ref-life would never be the same again

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"Life would never be the same again"

NANCY POTTER

Story by Breana Comiskey

A small, cheery woman with a reddish brown pageboy, Nancy Potter is an Englishteacher at the University of Rhode Island who has published many short stories includingher latest collectionLegacies.

I was living on a farm in eastern Connecticut. I was very aware that the war was going onin England because I had an English pen pal. People grew up early in those days. My penpal was in an air raid shelter in London, and she would write letters about the war. Duringtwo bad winters, she spent almost every other evening in the air raid shelter.

I was standing on the stairs when the Pearl Harborannouncement was made on theparticular day, and the declaration of war followed very suddenly. I can rememberlooking down at the carpet and thinking life would never be the same again.

I was then in high school, and there was a belief that we were all going to be involved.The junior and senior classes were convinced that not only the men were going to beinvolved, but the women would be, too.

I had been 16 when I went into college and just 19 when I left. It was two years and eightmonths that I was at Tufts University. We squeezed four years into that time. There wereno vacations. We had a day at Christmas and a day at Thanksgiving and that was about it.The idea was to get classes through so that they would be ready for the war.

I had several friends in my college class who were in the service. Almost immediately,there were two young men, who were freshmen, who left after a month. Bothdisappeared. They were shot down on a military flight over the North Atlantic.

I did work as a volunteer in a hospital in Boston to relieve civilian nurses. We were veryconvinced that everyone ought to be tremendously involved in the war effort. I enjoyedthe hospital volunteering, but I found the experience absolutely terrifying. I had beensheltered, and I had not realized that there was as much pain and misery in the world. Thehospitals were very short staffed and seemed to me that there was always too much to do.I think the responsibility was really too much for me at that age.

There were entertainment centers called "Buddies Clubs" or USO Clubs, which came alittle later, and this meant that typically on a Saturday if you were a good patriotic youngwoman, you would go to a Buddies Club and you would serve doughnuts and coffee, and
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you would sit and talk with servicemen and sometimes servicewomen. There would be atremendous opportunity to meet people from very different parts of the country.Servicemen were very lonely, very homesick, and they simply liked to sit and talk withsomeone. They would like to show photographs of their homes and their parents and theirgirlfriends and talk about all that.

What do you recall about the newsreels and how the war was portrayed?

The war was always portrayed as winnable, but important, popular and fought for a justreason. The newsreels were extremely manipulative. We were taught to be more thanscornful of our enemies: the Germans and the Japanese. Our enemies were portrayed asdangerous, inhuman, uncivilized, unworthy of any sympathy. The Americans and allieswere portrayed as radiant, good, decent, honorable and always fighting valiantly. It tookme many years to see this manipulation. All of us went to the movies, partially to seethese newsreels since there was no television and newsprint was quite censored, we hadthe belief that if we saw something there, that we would see it in a more intense

dimension. Since we knew servicemen who were flying or were out on ships, we knewthat the newsprint news was not accurate. We received letters from people which werecensored and we knew that there was another side. We were all very greedy for the news.

I think all of our patterns of life, particularly our romances, our attitudes toward objects,our attitudes toward the future, our attitude toward education, all had to do with the war. Icannot imagine a day that I spent from the time I was 14 until I was 19, that I wasn'taware of the war for a good part of the day, and it had an impact on everything that Ichose to do. There was no point at which, except being asleep, that I wasn't aware of thewar because I had a great number of friends who died.

I had one college classmate whose fraternal twin died. After she got the message, we justsimply sat through the entire night trying to think of things to say to her, and we couldn'tcome up with anything very extraordinary.

I can also remember coming home from lunch one day into my dormitory room; mymother had sent me a letter, and out of it fell an obituary of a young man who died in IwoJima. The report of his death had happened a good two weeks before his family heardabout it, three weeks before it was in the newspaper, and a month before I heard about it.It was absolutely terrifying. This was happening all the time. It did have a great impact onour lives.

