Warner, Paul F.

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Paul F. Warner – Life during WWII
By Paul F. Warner
October 12, 2003
Box 3 Folder 26
Oral Interview conducted by Jamie Krause
Transcript copied by David Garmon October 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
2
JK: Can I get you to introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about your background,
where you are from, when you were born.
PW: My name is Paul F. Warner. I was born on the 22nd of March 1928. I have lived my
entire life in Morgan County going away shortly for a military duty, a missionary for the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints, and away to school[,] other that those few
years I have spent my entire life in the same area.
JK: I wanted to ask you a few questions about World War II today. If I can start out with
the question of how old were you on December 7, 1941?
PW: On December 7, 1941 I was 13 years of age.
JK: And how did you feel and think when you heard about the attacks on Pearl Harbor?
PW: At this time the wars had been going on in Europe and in fact my brother had
enlisted in the National Guard and was away to his basic training in California on the day
that war broke out at Pearl Harbor. The feeling was that we had returned from church
that morning and been in the house at about 11: 00 that morning. The radio was on and it
was at that time that news that the attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place. Now how did
I feel? Not necessarily alarmed. I feel sorrow [,] I felt sorry for the fact that what the war
could be[,] could bring and what it could mean in the lives of the people around me.
JK: Here’s a question that’s not on my list but were the feelings you had on December 7
anything like the feelings you had on September 11? Were feelings in the country or in
the community similar or different do you think?
PW: Somewhat similar. I think it was just a shock. We of the nation been [ being]
isolated from a lot of the problems of the world up ‘ til this point of time and now we find
ourselves in world conflict. We have been blessed as a country that most wars have been
on foreign soil. As far as September 11 this was closer to home than anything that we
had experienced or at least that I had experienced up until this point of time. However
Hawaii being part of our nation it was still somewhat removed from the you know the
close vicinity as to where I lived.
JK: You mentioned that you served in the military. Can you tell us what part of the
armed forces and when you served and where you served and a little bit about your
service?
PW: World War II had ended in 1945. Many of my classmates and people I had grown
up with had served in the military. At this point in time I was a senior in high school. As
the war came to a close my brother had been away for about five years and I had spent
most of this time on the farm and working at some of the defense depots in the
surrounding area. So that upon his return and inasmuch as many of my friends had or
where in the military, a group of us that graduated from high school that year decided that
we would enlist in the mil-, in the service and one of our close friends had received his
3
notice to be drafted and so as a group we went down to the recruiting office and signed
up for the military at that period of time. This was in June of 1946. Strange things
happened, the one who was going to be drafted failed the physical examination and
returned home and the rest of us then found ourselves spending two years in the military.
JK: Where did you serve when you were… once you joined the Army where were you
assigned?
PW: We entered through Fort Douglas, Utah where this is really, we spent a few days
there sort of an orientation period and from there we were assigned. The group of seven
of us thinking that maybe by going in together we could stay together as a group but this
proved to be wrong because once at Fort Douglas they began to break us out in various
camps across the country. Two of us, two of the seven ended up in Fort Knox, Kentucky.
We were assigned to the mechanized cavalry. Here we were trained in the use of the
tanks, armored cars, these kinds of weapons. After basic training at Fort Knox,
Kentucky, we were given a short leave of a, short leave to come home for a period of
time, couple of weeks, then we were to report to a camp in California to receive orders as
to where we would go and it wasn’t until we were on the ship heading somewhere that
we did not know when we got on the ship until it was announced that this ship would be
taking the group of us, consisting of at that time of 5,000 on this military transport we
would be going to Korea.
JK: You mentioned that you served after the war[--] did you ever participate in combat or
were you more… what were your duties?
PW: Uh, no. The thing that was so strange about all of this was really I hadn’t even a
clue as to where Korea was. When they said they were going to Korea the next question
from the group of us is just where is Korea? Because up until this point of time Korea
had been under Japanese occupation for over forty years and so at the end of the war with
the Japanese, then we were assigned to Korea in the occupation forces so we went in to
help stabilize the country and to spend time there to build up the military defense. As far
as combat, we did not see any combat just other that riots and these kinds of things were
taking place in the country at this time. Korea had been divided in two parts. The
northern part under, was under Russian control and the southern part was under the
United States.
JK: How long did you serve over there?
PW: We served in Korea for a little over a year. Our particular assignment, I finally
ended up at the 38th parallel. We were the farthest company north. We were right on the
parallel and much of our duty was to patrol this imaginary line across Korea and maintain
some stability because at this time there was a lot of war orphans and people who were
without homes and to make secure this border that had been declared between these two
countries.
4
JK: Can I ask what your image was during the war while you were home and while you
were serving people like Hitler and Mussolini and Hirohito ( struggling to pronounce
name)?
