Schuldt, Marjorie

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Marjorie Schuldt – Life during WWII
By Jonathan Nash
October 26, 2003
Box 3 Folder 21
Oral Interview conducted by Jonathan Nash
Transcript copied by James Miller December 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
JN: What year were you born?
MS: 1923.
JN: How old were you then on December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor…?
MS: Eighteen.
JN: Do you remember that day?
MS: Yes, very well.
JN: What was it like, how did you feel?
MS: Well, it was a cold windy day… I remember that; it had, it was quite a surprise
everybody knew that there was going to be war but we weren’t quite sure which way it
was going to come from. It was quite a shock to everybody. That was a terrible blow. A
lot of people were lost. Then we knew that there’d be more and more young men going to
war. They were only going only to take a certain age bracket, like from eighteen to
twenty- five, but then they started taking everybody from eighteen to forty- five. If you
didn’t have a job that exempt you from going in the army, or the navy— which ever
one— well, then you were definitely going to be drafted, but you had to have a very good
reason, and have more than one child and be the sole provider for that family or, if you
didn’t have any, then you were more opt to be drafted.
JN: How many people did you know who served in the war?
MS: Well, I had four brother- in- laws and they were in… three brothers and they were all
in the service.
JN: Tell me about you husband, I heard that he just went and enlisted
MS: Every month he had to report to the draft board. We couldn’t hire any help— we
were farmers— we couldn’t hire any help, I had to be the hired man, I hadn’t felt very
good for a couple months and he came in to the lady at the draft board and she started
telling him that now that it’s December and, it was the twenty- eighth of December, and
she told him, she said, “ You have nothing to keep you here, they need the men.” She said
“ You’re going to be on- call,” of course she told him that almost every month anyway he
told her, “ Well, I’ll just save you the trouble, I’ll enlist” so he did. And then that was the
twenty- eighth of December. The seventeenth of January he was in Salt Lake, were they
retched him, and they waved him, and indoctored them into what they expect and then he
came home and was home ‘ til the thirteenth of January and then he had to go back to Salt
Lake and from there he went to California to Fort Org, California.
JN: What did he do in California, was the boot camp?
MS: That was boot camp, and he was in the infantry, he had his opportunity of going
either into the artillery or either infantry, and he choose infantry, and why, I’ll never
know, because his legs were so bad that he couldn’t walk more than maybe two blocks at
the most without having to rest, but then, you know, they didn’t care, as long as you
could hear and you could see, and you could hold a rifle, you were eligible. That was the
main repetition of the whole thing.
JN: When he left California where did he serve during the War?
MS: He went to Germany, but he didn’t go right away to Germany, they went over on the
island of France, they landed at Normandy beach, and then from there, of course that
battle was already over with, but then they went from there on through in parts of France
and then from France into Germany and for maybe the next eighteen months he [ was] on
his way going through that. But he spent six weeks in the hospital in England; he got shot
in the arm by a little old German woman, with a twenty- two rifle.
JN Didn’t somebody else… didn’t his friend die?
MS: The fellow that was with him, that they always went together, he carried… Truman
carried the bazooka and the shells around his waist and she was upstairs in the bedroom
and she shot him right between the eyes and shot my husband in the left arm.
JN: So, did he receive an award for that?
MS: He was given a Purple Heart, but they needed the men so they didn’t leave him, he
wasn’t healed up when he went back to the front, but it wasn’t that bad, it just went
through the arm at the angle and came out through the back of the arm and kind of tore
the flesh a little bit, but like I said, it wasn’t that bad, but he went right back to the front
line, and they went across the Rhine River and met the Russians and that was the end of
that. Then they brought ‘ em back to the United States and they told ‘ em, when they were
disembarking over there to come back to the United States, that he would be going to
Japan to fight against Japan, or he would go to Iwo Jima, or they would go to the
Philippines, they had three or four different areas they had told ‘ em they would be
sending them.
JN: During the war how did you guys communicate? Did you write letters weekly?
MS: We wrote letters back and forth.
JN: How often?
MS: Well, I wrote every week, sometimes twice a week, and he wrote as often as he
could. A lot of times there was… he could write a letter but there was no way to mail it
and if they didn’t get back to the command post their letters never got back, you know,
never got a chance to be mailed. But after the war was over with, he wrote quite
regularly, he sent a lot of souvenirs home from over there, a lot of materials, you know
things that he bought when he was in England, and then things he stoled, I would say
stoled I don’t know, all the soldiers did the same thing. He had a huge luger and a P- 38,
and he brought back some American- made binoculars that the Germans were using, a lot
of their equipment was made here in the United States, and then he sent back a couple of
sabers and ammunition, you could [ have] sent ammunition through the mail back then,
you could then, you know there was no problem, but everything he sent came through, a
lot of fellows never got their stuff, but he did, everything he mailed came right through.
