Dorwin S. Pierson

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Dorwin S. Pierson – Life during
WWII
By Dorwin S. Pierson
September 21, 2002
Box 1 Folder 17
Oral Interview conducted by Scott B. Colton
Transcript copied by Maren Miyasaki June 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
DP: ( Missing part at beginning) But there wasn’t a draft then, they weren’t drafting
people yet.
SC: So that was before Pearl Harbor?
DP: Yea, that was before… that was in ’ 39, either ’ 39 or ’ 40, I can’t remember before I
went to work on the railroad, and it was after we was married and we was married in ’ 38
and oh boy, she’s been gone a year and a half and it just don’t change.
SC: I guess the first question I have is what year were you born?
DP: 1918.
SC: 1918.
DP: Champion, Alberta Canada in my grandmother’s house and Marcine was born in her
grandmother’s house right down here where Carford’s is now, right down here on the
corner.
SC: Wow. And how old were you when the Japanese did attack Pearl Harbor?
DP: Well, let’s see ‘ 18, ’ 41… 23.
SC: Tell me what you remember about the bombing of Pearl Harbor? How did you feel
about it? What was your reaction?
DP: Well, I really can’t, I guess kind of like waiting for the other shoe to fall. I knew it
was going to happen, I didn’t know how or when or anything about it, but I just had a
inner feeling the way they was buying up things and way things was going politically and
everything that it was gonna. And Germany was already fighting so I don’t know it, just
it had happened and I knew it was going to so maybe it was relief, I don’t know.
SC: What were some of the things that made you, “ know it was going to happen?” Like
you said they were buying up things, what exactly?
DP: Like all the scrap iron.
SC: The United States was?
DP: No, Japan was.
SC: Oh, Japan.
DP: It was… they were… Japan was getting it from the guys that had it here and they were
shipping it to Japan. I don’t know, I just it and…
SC: How did you feel about the war after the bombing as opposed to before?
DP: Well, I’m against anybody attacking from behind and that’s just what had happened,
a sneak attack, and I don’t like sneaking and… but the political things they was at logger
heads, and they were even talking while they, when they attacked. That was the thing
that really-- they were talking peace, the ambassadors were here while they were
attacking Pearl Harbor.
SC: Oh, Japan’s ambassador was here?
DP: Well the officials, I don’t know exactly what they were yeah, and I do think too if
they had followed up with it instead of backing off they might have come a lot closer to
winning. They had us pretty well down on our knees for awhile, but they never, they
never followed through in my notion.
SC: How did people like your family and friends and community feel about it?
DP: The same as I did. They thought it was a sneaky thing to do and underhanded and so
many people volunteered, and I never ‘ cause I was married then and had a job then that I
wanted to keep. So I didn’t venture to try to get into it again, but I knew the railroad was
going to be important, and that’s what kept me out. And before I was working and not
making as much as my wife and that hurt my ego I guess ‘ cause it was different. And
like I say I wanted to get… I knew it was going to happen. I knew that I was the right
age to be the first one in and I wanted to get some training. We went out, and that was
Sunday that it happened, and we went out Saturday night went downtown to buy
groceries and we met some friends. So instead of buying groceries we all went to the
show and then when we woke up Sunday morning why it had happened, and before we
got to the store they’d put a hold, they issued stamps you know for sugar and meat and
bananas, and you couldn’t buy any of that stuff, an they hadn’t issued the stamps yet.
And we never had a bowl full of sugar in the house ‘ cause we figured on buying
groceries, and we never got it bought and when we couldn’t, we did go [ without] most of
the things you couldn’t buy it happened that quick. Yea, they rationed. You couldn’t get
bananas, sugar, and you had to have stamps for gas, and it took awhile for them to issue
this to, but you couldn’t get it in the meantime.
SC: So what did you do until you finally got the stamps issued?
DP: Well, I guess we just got by with what we had. And then her folks, which were I
don’t know… I know when they went to buy groceries they didn’t get them, but we got
by. You couldn’t buy tires for the car, just a whole bunch of things they rationed and
then later on why the best meals I got was on troop trains. And the guys fed the troops on
the troop trains, and then they threw [ it] away, you couldn’t imagine the food they threw
away. I got the best meals I ever had probably better than I did at home, but they was
going to be thrown away on the troop trains so that was something different.
