode the bus with Japanese Americans. They were around. But nobody seemed to hold it against them, because they had been here for a while. It wasn’t like out on the coast. That was the most terrible thing they ever did, I thought that it was. They moved all of those people in and confiscated everything they owned, put them out here in the middle of Utah dessert. I know we realize now, but we were so paranoid it seemed like the right thing to do then. When you’re scared, you don’t think rationally. It wasn’t just people it was the President that was doing that. AC: Did you know about the internment camps when you were twelve? JT: You know I don’t really remember too much because we didn’t have any around Idaho Falls. But they had them down here, and I think they did over there in Boise or somewhere. I don’t’ know. I just had heard about them. AC: You mentioned your school collected grease, tin foil, did you also do any war bond stamps too? JT: Oh absolutely. You didn’t buy a whole bond but you could buy stamps. You get so many stamps and that would be worth it. They come to the school and sell them. They’d have them and then you’d put them in your stamp book and when you got enough you’d trade it for a bond. That was the patriotic thing to do was to buy bonds. I can remember hearing a comedian at the end of his program he would say, “Bye-bye and buy bonds.” That was the patriotic thing was to buy the bonds. You didn’t lose anything but they needed the money to defend ourselves 9 in war. But I just remember that, “Bye-bye, and buy bonds.” I can’t remember who it was that said that. AC: I like that. Were you effected quite a bit by the rationing? JT: Living on a farm we didn’t have to worry too much. But, we did go out and can peas. I remember picking the peas. I had to shell them. We found a different way of shelling the peas, we’d put them through the ringer of the washing machine, the old fashioned ringer washer. They’d pop out and fall in the tub and the shells would go on out. So we canned a lot of peas and different things like that. We didn’t have big freezers like we do now days, so you didn’t freeze too much. It was different. AC: Were you effected by the rationing on nylons as well? JT: Well I wasn’t old enough to be wearing nylons. But I remember my sister’s painting their legs and that’s when you had seams up the back. They’d take a black eyebrow pencil and draw a seam down the back of the leg. So they’d look like nylons. A lot of people did that. Now days you wouldn’t even think of putting a seam down the back of a nylon. AC: Where they thicker back then? Like a thicker material? JT: No, they weren’t. You couldn’t get nylons because all of the nylon went into parachutes. BK: What did they use to paint their legs? JT: I think they had something they sold at the drug store. I remember my sisters putting on all that and then they’d draw that seam down. You had to be careful to 10 get it straight. But then seams were not always straight when they were there on the legs. AC: How old did you typically have to be to start wearing nylons? JT: Probably in the junior high. I did start then and then the war was on and I think we went bare legged because there wasn’t nylons to be had. AC: Right, that’s interesting. JT: It all went to the parachutes. AC: Did you ever go watch the movies during the war when they would have the news reel and such? JT: Yes, I remember seeing those pictures of the German soldiers and that step they took, “Hail Hitler, Hail Hitler.” We all hated him. AC: Was that scary to have those news reel before your movie? JT: No, it wasn’t. We just knew they were over there. We saw that before we really got into the war because Hitler started quite a bit earlier into indoctrinating those people. AC: What were some of the movies that you would see during that time period? JT: We didn’t go to a lot of movies that was one of my father’s way of economizing, but you know what it cost to go to a movies then? AC: Was it like twenty-five cents? JT: Ten cents for under twelve and twenty-five for the adults. We’d see those old western with Gene Autry and Roy Rodgers, and the cartoons. I don’t think I remember going into any adult movies at all. 11 AC: I noticed that when you first signed up to do this, you mentioned something about German P.O.W’s. JT: Oh yes, that was right up the road from our farm. They had an internment camp for the prisoners. That was scary when I would walk by there. I’d walk by there and all these prisoners out and they had armed guards with their rifles. They’d let the farmers come and pick them up and take them out to help them in the fields with the harvest. My brother had some that would come to his farm. We’d just look at them and they’d always have an armed guard over there with them. We often wondered if they’d try to run away if they’d ever shoot them. But they had no reason to run away. They weren’t treated like they treated our prisoner’s we had over there. BK: There was no were for them to run. JT: No, I mean out in the field they could have, but where would they go? They couldn’t escape to another country, and they were treated well. They were feed and kept warm and all that. It wasn’t a big problem. But I just remember watching them and it would scare me a little bit because I was young. That didn’t last too long because I think the war ended