Scott, Yvonne

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Yvonne Scott – Life during WWII
By Yvonne Scott
February 27, 2004
Box 4 Folder 29
Oral Interview conducted by Meagan Ellgen
Transcript copied by Alina Mower June 2005
Brigham Young University – Idaho
ME: If you could just say your name into the microphone.
YS: Is it on?
ME: Uh, yeah.
YS: My name is Yvonne Sant Scott.
ME: Where were you born?
YS: I was born in Blackfoot Idaho on June the 7th 1923.
ME: How old were you when WWII started for America, December 7th 1941?
YS: I was nineteen.
ME: What do you remember about that day?
YS: That day? I was very disturbed. When I found out, that, they had Pearl Harbor and it
had been bombed. It just gave me a feeling that I needed to do something.
ME: Did they have, television or something?
YS: I don’t think we had television.
ME: But it just came over the radio? That’s how you knew?
YS: Yes, it came over the radio. Yeah.
ME: Do you remember exactly what you were doing, when it happened?
YS: I was working, I think. On June the 7th, I mean, December 7th, 1941.
ME: You served in the Armed Forces, right? In the Army?
YS: I served in the Women’s Army Corp, for two years and about, two months.
ME: What were your responsibilities?
YS: I was a clerk, most of the time, a clerk in the, supply section. I did typing and at one
point, I managed the office, in, that was in Texas.
ME: So you were stationed in Texas?
YS: I was stationed first, in Des Moines, Iowa, where we had our basic training. And then
we went; a girlfriend from Driggs went with me. Her name was Alex Corden. Her
husband was already in the service. And I had a brother in the service, so we talked about
it and we decided that we wanted to join the women’s army. So we did. And so we went
as far as Des Moines together and then we were separated. I went to Massachusetts,
Camp Edwards and she went to down into Georgia.
ME: So it was strictly volunteer? You weren’t drafted?
YS: It was. It was volunteer, yes.
ME: What was your rank?
YS: Well, I started out as a private and I ended up as a sergeant.
ME: Oh, wow. How did you work your way up from private to sergeant?
YS: Well, if you did a good job in your office, they would recommend you for
promotion. And I was recommended for promotion in two of the different offices that I
worked in, in the supply section.
ME: Were your supervisors or commanders, were they male or female?
YS: Both. Yeah, we had in the office we had female officers that were over me and we
also had men that were over all of us. And in our detachment, where we, slept and where
we spent our evenings we had an officer that was in charge of the detachment and she
had her non- coms that were under her and they would take charge of the barracks and so
forth.
ME: Could you hold it just a little bit closer? There you go.
YS: Do you want to try it back to see if it works?
ME: Should we try it?
YS: Is this where I hold this?
ME: Where ever is most comfortable. Did you meet any new people or make any new
friendships during this time?
YS: Lots of them.
ME: Do you still keep in contact with any of them?
YS: Well, most of them are dead now. ( laughs)
ME: ( laughs)
YS: I don’t know how I was so lucky to still be alive. But, uh, a lot of my friends in the
Army with me are dead. The one that went into the service with me, she’s dead. Ummm,
we haven’t kept in touch too much. I used to visit a lady in Spokane that I was in service
with. I think she’s dead now, too. So, when you get to be up to my age, you run the risk
of doing that.
ME: Yeah. What was your image of Hitler or Mussolini or Hirohito during the war?
YS: Well, we didn’t have a good image of them. But we really respected President
Roosevelt and the decisions that he made. I did anyway.
ME: What is your view or your opinion of Japanese or Germans now?
YS: They are all people just like we are and I feel like we have to treat them, if they’re in
the United States we have to treat them that way. And I’m sure there were people in
Germany and even Japan that didn’t like what went on. But it did. And that’s why we
fought a war. We just need to overcome all those things and put them in our past.
ME: At the time, did you feel that way towards the Japanese or Germans or even Italians,
I suppose?
YS: Well, I didn’t have too many ill feelings toward them because I didn’t know many of
them. And uh, I didn’t like what they were doing. And I knew that many of our soldiers
were killed over there and some of our women were killed. But I just have to put those
things behind me.
ME: When did you first hear about the German concentration camps?
YS: While I was in the service.