SC: Tell us more about the railroad, and, I know you told me that you were drafted, but
or you know, couldn’t be drafted.
DP: I figured I would be.
SC: But tell us I guess more for the tape about that.
DP: You know there’s not much to tell, but like I said I tried to enlist and then they tore
up my papers when I told them I was married. So after that I was more at ease. I didn’t
figure I was dodging the draft ‘ cause on the railroad, why you got to run a railroad and
you should of seen the stuff we hauled most of it going to Russia, a lot of it going to
Russia. And that was another thing I hated. I didn’t like that, but the troop trains we
never knew where we was going from one order board to the next we didn’t have a
destination known to us on the trains in case that anybody was, I guess, going to
sabotage. I don’t know of any sabotage around here. I really don’t. There was a lot of
Japanese here, but I don’t know of any sabotage, and I don’t know of anybody who
would be a saboteur. I mean, I don’t think people here were even in favor of the Japanese
here, I don’t think they were in favor of what happened here. I just don’t think, so they
was too nice of people yeah and after that, why the price and everything started going up
because it was short and every time you get a shortage the price goes up and then they
couldn’t sell as much so they had to make more on what they did. And I was gone away
from home, and that’s the longest I was ever gone, and that was seven weeks I was gone.
I went to Lyman on my own, but I couldn’t lay off to come home. Marcine was still here,
and I was gone for seven weeks and that was the longest I was ever gone and then I
worked baggage a lot on passenger trains, and they had no rest while I was a baggage
man. So they wouldn’t let me off to, they didn’t pull me on, of course, but they called me
on the train I come in on, and they just pulled me right on through and you could rest on,
a Baggage man could rest on the job if he had a chance. A brakeman and conductor
couldn’t, so we had no rest law on baggage. Everything sure changed, though people
were sure patriotic. They did all they could I think to further the cause and the ones that
joined had the idea that our country was right, that we had been attacked. It’s a lot
different I think then, than the attitude is now and much different than it was in the
Korean conflict.
SC: How is it different?
DP: Well, [ on] my own, I can’t speak for anyone else, I figure that everybody I worked
with felt like I do. I figured that we was just absolutely political and financially
motivated. I think that Lyndon Johnson and big business got us into that every time
things started slowing down. The darned Democrats got us into another war in my book.
And it bolstered the economy and that is kind of a poor way to do business.
SC: When did you first learn what Germany and the Nazis were doing to the Jews? And
how did you feel about it when you found out?
DP: Well, we hadn’t heard much until after the war started and Marcine had a oh, I don’t
know if he was a relation, just a friend that had been over there on a mission and
Germany inflation was so bad that they’d get paid, if they could why they’d get paid at
noon and again at night because everyday it was going up so bad that if they didn’t, if
they waited two or three days their money didn’t keep up with the inflation, [ it] was that
bad and Hitler stopped that. He did like President Roosevelt in 1929. The banks all went
broke and just closed up and went south with everybody’s money. And he stopped that
and closed all the banks and put on the Federal Reserve and all that so banks haven’t
closed like that since. A lot of people questioned Roosevelt, and I think like everybody
else nobody’s perfect. But I think he [ had] done a world of good for this country, but
then that Hitler done a world of good for Germany starting, but I think he got carried
away. I think he really, in his own idea I think he had the idea, right motive and the right
intention and everything, but the devil just carried him away ‘ cause he stopped inflation,
and he, but then when he picked on the Jews I don’t think there was anything like that
before. I think that all happened after the war started. I don’t, well their war… ‘ cause he
invaded Poland before we got into it, but I don’t think there was… until it started and
then he was over the hill by then.
SC: So when did you first learn about what he was doing to the Jews?
DP: Oh boy, I couldn’t tell ya. I just… everything’s, just… I‘ d have to have something
to compare it to now. I couldn’t tell ya. It was just a feeling you had. It wasn’t anything
that… it wasn’t anything definite to put it on. It was just a feeling you had with the
situation in the world and everything.
SC: What did leaders in the church say to members of the Church during the war that you
can remember?