I exchanged mail with several young men who had been in high school classes. Everytime you went to a Buddies Club, there would be billboards with names of service menwho needed to be written to. We were constantly writing letters. This was considered tobe an absolutely essential activity to boost morale.

Did you feel that the war was for a good cause?
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I never doubted that it was. We talked about the cause a great deal. We believed rathersimply that the American involvement in the European theater was an attempt to freethose parts of Europe that had been overrun by the Axis forces that had annexed Austria,Poland, France and were busy trying to overrun Russia.

In the Pacific theater we were convinced that the Japanese were going to overrun theentire Pacific and land on the west coast and move over eastward. It takes a littlepropaganda to convince quick minds that this is true, and the propaganda wasextraordinary.

I had actually read Mein Kampfand hated the sound of the book. I saw it as more thandistressing. It was dangerous. I didn't see how Nazism could be stopped except by themassive military effort.

My enthusiasm about the war began to pause when the bombwas dropped. Our sense ofthe justice and the worth and the rectitude of the war were beginning to be challenged

then. As the war went on, people grew tired. They got tired of sacrifice. They got tired ofwithholding their hopes and expectations of normal life, and they began to chafe a little atthe restrictions. Rationing was no longer as much fun as it had been initially. Goingwithout was much less fun. I have to confess, it was harder for me to get psyched up forthe worth of the war. We wanted the war to get over and the decision to drop the bombwas a decision to shorten the war and to save a number of people who would have diedotherwise. Yet, was it fair to kill perhaps 200,000 people to save the lives of 25, 30,50,000 American soldiers?

I remember a great number of us sitting there crying because it had been a terribleexperience of losing friends and having had this part of what we considered our youth

used up by the war, but also because all these Japanese had died whom we'd never get toknow. And that seemed very wrong -- very wrong.

I think for girls and women, and perhaps boys and men, of my generation, the war forcedthem to grow up prematurely. It made them far more serious about the bare realities oflife: life, death, values. It robbed them, in a sense, of some childhood. Perhaps it was agood thing. But it made us more critical of later generations who seemed to have asomewhat easier time.

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The Threat of War Becomes Real
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Things were rationed during the war. You got a book for every member of the family,even though they were young. Sugar and meat, and of course gasoline, were rationed. Webicycled a great deal because of the gas rationing. I had a little seat on the back of mybike for my little boy. I can remember going to a dance and bicycling home four miles attwo in the morning.

When the war finally ended, my sister-in-law and I were sharing this house. Sheremembered how people had wanted to celebrate the end of World War I, and got our fourlittle boys all rigged up with something to bang and make a lot of noise with, and theymarched around. It was just something to remember the day by. But there was aremarkable feeling that it was finally over.

Looking back at the war now, how did the war affect your overall life?

Well, I suppose in a philosophical way the war opened our eyes to a lot of social concernsand what is worth fighting for. It was kind of a time that one dates things by, before and

after. Before, we thought that our way was right -- that we had the best possible country.A lot has happened to make one wonder.

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Copyright1995

A Farm Girl Plays Professional BaseballWILMA BRIGGS

Story by Ben Tyler

Wilma Briggs is an elementary school teacher. Her feelings about women in the familywere not what I had expected, considering her unusual career for the time as aprofessional baseball player.

I was born in 1930 and grew up on a farm in East Greenwich. There were 11 livingchildren in my family. We had a 60 acre dairy farm, and a lot of work to do. Not a lot ofmoney, but a lot of food. We had our own garden, grew our own food, and played a lot ofbaseball.
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We didn't get a daily newspaper, only the Sunday paper. The kids just didn't do muchreading other than the comics and the sports section. We knew there was a war - myfather was an air raid warden. We hadblackouts where they would have the practice airraids, and he'd go out and stop traffic. That's about as close as I came to the war. None ofmy brothers were old enough to be in it.