We used to have to watch the paper for the disembarkment, when they were coming back
to the States from… let me find it… we had to find out what troops were coming back,
there is something in this book here that I have, there is… 1945, he was with the Thirtieth
Infantry, they left Le Havre, France, came back on the Queen Mary, went over on the
island of France.
JN: Was his main body brought back here to Oklahoma City?
MS: They brought him back to Fort Meade, Maryland, and from there they railroaded
him into Salt Lake and then from there they had to get themselves home. Then they were
here for thirty days before they were discharged after the war was over. But he was gone
just exactly twenty- two months from the time he enlisted ‘ til they came back.
JN: So what year did he enlist, 1943?
MS: 1943, no 1944. Jolene ( daughter) was born in June and he enlisted in December of
1943
JN: Now, when he left he didn’t know that you were pregnant with Jolene?
MS: No, he didn’t. Two days after he went to Salt Lake I became pretty upset, sick, and
what not, and I had to go to the doctor, and that’s when I found out I was expecting
Jolene.
JN How was that, was it hard on him, was it hard on you?
MS: Well, he didn’t know for two weeks ‘ cause I couldn’t get any word to him. By that
time then, when he finally go to Fort Ord, and then he called his brother- in- law, and so
then I went… we didn’t have a phone at my folks’, so then I went down there to their
house… we had a set time and I told him then that “ you can’t go to war because we’re
going to have a baby,” he said, “ Well that doesn’t make any difference.” He said, “ Now
I have more reason then ever to go, because, you know, make this country safe for our
children.” And I said, “ Well that’s true too.”
JN: During the war, when he was gone, what was it like here? You were here in Rupert?
Where did you live?
MS: I was right here in Rupert, there wasn’t much change. The only thing that we ever
noticed was sugar was rationed, coffee was rationed, tires were rationed and gasoline.
You were allowed so much gasoline, I think five gallons a week, that depended on what
your job was, and if you needed tires they had to be thread bare, I mean thread bare, there
were no tires to be had, and then we were never really wanted for anything, as far as that
goes. Everything went along just like it did before, except families were all split up, and
of course, then it was hard to get coal for heating, because a lot of people used, you
know, a coal stove for heaters in the wintertime, it was hard to get coal. And as far as
food items, there wasn’t any problem with the other food items at all. At one time they
said we probably wouldn’t be able to buy flour, but it never did become rationed.
JN: Here in Minidoka there was a Japanese interment camp wasn’t there?
MS: It wasn’t here, it was up… you go out towards… they call it the Hunt, it was
Minidoka Relocation Camp at Hunt, well that is out northeast of Mapleton or Eaton, but
they called it the Minidoka. It really wasn’t, and then before Truman went to the army,
just above us, just a mile above us was the German camp, they had German prisoners,
they had like about 300 or 500 prisoners at a time that they had brought here and put
them in this prison camp, and then a lot of soldiers out there guarding those. But as far as
the area changing, it didn’t change a bit, it went right along.
JN: Were there not a lot of young men around?
MS: There weren’t any. High school boys is about all, if you were, like we were
farming… when Hitler declared war and everything, well then, we had to hire high school
kids. The disadvantages… you had to come to town and get these kids that had never
work, and they didn’t know anything, you had to stay with them constantly, so that made
it extremely hard. And in order to hire a man, there weren’t any men, there just weren’t.
Because people left here and went to the shipyards in Seattle, or they went to California
to work, they just left. There were just the people that had to stay here that were here.
JN: What did you do for money during the war?
MS: Well, I got forty dollars a month from the government and that was what I lived off
of.
JN: So, you lived on a farm then too didn’t you?
MS: Well, we lived on a farm, and of course, we were renting the farm so we had to sell
our machinery and stuff, so… that money we put in the bank, in case, when he came back
well we were going to use that to start farming again. It wasn’t very much money, I think
it was something like about, eighteen, not quite 1800 dollars, but it was a lot of money
then. So, that was never to be touched unless we absolutely had to have it. And I lived on
the forty dollars a month and then he got… in the service, I don’t remember exactly what
he did get, I think something like about fifteen dollars, it was just enough to buy a few
incidentals if they [ were] needed and whatever, that was it.