PW: It’s Hirohito. ( clarifies pronunciation) Of course these were the enemy and they
were well known. Each one of these, I as a young man, my brother and I one summer
day listened to Hitler’s famous speech from Berchtesgaden. And this is just prior to the
beginning to World War II. And it was interesting as we listened to the radio that day
and listened to the crowd as they would shout their remarks, “ Heil Hitler, Heil Hitler” as
he was speaking. Of course everything he said was through an interpreter so his image
began, he created an image within me one of, I don’t know sort of distilled some hatred
and feelings, strong feelings against him. Mussolini was sort of a minor dictator and
played… went along with a lot that Hitler had to say and he… his reign and power was
really not as great as the other two. As far as Hirohito was concerned he was almost like
a swear word or a dirty word after Pearl Harbor because of the way that that attack took
place. Even though I think most American’s felt that war was inevitable with the… was
inevitable at this time simply because of world events but to have a sneak attack on Pearl
Harbor was something that, you know very few thought of until it actually took place as
far as I was concerned.
JK: Have your opinions… what are you opinions of Japanese and Germans now days?
PW: I guess my first close association with some of the Axis powers which were the
Germans and the Italians and the Japanese took place when I one summer during school I
worked at the defense depot in Ogden, Utah and while there, this was an area where they
brought a lot of prisoners of the war from Italy and they came into Italy and came from
the Italian front and were POW’s at this particular camp and during this period of time
we sort of had some interaction. The men themselves were very friendly and to look at
them, you know you tended to think of Germans and Italians as being somewhat different
than you were and it was here that I really discovered that they were like any other
human being. Their desires and their ambitions and all of these kinds of things were the
same as ours and we found that put in this kind of situation they, many of them were
there, were forced to have joined the armed services and were there against their will and
that when we got down to the nitty gritty the basic human needs were the same. We
became, a lot of us became close friends not immediate you know close friends but we
became friends with them during this short stay that we were at this defense depot. My
feelings toward the Japanese of course I had a cousin that went down on the Arizona
during the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. He was on board the ship and I guess his
remains are still in the ship there in Pearl Harbor so others that I was acquainted with,
have been acquainted with in my life that served in the military lost their lives during the
war. While there was a hatred for what was taking place and a hatred towards the, those
individuals who were, who had brought about the war, I disliked the Japanese and really
only for the fact that they had done what they did at Pearl Harbor and during the war.
Little did I know that after the war in 1948 I was called to serve a mission among the
Japanese people and I guess at this point in time when I really became acquainted with
them here again I found that they were now human beings and they had the same basic
5
needs that I had and they had some characteristics and qualities that I admired and
respected them greatly. I had no animosities towards the Japanese per se my strong
feelings were against the military leaders and the emperor and those who had brought
about this devastation throughout the world.
JK: You mention the Japanese a lot, can I ask what your impressions and feelings were
the day you heard about the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
PW: I guess by that time in the small community that we lived it seemed to be like most
of the young men and even some of the young women were involved in the military.
There were few families that lived around me that was not affected in some way by the
war having men or boys and women who had gone in the service. Very few families did
not have someone who was serving and so as the war went on and a lot of these men that
we had known and grown up with lost their lives and did not return home I think that
your feelings of animosity grew over this period of time. I think that a family I was well
acquainted with lost two sons during World War II and to see what, how this affected the
family and the communities and those around sort of a real hatred towards them and
when it was announced that the atomic bombs had happened my first impression was the
fact that this was the means maybe of bringing the World War II to an end and while
there was a lot of people injured and killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I felt personally
that maybe this would, was the means of saving American lives from going in actually
and invading the island of Japan. We know that they had gone into Okinawa and there
were many hundreds of men killed in that battle and by the bomb taking place in these
two locations my personal feelings at that time that it was a saving of American lives.
JK: On the other side of things how did you feel about or when did you first hear about
the German concentration camps and what were your feelings towards them?
PW: Other than what you would read in the newspaper or what you read in the
newspaper and heard over the radio of the concentration camps in Germany a lot of the
atrocities and things that took place was really hard to imagine, you know. For example,
while this was not a German concentration camp we had during my senior year of high
school, had a man who was born and raised in Morgan return from the Philippines and he
was part of the fall of Core… of a Japan, Corregidor in the Philippines and was taken
prisoner and became part of that dreaded death march that took place through the
Philippines and ended up in Japan and he spoke to us as a group and to see this man to go
from where he was and where he was a young person in the community until to see him
stand before you today. He was crippled, his health was, had been ruined and destroyed
and he talked to us about the atrocities that had taken place and the things they went
through. This became more real then and you could relate yourself to the death camp in
Germany and I think as you begin to listen to the hundreds and thousands and even
millions of Jews and others that had been taken prisoners and the things that they have
gone through its just really hard to totally understand first hand until we met this man
of… well it just became… alive to you and you began to understand what war was all
about and the evils of war and these men who had gained power and was willing to take
and destroy human life.
