Interviewer ---
Where were you on December 7, 1941?
Evelyn ---
I was coming home from church and I was on what we then called Main Street, and somebody came running across the street and a girl that was one year ahead of me in school and all were together, and told us what had happened. And I guess like everyone else in the country we went home and listened to the radio but we really didn't, I don't think we understood too much, but by the next week we had people that were going into the service and it really came home then.
Interviewer ---
How do you feel about the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Should we have done it, should we have not and why?
Evelyn ---
Oh boy, that's a deep one. At the time it was done we certainly all approved of it, I think. I think there was very few, I don't think we knew really how much the impact would be looking back at what history has recorded since and so on. I maybe could hope that it had been better investigated. I hope it was something...we had to end the war and the other things that were going on were atrocious, the prison camps and so on and I think, I think all in all that most of the people that lived at that time had felt that it was probably a decision that had to be made.
Interviewer ---
How old were you during the war?
Evelyn ---
I was fourteen when it started.
Interviewer ---
So you went to school at Newport?
Evelyn ---
Yes, and because of the war, my class started out, I was a freshman, and we had forty-seven students and by the time I was into my junior year there was only like two boys left in my class. Several of them had turned eighteen and had been drafted and some of 'em had enlisted, and I really felt like I wanted to quit school and go to work. It was the patriotic thing to do and my parents were definitely against it, and I found that I had enough credits to finish at summer school in Spokane, so I went in and went to a six-week summer school class and got my remaining credits and I graduated on my seventeenth birthday, which was the first of August, and within two weeks I was working at Galena, which is now Fairchild.
Interviewer ---
And what did you do at Galena?
Evelyn ---
I was a typist that was, that was almost unusual, everybody wanted to be riveting and doing all of these, making more money and things, and because I had just finished all of these typing classes and so on, they gave me a typing test. And so I went in and the first job was so boring that I just wanted to quit and so they gave me a different job, and it was really quite, quite a neat job for a seventeen year old. I worked in the Tool Crib. Each of the four large hangars had a center deal that was called the Tool Crib, and it was upstairs and they checked their tools in and out, and I signed clearances for people that were returning things or whatever, and I did filing and some typing so I did a type of office work most of the time I was there.
Interviewer ---
How much were your wages? What did you earn?
Evelyn ---
$1,400 a year
Interviewer ---
Not bad, and that worked out to how much an hour?
Evelyn ---
I have no idea [laughs]
Interviewer ---
Okay
Evelyn ---
You can do this with a calculator, but I think it was $1,440 or something, but it was just a little over $100 a month, so...well I know I put in at least a forty hour week, but...
Interviewer ---
That was my next question, how many hours a day did you work?
Evelyn ---
We went to work at seven in the morning and they had us on permanent daylight time thing, and we went to work at seven, I think we maybe worked more than eight hours a day, 'cause I don't think we got off 'til four, so we musta been working like a nine hour, see seven to five and four is nine, maybe is was eight hours with lunch. I think we got off about 4:00 but it was at least an eight-hour day, and forty-hour week. I lived on base, the first couple months I lived in downtown Spokane and they had busses that ran out to the base but they had a speed limit, very low and it took so long to get that fifteen miles and they had some housing, civilian housing, dormitories really, that I was able to get into at the base, so I lived on the base.
Interviewer ---
Any stories from when you worked out at Galena that you'd be willing to share? Anything out of the ordinary, or exceptional or just really cool happened when you were...
Evelyn ---
Well it was all pretty cool for a seventeen year old that had grown up in Newport and here were all of these people out there and the officers were young and so on, I mean it and you got acquainted with totally different people. The lady that was office manager of the office I was in was, I thought she was an older woman, she was probably thirty-five, but she was I think her last name was Novotney. I think it was Hungarian or something, and she was the first person I met like that. She had a wonderful sense of humor, and a different type of family life and so on, and she used to bring little treats that were different, you know, like poppy seeds in a roll and things like that, sweet rolls and stuff but meeting her was one of the things and the fact that I can remember her name now is something because it's been a long time ago. And meeting, the course that happened a lot with Farragut and so on but we met young people from all over the United States, so it was just, it was kind of an eye-opener for someone who had grown up, I was born in Newport you know and I, the only schools I ever attended were in Newport, so it was different.