JN: While Truman was over in Germany, was there anything he didn’t tell you that he
told you afterwards or was there anything that you wish he would have told you?
MS: Well, he couldn’t write and tell me exactly where he was, he couldn’t tell me what
he was doing, he couldn’t tell me… he did send me a couple of pictures of him and some
other fellow that he was with, but other than that that was pretty well all off limits.
Because they world just black it out, you know… if you wrote anything in that… they read
all letters, coming back and forth. And then when he came home he then told me about
all of his, he didn’t tell me right away, just parts of things he’d tell me and then
sometimes he would tell me a lot and then sometimes he wouldn’t. The older he got the
least he talked about it. It bothered him, he dreamed about it a lot, and he used to have a
lot of nightmares and wake- up hollering to somebody, and calling names, you know,
telling them to “ get down” and “ do this” or “ do that,” but then he’d go along for a long
time, and then when we started to have television and all those war pictures and all that
and everything brought back the war to him a lot. They never forget, it’s always in the
back of their mind, like he said, “ I didn’t shoot the woman that shot me, I could have,”
but he said, “ I did hit here on the head with my gun butt,” and he said “ I hit her pretty
hard so I don’t know whether I killed her or not.” That bothered him, it really bothered
him. He said “ it’s just like I’m going out here and my neighbor’s over there, and I’m
going over there with a gun to shoot him, if I don’t shoot him he’s going to shoot me,
that’s what I look at.” He said, “ The fellow looks just like me, he could be my neighbor,
he could be my brother, he could be my cousin, he could be anything,” so he said,
“ That’s war.” He said, “ It isn’t pretty to walk up to some man, or see some man coming
and you lay in wait for them to come, and you know if you know if you don’t kill him
he’s gonna kill you,” so he said that’s “ just the way it is.” But he never ever told me he
killed anybody, other than hitting that woman with that gun butt.
JN: Now the name Schuldt is German, correct?
MS: Yes, he went to Westerberg, Germany and there was a lot of them— Schuldt. And a
lot of their records here, there’s a lot of records, and he went to another town, went
through this other town and… there’s just lots of names that we hear here and now that
are German, that’s where they came from, those people, their descendents all came from
there. In fact, his dad’s dad was born in Westerberg, Germany, and that’s where, he said
there was quite a few Schuldts, he said, “ I never met any of them, but I saw the name in
the telephone directory,” things like that, because he said, “ Sometimes you go through in
the night and you run onto something you think about something,” and he said, “ as
you’re going by you grab it and you look at it and when you’re through looking at it you
throw it down and go onto the next place.”
JN: When did you first hear about the German concentration camps? Did he ever tell you
about those, did he ever encounter those?
MS: He never did mention the concentration camps, the only thing he mentioned was the
hospitals, there was a lot of hospitals they run onto, they really weren’t normal hospitals,
they were full of pregnant women. And they were there because they were, the fathers of
these children were SS troops, and that was super- human race that Hitler was breeding
up, and he said they run onto several of those.
JN: During the war and during those times what were your opinions of Hitler and
Mussolini?
MS: That was sad, it was just disgusting, it was sad, we heard about what a maniac he
was how cruel he was, because those are the things that stick with you, that was about,
our papers, well you know, they had little articles, but there wasn’t a great deal in there,
you just couldn’t help but despise them, because you knew that that’s what they were
trying to do was… the way they treated the people over there was just ridiculous. A boy
from Paul ( Idaho), he was just eighteen; he boarded the train in Minidoka with Truman
when he went from here to go back to Fort Meade, Maryland to go overseas. A French
woman killed him; she lured him out of his camp area and took him into a place, they
found him the next day, and there was nobody but women in there— French women.
JN: Was that in France?
MS: That was in France, in Paris. We just never was a bit happy with the French people.
They didn’t help, I guess, one way or another the American soldiers, everything they did
was against them, in a rotten way.
JN When Truman came home, did he come home with friends?
MS: He came home with what was left of the troop, but most of those, I think he told me
there was only about seven out of 1500 that he remembered going from Fort Orton,
California to [ go] back with him, there weren’t that many, most of them were either sent
back to a hospital unit or were dead… and the infantry really took it, it was a hard thing,
because they were first on the line and the first to burst through, so it was… a lot of men
lost.