6
JK: How would you say that your world, that your life was changed as a result of World
War II?
PW: I was born prior to the Depression and lived as a very young person through the
Depression and having been born and raised on a farm we did not notice directly a lot of
the things relative to the Depression because we were able to provide. My folks were
reamplified the necessities of li[ f] e that we needed was grown and raised on the farm and
jobs were hard to get, the banks had failed and many people I was personally acquainted
had lost everything that they had during the Depression but I did not know as a young
person, I didn’t feel that I was deprived or had gone without very much. We knew that
things were hard to come by for a lot of people but I think the fact that we lived in a small
rural community with… and on the farm made it so that we went through the Depression
era pretty good and going back to your question of what was what now?
JK: How World War II affected or changed your life?
PW: Oh, the affect that it had on my life I guess really it didn’t have a lot of effect until
my brother left as I mentioned earlier to go in the National Guard. He enlisted before the
wars, any of the wars had broke out and went into the military to receive training with the
idea of possibly returning home so as we bid him farewell on that day the fact was that
we thought that we would be seeing him in a very short period of time that he would be
coming back home and it was long after he enlisted that the war was declared and Pearl
Harbor had taken place. My feelings on how did it affect my life, I guess my life
changed from then on because it was necessary for me to then take over his place in the
family and on the farm and so I grew up in a hurry so to speak and had to accept
responsibility that I may never have had to accepted [ accept]. Now in some ways it’s
probably a good thing because it prepared me for what was to come. As far as affecting
my life, I think it probably affected me in a lot of ways because I, one thing that I gained
as a result of my military experience is a new appreciation for our country. So many
things that you take, as Americans we take for granted and, and it’s just a part of us. It
wasn’t, it isn’t until you get away from home and under military kinds of experiences and
that that you gain a new appreciation for family, the ideals, and the traditions and the
customs and the things that… freedoms that we enjoy in this country others have not had
the privilege or opportunity to take advantage of.
Beverly Warner: More jobs were plentiful during the war.
PW: Well mentioned here as we[‘ re] talking about this. One thing that affected all of our
lives is the fact even though a lot of people were not in the military per se the defense
depots surrounding our small little town people were called to work and to take part in
the war effort. And I remember that my sister just older than I am, two years older than I
am, they needed people to work and to help build aircraft and to make ammunition and
these kind of things, she left her senior year and went down to work at Hill Field and
work of airplanes and she was a riveter on the aircraft that were being built to you know
supply the war effort so she would go to work at Hill Field I would go to work, I would
7
go to school and so that provided employment which relieved a lot of the affects of the
Depression to many families around because they were able to receive additional income
or to supplement the income from the farm. We found ourselves all of the sudden that
various commodities were rationed. There were certain things that even though you had
money was limited to you. Gas was rationed. You were only you were issued stamps
according to your occupation as farmers we received additional stamps to provide the
gasoline for all of these kind of things to run our farm but I don’t remember what the
ratio was but you were given gas stamps and you could only buy that much gas. If you
used it all up in a week your car stood idle for the rest of the time. If you were given
stamps for tires, if you wore your tires out you either had to walk or do without. You had
to make wise use of what you had. Sugar was another commodity that was rationed.
And I remember as a family we turned a lot from sugar and for example we used honey
on a lot of things. Our cereal we would have honey on rather than sugar. Butter was
rationed but of course being on the farm this was not, we did not notice this at all because
we would, had our own dairy animals and we would make our own butter. But there
were other commodities, all of rationing each person would have a little ration book and
as you went to the store this will cost you this much and this many ration stamps. So you
would pay your currency plus tear out form your book some stamps for the amount that
was required and rationing stayed in all during the war time from the early part of the war
in 1941 until its end then the ration stamps were taken off. Automobiles of course the
manufacturing of automobiles all of these industries were turned into the manufacturing
of war goods. So you made do with your automobiles, your trucks, and all of tractors and
all of these kinds of things for this period of time too so that these industries could then
provide in the war production. If you wanted an automobile they would take, you would
place your name on a list and when automobiles came available you would then come to
the head of the list. You did not have a selection of what, you’d have a selection of make
because you would sign with that dealership but when it came up you had to take the car
that was, that they had available to you. It may not be to your liking but it was your
opportunity to purchase a car and most people when theirs, their name came to the top of
the list even after the war and the plants then changed from the war machines back into
automobiles and trucks. You had no choice as to color, as to the things that are important
to us now you had an opportunity to buy a car and the first car that I bought by this time
my name came up two years after the war was over and I was ready to leave in the
military service and I remember the dealer called me up and said your car is here do you
plan on purchasing it? And I wavered for a while because I thought well at best I would
have a car for two months then I would be gone as a missionary to the Japanese but my
sister who was married at the time said well get the car we will buy it from you. So not
knowing what I was going to get I went to the dealership and bought the car. So it
affected our lives. It affected clothing. You did not, a lot of the commodities that are
important to us today it was not important then. You know, the fact that people said they
had to go without, this was really no big sacrifice. You did with what you had and I
don’t remember people complaining. You know it just wasn’t a big issue at that time
because all of the effort was going towards, boys and girls were leaving for the military,
and this was maybe our way of contributing to the overall effort. In school once a week
we would have war bonds that you could buy and you would take your money to school
they would accumulate the money for you and when you had arrived at $ 18.75 in the
8
fund they would then give you a war bond and you would bring this war bond home and
if you kept it ‘ til full maturity in ten years you could go from $ 18.75 to $ 25.00 and so a
lot of the money that you had, spare money, and this is where I put mine as I worked and
everything I would put it into the war bonds and I saved it in this means until such time
as I wanted to redeem this after my missionary time towards buying the things that I
needed or I wanted.