Interviewer ---
What was it like having to live through the rationing system? I realize you were out on the base and could pretty much, I assume could get what you needed off the base when you were living there.
Evelyn ---
Well all the restaurants had food but there were things that were cooked I suppose on the base, maybe we did but then the base food was nothing to write home about. But the restaurants in town I can remember like probably nobody has seen rabbit in a restaurant for years, but rabbit wasn't rationed so about once a week they would have, that would be one of their main courses. I think, I'm not sure if chicken was, I know beef and pork were rationed and meat always was a big thing, I think, although I can remember my mother agonizing over sugar because she did so much canning, and the main thing I can remember at that time was shoes and by the time I started working out at the base, they had come up with a man-made material that was not rationed so that you could buy like dressy-looking shoes. They weren't good quality and the stockings were not rationed, they just weren't available. If you saw a store that had nylons, there would be a line a block long and we wore rayon stockings, which were neat, when you'd stand up the knees would bag and so on, and that was...
Interviewer ---
Okay, on the stockings did you ever paint your legs?
Evelyn ---
Yes
Interviewer ---
Tell me about that
Evelyn ---
Okay, well it looked a lot like liquid make up, facial make up, a little bit thinner I guess, you had different colors, and I don't know, I heard a lot of people saying you know, that it ran and so on, normally I only did it in the summertime, you know, it was too cold in the wintertime. I didn't play around with, some of 'em tried to paint, the stockings nearly all were seamed then, and some of them would try to paint the seams and stuff.
Interviewer ---
But you never did, you never tried to paint yours [the seams]
Evelyn ---
No, no not one, I couldn't get my stocking seams straight half the time, I thought that was the best invention when they came up with seamless nylons. It was just, it was something that a lot of people did or didn't do. I don't think I know I didn't do it all the time, but if I was going someplace and especially in the summer when it was hot anyway, and I didn't want to wear those old rayon stockings and I think I had one or two pairs of nylons that I had saved for very, very special occasions. And silk stockings maybe if some people had a few silk stockings left, but I had nothing that hadn't worn out totally, so leg paint was a better alternative than white legs or something. Course we also tried to get our legs tan and that, but I never did have very much luck, I never laid out in the sun very much, it always made me a little kinda nauseated and so my tanning always happened just as I was doing activities outside and so on, so...
Interviewer ---
So stockings and shoes were the hardest things to live without basically for you?
Evelyn ---
Well for a teenager yeah, an older teenager but teenager, yeah.
Interviewer ---
What type of transportation did you use? I mean you didn't have a car obviously and so you walked, rode the bus...
Evelyn ---
Well you know we had all kinds of transportation, if I wanted to come home for the weekend I would, and I knew the schedules but there was trains, I think two a day, there were busses, I could get into Spokane every fifteen minutes on a Galena bus, I could go to the bus depot and get onto a bus and come into Newport, or I could go to the train depot and get onto a train, it just depended on what time of day that I was arriving or leaving and the same way with going back in Spokane you had all kinds of city busses and so on and the few people that had cars basically did not have gas for running around just errands and what not, I mean you did a lot more walking too but I had grown up with that. There were never any school busses in Newport; the busses came in from the outer districts, but not like now where I see the busses picking up the kids and stuff. So we were used to walking and not only walking but from where I lived up to Spokane, but I went home for lunch and came back, so walking was just nothing for me. You know if I was in Spokane and I was eight or nine blocks or something I could walk, it was nothing to do.