JN: Around this area, in the Minidoka area and the Minidoka County, I guess, were there
a lot of young men that did not come back?
MS: There were quite a few, I don’t really know how many, but I know there was quite a
few.
JN: Did you know any of their mothers or any of their family members?
MS: Well, I knew one boy; he was married to one of Truman’s cousins. He went and he
was killed in Italy. Another boy that went from here, he was in Italy, he was over there
for five years, he stayed for a long time, but the only reason he stayed so long was that he
just lost his leg, mentally, they couldn’t release him to come home because his mind… it
just snapped his mind horribly. When he did come home he couldn’t handle the
pressures, he couldn’t look at people for some reason or other, it just destroyed his mind
that’s all there was to it and then he finally committed suicide; it’s not a pretty thing.
JN: During that time what was you opinion of the Japanese and the Germans as a whole?
MS: I was afraid of them, I really was. I was more so afraid of them because I knew… we
practically had the war over with… over there, and then when the Japanese bombed Pearl
Harbor, well, that’s what really scared me just because if they could come that close and
do that much destruction then what would keep them from coming to the West Coast, and
we’re not that far from the West Coast.
JN: Were there very many Japanese or Germans in this area?
MS: Well… we had a few families of Japanese, and then of course there were a lot of
German families, but the Japanese, they rounded them all up and put them up there at
Hunt. And they had very poor living conditions, it was just awful.
JN: Did you ever go up there?
MS: I was up there years ago… probably… forty- five maybe fifty years ago, it’s been a
long time.
JN: Do you remember what the conditions were like?
MS: Well we walked through the barracks; in fact, we went up there looking at them, the
government was selling those building they called them army barracks, they were just
one big long building, and there was no insulation, no nothing, people had to put up posts
and poles and whatever they could find for some boards and cardboard to make separate
rooms for different families to live there. They just lived side by side in these barracks;
there was no carpeting— just plain old wood floors, they stood up off the ground probably
25, maybe 26 foot, I mean inches off the ground. And the wind just whipped under them
and blew, and all around the whole area. My impression, I have never been back, ‘ cause I
just never wanted to go back, but that day we were there and the group of men that my
husband was farming with they bought up army barracks from the government and had it
moved out to the North- side project. That was just awful, when I walked in those I
couldn’t imagine anybody living in ‘ em… because not even poor people in town lived
like that. But they had put all these families, bit group families in these big army
barracks, and they just had to make partisans of themselves, and they had one area that
was quite nice, the walls were painted white and the floor was painted a dark green, I
don’t know where they got the paint at, and it had walls that went clear up to the ceiling
and there was just odds and ends of lumber and what not in that, the fellow that we were
talking to there was kind of overseeing that, he said that was the birthing rooms for
mothers. The rest of it was just whatever, makeshift however, they used orange crates for
storage and there weren’t no furniture, they wouldn’t let ‘ em take any furniture with ‘ em,
they didn’t have anything the government wouldn’t let them take anything.
JN: Wow… now, back here during the war when you were here, what did you do to
entertain yourself or what did people do?
MS: Well, we had radio, that’s about all we had. I lived with my parents and my dad
worked part- time, he was a mechanic, he liked to overhaul cars, and my mother worked
in the lunch room for the school district, and I just stayed out there at their house until
Jolene was about eight or nine months old and then I moved into town and I really didn’t
do anything; there really anything that you could do. There was no jobs, what few jobs
there were, you know, were already filled, or there just wasn’t any, there wasn’t any work
for anybody, our biggest entertainment was just our radios.
JN: What did you listen to?
MS: Well, I listened to mostly the news. We were always so hungry for some news, for
you know… Amos and Andy was the old radio program— that was one thing that we
listened to, and then the rest of the time was just music and then when we… always at
noon… there was always news that would come on, and it wasn’t that much news either,
probably twenty minutes of news and then that was it, so everyday if you wanted to
listen…< Interruption>… I think they censored everything, I really do, I don’t know that
they did, but I have a feeling that they did. I think most everything was censored.
JN: What did they say on the news, like, what would be a normal day on the news?
MS: Well, they would come on and they would tell is how well the War was going and
where the troops were and how, and the if they were in a certain area like the Battle of the
Bulge or crossing the Rhine River… coming up something or other, you know, always
some little… and in France, or in Italy they would always talking about how much
progress that the… because of the rains, there were so much rain, and everything was so
mudded in, and everything, and they would talk about that, but that was just… and it was
just such a… and it really was vague, it wasn’t…
JN: Was it local news? Where was the news broadcast from?