JK: You mentioned your brother a lot. Where did he serve?
PW: Lloyd ended up in the, I can’t remember the term, anyway we went in and started
out in California. Then the war in Europe was brewing. He ended up in the European
Theatre of war. Went into England. Here he went, he became an officer in ordinance
work is what it was and he was responsible for a base just outside of London and they
were providing all the weapons and tanks and everything to supply the troops in the
European Theatre. He was responsible for organizing and maintaining the place that he
was stationed would supply many of the troops, ammunitions and all these things for D-Day
when they invaded Europe. He was short lived there however because of a
motorcycle accident he had. He injured his back and was sent home and upon receiving
word that he was coming home our first feeling was that he would be coming home to
stay. He got back to the states and got home. He stayed at our home for a short period of
time then went on to California. While here, he received an operation on his back, for his
back was fused and from there he was sent to Burma into a place in Burma where he was
supplying the supplies, the ammunitions, the tanks, the trucks, and all of this to the troops
on the Burma Road. The Burma Road was the supply line then into China. From China
the Chinese were fighting the Japanese. So he supplied most of those materials along the
Burma trail and he, by the time he was released he’d been in the Army I think about six
years, a little over six years from the time he enlisted until he returned home.
JK: Did you guys receive word from him through letters or how did you guys hear word
from?
PW: The only thing you had really was letters and then during wartime of course
everything was really, really slow. Letters were the communication was really far, few in
between because of the length of time it would take to send them packages and things
like this would literally take months and months and months. So that if you wanted to
send them gifts at Christmas time, birthdays, holidays, these kinds of things you would
we would prepare them several months in advance. You didn’t send a lot [ of] food
commodities unless they were canned this way because they would be old and stale by
the time that they got there and it was understood of course that all of your writing, all
letters and everything were censored so that sometimes when he was in the theatres that
were important to the United States if he said things to us you they would be crossed out
and blanked out so that there’s not a means of I don’t know getting important information
back home. So the letters, you know you the only thing that you knew for sure and the
thing that you hoped for that you didn’t get a representative of the United States
government knocking on your door because this usually meant that he was, that he had
been killed or he was missing in action or he had been wounded so the fact that you
9
didn’t get a letter sometimes was the means of saying hey things must be going alright for
them because we hadn’t heard otherwise.
JK: You mentioned a little bit of this already but how would you say the war affected
this community of Morgan County?
PW: Probably in a lot of ways simply because of the fact that it brought the community
and all members of this small rural community together in a single effort we worked
together as people, we drew closer together to help strengthen and to assist each other.
Those who had men in the service we recognized this fact because at that point in time
any home where there was a serviceman would have a small flag flying in the window
and those who had more than one son or daughter serving in the military would have
corresponding flags so that as you would drive up and down the streets of our community
you could look at the homes and you would know by looking at the windows, there is a
person here who is now serving in the Asian Theatre or Pacific Theatre or in the
European Theatre because the flags were flying. Upon the death then the flag would be
removed and so it was sort of like a big family and when they would die and were killed
in action I think all the community came together and mourned the losses and there was a
certain pride in our community that they were serving our country and that they were
going to give their lives to, for freedom and preserved the freedoms we enjoyed.
JK: Did you have any of your friends or anyone that you knew personally that was killed
in the war, that didn’t return?
PW: Yes I know, he was a couple of years older than I was a fellow that, it was
interesting you know you tend to think of the war, the guys that were going were the big
macho men and these kinds of things but this isn’t true. Everyone at eighteen, when they
reached the age of eighteen had to sign up for the draft and as you arrived at your
eighteenth birthday it didn’t matter your nationality your creed, your color, any of this.
