Interviewer ---
Where were you on December 7, 1941?
Ted ---
I'd been over at Defenbaugh's. I was probably checkin my traps and went on over there to visit with them or something and I shot a little buck on the way home. It was out of season but that wasn't big...
Dory ---
You might not want to put that in there
Interviewer ---
That's okay it was 60 years ago, they aren't going to bother you.
Ted ---
...and that was probably about it then.
Interviewer ---
How did you hear about it? I mean, you were over at Defenbaugh's, did they have a radio on?
Ted ---
I probably heard about it when I got home, is probably where I heard about it
Interviewer ---
What were your reactions?
Ted ---
I don't know
Interviewer ---
Was it shock, was it, you know, wow, is this really happening, or big deal?
Ted ---
Well it was a terrible thing to happen
Interviewer ---
Okay
Dory ---
Hawaii at that time was a long, long ways away, it wasn't something that was common to hear about as it is today. Pearl Harbor was not that big a thing. We had gone to church, and when we came home, Dad had turned on the radio and of course he was very anti-Roosevelt, he wasn't very fond of him, but he was on giving his speech about "today is a day that will live in infamy" and then the next day when I went to school, I was a freshman in high school, they had his speech again on the P.A. System and everybody in the school listened to it I guess, I was about fourteen.
Interviewer ---
How do you feel about dropping the atomic bomb?
Dory ---
I tell you how I feel about it, I think it was a horrible thing to do, but I think it was the only way to stop the war because knowing how Japan felt about their kamikaze pilots and that it was such an insult to have to back down and be cowardly they would have fought 'til every person on that island was dead and as it was I think we sacrificed a bunch of lives but we saved more. They would have never quit fighting.
Ted ---
Well mine's kinda similar to hers, it ended the war a lot quicker
Interviewer ---
So you had no trouble with, I mean, yeah it was a terrible thing to do but it ended the war a lot quicker
Ted ---
But it did end the war
Interviewer ---
Where did you work, or did you work? During the war, before the war? You were in high school Aunt Dory?
Dory ---
In the 8th grade that summer, I worked for a woman who, watched her little boy while she ran the paper route around Metaline Falls and Ione. You know she would leave about 2:30 in the morning and because here husband was gone, I just stayed with her child and then when school started, I quit. And the wages, I really don't know because she never paid me, you know I was working there most of the summer.
Interviewer ---
You never got paid?
Dory ---
Somehow she didn't get around to paying me and that was Winnie's sister Esther Scarlson. What was it like living through the Rationing System, or do you want Ted on the wages thing first?
Interviewer ---
You guys can just keep going down the list and I'll just keep notes and I'll put things where I need to put things
Dory ---
Uh, what was it like having to live through the Rationing System? Well, we really didn't have a whole lot of anything anyway. I mean, people, people were not wealthy during the war. And I think sugar was probably the hardest thing in my family to come by. Gas was rationed, tires were rationed, shoes were rationed. I worked at JcPenny's for awhile and people would come in and say, "Well I'm not going to use all our shoe ration stamps, do you want these," and they'd give them to old people. [chuckles] Let's see, what else was rationed - butter, we didn't have enough butter, everybody was saving tin cans and anything like that was all recycled because it was all for the war effort. The hardest thing to live through during the rationing, I think it was, well gas was rationed, you couldn't go anywhere very much anyplace you ever went, it was carpooled because people only ran one rig even though gas was only fifteen cents a gallon or so, it wasn't expensive. You always had a garden. What kind of gas ration sticker did your car have? I don't remember.
Interviewer ---
That's okay, that's one of those that I came up with kind of off the top of my head.
Dory ---
You interview Ted, and I'll see if I can come up with that Ration Book.
Interviewer ---
Oh, okay great
Dory ---
I do remember the next year that I worked at the drug store and the Ration Board met in Dr. Winston's office and on Wednesday nights every time they used to come down to the drugstore way, way late and we were supposed to close at 9:00 and who ever had to work late had to stay there until that darned Ration Board came in and sat around the soda fountain until they got ready to go home so you could lock up. And then one 9:30 they didn't show up and I locked the store and my gosh, did I ever catch heck! Because we're supposed to close at 9:00 so they were just sittin' in there gabbing I guess and I waited a half an hour and nobody showed up, so I went home. Marie was the one who bawled me out the next morning. I'm sure that Pollard had something said to her. What types of transportation did you use if you didn't drive? Well you know, at that time the school busses ran and golly on PTA nights the school busses brought to the PTA meetings and parents all just went down and got on the bus. Kids could go if you wanted to. And then during the war they quit that and from then on, you know PTA never did have an attendance like they did at that time. You remember that?