MS: Well it came from, I’m not sure where it came from, I don’t know how, where our
radio news crew was stationed. I know we used to get news out of Salt Lake and that was
about… and the rest of it I don’t know, we didn’t have any local radio stations, there
wasn’t anything around here that was local at the time.
JN: Did the community or you yourself, did anybody ever do anything to support the war
effort? Obviously, you were supporting it with your sons and husbands, but were there
any other activities?
MS: We had some groups here that worked… with the Red Cross, I don’t know what all
they did, I never did attend, because I lived out in the country and… they, I know one year
they had a war thing going on for bandages or what not, my mother went in and rolled
bandages, and I don’t remember what all she told me she did, we tried to do a few things.
The Red Cross always was collecting money and there was such little amount of money
here I don’t think they were able to collect too terribly much, but they were always
wanting to collect money… for the soldiers. Truman said that was wonderful, charged
him ten cents for a sheet of paper and made him pay for his own stamp, and he wanted a
donut and they made him pay ten cents for donuts, he said they were suppose to be free,
but you know, everything had a cost to it, regardless.
JN: What were the newspapers like? Was there a lot of propaganda about the war?
MS: There was very little war stuff in the papers, it was mostly just adds. Maybe they’d
have an article about Hitler, and they’d talk about the things he was doing and about,
Mussolini or Stalin, there was a lot of, quite a bit in there about Stalin. And we were
really surprised that the Russians would quit when they did, you know, because most
people here, we were, I don’t know, my dad and I used to talk about it all the time. He
said, “ I don’t think when the Americans and the Russians meet,” he said, “ I don’t think
they’re going to quit, I think the Russians are going to come right along,” because, he
said “ that was their intent, to take as much of Germany as they could get.” I don’t know;
that was his idea, and that, I always felt that the Russians would probably start killing the
American soldiers and take over, you know, but they didn’t.
JN: Now looking back, what’s your opinion of the Japanese and the Germans? Was that a
hard transition as the years have gone by?
MS: I just always felt maybe like the Japanese people here in this country were really,
you know, hosed. I mean they shouldn’t have never been put in interment camps. I
couldn’t see that in the first place and Mr. and Mrs. Hondo, a little old Japanese couple,
and they had little bitty tiny kids, and she had I think a child probably out there at the
Japanese internment camp, but they were good people, they never harmed a soul. There
wasn’t anything that Mr. Hondo wouldn’t do, and he lived in that same neighborhood that
we lived in, that he wouldn’t do for you, he was a good neighbor and a good friend, and
he just, you know, and that’s the reason why I always thought those people, and one of
the few that I knew around here, that they really weren’t treated right, I don’t think that
they should have ever been put in that camp. They were, in fact, he had a brother that
went to war, that had been born in Japan and came over here and got his citizenship but
then he went to war for the United States, and yet he had to go out there to that Hunt
camp and live like a… I don’t know… it was just inhuman the way they were treated.
JN: Now looking back, how did or how has your life changed as a result of World War
II? How did it change then?
MS: ( Chuckling) Well, it changed, it changed a lot; it took quite an adjustment first few
years after my husband came back because… at times, sometimes, I was… actually I
would say that maybe I had a little bit of fear because of the way he had been trained.
One night I had to get up with Jolene and I went to go back to bed and I bumped his feet
as I was getting back in bed the first thing I knew he had his hands up around my neck
and my head was in the corner of the room. I mean that was just that quick,
because… you have to work through those things, there was just little things, and
sometimes he’d fly off the handle and be so angry for nothing, absolutely nothing. And it
took probably a couple of years before, you know, that he got himself totally under
control but he wouldn’t talk about it, only just a little bit at a time he’d say something, or
something would come up, or he’d mention something, or he’d say “ Well, did I tell
you…” and I always said, “ Well no, you didn’t,” but I wouldn’t go any farther that that
because I didn’t want him to get upset, and it worked on his nerves, there was just so
many things that were… it’s quite an adjustment, it’s a big adjustment.
JN: How old was he when he went to war?
MS: Twenty- eight
JN: How old was he when he died?
MS: Sixty- five
JN Did he ever fully recover or fully adjust?