ME: Do you want to talk about that for a little bit. How did you feel when you found out
about some of those?
YS: I didn’t like it. A boy that in Driggs was in the Japanese Concentration camp. He was
in the one where they had the death march. And he survived. I went to school with him he
was my age and he use to live in the yard behind our backyard in Driggs. He wouldn’t
talk about it when he came home. But, I did read a book about it and it wasn’t pleasant.
ME: How did your religious beliefs help you cope with the military experience and the
things you heard about it?
YS: My religious beliefs… there were people of all religions in the same group and I
respect each ones own religion. I found out that the catholic girl could kneel down and
say her prayers every night. I didn’t always say mine then but I did some. They respected
me for my religion because I didn’t smoke or drink. If I went out in a group and they had
drinks they would say she doesn’t drink, bring her a coke.
ME: How did you contribute as an individual and in your community to the war effort?
YS: Well, as an individual I think I contributed because I took the place of somebody
else. My own brother had to go and maybe that wasn’t good either I am sure it wasn’t the
best thing for mothers who always had to leave because the girls joined the service or
( tape wasn’t clear) she stayed home. But, I did a lot of work in the service. I did a lot of
typing and in charge of the supply section. Somebody had to do it and it released the man
for their office.
ME: Did you receive any special awards?
YS: The good conduct medal is about all I received. I had my papers here; there might be
something else on it. But that didn’t matter to me too much.
ME: What did you guys do to entertain yourselves while you were working?
YS: We would sing a lot. We’d sing in the shower, we would go into the playroom and
get to the piano and sing a lot. We enjoyed that. And we went out on dates.
ME: Did you date the boys that were serving in the army?
YS: We did. When I was in Massachusetts I had to travel forty miles to go to church and
I went on a trip to Boston once and I went to church over there. I wasn’t serving over
there. I went with a group of people.
ME: How did the war affect your community? You lived in Driggs?
YS: I did. Everybody was sad to see the boys go into the service. They kind of looked
down on Alex and I when we went into the service because they didn’t think women
should go. The church didn’t think women should go into the service at the time. But we
wanted to go because we wanted to help our country. They put up an honorary thing in
the paper and they didn’t put our names in the paper. There were three of us I think, us
and another girl from Driggs. They put all the boys’ names, but they didn’t put our names
in the paper and I never said anything. But, before it was all over they put our names in
the paper. When they put another honor roll up. The girls in the service could be just
what they wanted to be. If you wanted to cat around and make suits and do things that
you should do. You could do it, you were on your own. But, if you wanted to be descent
and respected, you were respected and I really felt I was respected by my roommates and
everything.
ME: Did you know any young men or young women I suppose that didn’t come back
from the war?
YS: Yeah, I had a friend who served in Tetonia and he was called into, he was drafted
into the army and I wrote to him all the time. He was killed overseas, in Mindanao.
ME: Did you know his family really well?
YS: After he was killed I came home and I stopped off to meet his family but that was the
first I had met them. I used to write to his sister in law after that for a long time and I
think she died.
ME: Was it hard on the community to not have the young men come back?
YS: Yes, it was. I really think… < interruption>. We had better stop.
ME: Did you have a father or a brother or a boyfriend that served in the military?
YS: Yes, I had a boyfriend that did but then I also had a brother in the service but he was
in Germany. He just died.
ME: Oh, he came back from the war and then died later.
YS: He died this past December.
ME: How did you keep in touch with him? Just letters?
YS: Through letters and when I made sergeant and he wasn’t. Then when he made
sergeant, he said NOW he can give me orders.
ME: Were you older than him?
YS: No, he was older. ( laughs)
ME: Did you meet Haley and Kiely’s ( her granddaughters) grandpa when you were in the
service?
YS: I met him when I came home from the service. I had been discharged and so had he.
But, I knew him due to my parents running a store— he would come into the store every
once in a while and I knew him at that time, not very well. He was from Driggs.
ME: But you didn’t meet in the service?
YS: No.
ME: What year did you get married?
YS: We got married in ’ 43, I think.
ME: Had he served in the military?
YS: Yes. He served in China, Burma, India. In his life history, he told some interesting
things about his time in China Burma, India.
ME: What are some really vivid memories that you remember about that entire time
period whether you were at home or in the service. Is there anything in particular?