We would get up a 6:30 and go to the barn before breakfast. We had probably 35 milkingcows, and we milked by hand. It was only my father, my two older brothers, and myself.We all milked, or the boys would milk and my father and I would feed, which meant Iswept out in front so that it was clean for the grain to be put down. When we got homefrom school, we'd have to clean the barn. Homework was a problem. When I got home Ihad farm work to do, which meant if I didn't get homework done in school, it didn't getdone. But we fit everything around baseball as much as we could because that was ourhobby. We had baseball equipment because my father had a team. All the neighborhoodkids came to our house to play which was convenient for us because sometimes theyhelped us finish up the work so we could play earlier.

When the little kids got big enough, they helped in the barn. By the time they were olderwe had expanded and moved to Pt. Judith. The number of cows that we had, all pure-bred, registered Ayrshires, grew from 35 to 208. There was a lot more work to do then. Ittook a lot more hands to do the work. That's when the little kids helped.

Did your family make a lot of money from the farm?

(Laughs.) Farmers never make a lot of money. They were always, you know, underpaidfor everything. We never had much money, but we never knew that as kids. I thought thatwe were rich. Most kids didn't have horses. And we had sleds and bicycles and ice skates

and that kind of thing. But we hardly ever went anywhere. Once a year we'd go toFenway Park or something like that, or we'd get a treat to go out for ice cream. We didn'tgo to the movies very often. Some kids went regularly. We went, if we were lucky, once amonth. We had only on family car.

My mother was just a house wife, but you know, I think back on what she did. She reared11 children, helped in the garden, helped pick the beans, canned beans and tomatoes-shedid so many things. Laundry for 12, 13 people, cooked for our family, and half theneighborhood. Everybody seemed to eat at our house. The canning that she did wasabsolutely incredible. She canned like three hundred quarts of vegetables. We never hadto buy canned vegetables-ever. We'd just go down cellar and bring them up.

I remember during the war years I was in the 4H and I had a victory garden. As a matterof fact, it won a $25 war bond. They were called savings bonds until the war, and thenthey were called war bonds. And I won a war bond and a camp scholarship because of myvictory garden.

What type of clothing did you wear?
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Well, I wore dungarees, even to school. I wore them every day because we didn't have alot of money. My mother and father had to buy dungarees for the boys and I'd say, "Well,get me some too." I was wearing them in the barn. And we wore the same style clothesworking as we did to school. By the time I got to high school and started playingbasketball, and was on the gym team - I needed slacks anyway, so I wore slacks or

dungarees to school, and I got away with it. I was the only girl that did, but then I was theonly girl who played on the boys' basketball team, too.

Had it not been for the war, I never would have played professional baseball. That startedbecause of the war. People didn't have money to go places. Phil Wrigley of the ChicagoCubs was certain that all the men would be drafted, and the major league ballparks wouldbe empty. That's the reason he started that league, the All-American Girls' ProfessionalBaseball League.

So, because of the war, I got that chance. That league started in 1943, and I joined it afterhigh school in 1948. Had it not been for the war, that part of my life would never have

come to pass. And I think because I went out there and played ball-I met a lot of peoplefrom all over the United States, Canada, and Cuba, which I never would have done. Itraveled, lived in the best hotels, ate in restaurants, lived in private homes-that's anexperience. I think it gave me the courage years later to say, "I think I'll go to college."The league ended finally in '54. All those things that people couldn't do during the waryears they could now do. They had money in their pockets, gasoline in their gas tanks,and television came out. I think that's what broke the back of that league. People could doso much more after the war.

How did the war change your life?

I think our whole country changed after the war when all the "Rosie the Riveters"continued to rivet when the war was over. I really believe that's one of the majorproblems in our world today. I think that was the beginning of the downfall of the family.The family unit started to disintegrate right after the war when Rosie kept riveting.Families found out that they could have two incomes. And now, 45 years later, parentsneed those two incomes to survive. Because of that, nobody's home. The kids know theirbaby-sitter better than they know their parents. They know their teacher better than theyknow their parents. Everybody seems to be going in a different direction. And I reallythink that all happened because Rosie was needed to rivet during the war, but when thewar was over, she didn't stop.