DP: That I never got. I never started going to church until see, I never went to church at
all from the time we left Canada in ’ 27 I never went to church anymore until I met
Marcine and then I went ( inaudible) and then I never started going to church regular until
oh, I think in ’ 44 or ’ 45. So I don’t know what, how the church felt about it. I really
don’t ‘ cause I wasn’t going, bad to say, but I wasn’t.
SC: Did you know anyone that had to serve in the war?
DP: My best friend and it just absolutely turned him 360 degrees ( Dorwin called the next
day to correct this to 180 degrees). He was just the nicest guy you ever met, and they
drafted him, and he went, he went into the Marines. And we was the best friends in the
world, and we was, I didn’t think anything would ever change it, and when he came back
I invited him for dinner and everything. And before the night was out I had to tell him to
be quiet and not to come back unless he changed his views and ‘ cause I didn’t… His
manner and his speech, he was just oh, he was bitter. He was, but it had just changed him
absolutely and that’s what the army and that’s what I’ve always, he was a nice guy and a
level guy and when they could change him that much I thought that’s not a good thing to
have that happen to anybody. And he said in boot camp and in their training why they’d,
he said they’d make you hate your own mother. That it is not right to drill hate into
people, and they’d never send the Drill sergeant over with the same people, if it was the
same people, if he went he went with a different group. They never went over, Mac said
they never seen the guys that they seen in the United States. They never seen them again
‘ cause he says, they really killed them, and that was his attitude, death. If you’re going to
be killing somebody you might as well kill someone you hate, someone you don’t even
know, and that’s how they felt. ‘ Cause afterwards… he talked afterwards, why we had
got back, and he changed, oh it took him six months. I can’t get over what a change in
one man! Like it was him, and I’ve always had a bad feeling about the service if they
could indoctrinate you so bad to change a person as much as they changed him. And
Marcine had a cousin that was in the Marines, and he was in the Marines and they
chained him to his bed; when he went to church once and when he got back why they
chained him to his bed. And when that boy come home, he was in the Marines and his
brother was in the Air Force, a pilot in the Air Force and them two just go at each other
like cat and dogs, just gone attitude what they gone through he figured his brother as pilot
had all the, all the cake and he had all the crumbs. ‘ Cause he had a tough time ‘ cause he
wanted to go to church, and they wouldn’t let him. They blamed the church for you
know that [ is why] he was treated that way. I don’t know, it was bad, that changed
brothers, and that was another case that I couldn’t ever forget those two brothers and as
far as I know [ they] never reconciled yet. And that one that was in the Marines he had a
car, and he was a good mechanic, and he supped the car up so it’d outrun anything. And
he’d go and entice cops to follow him, and they’d get him out in the country and he’d
stop and kick the living daylights out of them. He just liked to fight and he was good at
it, and he just well, so was Max, except he never done the same thing. I’ve never seen it
change people like that. I just never took the training, and I just can’t see how they could
change a personality that much ‘ cause Max said afterwards after I talked to him, oh it
took about two years for him to get that all worked out of his system. And he said they
were… he hated everything and there were just no questions, and he said you could kill
your own mother, and that you’d have to know him to know how drastic that was.
SC: Did you ever know anyone that went to war and never returned?
DP: I had a Bob MacDonald. He went, he joined the air force, but he went to England
when England and Germany was going. He went to England and fought for England, and
he was shot down. He was a pilot, he went to England ‘ cause he didn’t like the way
things was going, and he went over there to fight.
SC: Did you know his family?
DP: No, he was like me. He didn’t… he was, he had a father and a sister, but their family
was broken up kind of like me. That’s why we were good friends, a lot of the same
background. Yep. So that’s the only person ones’s around here. I didn’t know anybody
that didn’t come back around here. A lot of guys I worked with on the railroad, one of
them was a tank commander and when he got back, I didn’t know what he was doing
until he got back of course, but after the war was over… that’s what he’d been was a tank
commander, and they did draft some from the, that was on the railroad, and a lot of them
volunteered so I don’t know which one he was.
SC: What was your impression of the soldiers that went on the railroad that went?
What’d you call it? The Troop…
DP: Troop trains.
SC: Troop trains, yeah what were you’re impressions of the soldiers?