All young men were expected to register for this draft with the idea that as your number
came up to the top of the list, you and the need, was given to the people on the draft
board. So many people would leave our community on a very regular basis and besides
those who waited for the draft, a lot of the young men I knew and many of them enlisted
at age sixteen or went in to the military as juniors in high school and many of my friends
that I knew that I’d gone through school with did not complete their education but felt
they needed to go that they would bother to go into the military and so that in our
graduating classes these young people were recognized as being in the military as part of
our graduating group. One young man that I grew up with was very shy and very
reserved. Young man in our community he was killed in action and of course we all
mourned his loss but he was one that was close enough to us that it almost became
personal.
JK: A lot of the young men obviously were serving during this time so, what was it like
to have so many young men gone to war, I mean in the community was there a feeling of
a void of young men or…?
10
PW: Yeah very definitely! You know it, well the population of men of course decreased
and even in high school as they enlisted and went into the service at an early age things
changed. The men who went into the war were sort of looked up to by the girls. They
would come home on leave with their uniforms. They would be in their Navy uniforms,
the Marines and the Army or what have you and they would come home and the young
girls… sort of be drawn to this military uniform idea and several of our classmates,
several of the girls in my class particularly were waiting for servicemen so that they did
not date or if they dated it wasn’t on a serious basis ‘ cause they were waiting for this
person to come back. Sort of like the missionary kind of thing you know. Going on a
mission the young girls would wait for them to serve their two years. Here it was, they
were waiting for them to get out of the military and we had several in our group who
were waiting for young men who were in the military and they had sort of had a status.
They were sort of looked up to. There was a young person who was willing [ to] go and
give up certain things in their lives and willing to go and to serve and the big question
was if you went were you indeed going to return and that was the big question mark. We
may or may not see them again so there was sort of a, they were sort of held on a
pedestal. They were doing something that, out of the ordinary that was, that they were
not being asked to do. A lot of, some young men that I know were relieved when the
draft was over and some were not anxious to serve in the military for the wrong kind,
personal kinds of reasons but the bulk of the young men that I grew up with even though
the war was not a fighting war still were being drafted and enlisted in the service and
went over sort of a sense of duty and responsibility. This was the thing that you do at this
time in your life to help out your country.
JK: I know obviously that you are a very religious man. How did your religious beliefs
help you cope with the war and with your military experience?
PW: That was an interesting challenge because of the fact of our background in the small
rural community of Morgan, Utah. Most of us were of the same religious faith and as
part of this religious faith there was certain thing that you did or did not do if you wanted
to practice your belief. And I found myself going from this kind of an environment, sort
of a protective environment, into a situation that was completely foreign to me and I
found that I was being, having to deal with things that I had never and decisions and
making decisions that I had never had to face in my life and I was seeing things that were
completely foreign to me. In a lot of ways it was very difficult because as you went out
into the military they had certain preconceived ideas about the Mormons and I was
constantly being bombarded, “ I hear the Mormons have horns” and I was asked over and
over and over how may wives my father had. It got to the point that I thought this is
really ridiculous and one would ask me the question about horns I said just “ wait a
minute I’ll take off my hat.” I found it difficult that people in this day and age had these
ideas and when they asked me the question of how many wives my father had I’d say,
“ Oh seven,” I’d just make up some number and the next question would be “ Oh really”
and I’d say “ hey come on now really my father has one wife, I am a member of a family
of eight children.” I said polygamy was not practice any longer in the Mormon Church.
They all knew strangely enough about the Word of Wisdom and immediately when you
declared yourself to be a Mormon they knew that you did not smoke, you did not drink,
11
and there’s certain things that you did not go, do. As a result of these if you indeed
practiced the beliefs or you practiced your religion, it wasn’t that difficult because people
knew who you were and what you stood for and I think they respected that but you had to
establish yourself. To those young men who went into the military who did not so to
speak live their religion I think their time, they had a little more difficult time than those
of us who really tried to stay close to the Church. There were no, you didn’t go into the
military as LDS or a Mormon. When you entered the military you had to declare
yourself one of three categories and they were the only things that were recognized and
printed on your dog tags. The dog tags were of course your identification marks that you
wore around your neck at all times and if you were killed or injured they would have a
record and pull off your dog tags, they would know who you were, your name, rank,
serial number, and all about you. So when you went into the military we went in at Fort
Knox, they asked us the question, “ what is your religious belief” and they read off our
options and we said we weren’t any of these and their response was you have to declare
yourself as one of these and that was either a Jew, a Protestant, or a Catholic and those
were your options. And so you begin to examine then which of all of these are you the
closest one to and you made your declaration. In my case I guess I said well I guess I’m
as close to Protestant, I think I’m more Protestant than I am the others. It wasn’t until
several years or I don’t know exactly when the LDS Church was recognized and then on
their dog tags they began to recognize that you were an LDS. So the only reference we
had to religion while in the military, you either had again those options. The Church was
established in part of the Pacific area and the servicemen could get together on certain
occasions but we were so far removed in the northern part of Korea that it was difficult to
attend any kind of group meetings other than those of us and I knew a three of us who
were members of the Church in the camp that I was stationed at we would get together
but I found that it was, there were times that I would go on Sundays to the Catholic
Church. The Catholic chaplain would come in and go to the Catholic services, we’d go
to the Protestant services, or we’d go to these others mainly for information or just
something to do. But as far as the Church itself, we were, I had no contact with the
Church from the time that I left, basically form the time I left home until I returned as far
as formal church services and these kinds of things there just wasn’t any available.