Ted ---
Well I was gone for most of that stuff
Dory ---
This was prior to the war, it was during the war that they quit doing that
Interviewer ---
Yeah, I did read in The Miners, I've been going through The Miners and I did read that they shut the busses, the activity bus basically, down for the duration of the war
Dory ---
Yeah they did, and it was a matter of the gas and tire rationing and everything. You had to save everything you could. This area during the war? I would say this area during the war was pretty depressed, probably the same as it is today. [chuckles]
Interviewer ---
Let me go back to that one real quick. Now I've been reading, the mine industry, the lumber industry, and the agriculture industry here were vital war efforts, now despite that, this area was still terribly depressed? I mean, there was no change from the Depression, really?
Dory ---
Well things were better after the Depression
Ted ---
Yeah, things started picking up because there was jobs then
Dory ---
But yeah, those were all regarded as essential things and if you were involved in those you could get deferred but most of the people who were working at those guys all volunteered anyway.
Interviewer ---
When did you meet you husband or wife?
Ted and Dory ---
[Laughing]
Interviewer ---
Yes, that's one of the major questions really. When and how?
Dory ---
Well, I was in the 6th grade, when one winter we all lived across from the church in a little old house down there, your Mom [Grandmother] probably told you about this, course she was in high school and I was in the 6th grade, and Ted and his sister and a bunch of their friends used to all come and congregate in this living room that was right under the bedroom where Berta Lee and I were and we spent most of the winter hangin down that register trying to watch 'em, thinkin they were just absolutely terrible bunch of nothing bunch a idiots down there. [laughs] I didn't start going out with him until I got back from college and he got out of the service, he'd been out a couple years I guess. I came home from school and Helen and Bob were living at Sullivan Lake and I used to go up and stay with them and he was living in Ione and he and Bob used to go fish a lot and we spent a lot of time up there too. I guess that's when we started goin together in '48 when I got home from school. I wasn't a war bride, this was after the war. The POW camp up above Priest River someplace, and it was Italian. There were Italian and German prisoners up there, and on Saturday night they used to bring them down to the, a lot of them would come into the drug store, and they were all, pert near all of 'em not a whole lot older than I was, you know they were all young kids and they were always very nice, they were always polite, and I don't remember, recall them any trouble.
Interviewer ---
What year was that in?
Dory ---
That had to be probably...I worked in the telephone office in 1947...
Interviewer ---
The reason I asked is because I have not yet found documentation they were there, none
Dory ---
Really?
Interviewer ---
Really.
Ted ---
Where was that Kris?
Interviewer ---
At the POW Camps, the one at Usk and the one up at Priest Lake.
Ted ---
Well the one at Usk coulda been out there, there used to be kinda an old C.C.C. camp, darn thing out there where, remember where Bon Johnnie lived?
Dory ---
Yeah, uh huh
Interviewer ---
Well that's where I thought they were was at the C.C.C. camps but I cannot find any paper about it
Dory ---
Really?
Ted ---
Is that right?
Interviewer ---
And this is bothering me because I have had countless people tell me they were there
Dory ---
Oh yeah, they were
Interviewer ---
They remember 'em. They remember them coming into town but there is nothing in the way of documentation that they were ever there
Ted ---
I'll be darned
Interviewer ---
At Farragut, yeah
Ted ---
Well that's where they had to be was out there, I don't know who lives in that house now, but Bob Donahue's lived there about 50 years ago.
Dory ---
It would have been like...
Interviewer ---
McGill's
Dory ---
...McGill's I think it would have been that I remember would have been in the summer so probably '45 or '46.
Interviewer ---
Okay
Dory ---
And they most certainly were yeah. And the affect, they didn't have a whole lot of money and they couldn't speak the language and not always did they have a translator with 'em you just kinda went by hunt and peck and they point to what they wanted and you'd kind of figure out how much money they had and sometimes they'd just give it to you in your hand and you'd pick out what was the appropriate amount.
Interviewer ---
Well you guys spoke German at home now could you understand?
Dory ---
I could understand some of it, uh huh but of course the Italians, none at all and the older kids learned German but we younger ones didn't learn. The only thing we learned enough to kinda figure out what the folks were talking about when they didn't want us to hear. [chuckle]
Interviewer ---
Do you know any of the guys that stayed? I heard they were given the option at the end of the war to stay or go home.
