April 12, 2004
Interviewer ---
Okay there are a few standard questions that I ask everybody. The first is, where were you on December 7, 1941, how did you hear about it, and what were your thoughts?
Henry ---
At my folks' farm with them and at that time we had no electricity therefore no radio. The radio we had was battery powered, multiple batteries. Every weekend my aunt, uncle, and their kids would come out, he was a baker in Missoula and he brought out bread and such and took back farm goods, family sharing. And he had a radio in his car and I can remember standing out in front of the house and listening to the reports of Pearl Harbor on the car radio.
Interviewer ---
What were your reactions and feelings about the attack?
Henry ---
I don't remember, it was certainly a concern because we were now involved in the war, there had been stories about the war in Europe in the newspapers and a little bit about China but not much. Course the next day in The Missoulan there were reports that had come over the wire.
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?
Henry ---
It was something that we had to do. It was total warfare at that point and the ultimate cost of trying to invade Japan would have been horrendous to put it mildly because of the experiences that our soldiers and sailors had gone through in fighting through the Pacific and so it had to be necessary.
Interviewer ---
Where did you work or did you serve?
Henry ---
No I was much too young, I did farm work. See I graduated from high school in 1947 and the only work a farm kid had was haying. Mainly I chopped beets for my dad and any other jobs I could find. When I got older I went and worked on haying crews.
Interviewer ---
What was it like having to live through the rationing system?
Henry ---
It didn't have a great deal of affect upon us. In the first place we had a lot of stuff on the farm, vegetables and so forth, the root cellar was always full, mother canned a lot, and the problem with canning fruit was getting the sugar. Gasoline being on the farm we always had a better supply of gas than city people did. The rationing of shoes and other things didn't bother us. Everything had to last until it was totally worn out. Food was no problem, in fact we sold food from the farm, beets, carrots, milk, cream, butter, people would come out and buy them.
Interviewer ---
What was the Missoula area like during the war?
Henry ---
Missoula was a rail junction point for the Milwaukee and Northern Pacific railroads. The Northern Pacific was steam powered and the Milwaukee was electrified lines and there was a branch line that went down the Bitterroot and what they hauled out of there in the Fall sugar beets and the rest of the year they hauled logs for the mills. Now Fort Missoula was not a military post during World War II, it was a detention center for primarily Japanese, Italian, German sailors who got caught in American ports when the war started. They were not in any way military and they were housed over there at Fort Missoula and which was only a mile, mile and a half away from our place and they would actually come out and scavenge on some of the farms, like our farm. We had a big orchard there which was no longer an effective orchard really in a sense but we had apples, they'd come out and pick apples for their own use and they would come out with a crew it was interesting because the crews that came out they were the Japanese and people thought my mother was foolish because they couldn't speak much English and she sure couldn't speak much Japanese and she basically would back out and let them come into the kitchen and cook their own meals, but we didn't have any problems with them. But many of the Italian and German prisoners became acquainted with American women from Missoula and there were a number of marriages that occurred after the war.
Interviewer ---
Hold on, were they allowed to stay after the war?
Henry ---
A number of them did wind up staying. If a crew came out to work on one of the farms a guard came with them. That guard was pretty relaxed about the whole thing.
Interviewer ---
Being that you raised sugar beets, did you have any Mexican Braceros come and work on your farm?
Henry ---
Yes we did at one time. They came in and crews came for the growing process and the harvest. See there was a big sugar mill in Missoula, but we couldn't understand them, it was just something strange and out of the normal. They were also training pilots in Missoula three or four miles away from our farm near the university, and what they had for training was the little yellow Piper Cubs. They were flying all over the area practicing take-offs and landings and the like. There was also all sorts of scrap collecting going on because just about every farm had scrap iron laying around.
Interviewer ---
What was your best moment?
Henry ---
I could say the end of the war, and I remember when I turned twelve and I could go out hunting alone.
Interviewer ---
What was your longest day?
Henry ---
Listening to the radio on December 7, 1941. There were so many questions that couldn't be answered.
Interviewer ---
What do you remember about the end of the war?
Henry ---
I can remember hearing about all of the celebrations. But it was an end to all of this that was occurring since 1941.
Interviewer ---
What do you miss about that time?
Henry ---
Some of the people that I knew in those days, and the wide open spaces.
| Copyright © 2004 by Kristen Cornelis |