JK: What kinds of things did you do to entertain yourself while you were in the service?
PW: Well, I guess entertainment it all had to come with, basically within the group that
you were assigned and finally entertainment of course during basic training was just
basically that. On church you could go to church. The first Sunday we were in Fort
Knox, Kentucky we were all forced to go to church. We lined up on the first Sunday
morning in Fort Knox, Kentucky they didn’t ask, they asked us two questions, are you a
Protestant or a, well three, are you a Protestant, a Catholic, or Jew and you lined up
accordingly. You had no choice where you were going to go but you went to one of
these and they marched us then in my case we went to the Protestant service. We were
marched to service. After the service we then came back to our barracks. Read that?
JK: Entertainment?
12
PW: Oh entertainment, finally by the time we ended up in Korea and our final place in
Cason, Korea just off the 38th parallel the only entertainment you had was what you could
read, going down to the noncommissioned officers’ club. There would be jukeboxes
there and all kinds of drinks were available to you if you wanted to drink. A big source
of entertainment to many was the playing of cards. They would play cards during the
winter time for hours and hours on end and when the infield club would open in the
evenings they would go down or we would go down to the infield club and sit and listen
to the music and drink. The only soft drink that was available was Coca- Cola so you had
the option of beer or alcoholic drinks or you had Coca- Cola. The water in our particular
area was not good. In fact it was contaminated with tapeworm and so they had to highly
chlorinate this water to the point that it was almost seemed like you were drinking
straight chlorine. So your option was to drink the water or to drink Coke or to drink
some of these other beverages. So we drank, at least I drank water sparingly and I drank
umpteen bottles of Coca- Cola just simply out of survival. But once in a while there
would be some kind of entertainment that would come through the camp and at then that
time of course then we’d go down to the club or wherever it was being held and enjoy
this. I guess the greatest entertainment was to receive letters from home. And usually
when you received a letter from home it was shared with everybody around you because
it would be news as what was taking place at home, your community, your part of the
country but I found myself in the barracks we were surrounded with people from all over
the United States. We were thrown together, we had to learn to get along, to live together
and a lot of the fun was the fact that, “ Oh you’re from this area, you’re from the west
where everybody’s a cowboy.” So you’d begin to defend as a means of entertainment to
you own particular culture and each part of the country sort of had their own
preconceived ideas. If you were from the east you’re one of these wealthy, you know,
city slickers. To those of us in the west we were cowboys; we were farmers and all that
went with this kind of an image. So a lot of enjoyment was had just by listening to others
and sharing with them, you know, the experiences and what you had grown up with and
your way of life.
JK: How often did you receive letters from home?
PW: Very sparingly because it took so long to get there. They could write a letter and
depending on the ship because it all was coming by ship. By the time you would get the
letter everything would be so old that you’d then begin to think well let’s see it’s been
two months, three months since this happened what’s taken place in the inner and by the
time you’d catch up with all of this it was really out- dated and sometimes letters were
really far and few between but my mother was very, very devout in the fact that she made
sure that she wrote letters very, very frequently to keep me abreast and while I was
serving my brother had of course arrived home and I would hear from him periodically as
to what was taking place at home and other friends that would write and try to keep you
informed. Mail call was one of the big important issues and everyday the fellow would
come with the mail sack and come from the southern part of South Korea with the mail
and somebody would holler over the horn, “ Mail call” and of course everybody then
would drop what they were doing and run towards the company parade ground and this
man would stand up and read off. He’d hold up a letter and call off while you were
13
standing there just hoping that maybe it was your turn to receive a letter. Then you
would take your letter and go back to your ownss barracks in the privacy of your own
little space back there, your bed. You’d read the letter and if there was something
noteworthy you would share with everybody else. We were kept abreast of what was
going on in the world with radio that was broadcast out of Japan and there we would hear
world events on a regular basis. This was taking place in Europe; this is a big battle and
all these kinds of things. We were being kept abreast on a daily basis as to what was
happening throughout the world. They had a newspaper that came out periodically that
was also printed and published in Japan. By the time the newspapers came from home
like I say they were so far out- dated. You knew a lot about the war so you’d pass all that
place and you’d try to get back to see who at home was being married or what was
happening at home what events had taken place. Things pertaining to war while we were
there, we were part of this and so that really wasn’t the important thing. You were
looking for those personal things that the family and the people that you loved at home.