Dory ---
I don't know of any
Ted ---
I don't know about that either
Dory ---
Wait, now Rudy Bergau was one
Interviewer ---
No, Rudy told me he was a German prisoner held by the Russians. He didn't come until the '50s, so he's one of my interviews I've gotta get to
Dory ---
He'd be an interesting interview, yeah 'cause I was sure that he had been a POW at one time. What do you remember most from the war years? Well Farragut was running wildly over there and every Saturday night a bunch of the sailors used to come over and we always had dances at the high school to a Nicklodiad. And oh wow, we had a good time! [laughs]
Interviewer ---
I did not know that they brought them over
Dory ---
Oh yeah, brought them over in busses and I remember being at the drugstore one night...Kris, don't put this in [chuckles] ...about three kinda cute guys sitting at the soda fountain and Jeannette and Joyce MacArthur and I walked into the drugstore and one of the guys said, "Wow, a couple more salmon runs and they'd be all right." [laughs] Ah dear, it was insulting, and I remember just the rationing and uh we had fun with the sailors from Farragut who came over and at one time there was a camp up above Priest up around Priest Lake somewhere that was for conscientious objectors you know the ones that religiously refused to go to war, would have gone to the medical corps but they would not go to carry a gun and there were a bunch of them up there and one of them that I had met when the in Montana and he used to call me probably one time and asked me to go to the show with him and so I went and afterwards we were going to go up to Helen's and so Helen and I we stopped and got some hamburgers or something, the whole truckload came. We thought it was going to be Butch but it was a whole gob of them. And two or three times they came down and stayed and went out to church and people out there would take 'em to dinner and they'd come home and the truck would load up and take them back up there.
Interviewer ---
I'll be darned
Dory ---
And at this time we lived in town, so it was after Mother was sick 'cause we lived at the parsonage in Newport.
Interviewer ---
So they kept them up in this camp above Priest River somewhere?
Dory ---
Yeah
Interviewer ---
What did they do, did they just kinda take on the role of the C.C.C. guys? You know, that did the blister rust campaigns and all that, or...
Dory ---
Do you know what, I don't remember, I don't think I asked them what they did. [laugh] I'm sure I didn't.
Interviewer ---
I have never heard of this
Dory ---
Yeah, but they were confined, and whether any of them ended up going into a medical corps or whatever, they were being held until they got into the service to do that sort of thing. A lot of the C.O.s did went in those medical personnel they were on the front lines and everything, they just didn't carry a gun, and because they were called the Pacifists a lot of people looked down on them. And I think that was wrong because it served a really vital part of caring for the sick and injured. And what was my best moment? I gotta think about that one [laughs] you can go ahead and do Ted's for awhile.
Interviewer ---
Okay, let's go...Where did you work?
Ted ---
I worked at the shipyards before I went in the service down in Portland
Interviewer ---
For Kaiser, right?
Ted ---
Yeah, Oregon Shipbuilding
Interviewer ---
Doing what?
Ted ---
Welding
Interviewer ---
What was your...
Ted ---
Welding
Interviewer ---
What were your wages while you were down there, do you remember?
Ted ---
I think the basic wage back then was about $1.40 and I worked graveyard most of the time and we got 15% so I made darn near about $1.60 more or less.
Interviewer ---
Not bad wages for those times
Ted ---
That was big money back in them days
Dory ---
That was big bucks because in the telephone office where your Mom [Grandmother] was working she was probably working for thirty-seven cents an hour or less.
Ted ---
It wasn't even that much 'cause Myrtle Dodge was workin' down there and I tried to get her to come down there to work in the shipyards, and she didn't wouldn't or didn't, but I think they was only made two bits an hour at the telephone office there well Sis took a year out of college and went down there and worked.
Interviewer ---
Let's skip down to when you were in the service Uncle Ted
Ted ---
Well all this rationing stuff I wasn't here when they had all that
Interviewer ---
Yeah, okay, so let's skip down here. What branch of the service were you in? I kind of already know, but tell me anyway.
Ted ---
Well I was in the Navy Seabees
Interviewer ---
Okay, which was amazing, you are the first Seabee I've talked to
Dory ---
Really?!
Interviewer ---
Really. You are the few and far between kind I think
Dory ---
Uncle Bob Beaubier was a Seabee
Interviewer ---
I haven't talked to Uncle Bob yet
Dory ---
Well he was over in England
Interviewer ---
Where were you stationed?
Ted ---
We were uh, well we took our boot camp at Davisville, Rhode Island and from there we went to Gulfport, Mississippi. We were there two or three weeks then we went to Port Hueneme [California], we were there not very long and we headed for Brisbane, Australia.
Interviewer ---
Oh wow big change of scenery! Okay,
Ted ---
And we was on a cargo ship, the name of it was Summelsdyke, a Dutch freighter. We played pinochle, three of us played three-handed pinochle for two or three weeks all the time, and we slept out on the deck in hammocks when we weren't.
Interviewer ---
And what year was this?
Ted ---
Huh?
Interviewer ---
What year was that?
Ted ---
That woulda been about January or so of '43
Interviewer ---
Okay, what was your most memorable or unforgettable time during the war and how come?
Ted ---
[laugh] Man, I don't know what that would be [laugh] I wouldn't have any idea
Interviewer ---
What did you do as a Seabee?