DP: Well, they were all gung ho you know, and I felt sorry for them. I was the same age
as they were, and I thought, man the things they’re going to face. There we are hauling
them away like sheep to the slaughter, [ that’s] the way I felt about it. That’s the way I
felt. ‘ Cause you know that they was going to have real hard times, and they was just
well, they were indoctrinated. They had to be gung ho about it, and they all were. I
never seen any of them that weren’t. I don’t know… I felt guilty myself. I should have
been one of them, so maybe I had a different feeling than a lot of others, but then I
figured I was doing what I could here, and let it go at that ‘ cause I sure did want to leave.
SC: Did your work that you did on the railroad help you feel like you were contributing
to the war effort?
DP: That’s the only thing. That’s the only thing I think I would have enlisted if it hadn’t
been for that. And after that they’d take ya ‘ cause we didn’t have any children yet. We’d
been married over three years, but we didn’t have children yet, and they’d have taken me,
and I probably [ would have] enlisted, but I figure in the railroad I was doing a lot of good
because we moved a lot of stuff. And we put in a lot of hours and during the war, I’ve
always laid off and done a lot of things, but during the war I never, if there was a lot of
men on the extra board why then, and I’d been working steady then I’d lay off but other
than that I wouldn’t after the war, and everything why when I wanted to lay off it did not
matter what you know when or anything that, that was just a rare… I never laid off when I
figured it would hurt any, stop anything, or slow anything or make a difference. But I
figured I was doing as much or more good on the railroad than I could over there. And
that’s the only thing that sighed my conscience. That and the idea that I tried to enlist,
and they wouldn’t take me.
SC: Do you remember where you were when the war ended?
DP: When the war ended?
SC: Yea, when the war ended.
DP: No, but I can tell you where we were when it started.
SC: Where were you when it started?
DP: In bed, we turned on the radio and it was the first thing we heard in the morning.
Before we got up in the Sunday morning, why it was Saturday, December the 7th ’ 41 was
Saturday. And we was out to buy groceries and didn’t went to the show instead and then
we was listening to the radio before we got up. That was it. And boy I’ll tell ya, that was
really… a lot of people figured well boy, we’ll just knock them out in a week, and I never
did feel that way, I’ve never felt that way about any war. And the Gulf War I felt the
same way about that, and it wasn’t as bad and didn’t last as long, but I still feel the same
way. But I figured we had reason then, but I still feel it was financial at Kuwait in oil
and big business, I still think there was a lot, financial and political, maybe I’m wrong.
SC: How did the war affect the community? What changes did you see in the
community?
DP: Oh, I think everybody did everything they could to conserve and rationing. They
never fought it or crabbed about it, they accepted it and did everything they could to help
the matter. Well, they lived up to everything that they enforced out, the people here
didn’t gripe about it at all I think the… everybody did all they could to further the cause.
SC: What memories from that time period are most vivid?
DP: Well, that’s the main thing that I’ve already mentioned you know my feelings ‘ cause
I was the same age as the kids going. That was my big drawback, but I didn’t want to
leave Marcine and like I say I tried to enlist when I seen it coming and they didn’t take
me when I wanted to. I didn’t try to stay out; I just didn’t have to go.
SC: Why did you enlist?
DP: Because I was between jobs and was dissatisfied with everything and I wanted… I
figured I was going to have to go. I never knew, I never had any idea [ like] working on
the railroad or anything like that anymore [ other] than flying from the moon. And I just
had a high school education and Marcine was making more money than I did, and she’d
been to college and I hadn’t, and I was down in the dumps really, and she was making
more money than I was, and I figured this was coming, and so that was what I figured I’d
do and it didn’t work. I can’t even remember if I was working ‘ cause I disliked [ it]; I was
working in storage and I disliked it with a purple passion. I’d been working in
construction and driving trucks and when I went to work at the store I quit my job ‘ cause
Marcine wanted me to be at home and be [ at] home [ in the] evenings and work regular
hours you know and not follow construction. And so I was trying to do what she wanted
and it just wasn’t panning out for me. I can’t there’s, a different people that I worked
with in construction and everything than [ I] worked [ with] in storage and when I went to
work on the railroad I found the same type of people again. I was more at home then, so
I was dissatisfied with everything at the time I tried to enlist.
SC: Did you make any new friendships on the railroads; did you actually make any
friends with the soldiers before they shipped out?
