Interviewer ---
Okay Faith, first question that I have been asking everybody is where were you on December 7, 1941?
Faith ---
At home
Interviewer ---
And how did you hear about it?
Faith ---
Now when I'm talking about home, I'm talking about a ranch out in Deer Valley Road and at that time it was quite isolated. We had no electricity, we had battery-powered radio and the way that we heard about December 7, 1941 was that we were outside and we could hear a sawmill whistle blowing and it blew all day and that, we knew that that was a universal distress signal of some type and naturally we thought perhaps it was a fire of some sort. It was later in the evening when we heard what had happened. As I said, we had a battery-powered radio. That's what that meant, was that we went and got the truck batteries, brought 'em into the house, turned on the radio, and this radio had a little tiny, thin aerial wire that went out and was hung up on the tree. [laughs] And we listened to the tinny voice of FDR and his speech.
Interviewer ---
What were you're guys' feelings, were you...you know the range of feelings have been shock, disbelief, anger, all of those emotions, or...
Faith ---
All of those emotions, plus the fact that my father had been in World War I and he had great opinions on world leaders and wars [chuckling] and all of that type of thing and so we heard a lot of ranting and raving about what he would do with it as an armchair general.
Interviewer ---
I'm going to skip all the way to the end of the war. 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?
Faith ---
I would rather of had them perhaps bomb a desert island and say, you know, "This is what's going to happen to you, the Japanese people, if we don't have a surrender." But at that time, I don't know how many bombs we had, whether they could have done that. I think probably the feeling would be give them one more warning, but the general feeling I don't think...the general public was just a great sense of relief that our men weren't going to be invading and the thousands that would have been lost. Where was I?
Interviewer ---
Where were you, wait...nope actually, yeah go ahead and tell me, where were you, where were you when the atomic bombs were dropped? That actually isn't part of the questions, but I'll ask it anyway.
Faith ---
You know what the date was?
Interviewer ---
August 9, 1945
Faith ---
August 9, 1945 I was up in Victoria, Canada
Interviewer ---
Doing what?
Faith ---
Well I have Canadian relatives up there and this was sort of my high school graduation present, that I would be able to go up and see them. And the train ride to Seattle was very interesting, because they used the old box cars and old passenger cars and it was just stacked full of people, I mean it was standing room in the aisles and they were so old they had old stoves in the back [laughing] of the passenger cars. But at that time, when we left Seattle, we were not aware that there was anything going to happen, so I was at my aunt's house and during the day why of course we heard all the sirens blowing and my aunt said, "Let's go down toward town," and there were, there were just thousands of people all over the streets and very elated and everything like that. And I can remember a few drunken sailors got a hold of an old bathtub and [laughs] hooked it up to a car and they were going lickety-split down the streets, and everybody was just having a ball. And the next day we went to a concert out at the park, and of course they were singing "Forever England" and all these songs, and it was a very strange feeling to be in a different country for the end of the war.
Interviewer ---
How interesting. Where did you work, well let me go back, tell me about where you were during the war, we'll go that way instead.
Faith ---
It was during my high school years
Interviewer ---
During high school years, at Newport High School?
Faith ---
At Newport High School
Interviewer ---
Did you work at all during high school? I mean, I know a lot of people did, did you work anywhere or were you just a plain old student?
Faith ---
We worked all the time on the ranch because it was just a matter of survival and there were lots of problems of getting any kind of supplies to repair anything. My father ran a sawmill, and if anything broke, it was a great disaster because we couldn't get any parts, we couldn't get any help, and gas was rationed and we just didn't come to town very often so as far as outside work, no, but we working all the time and going to school.
Interviewer ---
What was like having to live through the rationing system, I know you just sort of touched on it a little bit now, but...you know like you said, you worked in the agriculture industry basically and hard to get supplies, what else was a difficulty with the rationing system for you?
