Evans, Vera

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Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Vera Evans – Life during WWII
By Vera Evans
February 15, 2004
Box 3 Folder 3
Oral Interview conducted by Jessica Cowgill
Transcript copied by Devon Robb September 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
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JC: First of all, when were you born, where did you grow up and where were you born?
VE: I was born in Southern Idaho in Downey -- population about 549 or something –
everyone knew everyone. Of course there weren’t that many people there when I was
born in 1920 on the 13th day of July, so I am eighty- three years old today and surprised to
be this old – I didn’t expect to live this long! I went to grade school in Downey. We had
about thirty students in the class- grade school and high school graduated. We had four
years of seminary and I really enjoyed my school years. We had reading and writing and
arithmetic. We had penmanship – everyone would learn to make it. We had pus- pulls and
circles – we practiced those. And I think that’s something that would benefit schools
today. Since no one asked, I’ll just tell it!
JC: Definitely! Did you go to college after high school?
VE: I received a scholarship from Heniger Business College and I went there for about
eighteen months. And I took some bookkeeping and secretarial work. They had a great
arithmetic class – taught us to add two columns at one time! I wish I had that notebook
back because I’ve forgotten how to do that! And then I got a job at the courthouse in Salt
Lake for a while – a compounder operator which is an adding machine. And then, later, I
was offered a job at the Downey Grain Growers – a grain elevator – as bookkeeper and
general telephone and sales and weighing the trucks when they came in with the wheat.
That was interesting. We had coal and feed and seed and gas and oil. So I got to meet all
the farmers in the valley because most of them were wheat farmers and they come in
there to sell their grain. That was an interesting job.
JC: Where was the college you went to?
VE: It was in Salt Lake City. And it was during the Depression. You have to realize there
was no money. I couldn’t have gone to school if I hadn’t received that scholarship. And
we were poor by today’s standards, but we didn’t know we were poor because everyone
else was in the same boat. And we had a few chickens so we were provided with eggs
and we had cows, so we got milk and sent the leftovers to the pigs. We always had wheat
so we could feed the chickens and my dad would take a load of wheat to town for the
flourmill and then would exchange it for flour. So we had twelve or fifteen sacks of flour
to last us through the winter. And heating was not central heating – we had a wood and
coal stove and in the fall we’d go to the canyon and chop a load of logs and bring it back
to town. And we’d have the pleasant job of chopping those logs into lengths that we
could get into the stove. And during the winters you’d have to be careful and be sure you
got the kindling in the night before because it may snow and then you’d have to go scrape
the snow off the wood and still chop it up and bring it in and wait for it to get dry to build
a fire. And my mother cooked on a coal stove and she made soup from the lard and the
pork, you know, that was left over from butchering and so we made our own soap. She
canned a lot of fruit. In the fall, we’d make a trip to Brigham City and buy fruit – peaches
and tomatoes and melons and she’d can like 200 quarts a day. It was so hot, you know,
it’s the hottest part of the year. And we had this big fire in the stove because it had to be
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cooked and processed. I don’t know. Now we have air conditioning. You flip a switch
and you get heat or flip a switch and you get cool!
JC: It’s a lot different! When did you meet you first husband ( Holt Burrup), or, how old
were you, and where did you meet him at?
VE: Well, there was a little town outside our town. And the school, the high school kids
were bussed in from the outer areas. And I was a sophomore here came this guy that I
had never seen before! I didn’t go with him during high school. We, I danced with him at
a school dance, you know, because you dance with everyone. He was a good student, in
fact, our principal called him Socrates. If someone didn’t know the answer . . . he was
always sitting in the back seat and if someone didn’t know the answer to a question, our
teacher would say, “ Well, let’s ask Socrates.” And he would answer and he didn’t raise
his hand, you know, but somehow the teacher knew that he knew the answers to the
questions. He went to school in a little one- room schoolhouse so all the grades were in
one room, so the teacher taught all eight grades – not at the same time, but he learned, I
think, from being exposed to the lessons the other children were involved in. And when I
was working at the Grain Growers – that was during World War One [ actually World
War II], and he joined the service, and one day I went out to help someone with gasoline.