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Coming to Terms with the Holocaust...

and Prejudice at HomeJUDITH WEISS COHEN

Story by Jason Gelles

There are two sides to Judith Cohen. There is the up-beat, enthusiastic side of her that Ifirst encountered. Later on, I discovered a more serious side. She spoke in low tones, andappeared possessed by a greater force, almost enchanted. Life was difficult before WorldWar II. Her father had a hard time finding work during the Depression. Life was a gameof hop-scotch between homes. Business would go bad and her family would move, againand again. Finally they moved to a small flat on Taft Street in Providence and Judithwent to Hope High School.

My big worry at that time, as I remember, in 1939 and 1940 was whether I was going tobe able to go to college. Nobody in my family had ever been to college, but I wanted togo.

Judith Cohen took a job at the Outlet Department Store after graduating from highschool. It was a time when she felt her dreams rise.

I worked from January 1940 to September 1940. My father had $100 that he had saved,and he borrowed $100. I earned $100, and got a $100 scholarship. The tuition was $400,and I started college.

At that same time, war rumors filled the good times atmosphere that Judith had justbegun to experience.

We weren't at war yet, but we were beginning to hear what was happening in Germany.We were all very frightened.

An aunt and uncle of my father's came over from Germany. The uncle came first, andthen his wife and his children came later. They were on the last ship Hitler allowed toleave. That uncle could not come to this country unless somebody here would supporthim if he ever couldn't get a job. My father did not have much money. He just had his joband no savings at that time, and the real struggle with hoping he could educated hischildren. But father was the one who signed for my uncle to come. If it hadn't been formy father, they would have all been wiped out. Any family that was left was gone. My


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aunt's mother stayed there. They couldn't bring her, and they heard that she died ofstarvation in a concentration camp .

So, those were the sorts of rumors that you were starting to hear. You didn't know aboutall the killing, about the Holocaust, but you started to hear things. Especially if you were

Jewish, you were beginning to be frightened by it.

I had just begun to see the other side of Judith Cohen. The side whose door was openedby the coming of the war.

As more and more news came out of Germany, you just felt you wanted to do something.Hirohito was going to dominate half the world and Hitler the other half, although theyboth said they wanted to dominate the whole world. Hitler's plans were to wipe out theJews all over the world. It wasn't just wiping out the Jews, it was to take over the UnitedStates. I don't think you needed propaganda. All you had to do was read Hitler's bookMien Kampf, and it was all spelled out there.She seemed to see it as if it were yesterday.I

think we were all very much worried about what was going to happen to us, and to ourway of life.

Judith graduated from Pembroke College and in a short while decided to join theWomen's Army Corps (at that time the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps) or WAAC's.

I was the kind of person -- I still am -- that liked to be involved in things.Judith was sentto Georgia for basic training. That was the one time I saw the real segregationin theSouth. Buses with the Blacks having to sit in the back, and drinking fountains labeled"White Only."

We had all led a somewhat protected life. I probably more so, because I was younger thaneverybody. I had never heard that kind of swearing and vulgarity. There were womenwho just talked that way constantly. There were women, particularly from the South, whohad never had been in a place with a flush toilet. These women were very, very poor.Many of them joined the army to get fed. I had never known people like that.

Judith was assigned to the New York Port of Embarkation to do what she really wantedto do -- work in the Public Relations Department on an Army newspaper. She was paid$50 a month to start, but her room, board, and clothes were provided -- much differentfrom her earlier job with a small New York newspaper.

That $50, to me, was the first real spending money I had ever had in my life.

Judith experienced prejudice first hand, as she recalled: Once I was in the base hospital,supposedly asleep, and somebody started making remarks about Jews. I didn't say or doanything that time. Then it happened again the next day -- this time I got up and criticizedher very strongly. She never said anything like that to me again. She spoke againstItalians. She spoke against Blacks.
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She told a story of her own college. I do remember something very striking at Pembroke.There was a Black woman in my class, and she could not live in the dormitory. Myfriends and I were very upset, but at that time, nobody knew about activism. Yourespected teachers, deans, and so forth. You wouldn't dream of going and complainingabout something. You never had heard about anybody who had started a movement, or

had a protest. When I went into the WAC's, I was friendly with a woman who had gone toVassar College. The same thing had happened at Vassar, but they had a protest. I wasstruck by that. This Black woman did drop out of college the second year, and we feltvery badly about it. I wish now that we had done something about it. There was also anti-Semitism that we didn't know about at the time. I recently read an article in theRhodeIsland Jewish Historical Association Notes, about a quota for Jewish women atPembroke. While I was there, there was a quota for Jewish women in the dormitories.