shortly after that. But it helped. They needed help on the farms and my brother-in-law was also a small farmer and he didn’t have a hard man. I was his hard man. I’d go over there, and he had a tractor then. People were just starting to get tractors on the farm. I could never have driven the horses with all of that equipment. I would take the tractor and I’d cultivating potatoes and then I’d cut hay and cut wheat and drove the combine through the wheat field. I was always sitting there on the tractor in shorts and a 12 halter top. Burned myself. We didn’t know about melanoma then. I got it when I was about fifty years old. It was foolish but we didn’t know. AC: Did you have sunblock during the war time? JT: No, we didn’t have sunblock. We had sun tan lotion but it wasn’t very effective. Most of the people would just put baby oil on there and that just kind of fried them good. AC: So sun tan lotion was made for giving you a tan than preventing a sunburn then? JT: Yes. They weren’t good until they got advanced. That was long after the war ended. I remember on V.J. day, you’ve heard about V.J. day and V.E. day. I remember I’m sitting out there on the tractor, cutting wheat and I turned the tractor off and I could hear this horns and sirens and the whistle blowing in Idaho Falls. We weren’t too far out of Idaho Falls. I could hear all of that noise and I knew that the war had ended. AC: How cool is that? JT: Because we expected it. After they dropped that second atom bomb, there was no question about ending the war. As I grew older I thought that was a terrible thing to do. But the more that I looked into it and the traveling I’ve done, I’ve done a lot traveling, a lot of lives were saved. They were ready to attack us over here. When I went to Singapore, they had a big museum there and I found out they didn’t just fight us they were over that whole area—Southeast Asia. They were cruel. I remember I was in Burma, this girl was telling us how awful they were. They said some of the Burmese people and some of the soldiers would have tattoos on their hand. The Japanese would take those tattoos and cut them off 13 and put them on their lampshades and stuff. She said, “Oh they were awful.” They really were. I didn’t realize until I started traveling over there a little bit. They were just vicious people. Their history shows that too. Yet, as people, they are so sweet and gentle, kind and polite. When I went to Japan, I just couldn’t believe, they bowed to you and everything. I thought, “They are such nice people.” But it’s the leaders that are doing all the damage. It isn’t the people, and just like those Bora prisoners, those German war prisoners, they were innocent people. They just belonged to the wrong country. A lot of them did not like Hitler. He went out the wrong way. But I remember on V. E. day, that was victory in Europe, it was in May. I went to school that morning and I rode the bus to school. We sat in the back of the study hall in the morning before school started. The news came out then and we were all so excited. They just missed school. They packed us on our bus and sent everybody home. We had the day off. Now, you couldn’t do that because mothers work. Kids would go home to an empty house. Now, we keep them at school all day. AC: That’s really cool. What did you do after you got home from school? JT: I can’t really remember. We were so excited because you were limited on what you could eat and do and everything. You had to take those ration coupons to buy everything. I remember my brother belonged to a bridge club or Pinochle club or something like that. She didn’t drink coffee but the other women did in the club, she would buy coffee and give it as prizes. They just loved it because they just couldn’t get that much coffee. My dad drank coffee, but nobody else did. AC: Do you feel like the celebration was greater for V.E. day or V.J. day? 14 JT: Oh, V.J. because it was over. We ended the war in Europe and it was still a serious situation. Of course it didn’t last too much longer because we had that A-bomb. That was something else. If we hadn’t had it, I don’t know what would have happened. It was a terrible thing to do and yet really lives were saved by it. I don’t want to judge that, but it sure ended the book and we were glad. AC: I bet. So did you and your family have any kind of special celebrations to celebrate the end of the war? JT: Well, we got in the car and went to town and everybody was out running around the streets and singing and shouting and having fun. We kind of got in on that. We went to a movie. I don’t remember the movie because there was a whole lot of young kids. Let’s see, I was sixteen I think when the war ended, so we went to a movie and then we went home. The first thing I did the next day was make a batch of candy because rationing was over. I was so excited to whip up a batch of taffy, because we couldn’t make candy before. AC: Interesting. I love that. That’s a good way to celebrate. You were living in a farming town, were there still a lot of boys that would be called up to war from your home town? JT: Oh yes. A lot of them were. Not my age but they were older people. I just knew all kinds of boys. I remember coming home one night—I stayed all night with a girlfriend in town. I remember we came to her house that night. Her little niece came running out