Interviewer ---
What was this area like, Newport area like during the war? What made this area different than it is now?
Evelyn ---
Oh boy, I think a lot of it was the base at Farragut. We got other kids from the military in, but a few of 'em discovered Newport and when thy had leaves on weekends and stuff, you'd get acquainted with this group or that group or something, but there was nearly always service people and a lot of people took them into their homes for meals and you know that type of thing and they would come pretty soon they'd be transferred out and maybe they would meet somebody else or something and we had, there were lots of trains going through here. We had troop trains and in fact a few times we were down here greeting 'em and I got mail from some of 'em all through the war and never saw 'em again but met 'em through a window up there and you wrote to, we had pen pals, people and stuff too, maybe there was a picture exchange or something but anybody, they were all our age and that's why I say, kids from, I wrote to a kid from Louisiana, one from Minnesota and so on that uh, I don't think, I don't even remember if I saw them here or if somebody else said, "You know I've been writing to this gal" or something, and it was you'd get a letter, letters from him, stamps were three cents I think, and but that was uh Newport just kinda kept along during the war. I think a lot of people, my mother worked at the aluminum plant in Spokane and my dad got put into kind of a temporary job, he worked at what was then the Kaniksu Forest and he became operations manager of the Kaniksu Forest during the war, which meant that he bought or ordered all the supplies for all of the camps and the fire deals and all that stuff, and so he was hardly ever home, they were running those camps up there and especially during fire season with kids up to sixteen I think, or maybe it was that one year 'til sixteen or seventeen or eighteen, before they went into the service and men that were up to their late thirties or forty years old, something like that were not available for being in the service and when they had the prison camps, I guess they called them, the detainees or whatever. You know they had the Italians and the Germans that were here that were kept, and they had to be agreeable to working on these various jobs and so on, and he had camps of those up there too. And anyway, I know there was a couple years that I think he was six or seven weeks when he never even got close to home you know in time and my mother was getting up and leaving 5:00, 4:30, 5:00 in the morning to drive into Spokane to work at the aluminum plant and they could get gas. They carpooled and there was, I don't know probably more than one, but the car she went in on, there were five or six people that went in everyday, and that was the dirtiest, she worked in the carbon room and it was filthy but she did it all through the war so, so that I think there were a lot of people, she was far from alone and there were a lot of people that were involved in things like that. And of course, the other people say, "Well on the other hand they made better money than they did in three years because of the Depression, and so on." So, but it was definitely a different type of life that I think all of the small towns, I don't think it was unique to Newport so...
Interviewer ---
I want to go back to meeting the troops, troop trains, when I talked to you here a couple weeks ago you said that you used to sit in the drugstore [Tulles]
Evelyn ---
We would be, well in the drugstore or whatever, and somebody would come up and say that there's a troop train coming in, and we would go down. And you'd walk up and down and talk to the guys and stuff and it was just a kinda like a miniature USO thing in Newport [laughs] but they would be here, see in those days those trains had to fill up with water. There was a big water tank out here, and they would be here for awhile and I don't think they were ever allowed off, I don't remember anything except windows down and all these heads out of the window and so on, but yeah we use to, there would be you know whoever what downtown would probably come in that age group. I don't remember adults coming much for that it was kind of something that high school girls did.
Interviewer ---
Did you ever go, you know the famous story of the North Platte Canteen, while you were meeting you know, the trains, did you ever bring down any goodies, and coffee and doughnuts and whatever? I was just...
Evelyn ---
No, because we never had enough warning if those were scheduled I didn't know that much about it and don't even, if they were pulling in we knew or if it was something that maybe they got a little advance warning. I just can remember several times when somebody would come in and say that there's a troop train either you know, on the siding or coming, or something like that and we would come down. But I know that, see that would be over at the other place here, the other depot [where Stimson Lumber Company's office is] and you could kinda walk up and down the tracks and there would be all of these cars just filled with hundreds of men, and such young people and as we all were but a lot of those kids you know were only seventeen years old.