DP: No. No, and then the war happened so quick after that I didn’t really have any
friends really on the railroads, just guys that were, I didn’t have any friends go or
anything I’d only worked about four months when it happened.
SC: Were most of the young men in this community gone?
DP: Most of them went, yes.
SC: What was that like?
DP: Well, that’s another thing you’re always… me being that age I always felt, you
know, if I hadn’t been working for the railroad I would have enlisted. That’s how I felt.
But I figured I was doing good so here I’d stay but, ( inaudible) my friend Max Roberry
that was the one that… and of course I didn’t know all the other until he come home
when my best friend left.
SC: How did you keep in touch with him?
DP: I didn’t. No we never did communicate, or he and I, neither one wrote [ a] letter so I
never contacted him or anything all the time he was gone. I knew him. He was working
on the railroad himself, he just started, and I don’t know if he was drafted or enlisted. I
can’t tell you that because we were cut off right after it happened. We’d both been
working and then we were both cut off after it happened so I don’t know whether he
enlisted or whether he volunteered. But we was… it was funny I don’t remember. Now
when he got back I could not believe what they had done to him, and it was years later of
course when I met Marcine’s cousins, I just can’t, I just don’t have any idea how they
can indoctrinate anybody and change them with hate like that, that’s Satan’s work from
way back.
SC: Did that make you feel at all less comfortable, like our own nation, it’s on our
soldiers?
DP: No. It made me glad I didn’t go because Max Roberry was a lot nicer guy than I was.
And if they could do that to him I had no idea what I would have done. I was glad I
didn’t go after I talked to him because I’d have never survived it because I couldn’t stand
authority, and the first person that did that, I’m just glad I didn’t go.
SC: Did they tell you any stories about any of their battles or anything?
DP: No. I never talked to any of them, even Marcine’s cousin, all he just tell was just
hell and that you’d try to be decent, and there was just no way to be decent he said and
the worse you was, the better off you was. He said too that was a sad commentary, but
you just had to be, to have that hate survive. You had to have a driving force, and that
was what it was, and I cannot think of anything worse for a civilization than to hate like
that… than that’s what these darn Islamic guys drilled into them. It must be… I wouldn’t
think it was possible, but I seen it. Ya, and that’s what they’re doing to these people in
the Middle East country, drilling hate and martyrs, and then blaming somebody, that’s
another thing they all try to blame somebody else for their actions. I don’t think that’s
right, but I always, after I look back I was so glad I didn’t go, didn’t have to.
SC: Do you feel like there was any effect from the war on your relationship with your
wife? Did you guys change any of your habits? Did you have different forms of
entertainment?
DP: Well, I don’t know about her, but it did me. I was so glad to be with her I don’t
know what her ideas was all about it because I know we was glad I was staying home and
when I was gone, why I told her that’s why I was gone and she had no conflict about that
at all. She always supported me a hundred percent when she was working, when I went
to work for the railroad I worked 31 days for nothing, absolutely nothing. So I had to live
off Marcine for 30 days with not even trying to work, and that didn’t set well , but I asked
her if she’d do it, and she said yes and she never mentioned a word. So I was living off
her when I was taking those, I worked right here in town, taking these locals out of town,
and I was gone on weekends all day, six days a week on the freight trains and to get me
student trips faster I went to work Sundays on the passenger train so I could get to work
quicker and Marcine just backed [ me] a hundred percent, and she was working and I
wasn’t.
SC: What was she doing?
DP: She was a government stenographer in the farm security administration. She was a
stenographer and then part of the time she worked here in Idaho Falls, and they wanted to
open an office in Rigby, and so actually she opened the office, and she wasn’t the boss.
It was a young guy coming out of college, and he didn’t know what they was doing, and
she did. As they sent this young college graduate and her up to Rigby to open this
office… so it was her that did it ‘ cause she knew what was going on, and he didn’t. And
that winter, that was before I went to work on the railroad, that winter I made more than I
would make around town because I’d go hunting rabbits. And I could sell a rabbit
carcass for 17 cents, and I could sell the fur for 8, and I could make a quarter for every
rabbit I shot. And if I got eight rabbits a day I was ahead of the game, and so I’d go
hunting rabbits while she was working, that was quite a winter, so I made better than
wages hunting rabbits.