MS: I don’t think he ever forgot, I mean there was no way you can forget, but it was one
of those things that… you know, you do something, you know it’s not right and it’s
always there in the back of you mind. And I think that’s kind of the way, if you knew him
he was so kind, so gentle, and he’d never, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he was a big and
when he talked to you he… if he meant… what he said he meant his word was… that was
it, and I think it bothered him the things he had to do over there, because he told me, that
he always kept in touch with a friend of his, that was his captain, and he never let a year
or a month go by that he didn’t sit down and write him a little note, and Captain Kent
would write back and let him know where he was at and what he was doing up until
Captain Kent died, and I think he was probably forty- five, something like that, but he
always managed to kind of keep in touch with one or two people that he was really close
to. But he said the people, the soldiers that they went with were out of the South, a lot of
them come from the South, and they always thought that the Indians still ruled this part of
the United States. They didn’t know that we had electricity, and they always wanted to
know “ do you have cars?” You know, things like that, is there railroads out there? a lot of
those young boys would ask him things like that he went with. Of course, he was quite a
teaser and would always tell them “ no, we don’t, we’re still using donkeys” and things
like that, “ we just use the candle for light,” things like that. He said that after a while “ I’d
finally tell them that we were just as normal there as they were everywhere else.”
JN: How about you, did it take you time to adjust after the war?
MS: Well, not really so much for me, because I… the only thing I had to do was just kind
of get used to him again, after twenty- two months, you know, it’s just kind of a strange
situation, you feel like… you’re strangers, you know, you really have to get acquainted
again and find out who’s going to get mad or who’s not going to get mad or who’s going
to be upset or what you’re going to do or…
JN: So was it like getting married all over again?
MS: That’s just about right; it’s just almost to that point.
JN: Looking back, what would be you most vivid memories of the World War II
experience that stand out to you?
MS: Most vivid?
JN: Most vivid, the ones that still come back to you.
MS: Well, I remember very well the day that I received the telegram that he had been
wounded, and when they brought me that telegram I just knew that he was dead, you
know, in my mind I just… when that man started walking across the yard to the front door
and I saw that yellow envelope I knew they were bringing me that. And every once in a
while I stop and think about that and have such a nasty feeling, such a horrible, I was just
totally, I couldn’t hardly breathe, and he looked at me and I think when I opened the door
I didn’t want to take it at first, and he said, “ This is from the War Department,” and, I
thought, “ the War Department?” And he said, “ Well don’t looked too startled or don’t
look so shocked,” or however he put it, he said, “ it’s not bad news,” and I thought, “ Well,
why would they be sending me a telegram that wasn’t bad news? Give me that thing!”
And I ripped it opened and there they had informed me that he had been wounded and
that he was back, he was in England in the hospital receiving treatment, and that’s all I
got. And then they gave him the Purple Heart and then he sent it home to me.
JN: Were there any other experiences that really stand out or is that probably the most
vivid?
MS: I think that was the most fearful one that I had; in fact, I can just visualize that… in
fact, I kept thinking all my life “ I wonder,” you know, while he was gone, “ I wonder if I
won’t get one of those telegrams, or they’ll come and tell me or something” and he said,
“ No, it wouldn’t have been the guy from the telegraph company bringing me the
telegraph, it would have been an army sergeant that would have brought me the news that
he had been killed, or a lieutenant, or somebody, but he said not them, but I didn’t know
that, that was something that I had to find out afterwards. But I think the war itself really
tolled on a lot of people, because a lot of people changed— their ideas and their attitudes,
and I don’t know… it seemed like the country became hardened. Before, you know, we
were kind of mellow and we just kind of lived and went with everything; and when the
war started I think the whole country just got torn apart. You could almost see it on a lot
of people’s faces and a lot of people didn’t care because they didn’t have anybody to go
to the service, and I didn’t want him to go! I cried for two weeks after he told me he
enlisted, but that didn’t help.
JN How many years had you been married when he…?
MS: We were married four years.
JN: And Jolene was… how old was she when he got home?
MS: She was… let’s see, she was fourteen months old… June, July, August, yeah, she was
fourteen months old.
JN: Did it take her a while to warm up to him.
MS: No, she looked at him a little bit, but, she wasn’t afraid of him, and he went to pick
her up she just put her arms around his neck and then that was it, he was crying and then
she started to cry, and of course we were all crying by that time, but it was funny because
she wasn’t afraid of him, she just looked at him like, you know, “ I know who you are,”
that was it. Of course, he saw her when she was two months but then he never saw her
again until then.
JN: Where did he come home, did you meet him somewhere or did he come back here?