Interviewer ---
What do you remember, obviously you said your dad worked for the Kaniksu Forest, what do you remember of the POW/Detainee/Internee, whatever you want to call it camp at Usk and the one at Priest Lake?
Evelyn ---
Well he had the one at Priest Lake, the one at Usk I really didn't know much about. They used to bring the truckloads, busses, I don't remember I think they were open trucks that they brought into town periodically for some kind of a recreation thing and that wasn't always too popular with the local people.
Interviewer ---
Why?
Evelyn ---
Because their fighting the country that these people belonged to and it was you know, what we had was German and Italian and both of those countries were not on our side. Now the ones that my dad had, he got a little more acquainted with one of 'em, I remember was a crew off of one of the big ocean liner boats, and those guys, if they worked they got, it was like prison pay now or something, very minimal pay. But if some of them were cooking and so on and they used to make some fabulous meals, especially this crew and then a lot of them were family people and they used to send us little gifts and stuff. I can remember, oh like one of them made me some jewelry out of nutshells that were painted and stuff, you know and strung on elastic bands and things like that. That was in the earlier parts of the war, when I was a little younger, but in fact I think even at the time I got it, it was probably kinda young for me but anyway. But they were pretty much, these guys were people that volunteered to do this, rather than just sit it out in whatever they were in, so it was kind of like trustees or something I guess. And, but I do remember people's comments when they would bring them in and others. And I don't remember, I don't think they let them go to the movies or anything, I think they brought 'em in, maybe they did a little shopping and so on. I don't know what they really did, but I do remember once in awhile something like that would happen.
Interviewer ---
What do you remember most about the war years? We're almost done actually.
Evelyn ---
Good, what do I remember most? Oh probably one of the things and that just came up a short time ago, uh when Billy Heath was killed. Uh, Billy had been home on his last leave and uh, I was several years younger than he, but there was nobody around that he'd gone to school with, and I happened to be here and he took me out to Diamond Lodge for dinner. And we didn't even write or anything, it just, knew each other and it was a nice evening. And that was such a nice place in those days, you know the white linens and stuff, and uh the next thing I saw was his picture in the paper and he was missing. [She started dabbing her eyes, and was visibly upset] And it's still really tough. [she was crying softly now] Let's see was that, I think it was sixty years last summer or last fall. His brother had that deal - did you catch that?
Interviewer ---
I don't think I did
Evelyn ---
Oh boy, it was, he got on the internet and located the town. I think you should follow up on this.
Interviewer ---
I will follow up on it
Evelyn ---
Okay
Interviewer ---
It will be on this, and I will catch it
Evelyn ---
Okay. He located the town where his plane went down and talked to some eyewitnesses and has the whole story now that you never had before, and I think we've, I don't think I have it now or not
Interviewer ---
Maybe I did catch that in the paper, it seems to me, wasn't it like a couple weeks ago it was in the paper wasn't it, or?
Evelyn ---
Longer than that, this last fall.
Interviewer ---
Hmm I'll look that up, it was in the Spokesman though, correct?