SC: How did you find out what was going on in the war during the war?
DP: Well, just radio and newspaper, and then after the fact you’d find out [ more]
afterwards. Like I’d say when I was doing this the war wasn’t on yet. We got married in
’ 38, and she was working when we got married so all this happened before the war
started because I was working on the railroad and didn’t have those conditions before the
war started. I went to work for the railroad so I didn’t spend my time like that then. And
as soon as I was making enough money I asked Marcine to quit, and she quit because I
was going to be gone a lot, and if she was working we’d have never been together so
soon in the first year I went to work for the railroad [ and] she quit.
SC: What do you remember about rationing? I know you said it started on the day after,
how long did it last?
DP: The day after the Sunday-- everything in them days was closed on Sunday, most
everything, offered, not everything but a whole lot of things, and Marcine’s folks being
on the farm, and that’s where we got… I really don’t remember, we’d get everything we
could, but we never had to go without. Yeah, and everybody did and I think they were,
what do you say, good natured about it. Nobody fought rationing and ever since then I
think they would… we’d never had it again, but I think people would have bought more
because we went to war because we were attacked, outright attacked, and we haven’t
been since and I think people feel, I know I did, I felt like it was financial and political.
SC: Did that make you…?
DP: You don’t wanna make me go out and fight for it. I’ll tell ya the guys that want
these wars let them go fight and that don’t happen. They send in the cream of the crop
out to get killed. It’s beyond me when you’re fighting for a cause that’s one thing, but
when you just go out to satisfy some political [ issue] that’s another thing.
SC: So is that how you felt about World War II?
DP: No, no I felt good about World War II I mean, it was a war that had to be fought.
SC: It was later wars, Vietnam, the Gulf War?
DP: But the later wars, why I’ve not agreed with any of them. I just think that… I don’t
know. I’m like, I’m not a politician and I might be all wrong, but I think like Teddy
Roosevelt “ You talk soft and carry a big stick.” You stay home and mind your own and
nobody touches you or you’ll knock their brains out is the way I figure, and I don’t figure
we should go out any further than our shores to do that. I guess I’m an isolationist. I
don’t know, but I don’t believe in attacking anybody and then I figure I’d get their
immediate attention if they get the idea to attack us, and I figure if you’re going to fight a
war you fight it to win. Korea you couldn’t go past the 38th parallel that is puppy cock.
You don’t fight by rules, you fight to win. And when you fight you use any method
that’s handy to get the job done and they won’t let them do that and that is political
‘ cause it’d end it too quick.
SC: Did September 11th remind you of the Pearl Harbor attack at all?
DP: Oh yes it did, but not to cause a war over, I can’t see that but I hate cowardice in any
form and that was the only thing that bothered me, just sneaky and pointless, useless loss
of life. That’s the thing that gets me is just how they can indoctrinate these young people
to do things like that, but I’ve seen it happen. So that’s the thing that brought [ thoughts]
back to me, but they just can’t happen, but it can [ if] those two guys would have done
anything and that is a sad state and that’s no way for a human being to feel.
SC: Did you know any Germans or Japanese people?
DP: I knew Japanese, I didn’t know any Germans per say. I mean I don’t know if he’s
German or Irish. I don’t know what they was, no I didn’t, but I knew a lot of Japanese
and I liked them all.
SC: Did they, were they treated differently?
DP: Yes, they were, most of them was rounded up, but I didn’t agree with that, but what
can you do. You… it’s “ there you go again.” We agreed with the laws and that was the
law when they rationed, we went along with it when they rounded them up we went
along with it ‘ cause we figured things that went on was a necessary evil at the time.
SC: How did they feel when it was over, some of your friends that were Japanese and
how did you feel…?
DP: I don’t know about that either I never really discussed it with anyone, but I think it
was… but and you can’t blame the Americans for it because the way they attacked us
we’ve got no idea who is sympathetic with who and so you’ve got to protect yourself, so
I don’t hold it against them. And I think it was bad, but I think their own people done it
to them, not us. I think the Japanese people caused the Japanese people to suffer, not us.