I mentioned that I was Jewish. I felt that I was going out on a limb and felt awkward thatshe made no immediate response.

Those were the days when you never told people you were Jewish. You just...it didn'tcome up in...I don't remember how old I was the first time I said " Well, you know," tosomebody "Well, you know, I'm Jewish." That took a lot of courage to do.

When war ended, Judith left military service. Although the army had given her manymemories and experiences, the most important thing that it would give her was the GIBill.

My husband to be was still over seas. I just suddenly got this brilliant idea of going tograduate school.Both Judith and her husband went back to college on the GI Bill.

A few years after the war, Judith married, earned her master's degree, and had children.

There was the feeling that the kind of slurs, insults, and jokes that people make aboutminorities had helped lead to Hitler. I can remember saying, "When you start thinking ofother people as just the butt of a joke, it's not that far off to thinking they're not humanbeings, and you might as well burn them up and make them into soap." I think there wasa very strong feeling after the war that there wasn't going to be that kind of discriminationagain.

Judith Cohen seems to still have this optimism today. The war had broadened herhorizons socially and economically.

The things that affected my life were the Depression, theHolocaust, World War II, andthe Vietnam War. I think there were some personal, good things that came out of it -meeting my husband, meeting lots of other people, living a different kind of life, being inthe armed services, meeting the women from Vassar and finding out about activism,many things that helped me develop as a person. I don't recommend war as the way todevelop as a person, but I think that it did have an effect on me -- probably changed me.
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Table of Contents

Copyright1995

Learning to Live Together in Good Times

and BadNAOMI CRAIG

Story by Aileen Keenan

In addition to reading Aileen's edited version of the interview, you can nowlisten to a Real Audio presentation of the complete interview with Naomi Craigwhile you view images and read material related to her remembrances. You can

revisit specific pages in the presentation, or begin the interview at any ofseveral points, using the table of cues and contents.

A "church person" and defense plant worker, Naomi Craig participated and coordinatedcountless activities with zealous efforts, despite the heavy discrimination surroundingher.

I graduated from high school in 1935. We had a big class because I went to Commercial.

I took up short-hand typing; I wanted to be a stenographer. Black people had a hard timegoing to school. We were not taught to be proud of being Black. We weren't taught Blackhistory. And when they spoke about Africa, it was always something negative, as if theywere people that didn't know anything. It gave you a false sense. So we couldn't have asense of pride like the young Black people do now.

I had a lot of friends who were Black and a lot of friends who were white because I wasan open type of person. I could bridge the gulf, but I knew there was discrimination,
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particularly when I went to get a job, when I graduated from high school. I couldn't get ajob. I went to offices of the different insurance companies. I was a crackerjackstenographer, and I was smart, but I was colored.

When I would go down for a job, the girl in the office would look like this, and then she

called for the employer. He'd come; he'd say, "Uh, uh Miss Jennings, um, yes, well thejob is filled." I'd go home and call right back. "Is there a position open as a secretary inyour office?" "Yes there is." By my voice, he didn't know that I was colored because Ispoke the same as anybody else. And so I said, "I was just down there." "Oh," he said,"Oh were you the Miss Jennings that was down here?" I said, "Yes, I was." He said, "Oh,well one of the girls..." I said, "You said the job was open." He said, "Well, one of thegirls has decided that she's going to take it." And this was the run-around that I got.