Evelyn ---
Yes, yeah there was a picture, the picture was in the Spokesman and there was, but you need to talk to his brother, I think his name is Ken Heath and he's really, he sat down here and talked to me for about an hour one afternoon when he found out, you know that I had known him that well, and so 'cause he was younger and he didn't really know the people that his brother knew. You know he's quite a bit younger I think, but anyway, it's always been kind of a mystery to him, and once he started hearing about contacts on the Internet and stuff, he went in and started investigating it and he's got the whole story and I'm not sure if he went over there and found it or not. Anyway, he's a member here so if I dont find it in here, but I think it might be 'cause I think he's lived in the same place in Spokane for a number of years. [looking in the Spokane phone book]
Interviewer ---
Okay, I will give him a call
Evelyn ---
But I think that was one of the most, biggest impact, because it's really hard when you're that young, you know you think you're invincible and everybody and I know that I'm sure he had known before he had left that these things could happen and certainly when he got over there and saw it happen to other people and so on, but, but especially the guys in the Air Force were kind of [chuckle] devil-may-care kind of thing and my own husband was uh, of course I didn't know him yet, but he was in quite a long time in World War II and he told stories about the things they did, they wouldn't even wear their parachutes and stuff. They came home and he was home for about a year and in the reserves, and they called him back for Korea. And he said he grew up so much in that period that by the time he went back and served over a year there, and flew quite a few more missions and he said that again; you know he had enough sense to do everything you should do. [laughs] But he said, you know they were all so young in that first one that they just didn't think it could happen, even though you saw it happening everyday, it wasn't going to happen to you, you know and so on, and so that was kind of the way we thought too. And I can remember you know, how hard that was when I heard about that, and there was a couple that came back that were very badly wounded, and you didn't know what to say and so on you know, that was tough. I think maybe, if I had been either younger or older it wouldn't have made quite so much impact, but I was at an age where it really, really did hit home.
Interviewer ---
What was your best moment during the war?
Evelyn ---
Oh, V-J Day [laughs]
Interviewer ---
Tell me about that
Evelyn ---
Oh boy, I happened to be in Spokane. Which was good [chuckle] and I was no longer working at Galena, but I was going to go work at the telephone company. And I'd been up there for an interview, and another girl that was going to start with me, and we came out onto the street and it was absolutely unbelievable! It looked like the pictures that you see with all the, everybody from every, every part of the military, you know the sailors, and the soldiers, and what not were out there, and everybody was hugging and dancing up and down the street and so on. And after awhile we tried to get into a restaurant and most of 'em weren't even serving, everybody was out on the street [laughs] and it was, it was uh it was a big, big party. And uh it I had no idea who some of those people were, never saw 'em before or since, but we celebrated together. It was, uh that was the big day.
Interviewer ---
What was your longest day?
Evelyn ---
Longest day...jeez, I don't know, um some of those days out on the base were long. We actually got into point out there where as I said, everybody wanted to get into some of this other work, and so on, and this lovely lady that I worked for used to volunteer for time on the weekends and stuff, and I used to go help her, and it was kind of hopeless feeling at times because we'd get so far behind and trying to...and probably because I was not really involved in anything bloody or gory or anything you know, but, but it does, looking back I think there were a lot of young people like I was, that were really putting in a lot of time and effort more than they were being paid for and so on, and feeling kind of a feeling of you know this is going to go on forever, and so on, and I don't know if it was any one particular day, but it kind of there were days like that it wasn't uh, there were days that were a lot of fun too, so after all you were that age. Is that the end of it?
Interviewer ---
I'm going to ask you one more question, well two more questions. Number one is, what do you miss about that time? Then we're done Evelyn, I'll stop at that one.
Evelyn ---
I don't know as I miss too much about that time. Everybody misses probably...no I don't think I miss that time. I think it was uh, it was not the happiest time of my life certainly, there was a frantic kind of underlay to everything and so on, and I think I was old enough to know this is not normal, and I wanted to see life get back to what I thought it should be. Course the next year was when I made my big mistake, or yeah I guess it was about the next year, '47, two years later, I had a marriage that didn't last, and that was probably partly if I hadn't had the other experience that I might not have had this [unintelligible] war and I didn't know him and so on and it was probably the [unintelligible] after the war. One of my things that I really do regret although you know, you can't undo the past, but it was not a great experience, so I just, I don't really think I miss too much about that. My high school was cut short and a lot of the things that we normally had going...they played six-man football, they didn't have enough people to make a team and there were a lot of things that you know, you missed as a student and so on and I don't, outside of the fact that I was young and starting out and I don't know if that was, that I think I did better in my twenties and so that's it.
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