Faith ---
Of course gas was a big problem even though my father did get extra gas because he was in agriculture and an essential sawmill business, and it meant that we just had to save everything in order to take any extra trips or anything, it was just impossible. And then I guess it was just everyday life, we just knew we would only get so much sugar, and shoes were rationed, and my mother had to can without a lot of sugar and of course the word that everybody used was, "This is for the duration" or "Once the duration is over things would come back to normal." [chuckles]
Interviewer ---
Was anything, specifically for you, as a teenager, just really hard to go without?
Faith ---
Well, nice shoes [laughs]
Interviewer ---
Shoes? Okay, this is a reoccurring theme, with the shoes, especially for the young girls.
Faith ---
Well my mother went down to the store, it was called Sauter's and of course the shelves were bare and the clerk, I guess it was Mr. Sauter, said that if he had even shoe boxes, he could have even sold them. That it was so hard to get shoes and we just wore what we had, I being the oldest I didn't have [laughing] I couldn't wear anybody's leftovers. So that probably was and it was just generally the clothes and that type of thing and money was hard too, we weren't that well off.
Interviewer ---
Did you ever paint your legs like the rest of, like many other teenage girls did if you ever got to go to town, which you already stated was very, very seldom, did you do the painting your legs bit for the stockings?
Faith ---
Oh yes
Interviewer ---
Tell me about that, tell me about that
Faith ---
The hardest part was to get the line up the back [laughs]
Interviewer ---
Tell me about this, describe all this to me
Faith ---
The thing that uh, we had a very young teacher, I don't remember now exactly what grade, what class she was teaching, she would sit on top of the desk and we obviously knew that her legs were painted [laughs] but we girls would you know, watch and look and see if she had the little line in the back straight [laughing] or what a good job she did and that type of thing, but it was not easy to do. Believe it or not, I've seen ads that say some of it's coming back.
Interviewer ---
Scary thought. So you did paint your legs, did you ever get into Spokane, or did you just paint your legs to go to high school?
Faith ---
It was very rare and it would just be for high school, as I remember.
Interviewer ---
Did you, did your mom or you out on the farm have a Victory Garden? Did you call them Victory Gardens? I mean obviously you lived on a farm, a ranch
Faith ---
Just had a garden
Interviewer ---
Just had a garden, you didn't give it the special, little designation?
Faith ---
No, the only thing that was real special was that we received from the government, and I wish that I had saved them, big posters that said, "E for Excellence" or "You're doing a good job," or this type of thing. It was as soon as the war was over, we tore 'em all up, it was over.
Interviewer ---
My next question is, what type of gas ration sticker did your car have, and I don't know if you'll remember that or not. That's kind of one of those that people don't remember.
Faith ---
Well, I just remember that we could get extra gas because we were in the agricultural business and the sawmill business.
Interviewer ---
Fair enough. What was the, do you remember the POW camps in this area?
Faith ---
Very vaguely, I just knew that somewhere in the area there were some, that we called war prisoners, but I can't say that I ever saw them, or heard much about them. It was kind of a secret, at least to um my circles.
Interviewer ---
How was this area affected by the war?
Faith ---
How was it affected?
Interviewer ---
How was it affected?
Faith ---
Well, for my father's sawmill business it was good because the large sawmills had the big military orders, for the camps, and this type of thing and for the local people or even builders in Spokane, he had a lot of business, and was kept busy all the time.
Interviewer ---
Did he ever, so the locals and Spokane builders kept him pretty busy. Now did he have any help working for him or it was it just he by himself and you kids? All right, let me go back. How many kids in your family?
Faith ---
Five
Interviewer ---
There were five kids in your family?
Faith ---
We did most of the work because it was almost impossible when we were very small, he did have some hired help, but during the wartime, it was just all of us working together.
Interviewer ---
What was this area like during the war?
Faith ---
Now what do you...?
Interviewer ---
What was...?
Faith ---
...what are you thinking?
Interviewer ---
What was the Newport, Deer Valley vicinity, what was it like, what made that time different than right now? Guess that's about the best way I can think how to put it.