When I went to the school department where they were giving out jobs to help peoplethey said to me, "Naomi Jennings, you've done very well, haven't you?" And I said, "Yes,I have." She said, "Well," she said, "we don't have any jobs for you as a secretary or a

stenographer." Because these jobs were going to white girls. I said, "There's nothing forme?" She said, "I have a little job for you taking care of these twins if you want to takethat." I said, "No, thank you." And I went out. You know I was crying. I cried all the wayhome. I got home and I said to my mother, "I'm never going to be able to work." She said,"Why?" I said, "Because they're only giving out jobs to white people." She said, "Thatshouldn't be." I said, "it shouldn't be, but it is."

I eventually got a job at the Outlet Company, running the elevator. All the kids wouldcome down, and they would see you running the elevator, and they'd laugh. They'd rideup and down with you, and the store was full of people shopping and doing things likethat.

When the war came, women went to work for the first time in factories and drivingtrucks. If a delivery truck came to your house, a woman would be driving it. The womenwere postmen. Up until that time, we didn't have women postmen. The women weregarbage people. They were because all the available young men were in the service.

I started work in a war plant, Federal Products in Providence, where they made gaugesand precision instruments. They taught us how to make these micrometers. We weretaught how to do everything in that line. I was top notch, but I couldn't do anymore thanwhat they had shown me. I did it so well that I could take tension in my fingers to knowjust how a gauge would run. That was the biggest thing for the war effort.

People came in from the government telling us that we were part of the war, that we hadto do the best we could, and we would make these indicators that were going out all overto precision places. We had such a feeling of being part of the war.

In 1943, I was going with my husband at that time. I said, "Oh, should I marry him whilethe war is going on? What should we do?" We couldn't think because if he went over inthe service, and got killed, then what? I had to make up my mind because he only had a


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short time. Finally, we did decide we'd be married. We married on a Friday and he left ona Sunday.

He went first to Fort Devens and went right up to Wyoming. I never went out toWyoming to see him because it was desolated out there. It was awful. You had a

segregatedarmy. All the blacks were together. They weren't getting the same supplies asthe white contingent. It really wasn't fair. It made people feel like this is our war, too. Wewere all in it together, and our men were going over.

Then my brother went into the Navy, and my sister's husband went. Then the war wascoming nearer to us.

I don't think I felt sad during the war. I was writing to my husband, and getting lettersfrom him. You go home at night to see if you had a letter, and write letters as soon as yougot home. Your whole life was writing and getting letters.

I went to a Methodist Church. I did religious work, too. I would go down to the Cape inthe summer to open up a Sunday school for young children, and for people who came towork in kitchens for the very wealthy people who would go down to the Cape. I wouldplay the piano and sing at church. There were servicemen down there because there wasFort Devens. Those colored servicemen, they said colored at the time, would come up tothe church, and we would open our house for them, and have friendship times for them,so they wouldn't feel so lonesome. The USO's did not have many places for coloredpeople, mostly whites were in the USO's. So the colored people made it nice for thecolored soldiers. It was discrimination all the way through.

I was a church person. I taught Sunday School to young children. It was hard trying to

keep them interested and keep them thinking, particularly if their fathers had gone. Wehad children without their fathers. Mothers got interested in church more because therewas a war, and a lot of people who never went church started going. Churches were full.

Then it got to be so we knew that this was war, and this was terrible. People were gettingkilled. When somebody came home that was a friend of yours with a leg or and arm off,the sleeve would be hanging empty, then you began to think, oh, this is terrible.

By '43, my husband had gone into the service. My two sisters came home, and it made itkind of crowded. So I went to live with my mother-in-law who lived by herself becauseboth her boys were in the service. I would go to work; she stayed at home. She had all my

food ready when I got home. She was delightful - the most wonderful mother-in-law thatever was - a beautiful woman.

Roosevelt, to us was like a hero. Oh, he was great. Whatever he said, we believed. If hehad told us that we were going to win this war in three days, I think I would've believedit, but that's how we thought of him. When he was on the radio, every house was quiet,even little babies would be quiet. And you would listen when he was talking, "My fellowAmericans..." (Laughs.) "There he is!" and we'd listen to him. And his wife, I loved
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Eleanor Roosevelt. She didn't come into her own until after he died, as a speaker and as agreat person for civil rights. She was the most fair president's wife.