Ted ---
I did a lot of carpentry work when I was a Seabee and welding and...
Interviewer ---
What kids of things did you weld on? I mea, obviously iron, did you weld on ship after they were hit by things, or...
Ted ---
No, just did general welding, repair stuff you know when we was at a town up at Hollandia we put about a six inch water line in and we welded all that stuff rather than put in, deal with couplings and all that stuff, and just general repair like you'd have around.
Interviewer ---
Now did you stay in Brisbane, or did you go out to any exotic islands?
Ted ---
Well we stayed in Brisbane we were kinda, our company was known as the Queen Street [chuckle] Commandos, that was the main drag in Brisbane, was Queen Street and we were there quite awhile and then we went up to Townsville and we was up there for well there was a few of us were on shore, they had a little barge, we used to float it every it would go out to Palm Island, a little island where they were building a seaplane base and we were the ones at, out at Townsville that load the thing up when it came back. It was about six or eight of us, and when it was gone, we was on our own, we'd get on the train and we went up to Innisville. I think the little town was that was up north of there and then we'd go out to the airport bum rides and fly around and we was out there one time and we got to fly in a P-38.
Interviewer ---
Oh wow, cool!
Ted ---
Back in them days that was something. It had the radio out of one of these P-38s and the pilot he sit down here, and my feet went out alongside of him and I had my butt stuck back in this radio compartment and that was something that I got to do that.
Interviewer ---
So being that you were based here...
Ted ---
Well when we...
Interviewer ---
...that whole time?
Ted ---
When we all came back to Brisbane and we went up to a Alelo Highlands up in New Guinea near the Shotan Islands. Mios Woendi was the name of this little island and the whole bunch of us was up there for awhile and then they sent our company back down to Hollandia which they called something else now. [Jayapura]
Interviewer ---
And still doing basic repair work, general welding? Did you ever get in on building the coral runways or anything like that?
Ted ---
No, well up there at this Mios Woendi we, there was, we graveled all the roads around there with clam shells. There was a darndest bunch pile of clam shells up there you ever saw in your life. [laughs] There's one of 'em musta been covered about an acre and musta been 50 feet high in the center and how many years it took for them to do away with it, that's a good question. And this little island only had 187 acres in it, and we built a PT base there and a PBY base.
Interviewer ---
That was on the Mios...
Ted ---
Mios Woendi. And then they sent our company back down to Hollandia and we were down there and picked us up, our company.
Interviewer ---
Good feeling to go back, headed home then?
Ted ---
Yeah
Interviewer ---
Ready to go home?
Ted ---
Yeah, well we'd been there a couple of years you know
Interviewer ---
And you got to come home, sounds like right away then, I mean 1945, 1946. Did you have to wait long after the war?
Ted ---
Well I was up from uh, we was down at Oakland, for, see we got in there I think probably January something. I could have exact dates if I could find this thing that's up here. [he's rummaging through a closet] You can uh, this has got a bunch of history in this thing here, I'll give you this too. [hands me the itinerary of the 55th Construction Battalion] We were down at Oakland for two or three months. See we got in there on the 21st of January, well we had a thirty day leave after we got, so when we got home from there, and then they had volunteers to go to Point Barrow or back down in the South Pacific. So a whole bunch of our company volunteered to go to Point Barrow.
Interviewer ---
Sounds like better duty
Ted ---
[laughs] Just the opposite. And we got on a boat and went up the Inland Passage to Whittier and got, caught the train there at Whittier and went into Anchorage. And was down there for a day or two, and then we flew up to Fairbanks and was there for a few days and then flew up to Point Barrow. And then up there, work outside 'til it got, I worked outside until it got cold. While in the meantime when I was down at Camp Parks and Tacoma both, I worked in the bakery and then when it got cold, I got in the bakery at Point Barrow and when the first Point Man left I was the head baker up there.
Dory ---
Wait, you'd better tell her what the points were, have you heard about that?
Interviewer ---
Yeah, points to go home, you had to have so many in order to go home first or whenever
Ted ---
You got so many points for being overseas. I don't remember what they were anymore.
Interviewer ---
I have them written down somewhere, somewhere I have them written down
Dory ---
But they were really important
Ted ---
Well they were and it depends on whether you had dependents at home but there wasn't anybody dependent on me. You know some married guy go, he had a whole bunch more points than I did, so they went first but I was head baker up there after the Point Man left. You didn't know I was a baker did ya?
Interviewer ---
No, I did not know that
Ted ---
When we were at Camp Parks, we made more darn pies in a day than a housewife make in a lifetime.
Interviewer ---
Yeah I bet
Ted ---
We fed about 15,000 people when we made pies, so we probably made I don't know how many thousand pies, three or four thousand probably.