MS: He came home. He came… when they got to Salt Lake they had to find their own
way home. The government… they were down, they gave him the thirty day furlough, and
Norm told him he would be going to Japan to going to one of those islands over there to
fight the Japanese. Well, he rode the bus to three miles east of town out here and got off
the bus. And I lived four miles north, or five, about five miles I guess— north, and but
that corner, his brother- in- law lived right there on the corner, and he borrowed his
brother- in- law’s car and came home and that was it. But they didn’t make any effort to
make sure they got home they got you within so many miles and then you had to do your
own thing.
JN: How was that when he got home, how were you feeling?
MS: Well I was elated, I didn’t expect him. I knew, because… they weren’t allowed to tell
us that they were coming back to you know… we were… all we knew was… in the little
slip of paper that came out in the paper that when the companies were going to be leaving
over there, but we never knew when they were going to arrive in the United States, when
they were going to get to where their destination was going to be. And I figured that they
would bring ‘ em home on the train, that’s what my parents and I thought— that when he
got to come home that he’d be coming on that, on the train, but he didn’t. He came
walking in there carrying his duffel bags about seven o’clock at night and we were all
ready to faint. Nobody expected him.
JN: Any other thoughts about the war, any other thoughts about the times that you spent
here while he was away?
MS: Well, the time I spent here was busy babysitting. I took care of Jolene and I cooked
for my dad while my mother was gone to work, and I had a little sister that was in high
school and we just lived here and did our own thing. There wasn’t really anything to do,
there was no work to be had… of course I couldn’t have gone to work because I didn’t
have anybody to leave my baby with.
JN: When did you move in with your parents?
MS: I went to stay with them… well, we moved there in December, it was a small house
there and we moved in that house in December… no not December, in January and then
when he had to leave to go to Salt Lake, but then he left in February, and I stayed there
that summer… and the next summer that Truman came home, or was it the next… I can’t
remember. From the time he left here until the time he came back was just twenty- two
months and he spent six months in California… was it six months? Well, it was, it was
from February until August, and then they shipped him over seas from August to the
following August, and then he came back. And then he wasn’t discharged until
November. But he never planned on going to fight the Japanese he always said, “ Well
pack your bags we’re headin’ for Canada,” He said, “ I will not fight another war.” I told
him, “ Why would we want to go to Canada?” Well, he said, “ that’s the
[ undistinguishable] thing; they can’t draft you from there!” He had made up his mind that
he definitely wouldn’t go. He took a test in Salt Lake to… before he went overseas, or I
mean before he went to Fort Meade, Maryland, to go overseas, to see if he was… he had
any potential to be… come up in the ranks, and he didn’t do too bad. They told him they
could make him a… in three months they could make him a second lieutenant; he told
them no, he didn’t think he wanted to be one, he’d just stay right where he was at—
private first- class was perfectly fine with him.
JN: And was that his rank, private first class?
MS: Yeah, he liked that, he said, “ I didn’t want to go any higher.” He said, “ I went in
with the intentions of winning that war,” and he said, “ We did,” and he said, “ That’s it.”
He said he didn’t want to be bothered being over somebody. He said, “ I don’t want to
give anybody orders, I don’t want any part of it.”
JN: Did he ever tell you about anything that would help him make it through the war, or
make it through the nights— keep him occupied?
MS: The only thing he didn’t like was wearing socks for two weeks at a time, shoes never
being off the socks, he told me that there was a lot of… you don’t worry about you outer
cloths, as far as shaving and being clean, he said, you weren’t, you could go back and get
clean cloths, get cleaned up and everything, but he said then you had to go right back out
and he said it was just kind of a lost cause, he just really didn’t… just not a bit happy
about the war. When they went on their last march, they had to make a fifty mile march
when he was at Fort Orton, and he made the first mile out of camp but then they picked
him up in the jeep and hauled him the rest of the way and he walked the last five hundred
feet in, so he could pass. I told him, “ Boy if, why didn’t you just come home?” “ No,” he
said, “ I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t do that, I went that far” and he said, “ I was going to
see it through,” that’s what he told me. He said, “ The army doesn’t care as long as you
could see and hear and pull together,” he said, “ That’s all they need.” Then he felt really
bad about having to… like I said, when you look at somebody and they was just like you
neighbor or friend, or somebody, you know like that and then you have to go and shoot
them. But I never asked… I did once… I think I asked him if he ever shot anybody and he
never answered me. Then he told me once, he said, about the little old lady he said, “ I
never shot her I don’t want you to get the idea that I did,” he said, “ I just never shot her,”
and that really bothered him. And then when she shot his little friend Massa, he was from
New York, he said she shot him right between the eyes and said, “ I seen him go down
and I knew that I was going to be next,” and he said, “ We was running through an open
field,” and he said, “ That little gun we could hear pop, pop, poppin’, it was coming out of
an upstairs window,” and he said, “ I didn’t know I was hit until I got to the door of the
house and,” he said, “ I looked down and my hand was covered with blood.” And he said,
“ I went in and he said, you opened the door of those houses and it smelled like kraut,” he
said, “ they all smelled like kraut.” He said they eat a lot of sauerkraut, I guess… and you
could always tell, you could always tell if there was somebody in the house, he said, “ It
didn’t matter how quiet they were, you could always tell that they were there.” Isn’t that
something? Your senses really kick in don’t they?