And when Marian Anderson, this Black woman, was supposed to sing on the stairs rightin front of the Washington Monument and nobody wanted her to do it, Mrs. Roosevelt

had her sing. And then all the people of color just loved Mrs. Roosevelt. There was a wargoing. Our men were fighting in this war. Why couldn't we have some kind of freedom inthis country here too?

After a while I thought the war was getting awfully tiring. I thought it ought to come toan end. I wanted to be able to go on with my life with my husband. I wanted to see if Iwas going to have a family, and he was going to come home, and how we were going tobuy a house and what we were going to do.

It was hard to find a job because everybody came home at the same time. When myhusband came back to Federal Products, they didn't have a job for him. Oh, they told him

all the time while he was in the service, when he came home his job would be open. Andmy husband's job was pretty good at Federal Products. But when he came back,somebody else had it, and they couldn't just put the other person off. They would givehim a job, but it would have been a menial job. So, he had to start all over again. Thatwas difficult, very difficult.

We had a terrible time buying a house. Oh yes we did, because we were Black. We wentto buy a house and they said, "Well, uh." When my husband came home, he just got homefrom the service, and they said we couldn't get a mortgage. You weren't shown houses inthe sections you wanted to buy. They would take you over to a place that had all rundownhouses. When they asked me on the telephone, "Would you like to see a house?" I would

say, " Well certainly." And we would meet at the house. And I would go there and his facewould fall because I would be a Black woman. Talking over the telephone, he wouldn'tknow.

Do you feel that what women were expected to do and be changed in any ways when thewar was over?

Yes, they did change. They had gotten the feeling of their own money. Making itthemselves. Not asking anybody how to spend it. And they were spending it. And thenwhen their husbands came home, it was kind of like, "Oh." You had to ask for money.You had to begin to curtail the things that you would have been buying, had it been your

own money. The war taught them how to stand on their own two feet. So, when theirhusbands came home, a lot of them didn't know how to be wives anymore because theyhad gotten kind of bossy. It was hard to get adjusted to somebody telling you "do this"when you've been doing what you want.

How did the war and the immediate post-war years affect your overall life and the livesof those closest to you?


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I always had a feeling my husband was coming home. But I do feel that when myhusband came home, he could've had a better job. People did not appreciate the sacrificesthat Blacks had to make. I felt that I could've had a better home to have moved into atthat time. I felt that the banks weren't kind to us as they were to white people, loaningthem money to get them started. We couldn't get mortgages like other people could. I felt

that people didn't appreciate that we went through the same things the whites did.

Another thing that the war did for us, it opened up our eyes to know that in trouble you'reclose. When a tragedy happens, it brings you together. Why can't we live this way afterthe tragedy? When peace came, people began to separate and then you began to see racialconflicts. Should not have been. Should've been, we were with you during the war whenthings were hard, when a tragedy struck, when a hurricane came, we were all together.Now, there's peace, we need to be together, too. That's what we need to learn. To livetogether in the good times as well as the bad times.

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Copyright 1995

Her Students Became Soldiers

MARY BRISTOW

Story by Kristen Elliott

Mary Bristow, a South County native, is a quiet, retired English teacher who helped outin the war effort and kept in contact with her many students who went away to war. Aresident of West Kingston, she still lives in the house where she was raised.

I began teaching English in 1936 and loved it. Once the war started, many of my studentswere drafted, or as soon as they graduated they had to sign up for the war. I really felt badwhen the students were drafted. they were so young, only eighteen years old, with solittle preparation. They were leaving, maybe never to return.

Those who did leave sent manyletters to me. Oh, I had hundreds and hundreds of letters.I can remember one particular letter that still sticks in my mind. A boy named Charliewas in the Navy, at boot camp in northern New York, I have forgotten just where. It was
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the most impressive sight that he had ever seen -- just hundreds and hundreds of boys allin white uniforms, all lined up to receive communion. He described the whole scene ingreat detail. It was a lovely letter. I saved it for years.