Interviewer ---
Big change going from welding to baking
Ted ---
Well we was in the cookhouse down there at Camp Parks for awhile, some of us and one day they asked some of us to fall out in our whites, "some of you is goin in the bakery," and so the bakery was a heck of a good deal compared to the cooks.
Interviewer ---
Oh yeah?
Ted ---
The chiefs and everybody helped at clean up time, the cooks all they did was, us newcomers all we did was all the dirty work course we did other stuff. When they had fried eggs for breakfast, they had them little frying pans that was about this big around [holding up hands to show the diameter] and you broke, broke two eggs and put in one of them you had eggs and crack 'em open 'em up and drop 'em in the frying pan. I still can't open up an egg with two hands hardly, I mainly crack 'em and open 'em up with one. Course my hands don't work too good this one here don't work too good since I had my stroke, it's still kinda paralyzed.
Interviewer ---
Being that you were close to Australia as you were, did you get in on being able to see any of the USO shows that would come through? You know, like Bob Hope and the rest of 'em. Did you get a chance to see any of those?
Ted ---
Yeah we had Bob Hope and who was it...Frances Langford
Dory ---
Yeah, and you used to talk about, oh shoot, let me think of it
Ted ---
Where's my old Seabee book at?
Dory ---
It would be up there on the top shelf. I'm trying to think now, this would be your great-grandfather Dick wouldn't it, Dick is you great-grandfather? Peggy's dad [holding up a picture]
Interviewer ---
Grandfather
Dory ---
Grandfather, yeah your grandfather was in Alaska and he had a good friend named John Waterman, and Johnny started to write to me, and one time he flew down to see me and he didn't tell me he was coming 'til he got to Seattle and said I'll be over tomorrow night or tonight, or whatever night it was. And I was going to high school and Norma [Dick's wife and Dory's sister] was working at the telephone office, and Norma called and said she and Johnny Waterman were coming up from the telephone office. Well in the meantime, Rose Marie, my friend Rose Marie Lund and two of the guys from school that we hung around, Lawrence Masterman and Wes Kinsie were there, and while they were there a bunch of the Johnson kids who we also kind of went with, they showed up and then Johnny Waterman shows up and we've got this...Norma and I lived in this little two, well three little room thing. Kitchen was here and the little bedroom and then a little living room, and Johnny Waterman showed up and we had Wes and Lawrence, Bud and Wayne and Johnny Waterman, somebody else was there, I can't remember. Norma had to go back to work so Rose Marie and I sent 'em all in the living room to play Monopoly or some darn thing, and we went in the kitchen and made fudge. Johnny had to leave the next morning, he came up for breakfast and then had to leave and go back to Seattle and when he got back up to Alaska he wrote me a letter and proposed to me! And that's the only time I ever saw the guy was this one evening when the house was full of people! You know, I didn't know him from Adam's off ox, and I wrote back and said, "Back off," and Dick took that all wrong. And he wrote to Norma and was really mad at me because he had thought I'd committed some unpardonable sin.
Ted ---
I couldn't find that old Seabee book but anyway, Bob Hope, I think he entertained us twice, down at Brisbane and up in the islands, Mios Woendi I think. Frances Langford was one of 'em that was with him all the time.
Interviewer ---
And how was that? I mean, all I've seen are newsreel footage of it, was it as portrayed on the newsreels, you know was it really cool?
Ted ---
Oh yeah it was great to be entertained by them back in them days. And then, when we were in Hollandia there was nothing to do in the evening time and they always had a double header show, a show and I saw enough shows back in them days that I haven't went to a dozen shows since then, I mean at a movie theater, I watch a few of them on TV, but [chuckling] not too many of them. But anyway when we left Point Barrow we flew down to Kodiak and we were there for about a month, we coulda hitchhiked back to Seattle on planes that were there at the base but we had to ride an old boat back
Interviewer ---
Awwww, what a disappointment!
Ted ---
On a Liberty ship, course we didn't have a darn thing to do there except drink beer and eat.
Interviewer ---
What was it like fighting in the Pacific? I mean, I know the Seabees really didn't, I don't know if you saw any action, did you?
Ted ---
Company D had a little action up in New Guinea, but our company never had any action but one, when we were at Mios Woendi, we had what you'd call a, we were about seven or eight miles from Biak and they had, there was still an international airbase at Biak now.
[Discussion between Ted and Dory about getting a world map out and what New Guinea is called now, and where his Seabee book was]
Interviewer ---
Okay, so back to Waterman. Was it Walterman or
Dory ---
Walterman
Interviewer ---
Say that again
Dory ---
Walterman. Wrote to him for a long time they were just you know, just blah blah you know letters that didn't amount to anything and where he thought that we were that far into a relationship, I don't know. He even bought me a ring, and then he wanted me to meet him in Seattle for a weekend and my mother just about agast at to think I was goin over to Seattle to see somebody I didn't really know and spend the weekend and so of course I didn't go.