YS: Well, I enjoyed being in the service. It taught me a lot. It taught me to be
independent and if it got done I had to do it. If my shoes need to be polished I had to
polish them. If my shirt needed to be ironed I had to do it. Nobody waited on me. But, I
really enjoyed being in the service and I was very proud to be in the service. When I got
out people were more receptive to me after being in the service then there were when I
first went. I spent two years there and there were a lot of women who went in the service
after I did. I was proud to be a member of the Armed forces, the women’s army corp. It
was a good organization.
ME: So you might have said this already, but how old were you?
YS: I was nineteen when I went in. So, I was 21 when I came out.
ME: Wow, that’s interesting I suppose. I can’t think of more questions. Um, so your life
after the war? Did it effect? Being married and having children— did your life in the army
effect your life afterwards?
YS: I was probably a little more regimented after I got out of the service. And, different
people called me sergeant and this when I got home but they eventually got over that.
ME: Have you ever talked about this with your kid and grandkids?
YS: There was nobody who wanted to know about it so I didn’t tell them.
ME: Did you keep a journal during this?
YS: No I didn’t, I wished I had. One time I had made some addresses of a lot of the girls
and I would write a little message and sign it. I think I still have that some place if I was
to look deep in behind something.
ME: What about President Truman, what did you think about him? You said you liked
Roosevelt but…
YS: I liked Roosevelt but I was very sorry when he passed away. Everybody was…
Everybody really felt bad when he passed away but Truman was our president and we
had to respect him and we did respect him. He made some good decisions.
ME: Can I ask how you felt about dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?
YS: You can ask it but you know; I was sorry to see it drop because so many people were
killed but it ended the war and that’s what we needed. The war to be ended. But, when
you stop and think— when you see those things on television they were mangled bodies
and stuff like that. It’s awfully hard to take. I have a book on World War II that really
shows the horrors of that war in Germany and it was terrible. People don’t realize. This
book was strictly on WWII, I gave it to Earl and some of it he just couldn’t look at. But,
he did enjoy reading part of it. There are some awful pictures. I know there’re pictures
where bodies were just pushed into a hole and those were awful things that went on. You
know, you don’t like to think of those things.
ME: Is that something our generation could learn from?
YS: Well, I hope you are never subject to anything that would put you in a position where
you were murdered and pushed into a hole and your body was left there. We can learn
from the results of it yet, and not let that happen to us. But my experience in the service
was good. I would recommend, well not recommend but let a girl make a choice if she
wanted to go in the service. I could have gone to OCS, when I took my first exams I
qualified for OCS, but Alex didn’t want me to do that because she didn’t qualify she
didn’t want me to do that.
ME: What is OCS?
YS: Officers ( not clear) I didn’t try for it. I could have done that. My score was high
enough. But, when you got a friend it’s a real hard thing to leave her alone. It was the
hardest thing we ever did when she went to Georgia and I went to Texas, I mean
Massachusetts. We both stood there and cried on each others shoulders because we knew
we weren’t going to see each other for a long time. But, we did. ( tape not clear). And we
stayed friends all through.
ME: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
YS: Well, what do you want to know? ( laughs)
ME: Any final thoughts? ( laughs)
YS: Well, I’m proud to have been in the army and I don’t know whether my family is
proud or not but I think they think well of me. I made good friends. I came home and was
respected when I got home by the community. In fact, they, the American legion asked
me if I wanted to be in the parade on Veterans Day and I said sure I’d like to. They asked
if I wanted to take a gun and I said, “ No I don’t want to carry a gun.” Because part of
them carried guns and part of them didn’t. So, they handed me a flag but it was too heavy
for me ( laughs). It nearly blew me over and the guys next to me grabbed it and held on to
his and mine too and we rode up to the cemetery.
ME: What did your Mom think about this?
YS: Oh, my mother cried. She didn’t want me to go because she wanted me to stay and
work and be around home but after I got out there she was proud.
ME: Did you keep in close touch with her?
YS: Oh yes, I wrote her about every week and I called her about every month. She was
sad to have me go.
ME: I bet. And your father as well?
YS: Yeah I think he was sad to have me go.
ME: Alright.
YS: Got enough?