Faith ---
The Deer Valley area has not changed very much over the years of all and in a way I imagine that you could probably say the same thing almost with the Spring Valley, maybe a fewer of the larger farms, but Deer Valley has not changed that much.
Interviewer ---
Still pretty remote
Faith ---
Very remote, it has better roads. During the wartime, Deer Valley was a narrow gravel road and we thought that was pretty lucky because before that it was a narrow dirt road.
Interviewer ---
When did you finally get electricity out there?
Faith ---
After the war
Interviewer ---
After the war?
Faith ---
And that was a day of celebration, I'll let you know [laugh] we watched the REA [Rural Electrification Administration] people come across the field planting those poles and cheered them on all the way and finally we got probably a twenty-five watt bulb in our living room, and we had it on a string, and we kept pulling it up and down, just because we were so delighted to have electricity and eventually we got a refrigerator which was just a miracle to us, 'cause we had no way of keeping things really cold before that and then we got an iron which took place of the sat irons which were so hard and heavy and burned so.
Interviewer ---
What about Newport, how has Newport changed since then?
Faith ---
Well, I think the obvious is that we do have more people, there's more newer houses up on Quail Ridge and some of the other buildings in town, new school.
Interviewer ---
What did Newport have then that they don't have now, that you miss?
Faith ---
Well, maybe the ice cream deal that Kimmel's used to have [laughs] um, I think people, everybody in town seemed to know each other a lot more than they do now, but basically, I don't think the town has changed that much.
Interviewer ---
What do you remember of the troop trains that came through town?
Faith ---
I just know that they came through town.
Interviewer ---
You didn't go down like Evelyn [Reed] did and meet the sailors and soldiers and things like that?
Faith ---
No, the only contact that I personally probably had with the service people was pen pals, and I think all the girls in high school had time wrote to a couple different sailors or soldiers of course we were just delighted just to have the letters come. I never met anyone that I wrote to.
Interviewer ---
How did you come across these pen pals then?
Faith ---
I'm not sure how I did, I think maybe the names circulated in school or maybe they were in the papers or something like that.
Interviewer ---
I didn't find anything on pen pals in The Miner, but that's why I was curious, that's why I was curious as to how, because Evelyn [Reed] mentioned this as well, that...
Faith ---
Did she write to somebody?
Interviewer ---
...that she wrote to a lot
Faith ---
Now did she, what did she say as far as where...
Interviewer ---
She didn't say, I didn't ask
Faith ---
Oh, you didn't ask
Interviewer ---
Well, some of them she came across by meeting the guys at the train
Faith ---
Well somebody should answer that upstairs. [ringing phone] Okay, well I suppose maybe we shared them, I don't know.
Interviewer ---
That's fine, that's one of the questions that actually isn't on paper, I'm coming up with questions as we go. What do you remember the most about the war years?
Faith ---
The screaming headlines, the um all the speeches on the radio, which of course were all very tinny but very dramatic. We heard Churchill, and we heard FDR, and we heard all the other people speaking. I think the most shocking thing, and the thing that really upset me the most was when the papers uh began to show the pictures of the concentration camps, it was just so unbelievable I could not comprehend that people could ever treat anybody else like that.
Interviewer ---
What was the best moment during the war?
Faith ---
Well, I think the most well there were probably a couple ones. Getting those pen pals was very interesting! [laughs] And being only fifteen or sixteen I could have great romances with somebody I was never going to meet. [laughing] And then of course the end of the war was such an elating, uplifting moment, and like a lot of people we just naturally thought the next day things would be back to normal and of course it didn't work that way, it just took a lot of time.
Interviewer ---
What was your longest day?
Faith ---
My longest day?
Interviewer ---
Your longest day
Faith ---
Oh, I suppose December the 7th 1941 because we were so mystified by the whistle blowing and not knowing for sure what had happened and this type of thing. And then I think all during the times when there were major battles, because the coverage wasn't like it is today, uh you just read every page, every word that was in the paper and listened to everything that was on the radio and you know we didn't have anybody in the service, but we certainly knew a lot of people that did, and it was very uh, stressful in a way. You just felt for the people that who's sons or daughters were gone and when they were gone, it wasn't like saying they were going to be gone for a year or six months or something like that, it was always for the duration.