Ted ---
You can see where Biak is here Kris. Biak is this big island here, and Mios Woendi was a little island which was about seven miles from Biak and the Japs used to bomb over there at Biak all the time and we had a grandstand like from about here to Usk you know, or a little bit further, you know see all the...
Interviewer ---
Front row seats?
Ted ---
Front row seats that's as close as we got. Then when we went, well here's Hollandia, they call it Jayapura, that's Hollandia, that's what they used to call it, Hollandia.
Dory ---
Jayapura?
Ted ---
Yeah Jayapura
[More discussion between the two about the name of New Guinea and why it was renamed]
Ted ---
And when we were up at this PT base we went out on a PT a few times and their excursions
Interviewer ---
Really, what was that like?
Ted ---
Some of them guys was glory hunters I tell ya! We went up a river there one time that we couldn't even turn around on!
Dory ---
How did you get out of there?
Ted ---
Backed up 'til we could find a place to turn around. The probably got Palm Island on here [looking at his world map]
Dory ---
Is this still on?
Interviewer ---
Uh huh, I'm trying to catch everything, I'm hoping I'm catching everything
Ted ---
Here's this little island off of Townsville, where we were for awhile we were in Townsville most of the time and then we went down to Sydney on leave two different times when we were down there and had a good time.
Interviewer ---
What was Australia like during the war that's something you don't hear very often
Ted ---
Well...
Dory ---
You liked it didn't ya?
Ted ---
Oh it was all right, their construction stuff, construction was a hundred years behind ours, yeah it was really interesting
Interviewer ---
So what was it like fighting in the Pacific during the war? You hear about Europe a lot but very little is heard about the Pacific, what was it like?
Ted ---
Well we didn't do any fighting, all we did was build stuff
Interviewer ---
All you did was build stuff, okay
Dory ---
But you built the airfields, the docks and all that stuff before people came into, before the Marines or anybody else, the Seabees went in and built the landing areas
Interviewer ---
Right
Ted ---
We made a couple, we made a hospital at Townsville and we also made one down at Brisbane, our company.
Dory ---
How scary was it, were you ever scared?
Ted ---
[Shaking his head no]
Interviewer ---
You weren't scared? Course you weren't doing any fighting like you said, so...
Dory ---
Nobody came in while you were there huh, I mean no Japs?
Ted ---
Well one time we went on our way up here to Hollandia, no that's when we went, I think that was on the way up here to Mios Woendi, the Japs were bombing the heck out of somebody, someplace along in here [pointing toward Biak]
Dory ---
You were out on a boat?
Ted ---
We was on an old landing craft, LST [landing ship, tank]
Interviewer ---
Oh really, otherwise you're in an LST and you're watching something getting the heck pounded out of it. The LSTs were kind of notorious for not being real sturdy
Ted ---
No they weren't [laughing]
Interviewer ---
That to me, being on a boat, and watching something being bombed, and you're awful close, I mean...
Ted ---
Well they was bombing on the shore and we were out away from shore
Interviewer ---
But how did you know there wasn't somebody underneath you?
Ted ---
Well, we didn't
Interviewer ---
Even with the planes coming in you would have had to worry about the Japanese dive bombers and fighter planes strafing your LST
Ted ---
When we went to Brisbane the first time we was on this, His Majesties Ship The Summelsdyke all at once we were headin towards Brisbane more or less I don't remember how straight a line we were on but one time we turned around and went the opposite direction for three days, I don't know how come that, but we did and then we headed back we were unescorted and everything, we was all by ourself
Interviewer ---
That's right, from everything I've read, part of the anti-submarine measures were you'd go for a ways then turn around and go for another direction for a little while and then come back, especially if you were unescorted there were zig zag patterns that you had to follow
Dory ---
I remember when the USS Lexington had all the zig zag patterns from the Lexington from the day before and it went on for days and days, somebody was following them they were, I think a sub eventually got them, but for a long, well it was a long, long while there'd be a daily report of all that something crossing the Pacific. One really fascinating story which is in the Reader's Digest is towards the end of the war, they had a sub in right in the shore of Japan and the Japanese had built this enormous ship on its maiden voyage from the place where it was built down to the harbor in Tokyo I think, this sub happened to pick it up and they blew it out of the water, they sunk it, they sank it, and they reported that they had sunk this huge, huge ship the War Department and State said it was a made up story because there was no such boat on the, the register that they Japanese had. We don't know of anything about that ship and we don't think, we think you're telling a story, and it wasn't, it was truthful.
