William Piper
Interview Transcript



April 14, 2004

Interviewer ---
There are a couple of standard questions that I ask everybody and then we'll get on to more specific ones for what you did. First off, where were you on December 7, 1941?

Bill ---
Where?

Interviewer ---
Where were you on December 7, 1941, how did you hear about the attack, what were your impressions?

Bill ---
I was up on the East Branch of LeClerc Creek. We were loading wood logs, getting wood. Well when we came out we stopped at Cole's gas station to get gas in the car and Mrs. Cole, she ran the gas station in Usk, and she told us. That would be in the evening, right around 5:00.

Interviewer ---
And what were your thoughts?

Bill ---
I don't think I really realized the full meaning of it, and but it wasn't something that I didn't expect.

Interviewer ---
How come?

Bill ---
Well this was in the newspapers and the magazines for some time and I used to read a lot, I still do. There was a book written called The Yellow Peril, do you uh remember that?

Interviewer ---
I've heard of term "Yellow Peril" used before

Bill ---
It was about what Japan was going to do and it was almost exactly what was forecast and well one illustration is the Panhandle Lumber Company stopped their logging railroad in 1935 and that Fall we tore up the steel and stocked it there at Camp 1 and in 1941 the United States put an embargo on all steel to Japan and the trouble was it was about three months before they started to enforce it so the Washington Machinery Company from Seattle came over with trucks and loaded it up and got it to the boats for Japan before the embargo started. Well everybody said, "Well this'll be coming back," it was in the form of bullets. Course we really weren't sure, but that was the general talk about what was going to happen. So then course that night the family course we talked about having to go into the Army, see my brother and I were both about the right age.

Interviewer ---
Did either of you serve in the Army?

Bill ---
My brother served. Well he went to basic training at Fort Lewis and he was in the ordnance and they sent him to the desert for desert training and supply and maintenance. He worked mostly in motors, in the motor pool trucks, he was a pretty good mechanic. And then of course he went to England first where he visited some of his relatives, cousins, aunts, uncles. Then he went to France and Belgium. I don't think he ever got into Germany though.

Interviewer ---
I want to go back before I ask you where you worked. How do you feel about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, should we have done it, should we have not?

Bill ---
I don't believe we should have done it. I think it could have been demonstrated without killing all those people. I know if I had seen that bomb go off on a deserted island I woulda given up and I think they woulda too. We killed innocent people, just because they were Japanese, they are still just like we are, you do what you're told or else. They shoulda dropped it on the war office or the Emperor's palace, they're the ones that started it.

Interviewer ---
Where did you work?

Bill ---
Well I worked in the woods the entire war.

Interviewer ---
For Panhandle Lumber Company?

Bill ---
No Panhandle was gone, they dissolved in 1939. It was for the Diamond Match. The Diamond Match Company started and they went through Diamond International.

Interviewer ---
So you were part of the essential lumber effort, what did you do?

Bill ---
I had a combination of a couple of jobs. I was a scaler that meant I measured the log and determined the footage. But I worked for a small gyppo, Carol Graham and so I did whatever needed to be done generally I had a pickup I'd haul in groceries once a week to the camp and keep the bulldozers and the jammers and that sort of thing supplied with gas and diesel, and also I kept the time. That wasn't too much of a job, the Diamond made out all of the checks and we ran Carol's payroll through there so all they needed was the time.

Interviewer ---
You had mentioned before that you worked out at Farragut while it was being built.

Bill ---
Well yeah that was in the first year of the war and everybody from around here flocked over there, you know they were paying what we considered high wages, $1.20 an hour for truck drivers and they worked ten hours a day, six hours a week, so it kinda drained the woods crews around there that one summer. And we'd go from Newport there the access roads in there were pretty primitive when you consider the 20,000 some men working there they were all headed in there in the morning and you had to get going early because if you got caught it was single file and if you had guts enough to get out into that other lane cause there wasn't much traffic coming the other way and go like hell but they wouldn't let you back in [laugh]. Some of those fellas were pretty hard-headed, they didn't want to let you back in. [laugh] They started in the early spring and gee by the time I left there in Fall, November, they were using some of the drill fields, if that's what you want to call them, there were six units. When they laid me off, well I guess I could have worked longer but I had a chance to go to work for Graham in the logging and they were laying them off by the hundreds. I worked in the truck dispatch, we did everything there. They kept a couple pickups there and the Superintendent bosses used the pickups to get around the project with. I suppose the Big Bosses had their own, but they would call and want a pickup and the truck dispatch would ask who would want that and they go up and pick them up and show them around wherever he wanted to go and the ambulance crews were there and all the transports went out of the truck dispatch.

Interviewer ---
What was it like living through the rationing system, and what was the hardest thing you had to go without?

Bill ---
Well I didn't go without anything, I was in a logging camp and all I had to do was go to the Ration Board and say, "I need so many red stamp points or whatever," and whatever I told them they gave me, so I had all my ration stamps and gas. I was hauling gas around all the time so I didn't worry about gas. I had all my ration points and I'd eat at the cookshack. I had a Chevy pickup and it ran all the way through the war. But I do know that through the war, old Carol Graham had an old RD6 they called 'em. It was one of the first diesel bulldozers they put out. That thing kept breaking down all the time and about the second year of the war the Diamond Match bought him a brand new TD10 which was something.

Interviewer ---
What was this area like during the war?

Bill ---
Oldtown was exciting, because of the gambling and the beer joints. There was about four no six beer joints I believe they all gambled 4-5-6 well you shook the dice, and 4-5-6 paid off 1-2-3 craps. It was pretty high stacks. But of course everything was going strong. The camps and everybody had money. The Diamond had camps on Priest Lake, they had floating camps, which had barges and tugboats that towed equipment around, they had a camp on Middle Creek here in Pend Oreille County and there were pole camps too.

Interviewer ---
What were those?

Bill ---
Cedar poles for electric and telephone poles. Didn't see good times until the war, the area was the same before the Depression and the same after was all Depression. It was always known as a poor county with lots of natural resources, lumber, minerals, and water power.

Interviewer ---
What do you remember of the Prisoner of War Camps that were in this area?

Bill ---
Not very much really. Oldtown was one of their favorite spots because of the beer joints. They'd bring 'em down in trucks and drop 'em off to have a good time. They coulda walked away if they wanted too. That's what I noticed mostly, they were very happy, they didn't want to go back to the war, they knew it would be over eventually and they could go home.

Interviewer ---
What do you remember the most about the war years?

Bill ---
Well while this didn't affect me much, the shortages because you couldn't get new vehicles and new cars. The news we followed that very closely and I worried quite a bit about my brother. I don't know if he was actually at the front or not, but he was close. We worried about him getting back alive. Well there was good times we hadn't experienced good times since the twenties but with the Depression on we had to scrimp and save for everything.

Interviewer ---
What was your best moment?

Bill ---
I got married in June 1942 and our first daughter was born in 1945. Probably my marriage.

Interviewer ---
What do you remember the most about the end of the war?

Bill ---
That was when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Well I was in camp there and Carol Graham came up and he tried to tell us where they had dropped the atomic bomb and he couldn't remember what they called it. [laugh]

Interviewer ---
What do you miss about that time?

Bill ---
We had a lot of fun even though it was wartime. But probably the camaraderie of the camps. We were all young and we had to be pretty healthy to work and we had a lot of fun. We always had a lot of fellas telling stories, especially in the beer joints.



Copyright © 2004 by Kristen Cornelis