The manager wasn’t there or the fellow that usually attended. I went out and it was Holt
[ Burrup] and he had hitchhiked with someone in the service and they needed gasoline. So
we had this conversation and he said, “ Well, will you write to me?” and I said, “ Sure, if
you’ll write to me first!” So I forgot about it and low and behold, here came a letter ... so
I answered it! That went on for a while. I went to Oregon and we got married during the
war. I had a little time there and then he was shipped out to where we didn’t know
because they were not allowed to say where they’re training. He was a tech sergeant for
the B, what was it, B- 19, B- 29 Bombers, on the service squadron. So I came back to
Downey and went back to work as a bookkeeper.
JC: So that was after you were married? I’m sorry, is that what you said?
VE: Yes, uh huh. And he was shipped over to Italy and he was over there when the war
ended. And he’d had furloughs in the meantime and by the time the war ended we’d had
two children. So he was separated from the service a little earlier than some of the others
by virtue of having his dependents. But, if you think about living on eighty or ninety
dollars a month it seems impossible now, but we did!
There is one thing I should probably mention about during the war – the rationing. You
could not buy gasoline, you had food stamps, you had gas stamps for a certain number of
gallons of gasoline and when that was gone, you didn’t go anywhere. Now we had to
save the grease, you know, rather than throw it away after you cooked something – we
saved that and they collected the grease. Shoes were a premium, you got two shoe stamps
for the year and we made those last.
JC: So did you get a certain number of rations per person in your family?
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VE: Yes, there was a stamp book and they tore out the stamps for the meat if you bought
they tore out a certain number of stamps. And each book had the same number, so I had
one book for me. And I had some for the children and that’s the way I got the extra shoe
stamp – because they didn’t wear shoes yet. So we were able to get by that way. But there
was a stamp for butter and cheese, a stamp for meat, canned goods. Tires were at a
premium. You could not buy camera film at all, it just was not available. They were using
it for the war effort or whatever. And everyone was in the same boat. You just got along
on very little. Paper was at a premium. It was hard to get paper of any kind.
JC: What memories do you have of the war’s beginning? What were the first things that
your remember hearing about it before it broke out – the things that stick in your mind
the most?
VE: Well, it was on a Sunday. December the seventh was a Sunday. I was at Sacrament
meeting and someone had mentioned that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and we
could not believe it! It was just out of the blue. Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and
they declared war almost immediately. I had a boyfriend who was in Hawaii at that time.
This was before I started going with my husband. And he was on a hill and he saw all that
bombing of Pearl Harbor. And it was just devastating – the bombs and the fire. And he
wasn’t in the service – he was with a construction crew, so he didn’t have to be done in
the area where they were shooting. So he saw it all and the planes that were disabled.
They could hardly get a plane off to defend them. And he told about that. And I cannot
watch the movies about the war, because, to me, that is not the way it happened. They
made it into a romance or something. And, I can’t, I can’t …
JC: It’s not a very romantic thing, is it?
VE: No, no. It was just devastating. Nearly every boy in my school class, I think, in my
graduating class, graduating class was involved in the war. About three of them were
killed. And one of them was a pilot. He had fulfilled all his missions and was ready to
come home and they asked for volunteers. He volunteered again and didn’t come back
from the mission. Another one, his name was Robert Brockston. Another one was Hatch,
Lynn Hatch. He was a tank … what do you call it? He had a tank anyway. And he was
killed. He was a commander. And he was killed in that tank. And some of the others, they
never did know for sure what happened to them. They just disappeared. There wasn’t
enough to send home. It was sad. Any able- bodied men in that town went. The ones that
didn’t were probably 4- F which meant they had some impairment – their vision or their
legs were, they were lame or something. And they were classified 4- F. Every so often
they’d read a list of the men that were drafted.
JC: How was the feeling of the men who had to end up going?