JN: I can imagine they do.
MS: But he always had this one, I know it was a… it must have been a reoccurring dream.
He’d say, “ Don’t Massa, don’t do that,” and then he’d raise up in bed, and he’d sit up in
bed and would say, “ Get your head down, I’ve told you and I’ve told you.” I don’t know
who he was talking to. Then I’d hear him, he’d moan and roll over and then he’d go, I’d
never hear anything for a long time, and then pretty soon, it’d just depend on what he saw
on television when we got television— those war pictures were terrible, they really… and
he say, “ These guys think that MASH is what went on in the war, that has nothing to do
with the war,” he said. “ That’s just a movie,” he said. “ That doesn’t tell you nothing
about what”… what… he had a friend tell him, “ Oh, you know I just love that MASH,
that’s just the way I pictured war.” He told him one day, he said, “ I don’t even want to
hear about it, I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, “ It has nothing to do with the war!”
But back in 1941… 42, people just didn’t have any money they didn’t have any place to
go in the first place if they did have money, you had, you wanted to make sure you had
plenty of food, plenty of ( undistinguishable) keep yourself warm, plenty of cloths and
that’s about all that really mattered. In those days people just didn’t travel, there was no
where to go. And it would take us all day to go to… to drive to Twin Falls and do a little
shopping at Sears, that’s the only reason why we had to go, and then turn around and
come back. One day we had to go… just before he went to the army, we had to go to
Twin Falls to go looking for a new set of harness for the horses. Of course, we farmed
with, we had a tractor plus those horses, and… we didn’t find what we wanted, but we left
early that morning, we were gone all day, and we got back that night, then of course there
were chores to do. But that’s about the only kind of trips we took… out of town, you just
stayed right here. If you wanted any entertainment we had to come in Saturday night for
dances, they would have dances here all the time, and, or sit on the street corner to watch
all the drunks— that was a big to- do, but we never did that, we didn’t have time for that,
everybody’s say, “ Oh, you should’ve went down,” well, we didn’t do that.
JN: Well, thanks for sharing that with me.
MS: Well, really that’s about all I can remember about it. I know we… our entertainment
and stuff like that, Jonathan, wasn’t much entertainment. We had the radio, we didn’t
listen to the music, they didn’t have a lot of music and stuff, but as far as… and the news
was so far fetched sometimes then there wasn’t that much news, we didn’t get a chance to
hear very much and our papers would come out but they had, they’d, maybe they’d have
one article about Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini, and then when the Japanese struck that was
a big to- do.
JN: Well I appreciate you sharing that with me.
MS: Well, there really isn’t much to share.
JN: Well it was great.
MS: I… it seemed like our life was kind of at a standstill ‘ til they do come back, you
know. And that’s about all I had to live for— was when he came home. But it was sure
hard to take him to the train in Minidoka and leaving, and knew that he was going
overseas. But he told me, he said when he left, he said, “ I’ll be back.” And he said,
“ When I got on the ship in New Jersey, at Fort Meade, Maryland,” out there when they
got on the ship there, he said, “ I… everybody said, well aren’t you going to come up on
the… they were down on the whatever, and see the skyline and the Statue of Liberty and
all of that,” and he said, “ No, I looked at the Statue of Liberty and I told that Statue of
Liberty that I’ll be back, I’m coming back.” He said, “ I knew I was coming back.” So the
only thing he carried with him all the time he was gone was a Bible, he never, he was
never without this Bible. His Bible had one bullet hole in it, we had it up here in his shirt
pocket, it was one of those little pocket… and he carried that up there and it had one
indentation that went in about, oh, half the width of it.