of the house crying. “What’s the matter?” Her niece says, “Uncle Charles is dead.” That was her only brother—killed in the war. I remember that hit me so much. 15 AC: That is really sad. But your friends were still in school. So I guess none of your friends went out at all? JT: No, my age went into the Korean War. My twin brother was over in that. He never got out of Tokyo. He was in Tokyo when that ended. I was so relieved. I was worried about him because we were close—being twins. AC: Were you guys close all growing up too? JT: We fought a lot, but we were close. We had a good time and we did a lot of things together and we did fight a lot, but that’s normal. Twins, one is usually dominate. Boy and girl twins it’s usually the girl that’s dominate. He just depended on me for everything. They didn’t separate us until we were in the fifth grade. That was too long, we should have been separated much earlier. Then we kind of grew apart after that. I mean, he didn’t depend on me. He just died recently and that was so hard for me. He had an incurable cancer. We made a couple of trips up there to see him, he was still in Idaho Falls. But the last time I went I said, “That’s the last time I’ll ever see him.” I’m the only leaf on the tree now. AC: I’m sorry. How was it having a twin brother during your dating years? Did he tease you a lot? JT: Well, I didn’t really date in high school, but when I got to college—he waited a year and then came a year later. I remember there was a formal dance, a girl’s choice and I didn’t ask anybody. I was no beautiful thing, I didn’t need much and didn’t have a lot going for me. So there’s this girl’s choice dance and it was right after Christmas vacation, and this girl asked him to go to the dance. He didn’t 16 really want to go with her but he said he’d do it. We went home for Christmas vacation and we had this big snow storm. Everybody was snowed in and the girl that asked him was from Hailey, Idaho which is up in the mountains, snowy country. When we went back to college I had to walk into to town, and some man gave me a ride on the back of his horse to get to the train station. The trains were snowed really bad, and Pocatello is where I went to school. Anyhow, she couldn’t get out of Hailey for several days. So he called up, “Well, you want to go with me?” Back in those days you had a program and you filled it out. You’d just trade every dance and everybody’s like, “Oh can I trade with you?” They wanted to go where my brother was, dance with him. He was really good looking. I had a wonderful time. All of our class reunions, he got to the point where he was in charge for years. So I’d go up and his wife didn’t want to go and my husband didn’t want to go, so we went to the class reunions together and it was fun that way. AC: What college did you go to? JT: Idaho State University. AC: I know a lot of the Utah high schools would do an accelerated program during the war. So they could get the boys graduated by seventeen. Did that happen in Idaho as well? JT: I don’t remember that, but I remember there was one thing we did. When I was in junior high, this one teacher, he decided we were going to have a cadet core. I think it was a national thing. He’d get us all armed up and we marched and it didn’t last very long. We were getting ready to be military. But I remember 17 marching up and down that street in front our junior high and calling out orders, flank right or calling left—all of that. We did learn all of those commands. But it didn’t amount to much. AC: That’s really interesting. I’m curious what the attitude was like in junior high versus high school as kids in high school started to become closer to the age of being able to go off to war. Did you start taking it a little more seriously once you hit high school? JT: Well, I think we all did. But I was a sophomore in high school when the war ended. It wasn’t a whole lot there, but it was an interesting time. I come down here and I’ve been volunteering at that senior memorial clinic—they had it down at the rescue mission. I volunteer down there and there was a Dr. Egbert that was down there. I remember he sat in front of me in high school. He was just two years older than me. He didn’t remember me but I remembered him because he played on the basketball team. We used to talk a lot about Idaho Falls High School. AC: That’s cool. Did they have ROTC in your high school? JT: Nope, they didn’t. They didn’t have that then, that came later one. The closest thing we ever had was that cadet core. AC: In junior high? Did you have uniforms and everything too? JT: No, we didn’t. I think we had a band. I’m to the age that I don’t remember a lot of stuff. I do remember I was in sixth grade when they started the draft and our teacher brought the radio to school so we could listen and we all sat there and listened for him to draw the first number. They didn’t draw names, they drew 18 numbers. Of course, every area had a different number, and I think the number they drew was twenty-eight or something. Of course there were twenty-eight all over the country. We just listened and I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t really know what it was all about. But I remember sitting there listening to the radio who the first draft team was. AC: So would the boys get a number in the mail? Is that how that happened? JT: They registered for the draft. They’re still supposed to. I had a brother-in-law that was shot down over in Italy. Well, he wasn’t my brother-in-law then, he came back and married my sister. But, he told some interesting stories. He showed me the shrapnel that had just scarred his back so bad. He was in the hospital in Rome for quite a while. AC: So he didn’t get captured? JT: No, he wasn’t, but when I saw that I thought—I think that brought the war closer to me than anything. But he didn’t come home until after the war was over. AC: So they just fixed him up and sent him back out there? JT: No, he didn’t get fixed up before—he was still in the hospital when the war ended and I remember that terrible scar on his back from shrapnel. Of course, “Let’s remember Pearl Harbor” was the slogan at the time, because that was a really shocker when they bombed Pearl Harbor. We were not expecting it. We didn’t think we had to be in that war. But I remember everything was “Remember Pearl Harbor.” When they were selling them on the stamps that would go in the books—that was there. Well, just like, “Remember the Alamo” back in the earlier days. 19 AC: That’s interesting. Do you remember what your sisters did during the war? They do anything to help with the war effort? JT: My one sister was a farmer’s wife. That’s where I drove the tractor. I wasn’t old enough to drive a car but I could drive a tractor. But then my brother, I helped him in the fields too. But I didn’t have to work hard there. He had me drive the truck up and down the fields to put the sacks of potatoes on. So, I had an easy job. They let school out for two weeks to help with the potato harvest during the war, maybe even the year after the war. It was so fun because you come back after the potato harvest, potato vacation, everybody had new clothes because they all went out and picked potatoes. That was their war effort. BK: When did you marry your husband? JT: In 1951. BK: Was he in the war? JT: Yes, he was. He was in the Navy. He was going to go out and then he had an attack of Appendicitis so the ship went without him. By the time he was ready to go back to work the war was over. AC: Was he drafted? JT: Yes. See he was five years older than I am. They were starting to draft those at that age. BK: How did you two meet? JT: On a blind date. BK: In college? 20 JT: No, it was after college was over. Then we moved down here to Ogden shortly after that. Ogden was really my home. AC: So you mentioned that Pearl Harbor was a shock because you didn’t feel like you were going to be attacked like that. Was there a sort of frenzy once the country started mobilizing? JT: Oh, it was terrible. You know what they did to the Japanese people, it was a terrible thing but you know we were so frightened with all of the attacks. You look back and it was a terrible thing to do but nobody seemed to oppose it then. We just had to get them out of there and yet they were such loyal citizens. They never did compensate them for what they left behind. That was bad, but when you’re scared that’s what happens. AC: Also, I’m curious about how your farm worked during the war—I know you sent a lot of your crops out to the troops, is that right? JT: Well, I don’t know whether we did or not. I don’t know where they went, we never knew. They’d sell the potatoes and the hay and all of that stuff. AC: Who would you sell your crops to? Was it a company? JT: Yes. You’d usually sold them to a company to process them or something. I never saw. AC: That’s really interesting. Did you guys eat any of the food you grew as well? JT: Well, potatoes of course, and peas. We didn’t freeze the peas we canned the peas. Then we had a big vegetable garden. When you have a garden space you can do a lot. I don’t really remember where the food went, I mean I helped harvest but it was part of the war effort. 21 AC: So after the war ended, you still had two more years left of school what did you do after you graduated? JT: I went off to college and then during my college years I worked up in Yellowstone Park during the summer vacation. That was so fun. AC: That’s really cool. What did you do at Yellowstone? JT: I worked at the Hamilton store, which has a different name now, selling curios and junk. That’s the way I looked at it when I was up there. But it was so fun. I’d get to meet people from all over the country. There was one fellow that went to school at Northwestern University, who was a med student there. He said he wanted to be a country doctor in Montana. He ended up in Ogden, Utah. I met him one day and we just chuckled over that. AC: That’s great. What year did you graduate from high school? What year? JT: 1947. AC: What did you study in college? JT: I was a teacher. I taught here in Utah for Horace Mann mostly, the first grade. BK: What school did you teach at? JT: I started teaching in Washington Terrace and then I went to Wasatch for year. Then I went to the old grant school and spent six years down there until they closed it. You don’t know what a grant School is, do you? Well, it’s down where the Ogden city mall park is at, on Grant Avenue. It was down in an inner city area. My little kids didn’t have much—Hispanic and Black and everything. I loved teaching down there. Then they closed the school and then I went to another school. I ended up at Horace Mann for most of my years, I