Interviewer ---
For the duration
Faith ---
Yeah
Interviewer ---
Who were your best friends?
Faith ---
Well it was just the kids that I ran around with in school.
Interviewer ---
I'm not going to go on to the next one just yet because I just came up with a question and I better ask it while it's in my head. What products did you produce on your ranch?
Faith ---
Well basically, it was the sawmill
Interviewer ---
You didn't sell any cows to the government like the Rednour's, did or the...some of the others?
Faith ---
We didn't have any
Interviewer ---
So the sawmill was the major money-maker?
Faith ---
That was our income and when we got the orders we had money and when we didn't, we didn't
Interviewer ---
Okay, um what do you remember most about when the war was over, I think you kind of already touched on it, but I'm going to ask the question anyway, what do you remember most about when the war was over?
Faith ---
Well, of course, how I felt or what?
Interviewer ---
All of it, all of it
Faith ---
I remember the headlines that the war was over, and all the speeches that were on the radio at the time and of course being in Canada at the time of V-J Day came was very unusual.
Interviewer ---
What have you done since the war ended? Okay, give me a brief, brief description of what you...
Faith ---
My whole life history? [laughs]
Interviewer ---
No, no not the whole life history Faith, but mainly, okay you graduated from Newport obviously, then what?
Faith ---
Went on to Whitworth College, graduated with honors, took a teaching job at Priest River, my last and only experience in high school [laughs] married my husband we went to Dallas, Texas where he completed his theological training and then we spent what, twenty-five years in the ministry in different parts of the country.
Interviewer ---
How interesting, okay...
Faith ---
Retired in, well I taught for thirty years there, retired in 1990.
Interviewer ---
And, last but not least, what do you miss about that time?
Faith ---
I think probably and this is probably what some of the others will probably say is the closeness of people. We were all in it together and there was, and I'm sure that there were people that protested the war, but the papers didn't seem to cover it as much as they do now. And it was a sense we got this big job we want to get rid of these dictators, these armies we're in it together, we're going to get it done.
Interviewer ---
Is there anything that I didn't ask that you would like to share? Like I said, is there anything that I left out that you think is important that needs to be told from your experience?
Faith ---
Well, I think probably just adding to this last line was the feeling that everybody felt like they had to do something and even the young boys just looked forward to signing up and doing their bit for the country and I'm sure some of them signed up for the big adventure and that type of thing, but it was that general feeling of togetherness and we're gonna work together and bring peace and have, this is going to be the war to end all wars, and that type of thing. And I think probably one of the things that this will probably go back someplace else, one of the things I remember about was seeing in the newspaper a clipping or a story and showed how the Axis was going to divide the United States up. The Eastern part, right down the middle of the Midwest was going to be a line. The Eastern part was going to be a Germany and the Western part was going to be a Japanese.
Interviewer ---
I hadn't heard anything about it yet
Faith ---
Well it was just you know, you read that and thought, "They can't do this, we gotta do something, this is our country and then there was one other incident that probably, maybe you ran across it, the balloons that the Japanese sent across the ocean.
Interviewer ---
I only found one reference to that in The Miners
Faith ---
Okay, we happened to see one of those balloons
Interviewer ---
Really? Tell me about that
Faith ---
Well of course our ranch is in a valley and so we just happened to be looking up towards the hills that go around our ranch, and saw this balloon and it was very obvious it was a balloon, it was not a plane, and we could see it floating across the horizon and we were told that the Japanese had somehow, these balloons would be, would land and cause forest fires, and I'm not sure whether that was true or not, because I had heard other stories about how effective they were but there never any forest fires really.
Interviewer ---
The only reference I've heard, and it's only been one or two, they had explosive charges in them, some people on the coast were hurt by one, but they were by and large ineffective.