VE: We didn’t have any conscientious objectors there. They were all willing to go. In
fact, there was a camp outside of town where the CC camp was built where they would
ship conscientious objectors from other parts of the country who would not go to war
because of maybe religion or various reasons. There was a little resentment towards those
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people. They did not mix well with the general population of town. Nearly everyone had
someone fighting and then to have these people come – these conscientious objectors.
And it was legal – they had their rights, you know. Some of them went to Canada to
avoid the draft. It was pretty intense.
JC: But most of the young men you knew were willing to go?
VE: Oh yes! They expected it … They knew it was wanted and they went willingly. I
didn’t hear anybody protest.
JC: And most people back home supported it?
VE: Very supportive. You bet.
JC: What kinds of things did you do back at home, with the other women, to support the
war cause?
VE: They had a drive for empty tin cans, believe it or not. And I mentioned the
shortening and the lard, the grease. They collect that. They collected the tin cans.
Anything made of metal was regarded as a useful item. Anything discarded, they’d melt
it down and make it into something else – bullets, or ships, or canons, something for the
war effort. I worked at Remington Arms in Salt Lake for a few months during the war as
a clerk and we were not allowed to talk about our jobs on the bus going to work or
coming home. You did not discuss what you did, because there’d be spies there who
would listen in and learn what progress they were making if anyone discussed it. There
was a reprimand if anyone was ever heard discussing their work.
JC: When your husband was in the war, how often were you able to hear from him?
VE: When he was overseas he would write, but there would be pieces of the letter cut out
if they thought it was anything that would be valuable to someone who was trying to find
out what troops were doing. Some of the letters that girls got were really sliced up. There
weren’t many words cut out of mine. But once in a while there would be a little
something – their position, they weren’t to discuss their position geographically or what
their plans were, where they were going, or where they were. I never knew for sure where
he was. And the soldiers who were killed, their families got a gold star which they hung
in their windows.
JC: Did you have any other family members or people that you were really close to that
were in the war, besides your husband?
VE: He had three brothers that went too. So there were four boys. Three of them in
World War II. One brother in Germany was shot by a sniper but he had just turned his
head and it nicked his temple. And he was in the hospital for a while but fortunately he
didn’t have any permanent damage. That was Ross. Have you heard of your uncle Ross?
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JC: I have.
VE: Ray was in Alaska – an older brother. And Holt was in Italy. Later on, Max was in
Italy. And they have erected a monument in Downey at a little park there. And they have
engraved all the names of the soldiers who participated in World War II and World War I
and the Korean War and Vietnam. There are a lot of names on there. It’s not as bit as the
Vietnam Memorial, I’ve seen that – it’s a pretty good size monument. But there are lots
of names front and back. I thought it was a nice tribute to those veterans.
JC: Definitely. So you said that you did work during the war. Did most of the women that
you knew go to work? Were a lot of their husbands gone too or their boyfriends?
VE: Well some of them went to Ogden and worked at something down there. There was
a naval ordinance plant here in Pocatello and Hill Field was the air force field out of
Ogden there – Clearfield and people – men and women went down there to work, but not
many of the women. I started working before I was married. The war was going on when
we were married. And there were telegraph operators. The railroad hired women to be
telegraph operators. There were all kinds of jobs. But we were far away from the seaports
that we didn’t have any “ Rosie Riveters.”
JC: How long had you been married before Holt went over to Italy and was in the war?
VE: Let’s see. He’d been in the service, he’d been in the army a couple of years before
we were married. And he was stationed at various airfields. Pendleton, Oregon, Gowen
Field in Boise, And Biloxi, Mississippi, and Oklahoma … let’s see, what was the name of
that? So, he’d been in the service about four years when he was sent to Italy and we’d
been married a couple of years. It ended shortly after he’d gotten over there – within six
or seven months I think, before the war ended. He didn’t, he wasn’t fit for anymore
service because they did it on a seniority basis. So he was released in October and the war
ended in what? May? And they had bombed Hiroshima with the atomic bomb. And that
put an end to the war. It was terrible … I thought it would be the end of the world
because I’d had a little chemistry and I knew what it was and I thought, oh, this was it.