enjoyed it. 22 AC: You mentioned that the poor schools had more Hispanic and African American children there. Did you see a lot of segregation going on in Utah? JT: You know, I started teaching in the early sixties and that’s when the new movement was coming along. We really had to work on being fair to everybody. I just remember they came out to tell us how to teach these children that their homes were not too stable. They said, “Don’t keep your room full of clutter. Keep everything calm. Don’t have pictures hanging everywhere, and have this and have that so there’s a calm atmosphere.” Then they built those two schools— Jefferson and Dee that were nothing but a three ring circus. I mean no walls, and after what they told us, “Keep everything calm so the children can learn,” then they put them in that atmosphere. They couldn’t put walls in them because they just weren’t built that way. They just tore Dee down recently and rebuilt it into an enclosed school. I substituted one day there and after school I just wanted to stand there and scream, “Be quiet.” I thought they told us to keep things calm. Have some water in your room like an aquarium or something. It was just kind of a shock for me to go in there. AC: There were no walls in between classrooms? JT: No. AC: So did they have any type of partition of any kind? JT: Yes, book cases and that sort of thing. There was a time then they built all of these new schools that way. Now they walled them in because, well for one thing fire hazard. 23 AC: That’s odd. I was curious because my elementary school didn’t really have walls to their classrooms either. They had like partitions that would split one big room into little ones. So was it kind of like that? JT: Yes, and the Dee school was a round school, so there was no way they could put partitions in. Out at Uintah it was that and they put partitions in. What school did you go to? AC: I went to Muir Elementary up in Bountiful, so pretty far but that’s interesting. So how was it teaching in that atmosphere? JT: Well, I hated it, but some got used to it. It was the new thinking, this is the new way: open classrooms. It was a nightmare to me. I never taught at one except when I went back and substituted. They built a lot of them that way. Then they went back and put walls in, but they couldn’t do it with Dee, so they tore it down. AC: And you could hear all of the other teachers, I am assuming, give their lesson? JT: I don’t know. I just felt that they didn’t know what they were doing. It was this new idea. They get these ideas every now and then. They have to try them because you got to keep up with the times, but there was always somebody filing past to go to the library or filing past to go to the gym or back to recess. Just substituting for a week was enough to me. AC: How many years did you teach for? JT: I taught for twenty-five. AC: What year did you marry your husband? JT: In 1951. AC: How long was it after your first date? 24 JT: Oh probably three months. We didn’t waste our time. He died about twenty-five years ago. I have four children, three girls and a boy. My one daughter died when she was thirty-seven. She went in for a hysterectomy, had a blood clot and that was that. AC: I’m sorry to hear that. JT: She left behind four children and her baby was nine months when she died. So I was a busy grandma for a while there. Fortunately I just retired from school teaching. AC: Wow. What did your husband do for work? JT: He was a buyer. AC: Okay, interesting. What companies would he buy for? JT: Well, he ended up at Hill Air force base doing it there. He came down to work at Marquardt and then they kind of downsized and he ended up out there. AC: Is that why you moved to Ogden? JT: Yes. I have been happy here in Ogden, I really like it. The weather is so much better than in Idaho Falls. That’s cold country up there and windy. AC: Did your family stay up in Idaho Falls? JT: My mother and father stayed there until they died. My oldest sister and my older brother and younger twin brother. The rest all moved away. Mother said I couldn’t stop her from her first two kids. All the good it did me. We all left them. AC: That’s interesting. Well, this has been so great, thank you so much. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell? 25 JT: I can’t think of anything other than I hope we don’t get into another war. This Afghanistan War or whatever it is over there, that’s the longest war in our history. Now, I thought it was a long time, when I was that age, those four years—that was a long time. Now, four years isn’t so long but when you’re that age, it’s a long time. AC: We were so much more involved in World War II. For my final question I wanted to ask you, how do you feel like your experiences during World War II have shaped the remainder of your life? JT: Well, I hate war that’s for sure, I’m just more cautious about getting involved. To go through the Korean War and then Vietnam War, they never accomplished a thing. We were better off in Korea than we were before. Those Vietnamese people, they were treated so bad by the North Vietnamese. It’s just a waste of time, but look through history. People have been warring since Cane killed Abel. I don’t think that it will ever stop. AC: Well, we will go ahead and turn off the camera now. Thank you so much again. This has been so fantastic.