JK: You mentioned the beverages food and, I mean water and soda and stuff. What
about the food, what was the food like?
PW: That was a whole new world. That was… I when I left for the military I was a very,
very picky eater. In fact my brother bribed me sometimes to eat certain foods because I
had choices that I could make and certain things I decided I didn’t like ahead of time. So
when I went into the military and found myself there your option was to either eat it or go
hungry and that really wasn’t an option so you ate the food even though it wasn’t
something that you were used to or the type of food you had not had. I remember my
first exposure where I was a picky eater and would sort it out on my plate and arrange it.
We were served on glass plates when we went into basic training and I remember going
along the mess hall line this one day and they put the potatoes and gravy and the meat
and the vegetables. Then we came down to getting, and that was alright they sort of
space those around but then we came down to the end of the line where they were serving
peaches and the man that was serving put the peaches right on top of the potatoes and
gravy and the liquid from the peaches sort of saturated everything and I looked at that and
I thought what a mess and I began to pick and choose around and I thought oh what the
heck its all going to the same place and its going to be there in a minute so I just decided
that all that was a waste of time and I… we were well fed on the whole until we got into
Korea and then at Korea being the farthest company north we were the last of the supply
line and so we received adequate food but it was not… well we would go to eat and you
ate what was there. We always had to take our mess gear with us and they would serve
us in the mess gear and then if there were seconds available fine, if there wasn’t that was
it. There wasn’t a place that you could go to and buy additional food. Your food supply
was furnished to you and this was all well and good for a while but then on New Year’s,
no Christmas Eve of 1947 our mess hall burnt down and it was a quonset hut that was
supposed to be made of metal and would not burn but the night that that got on fire it
burnt the wooden floors and then melted all the iron. So most of our food rations for our
company for a period of time was changed and we had to live on what was called sea
rations and we would go to dinner and they would put a can in our mess kit and that can
could be anything from bacon and eggs for breakfast to wieners and frankfurters. It could
14
be anything you didn’t have a choice you went through the line they would put this can
on your tray. You would take it back to the mess, the place, someplace because the mess
hall was gone. You’d take it back to your barracks and open it and you’d want to open it
in a hurry to find out what it was. It had been heated it in water so this was your dinner.
So we went from a place that the amount of food that was given you were again, you had
to, that was all you had was what was contained in that can and so we were all very
hungry. The North Korean’s sensing this would come through our barracks and they
would bring apples. And so I think we survived mainly on apples. We would spend our
money, they would come in at night and we would buy a large supply of apples to
supplement the food. But then about this period of time shortly after this period of time
they had a Congressional group come through from Washington D. C. The purpose of
them coming was to see what conditions were like up in the northern part of South Korea
and to see what kinds of living conditions we had. A mess hall by this time had been
built and the Congressmen and the Senators came in and they would sit down with us in
our mess hall and talk to us and one of the big complaints that we expressed our feelings
to them was the lack of food and the kinds of food that we were being faced with. As a
result of this we went from the can rations, the food that was scarce to an abundance of
food because we were given top priority as to the food that would come so we began to
receive the chicken and a lot of kinds of food that we hadn’t before so that as a company
we went from having lost weight as result of the mess hall burning down now we had an
abundance of food and we put on a lot of weight. This became a concern that as became,
as we had a lot of food we became fat and I remember I was one that became rather
heavy and I sent a picture home to my mother and I mean I was heavy and she wrote the
reply back oh that looks nice. It wasn’t until after I came home and asked her about this
picture she said it’s the most horrible picture I’ve ever seen. But I realized within myself
that I had put on a lot of weight and I decided that no one is ever at home is ever going to
see m[ e] like this and so I decided then when my time came to come home I began to lose
weight and I got down to an appropriate weight but point being there that we went from
feast to famine or from famine to feast. We became a company that was well- fed and the
amount of food we could go back for more if we wanted it and they brought in
commodities that we hadn’t had before. We hadn’t had any milk so that on our cereal
your option was to either eat it dry or to put condensed milk. Then they brought in some
whole milk, which was scarce, but they also brought in powdered milk. So that some of
these kinds of things we hadn’t had before began to make the food a little more palatable
but the one thing that I gained from all of this is the fact that even as G. I.’ s and even
though food was scarce we were wealthy because of the fact that every meal we’d go to
and here again it was put into our own mess kits and we had to wash and be responsible
for our own mess kits and as we would finish eating and go out to the places where these
trays were taken care of you would first dump your garbage, then you’d brush them out
with soap and water, then you’d put them in a disinfectant. Well right ahead of these
three barrels would be the Korean men and women standing and they would have gallon
cans and as you would come in if you didn’t eat all of your bread they would take this
bread from your tray and put it in an assortment of cans. We literally fed thousands of
Koreans by the waste that the American soldiers had and they survived on this and day
after day you would see these same people coming back everyday to get the scraps. You
know, you tend at home to think well I didn’t like this so you’d feed the scraps to your
15
dogs and your cats. Now I was recognizing that there were people that were actually
living on what we would waste and they depended on this for a livelihood and survival so
even though we didn’t have the best of worlds we were so far above the Koreans that
were living in the town where we were that it just made you wonder and you began to
think of what could you do for them, what you could give them, how could you help
them. We could not drink any milk because milk that was being supplied in Korea at that
time the cows were not tested for tuberculosis so you could not drink any milk. We were
advised to not eat any vegetables that come out of the soil because they use human
fertilizer on the soil so the only food that we could eat safely that was grown in Korea
were apples. We ate hundreds and hundreds of apples but everything else we decided for
our own health’s sake that you just didn’t touch but here they were living off from what
literally we were throwing away.