And all we did was protect our self and this compensation for past acts I don’t agree with
it at all. I don’t agree with that anymore than I did the Indians. I don’t think you should
pay somebody’s posterity for what happened to great- great- grandpa. It isn’t reasonable,
what happened is history, and I don’t think it’s feasible and I don’t think it’s right to pay
anybody for anything that they had no part in. If anybody pays them, let their country
pay them, they're the ones who caused it. Not us. Well, that’s what I feel about it.
SC: Do you remember seeing images of Hitler and the German soldiers goose- stepping?
How did you feel about that?
DP: Goose stepping yeah, and I always thought what [ a] show of stupidity, just why do
that, I mean the whole thing is oh, it’s just an exercise in stupidity as far as I’m concerned
‘ cause who could walk very far to [ a] goose step? I don’t guess-- I don’t believe in, put
on I think it natural and that goose step and that Heil Hitler stuff, at first thing I couldn’t
do that to anybody. I would not salute, I mean why not salute, but I wouldn’t do [ that] to
anybody.
SC: Do you remember when you first saw the swastika and all that around with that?
DP: No, that didn’t bother me. It’s just a picture and if they wanted to honor it fine. I
didn’t think about it one way or another. It was just a picture, and that’s all it was to me,
but I did think that he had a lot of the right ideas, the same as Roosevelt did when he
started ‘ cause he stopped inflation and he got the people leveled out and working and
eating and… but then he never stopped. He just kept right on going and when you get
too much power why, and then to pick on a race, to pick on that was not good ( inaudible),
well everybody’s human and got a right to most of the ( inaudible). He was and that was
another thing.
SC: Can you remember when you learned about what actually was happening in the
Concentration Camps, can you remember…?
DP: Yeah, there was nothing you could do about it, and there was just awful… I don’t
know how to [ explain]… not hatred, but disgust, that’s the best word I can think of with
anybody who would do that. And up until than I couldn’t have imagined anybody with a
mentality, that any mentality at all doing that until my friends started coming back, and
I’d seen what they’d done to them because they were not… I just can’t explain how I
feel. They just weren’t , they weren’t human, they just were filled with hate so bad that
their soul is just not there.
SC: So what do you think it was that caused that hate? Was it the Germans that caused
that in them?
DP: I think they was indoctrinated, and that’s another thing I can’t go along with. The
government that [ did it] and yet how do you, I can’t, I don’t know.
SC: So you think it was our government trying to get our soldiers to hate Germans so
they would fight better?
DP: That’s the… I think that the Drill Sergeants and [ others] did anything they could to
agitate, to cause hate, and there’s nothing they could [ do] to them, so they got to do it to
somebody else. Well, that’s why I never agreed with, and I don’t believe in taking it out
on somebody else when I hate them, so that’s where I’d have been in trouble. I don’t
know, I don’t know. But I know I’d have been in trouble, I don’t know just how far it
would have went or who I [ would] get into trouble with but I would have. And I can’t
blame somebody else, and I can’t go out and shoot somebody else ‘ cause he… I don’t
know, I don’t know whether they could have done it to me or not. I’m as afraid I’d be in
trouble before I got through ‘ cause I wouldn’t take that dehumanization. I just couldn’t
stand it and belittling. [ I] can’t stand [ it] that somebody that hides behind a gun or a
shield or authority [ can] horde it over me. I can’t stand that so I’d have been in trouble.
SC: Well, just one more question I guess. Have you seen-- you know there’s a lot of
movies that are made about World War II, have you seen any of them and do you think
they were realistically portraying that era-- the movies you’ve seen?
DP: I think they were. I think to the best of their ability, but I don’t think they showed
any of the real horrors of it. But they showed that your friends go out and [ do] not come
back and stuff like that. But I don’t think anybody can portray the horrors and the
dehumanization of war. ‘ Cause I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it that
anybody could do what I seen done to kids. And knowing me and everything I guess my
guardian angel knew it because I didn’t go ‘ cause I’d have never survived it. I would
have been in more trouble than…‘ cause I can’t blame somebody else for something that’s
done to me, and so I couldn’t learn to hate somebody I didn’t even know so I don’t know
just my personality that’s all I can tell ya from my point of view.
SC: Well, thank you very much.
DP: Well, you’re sure welcome. I hope I’m not too radical.
SC: No, I don’t think so.