Interviewer ---
I'll have to find that
Dory ---
Yeah
Ted ---
What was that?
Dory ---
It was in The Reader's Digest
Ted ---
I coulda been in some of that Time Life thing that Phillip's had too
Dory ---
I never read any of those, the only thing I read it in was this Reader's Digest
Interviewer ---
I can find it
Dory ---
Do you know what the, I don't remember the name of it was, I want to call it Mauri something or another
Interviewer ---
Yeah, I think I've heard of it
Dory ---
Have you heard that before?
Interviewer ---
Vaguely, I'm sure I have I don't remember the name
Dory ---
It was so new, that it was not on any registry in the world
Ted ---
Boy that was just gout out of...
Dory ---
Barely got out of the dry dock and sunk it but they never got any credit for it because they insisted that it never happened for years and years, wouldn't that be discouraging?
Interviewer ---
All right Uncle Ted, what do you remember most about the war years? See these are added on questions I added them on this morning, so that's why they aren't on mine.
Ted ---
Well I wouldn't give a million dollars for my experiences
Interviewer ---
How come?
Ted ---
And I wouldn't give a nickel to do it again [laughs]
Interviewer ---
How come?
Ted ---
Huh?
Interviewer ---
How come, I mean, I think I probably know why but I'm curious
Ted ---
Well I never got malaria. I stayed healthy most of the time I was over there. Had a little crud, jungle rot as we used to call it. [chuckle] I got jungle rot here at home too, household rot or household injury. [laughs] Oh it was really quite an experience being that I never got hurt or nothing.
Interviewer ---
Wouldn't want to do it again though?
Ted ---
No, I don't believe so, too old to do it now
Dory ---
What do you remember the most?
Interviewer ---
Most remembered times
Dory ---
You were running up and down on the beaches it looked to me like from the pictures you brought home
Ted ---
Well, liberty in Sydney [laugh]
Dory ---
You should have quit that before you got the crud [laugh]
Interviewer ---
So that was the best time, liberty in Sydney
Ted ---
We had good times when we were in Brisbane too but Sydney was probably a highlight we went down there for probably about a week, two different times
Interviewer ---
What was your longest day?
Ted ---
Man, I wouldn't have any idea
Interviewer ---
Okay
Dory ---
Being on the water, going the wrong way for two days
Ted ---
We just played pinochle
Interviewer ---
Played pinochle the whole time?
Ted ---
We, I forget what we played two bits a set and fifty cents a game or some darn thing. And one of the guys kept track of it, and nobody won over two bucks all the way across the ocean. We played for, it took us three weeks or more going from Port Hueneme to Brisbane.
Dory ---
You didn't have a longest day, huh?
Ted ---
Oh it's hard to tell what was the longest day
Interviewer ---
Best friends, you know people that you remember the most?
Ted ---
Red Shoemaker, when I went over to Seattle to catch the train to Davisville, Rhode Island there was Red Shoemaker.
Dory ---
Who was from Cusick, so he knew somebody
Ted ---
We was friends all through the service and afterward too. Well a lot of our well, see they had them reunions for fifty-five years and we never started going to them until '89 I think
Dory ---
Had to be along in there
Ted ---
They always had them in June so we was always hayin or doing something you know
Dory ---
So we could never get away
Ted ---
And then they started having them in September after school started
Dory ---
Well it was kind of after everybody got old enough to retire so they were no longer working and then they decided it was the time to hand them out to the crowd, you know because of the expense, get good break on hotels and all that stuff. But his best friend was probably Al Sharton that he lived with all the time. He was from California wasn't he, wasn't Al probably your best friend?
Ted ---
Yeah, he was a really good friend, well there was a lot of them guys you lived with that were just like brothers to ya, Don and Bill Marshall and
Dory ---
Marshall was an officer wasn't he?
Ted ---
Photographer
Dory ---
He was a photographer
Ted ---
He wasn't an officer
Interviewer ---
What was your rank?
Ted ---
Carpenter's Mate 2nd Class
Interviewer ---
What do you most remember about when the war was over? Both of you.
Ted ---
Well I, we was up, I think we was up in Alaska, I think when the Japanese war ended
Dory ---
Europe was first wasn't it?
Interviewer ---
Europe was first, May '45
Dory ---
And August was when the Japanese war ended wasn't it?