JC: Do you remember when you first heard that they bombed Japan?
VE: There was no TV in those days you know. In those days it was on the front page of
the paper. I saved some of those papers and I gave those to my son- in- law about a year
ago. I should give you some of those because it was quite interesting. The one where they
surrendered, I saved that one. And when the war in Europe was over, that was on the
front page. When Franklin D. Roosevelt died, that was on the front page. All these things,
I figured were historic moments in our country.
JC: Definitely. How did the general population just around you feel about the bombing of
Japan?
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VE: You know, I don’t know how they felt, but I was horrified. I was really scared to
think they had a weapon that powerful. I was afraid that they’d start one that would never
stop – it’d just go on and on and on. But I was glad when the war stopped. Everybody
celebrated. People I didn’t know came to see me because all the soldiers’ wives, you
know, were targets of sympathy. I’ll never forget that night. I stayed home but there were
people coming and celebrating.
JC: And you said your husband… when did you say he came back, he was able to come
back?
VE: I think it was in October after the war ended.
JC: Just the same year?
VE: Yes. It took them a long time to muster out all of those soldiers because they all had
to be processed. It took a long time.
JC: So, was discharged from the military or did he stay in the military?
VE: No, he came home and bought a drainage company. A man who had been hauling
produce and freight in town wanted to get out of the business and he bought his truck and
the business and he started hauling the freight for Garrett Freight Lines and Orange
Freight and Consolidated Freight and any of the deliveries from the elevators – there
were two elevators and he did a lot of delivery and that’s what he did for quite a while.
JC: I think you might have said this already, but where were you living while he was
gone?
VE: Well, when we were first married, let’s see, what was the name of that town? He was
stationed in Afreda, Washington and we got a little apartment in Soap Lake, a little town
called Soap Lake. It was three or four miles from Afreda. And it was hard to get a place
to live because there were so many soldiers there and they all wanted housing if they
were married. There was a woman there who had a garage and she remodeled it into a
little one- room apartment with a partition half- way across. On the far side was the
bedroom. It was about a four- foot tall partition. A little table in front of the partition and a
little monkey stove. It was a little square stove about two feet square that you could build
a fire in and cook and that was our cooking. I cannot remember about the sink. We must
have had a dishpan or something. The bath was over … it wasn’t a bath, it was just a
toilet and a basin. We had to go in her house to take a shower. And that was… I can’t
remember what the rent was – probably ten or twelve dollars a month! Then, later on,
when he was shipped overseas, I came back home and worked at the elevator some more.
JC: Did you have any children by then?
VE: We did have a little girl. And after she was born I got a basement apartment at the
Enterprise Hotel and there were about four or five apartments down there. There were
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apartments upstairs too, but they were mostly one- room so we had a housekeeping
apartment in the basement there. And that’s where we were living when he came home.
By then our second child was born just… the deadline in May so he got out a little earlier
by virtue of having two children. Each circumstance counted points towards your
discharge. So we had two children. But he came home and we bought a little house in
town and got out of the basement apartment.
JC: During the war, like you said, you didn’t have a lot… like you said, you were
rationing and everything – you didn’t have as many things as you would have had. What
did you guys do for entertainment or fun when you had a spare moment?
VE: I don’t remember going to shows. We visited. You could play games with your
family. But because there was no gasoline, you didn’t make many trips. We walked to the
grocery store. In fact, my whole life I walked to the grocery store. Sometimes carrying
eggs to trade for groceries. There was a lot of that. Then I’d carry the groceries home in
the same basket that I took the eggs to town. There wasn’t much entertainment. I’m sure
they must have had movies. But it wasn’t a big part of your life. It wasn’t a big part of my
life.
JC: There were other things to worry about.
VE: Yes.
JC: How were you able to hear news of the war, to know what was going on?