Faith ---
Right
Interviewer ---
But the fact that they were sending these balloons...
Faith ---
But see now, where did they send them from? Were they sending them from a boat, were they sending them from Japan? Because that's such a large area.
Interviewer ---
To be honest with you, I don't know, because I have found very little references to them in the research I've done so far. That will take more research, now that you mentioned something, I'm going to have to do some more research on it.
Faith ---
Yeah, see if there's anything you can find on it, one of the somebody just told us was that they contained weed seeds, which I though was kind of [laughing] They complained about all the strange weeds that the invasive weeds that we have now were caused by these balloons, which I'm not sure was not right. [laughing]
Interviewer ---
I have not heard that. It sounds like something that I know someone would say. What else, anything else that I...
Faith ---
I'm trying to think of anything that would be different
Interviewer ---
If you come up with something, because I'm sure a lot of people have said that after the interview that they come up with more, let me know, and we'll just turn the tape on again.
Faith ---
As I said, my father had been in World War I and he was there the very end and was in the last major but he was not on the front lines, but he [had] enough of the damage that the bombs did and all the artillery and this type of thing and so if the news was bad that day on the radio [laughing] he would spend the evening telling about how he would solve the problem [laughing] which I'm sure that a lot of other people did.
Interviewer ---
Probably
Faith ---
But that was kind of his way of relaxing, but it was uh something we lived through.
Interviewer ---
Did you know the two fellas that were killed, Bill Heath and Emil Dalke? Did you know them well? No, they were ahead of you
Faith ---
Yes
Interviewer ---
What year did you graduate from Newport?
Faith ---
1945
Interviewer ---
1945, big class of girls, just girls?
Faith ---
I think we started out with a class probably under twenty and there were nine when we graduated.
Interviewer ---
Mainly girls?
Faith ---
Uh huh, it was just like, okay you'd come to school and the desk would be empty and they'd say so and so, Larry Masterman or O.B. Scott or whoever, they've signed up and their gone.
Interviewer ---
Pat [Geaudreau] mentioned the difficulty in finding teachers.
Faith ---
Very much so
Interviewer ---
Talk about that, can you explain that to me? Where did all the teachers go, and once they were gone, what did you do for teachers?
Faith ---
Course the men teachers, those that could, went into the service and the one's that took their place were very young, mostly young women that came just out of college and obviously this was their first teaching year, or if it wasn't their first teaching year, then we got older women who had taught maybe when they were younger and filled in.
Interviewer ---
What was it like sitting at the soda fountain at Kimmel's [Drugstore]?
Faith ---
It was fun
Interviewer ---
Talk about it, I mean this is one of those that I haven't actually asked anybody yet. What was the soda fountain like at Kimmel's?
Faith ---
It was somewhat like what Owen's has now, as far as the arrangement of the furniture and that type of thing. We loved the banana splits, chocolate milkshakes, sodas and these were really great treats, because we very seldom went there. But just to get a banana split was a big celebration.
Interviewer ---
Did your family send cream into Spokane via the milk run?
Faith ---
We sold cream, but it was to the Newport Creamery.
Interviewer ---
And how did they pick it up?
Faith ---
We brought it
Interviewer ---
You brought it into town?
Faith ---
I really don't want to tell you about how long that cream sat here, long time, it would not pass the inspections at all, it was more than once that we fished stuff out of it. [laughs] But that was my money that I earned during high school, because I took care of the milk cows, the cows were my job.
Interviewer ---
And that was your money specifically?
Faith ---
Right, and we ordered a lot of things through the catalogs. The beginning of school why my mother would make up an order, and she would always say, "Well, you know we might not get exactly what you want, but this is what we'll order." And then the package would come and it would be just like Christmas. We'd get our nice, new dresses and other things. I did a lot of my own sewing too, so I was buying material.
Interviewer ---
All right, I think unless you come up with something later on, we're done.
| Copyright © 2004 by Kristen Cornelis |