April 12, 2004
Interviewer ---
First off, how old were you when the war started?
Joann ---
Well is was born in 1934 and I was asking Henry [her husband] when it started because I was a little kid and didn't pay attention to dates and stuff but I was about ten when my sisters brought boys home from the service, so I had to be like seven or eight.
Interviewer ---
I don't know if you'll be able to answer this question or not, but I am going to ask anyway. Where were you on December 7, 1941, how did you hear about the attack on Pearl Harbor, and what were your thoughts, feelings, etc.?
Joann ---
I was at home with my parents, and I don't remember the significance of the attack at that point, not until much later when we studied history. We had electricity and a radio, as it was in the city of Spokane. One of the first memories I have was that I had a red wagon and we collected scrap from the vacant lots. See we had lots and lots of vacant lots in our area you know we had some older homes and oh every once in awhile there'd be a house built but mainly not until after the war was over was a bunch of houses built. So the collection area then was the elementary school and because my mother and dad didn't have a car I think we kids pooled the stuff and took it over to the school 'cause we walked to the school with it all. Edison Grade School, which has since been torn down and there is a community center there now.
Interviewer ---
Where was this again?
Joann ---
Southeast Spokane, lower South East, in fact a lot of that, you could look from our house to where they took all that out for the freeway, yeah so we were just south of where the freeway would be.
Interviewer ---
Before we move on I want to make sure I get a couple questions answered. Did all the kids take scrap iron to the collection center in their wagons?
Joann ---
Yes, in our little red wagon, kinda rusty red wagons [laugh]. And my dad had a collection out in his garage like all guys do and we asked him what we could take from his collection too, as I remember correctly. I think we collected newspaper. I'm not sure why we did, whether those were used for who knows what, packaging maybe, I don't know what they were used for. But the big thing we remembered was the rationing stamps.
Interviewer ---
Tell me about that
Joann ---
Well ration stamps meant limited sugar to cook with, meat and bread and butter and that's the time that margarine came to be introduced. And margarine at first came in a white blob-like my sister told me over the weekend and to get it yellow so you thought it was yellow we, there was a little packet in there of yellow concentrate and you paddled it and our job was to mix it evenly and this was a Saturday job to mix it evenly in that white blob and make it yellow. So the margarine advanced during that time to a packaged it in a ball and a button was in there and all you had to do was push the button and all you had to do was squeeze the button and you squeezed the ball and you didn't have to use paddles anymore or a spoon to do it anymore. And in our house we had sugar jars for each member of the family and we got one cup of sugar each week. Now that's a heck of a lot of sugar isn't it by today's standards? Anyway that was used for our cereal and anything else we had to put sugar on. But my mother had a deal where if we would save some sugar and had sugar left in our jar and the way she did it was we each had a colored topped like a sugar pourer like you see in the restaurants, they weren't metal then, they were plastic and we each had our own colored lid because there were three girls and my mother and father, so there was five of those. So we pooled the sugar at the end of the week before we poured more sugar in it, we pooled that sugar and we could make cake, pie, cookies or something like that. My mother had a wonderful recipe for eggless and milkless and butterless cake. It was absolutely delicious and she would back that often. For canning in the summer, the sugar left at the end of the week and then you put another cup in each person's jar and that sugar that was in reserve would be used for canning, so you know it was real frugal, my mother did a nice job of that. And shoes, okay we had Buster Brown shoes and penny loafers and shoes there was only enough stamps for a pair of shoes at the beginning of school and those had to last you until Easter, then you got a pair of Easter shoes and they had to last 'til school in the Fall. They were resoled and repaired. Saddle shoes were one of our favorites and of course the penny loafers when we got older. Anyway as far as our impressions of the war, we went to the movies on Saturday and along with that movie was the newsreel and so we watched the newsreel which had some selective pictures of what was going on in the war and there were action pictures of what was going on in the war and it was really scary when you thought about it too much, so I didn't think about it too terribly much. My best friends mother, she lived over two houses from us was our block captain in case, she was the Air Raid Block Captain, and she would run us through drill once in awhile, and that meant it was it was in the evening she would do it to make sure we had our dark shades pulled over our windows.
Interviewer ---
Was Spokane in blackout conditions full-time?
Joann ---
No we did this because of our close proximity to the coast. Because they were afraid the Japanese were going to attack the West Coast. Anyway we had dark shades over the windows. Well see it was very interesting for me because my sisters were older and they had boyfriends which were in the service and so there were a lot of servicemen that came and went but they'd fill up our dining room table every holiday and I loved it because I was ten and I was kind of in awe, because I didn't have any brothers, of all that and I remember it was so significant to me because I can remember making a sign that said, "4th Avenue USO," and putting it on our front door. [laugh] So my sisters married during the war and my older sister Iona married Don and he was in the Navy on the USS Boise. But the Boise was hit by enemy fire, we don't know if it was torpedoed or not, but it had a huge, they said the hole was so big in the side of the Boise that you could put a freight car through it. So what they had to do was limp to the Philippines and there they had repairs made on their ship that would get them to a stateside port and that was probably an Eastern port because I can remember her leaving Spokane to meet him in Philadelphia. My middle sister, what I call my middle sister, and this is Thelma, she married Jack who was in the Army and he was stationed at Fort George Wright and he met my sister at Cook's Skating Rink, which is now Patison's. That was a great place for kids to go and meet and have good wholesome fun. So he served in England, France and I believe Italy. He was a welder, he repaired planes.
Interviewer ---
What were your impressions of the war as a kid?
Joann ---
My perception was not one of fear, it was one of, "Oh this is fun, we get to do this because this is important."
| Copyright © 2004 by Kristen Cornelis |