VE: The paper. We took the paper pretty regular. And the radio – they announced the
happenings on the radio. But it isn’t, it isn’t like it is today where you can see it
happening on TV. This is, this is just... it blows my mind that we can see it when it’s
happening. We had to wait for the paper and they’d list the casualties – how many
wounded and how many died. Who was winning and any advances that were made and
defeats were mentioned. The Battle of the Bulge and Normandy were just tragedies. Iwo
Jima and Okinawa – we learned the names of so many islands I’d never heard of before,
but you became acquainted with them during the war by virtue of the fighting that was
going on there.
JC: Were most people that you knew pretty well informed about the war?
VE: Yes! It was the main topic of discussion wherever you went.
JC: That’s not… I mean, today, it seems like some people don’t even care what’s going
on. But it wasn’t like that at all?
VE: No, because everyone was involved. Very few families didn’t have someone that
was. My brother was working on the Alaska Highway. He’d had infantile paralysis. So he
had a pronounced limp and was 4- F. But he joined this crew that was making highways.
He could do that kind of work. He was a civil engineer.
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JC: Did you know any woman who were women or who were going into the army?
VE: Oh yes. We had a cousin who joined the WAAC’s the Woman’s Army Air Corps,
they called them WAAC’s. And what was the Navy? I think it was WAF, but I can’t
remember why. I took the… I went to Pocatello and took the test to enter the WAAC’s
and I passed it and she told me she’d make me a corporal if I’d sign up right then and
she’d send me to Salt Lake. I decided to think it over and said, “ Well, give me a day or
two to think it over.” In the meantime I got a letter from Holt – we were not married yet –
and he said he would never speak to me again if I joined! So I didn’t!
JC: It seems to have worked out for you!
VE: Yes, he didn’t speak to me again! And I spoke back!
JC: That’s good!
VE: And I have a friend that’s in the marines. And I have a grandson – his son joined the
marines and he’s now in… he’s spent some time in Kuwait and Iraq. He likes the Iraqi
people but it’s so hot there! He spent about six months there and he came back and he’s
in Okinawa now. And he’s been to… oh, he’s been to several of the little countries
around there.
JC: I think that’s about all I have to ask you. Is there anything else you would like to add?
VE: Oh, I think that maybe my whole life has been shaped by the Depression because I
have a tough time throwing away something that I think could be used for another
purpose. And… papers, I have had a hard time throwing away papers and magazines.
JC: And even during the war, you were saving those types of things.
VE: Oh yes. I can’t think what they used the paper for, but I know that they gathered
everything. Anything that you ordinarily threw away was good for something in the war
effort.
JC: Were there any things that you had to give up during the war that you really
especially missed?
VE: Oh yes. The film for the camera. And you couldn’t buy tires for the car – the
gasoline. And clothing was hard to come by. Nylons – you could not by nylons. I think
within that period we had some kind of suntan lotion or paint that we painted our legs and
I’d draw a seam up the back of my… because they had seams then. There was a little
pencil you could draw the seam up the back of my legs.
JC: Did you do that often?
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VE: Well, I had a bottle of the makeup – put it on and it looked like you had socks on.
JC: I just wondered if you’d get tired of doing that after a while.
VE: Well, I didn’t go places everyday, but when I did, I’d use that and the pencil. We
didn’t do that in the winter – it’s too cold in this area to go bare- legged. If the clothing
store got in a shipment of hose, everybody knew about it. They went down and stood in
line to wait for you turn to buy a pair of hose or two.
JC: Did you have stamps to buy those too?
VE: I can’t remember, but you were only allowed one or two pair.
JC: So one girl couldn’t go there and buy all of them?
VE: No. They were not pantyhose. There were hose that came up above your knees and
had to be fastened with a garter – the good old days!
JC: Well, thank you for talking to me – I learned a lot.
VE: There are a lot of changes alright since then. The progress is amazing.
JC: I can’t imagine, for one thing, all of the young men being so patriotic. It’s not so
much that way anymore.
VE: No, it’s entirely different. Morals are different, education is different. We didn’t hear
anything about sex and now they’re mentioning it in school. This is an entirely different
world.
JC: Well, thank you!