Interviewer ---
September, September '45
Dory ---
I don't remember too much about when the European war ended because about that time is when Mother had gotten sick and Wally was in Germany and the Red Cross brought him home and we were pretty much taken up with that. This was the time she was dying and she died in May, you know about the time the war ended. But on V-J Day when the Japanese did, I worked until about 10:00 and George Pulford came along and wanted to know if I'd go out and celebrate with him and I said I had to go home and as soon as he got out of sight, Bobby Johnson came along and I went out with Bobby, somebody else [laughs] oh George Pulford, you shoulda known George Pulford
Ted ---
Old dirty George, he had some property up east over there east of Skookum Peak
Dory ---
And he was quite a bit older than I was, I had no interest in going with George Pulford and don't remember who Bobby and I, we carpooled people I think we just went around. I don't remember doing anything very spectacular. That was the night to celebrate something. During the war, we did have something called street dances now that would be kind of interesting to you, that would go way back there at the beginning of the war. They used to block off the street that was between Kimmel's and the Congregational Church. They blocked that off and there was a little local orchestra, a little local band that used to play Leo Chrysler played the drums and Jed Hutchins and Holmes, what was his name...I don't remember what his name was, it was Leo's brother and I should be able to think of who played the horns and some of those things. They would volunteer to come down and play and there was big street dances down there, it was always lots of fun, a lot of lights and...
Interviewer ---
How often?
Dory ---
Oh not every week, maybe once a month or so. I don't, if your Mom remembers, Grandma remembers those or not, but I do. She was pretty quiet in school.
Ted ---
The last street dance I went to was the Logger Celebration up at Priest River
Dory ---
That was after the war
Ted ---
Haven't had any of those street dances up there for a lot of
Dory ---
I hadn't even thought about the street dances but they were loads of fun
Ted ---
They used to have 'em up there all the time during Logger Celebration but I think they quit having them about thirty years ago or more.
Dory ---
What have we done since the war ended?
Ted ---
How did you meet your husband or wife? I never did answer that question did I?
Interviewer ---
No, but Aunt Dory kind of did you didn't meet here until '48, well actually before
Ted ---
Well I knew her when she was a little snot-nosed kid
Dory ---
You were a big snot-nosed kid. [laugh] Five years made a lot of difference. I was in 8th grade and you graduated from high school your club was crazy
Ted ---
Well, see the first time I, the first and only time I ever went to 4-H club camp down in Pullman I was ten years old and Lois [Dory's sister] babysat me that time she went the same time I did.
Dory ---
Well see, you're 81 and she's 90
Ted ---
Well, that woulda been in 1932
Dory ---
I think she's either 88 or 89, so she was only six or seven years older than you are. She's about as much older as you are older than I am, almost.
Ted ---
Well, she kinda looked after me, I sent a picture of our 6th grade class up in Newport into the Spokesman-Review someways 'cause I keep watching for it. I sent a copy the first time and they couldn't print a copy.
Interviewer ---
They had to have the original
Ted ---
So I called the guy up and said that I had the original. I said I could mail it in, so I mailed it in and then, oh it probably two or three weeks ago, some gal called and wanted to know a little bit about the teacher. I had it written down about the teacher I said she still a goin' strong far as I know and she lives up there at the Rockwood Manor, she's lived there for several years so maybe it'll make the paper sometime. And then I was also gonna send that old 4-H club camp of Pullman and it's about the same age too, about '32 or '33 or so.
Dory ---
When I came home from school, I used to go up to Sullivan Lake 'cause Helen and Bob lived up there, and Ted was working up there at the sawmill at Sullivan Crick, he lived in Ione, that's kinda when we started goin' together in about '48, the fall of '48. We went together for almost over two years before we got married.
Interviewer ---
Okay, last question, and then I'll be done harassing you. What do you miss the most about that time?
Ted ---
Well, it was kinda nice to get home to some of the family when I got home from, when I got discharged, the sis and Pete lived up at Everett someplace. He was the veterinarian up at some hospital and I was glad to see somebody of the family.
Interviewer ---
Aunt Dory, what do you miss the most about that time?
Dory ---
Well you know, that last year of the war was when Mother was so sick, and I think mostly we were pretty consumed with her illness at that time and then she died in May at the end of the war and other than that, I don't know. It was fun during the war. [laughs] I remember a couple times we got in really kinda serious trouble with one time, well I was in the Freshman, we wanted to go to a, Wee [Rose Marie] and Jean and I decided we wanted to go to a I think a track meet at Cusick or something. So we decided we'd skip school and hitchhike, and we got as far as Cook's Mountain and who should pick us up but the State Patrolman, and he took us on down there, but they mentioned this on the PA system the next Monday at school. [laughs]
Interviewer ---
So you were able to raise a little bit of Cain during the war?
Dory ---
Actually no, didn't do anything bad except that
Interviewer ---
You were just having fun
Dory ---
Yeah [laughs] oh dear, we were all pretty innocent because actually we didn't do anything, I can't remember doing anything really out of line we didn't do any drinkin' or carousing, not at all. None of my friends did, and I didn't either but we just had fun, went to a lot of dances and did a lot of that kind of thing, but we didn't do anything else.
| Copyright © 2004 by Kristen Cornelis |