JK: Can I just ask one finally [ final] question, what are some of your most vivid
memories from your WWII experience?
PW: I guess the thing I feared most of anything that I had to come with issues too was
what if I found myself in the position that I had to shoot someone. And I thought now
just what will I do if I was placed in that position? How would I cope with it? How
would I feel and what would I do? And I thought about this long and hard and as my
time in Korea, I ended up in the transportation pool and so that any kind of an
emergencies and anything that would happen in the north part of Korea we would be
called out to help solve and we were not permitted in our company to have arms and that
in our barracks. All weapons and everything was stored in supply rooms. Only on
occasions where there were disturbances and these kinds of things would you draw out
the weapons. We would train on them. We could see; when I was in Korea, we could
see the buildup that was taking place in the north and we knew that it was a matter of
time until there would be an outbreak between the North and the South Koreans. It had
to happen [,] it was inevitable. We were a company that was isolated from the main body
of troops that was isolated from the main body of troop[ s] in Korea and the standing joke
was if war broke out between the north and the south it was just we had no means of
basically defending ourselves against a large invasion and so the thing that went abroad
was if we heard that war was breaking out the best thing that we could do is to go down
and take a shower and start marching north because we had little means of offering, you
know, offering any opposition. So we lived under this stress all of the time that this
could be a real possibility and when it was announced that it was my turn to come home,
I was to come home I think it was on a Monday or a Tuesday and on the Sunday night it
came, I was called down to the Captain’s quarters and they said, there is a disturbance up
at this particular place on the parallel will you go down and check out a weapon and
come with your Jeep and there were several of us and report to this office we are going
out to this place. My biggest fear was okay I’m going one more day in Korea and here
we’re going out now to squelch this riot and this scene that was taking place and I was
just saying a silent prayer all the way out because I was driving the commander, the
company commander and I just thought now if, I would just pray I thought let’s just get
this past us. Let’s have something happen between now and the time that I arrive so that
I won’t have to. I, you know, I wouldn’t have to shoot someone or I wouldn’t have to kill
16
someone. I think I’d come to grips with the fact that if it was necessary I think I could
have handled it but it was something that, you know, not anything I really relished
wanting to do. And so the time we got out there however, they saw our military group
coming we were in Jeeps and some weapons carriers and the Russians had come down
from the north into South Korea into a small town and the local police could not handle it
and so at that period of time they called in the military and so when they saw this convoy
of people coming they got in their vehicles and headed north. They had actually come
into South Korea into this town and when they saw us coming they then got back into
their vehicles their trucks and what have you and they began to head north and so by the
time we arrived at this small village we were greeted by the local people but the Russians
and they were Russian, they were part of the Russian military, they were Russian not
North Korean they had actually left the camp. I was thankful that I did not have to face
that kind of a decision. It would have been hard. I guess of all of this the one thing I
guess that I came out of the military with and I alluded to this once before. I remember
coming back on the troop ship and we came down through, down into Washington into
Seattle, Washington into Fort Lewis and I remember the night that it was announced that
in the morning at this certain period of time you would be able to see land. So that night
I imagine that the bulk of the 5,000 men that were on the ship at that time probably
stayed up all night and we lined the outside of the ship just waiting for a glimpse. I guess
when it came time to debark the ship it was just a good feeling that came over you that
you were back home. You were on American soil again. I guess the thing even though I
didn’t say face combat and the things that other people did I came home with a new
appreciation for our country, what it stands for, and what it represents. And I was
thankful for this experience but I was also thankful to be home so that now when I see the
American flag it has a specific meaning to me now then the pride I guess as a young
person I never experienced so when I hear of the demonstrations, the burning of the flag
and these kinds of things that take place it sort of makes all these emotions boil up inside
me and I thought it these people only knew what we have in this country that is special
that they don’t find in any other part of the world these kinds of things wouldn’t take
place. Sorry for crying.
JK: That’s okay. Thank you for the interview. Today I just wanted to state the date
because I didn’t. Today is October 12, 2003 and my name is Jamie Krause.