Another boy was stationed down around New Orleans and he wrote me weekly letters.

None of the letters were censored. They never ever told secrets. They were very careful.They were very nice letters. They were not written as though they were written to anEnglish teacher; they were written to a friend.

What other work did you do for the war?

I was also a air raid warden instructor. I went to Providence, to the armory on North MainStreet, and there we were trained. We then came back and conducted schools where wetaught air raid wardens procedures of how to act in case of an air raid, how we were tokeep people in shelters during the air raids, and what to do with casualties. I didn'tparticularly enjoy being an air raid warden instructor, but I was glad to help. I was glad to

do it. I was doing my patriotic duty.

During the war we had food rationing , and I was on the board for sugar rationing. Thatwas a very special project. I was the local chairman for Kingston and South Kingstown.Sometimes I was very angry because some people came in and filled out applications formore sugar than they were entitled to. They said they were going to can peaches andpears, and I know that they were not going to do that, but most people were verycooperative. The sugar rationing went very well.

Another thing we did was to can fruits for the hospital. Groups of women throughoutSouth Kingstown gathered at the Neighborhood Guild and we canned. We worked for

days and days and days canning peaches for the hospital and then they served them to thepatients. But this was a community action.

At school we had drives collecting metal, and people brought in pots and pans right outof their kitchens. Oh, my, what a mess! But, we did it. In school we sold war bonds, andwe had competitions in school to see which homeroom would sell the most. This wasanother sign of patriotism.

I was glad when the war ended and the boys could come back and finish their education.We had one big class of returned veterans, and one particular teacher had all the veteransin her homeroom and she just loved them. They were more mature. They had had such

experiences, you just can't imagine. I know three of the boys were having difficulty withEnglish, so I used to tutor them during a free period to help them. Somtimes they couldn'teven talk about their experiences; they were just so deep that it would have torn theirhearts right out to relay the stories.

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Copyright1995

A Pacifist in a Time of WarRACHEL HIGGINS

Story by Hannah Gould

Rachel Higgins is 83 years old. I was struck by how much she realized the prejudices ofpeople during the war, and of how she stuck to her philosophy of peace.

My roots as a peace person started when I was seven years old, during the First WorldWar. My father was a minister, and he kept getting all this propaganda, and he wouldthrow it into the wastebasket. I got very curious, and I went into the wastebasket andpulled everything out! And what did I see? These ghastly pictures of what the Germanswere said to have done to the Belgians, piles of babies' hands that they'd cut off! Theywere piled way up and these things were so awful! I shouldn't have seen these pictures,but my father didn't know that I was going to get into the wastebasket. I filled my mindwith that stuff. Some of it was propaganda and exaggeration, but some of it was no doubttrue. So that really, really impressed me, and I had dreams of bombs falling. I don't knowany other child around whom it bothered, but it really sank into my subconscious. That'show I first became a peace activist. When World War II came along, I think it waseverything together; it sort of added up to the fact that I was not to be a war person, I wasto be a peace person, and devote my life to that sort of thing. Peace was my commitmentfrom that time on.

All I knew about the war, before America got into it, was what I had read in the paper.There was a lot of pacifist sentiment over here about what was going on. I don'tremember the United States being that interested in getting into the war, but it was beingtalked about in some government circles that maybe we should enter the war. I feltabsolutely numb after the invasion of Polandand afterPearl Harbor. I can almost feel ittoday; I just sort of went into a state of shock.

Just about that time I signed a pledge which was put out by the National PacifistOrganization. This was a pledge that I would not take part in any military activities oranything of the sort. I found it very difficult to know where to draw the line, and I spentnight after night agonizing over it, but of course it was silly because I'd never be calledon to fight. I was looking around to see what I could do in a non-violent way so I got ajob in the Red Cross headquarters.
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It was really hard for me to know where to draw the line about which activities werepeaceful, and which activities supported the war. There were some people who camearound to collect coat-hangers for metal. The government needed metal to build weaponsand that sort of thing. I thought, "Shall I give them coat hangers: That will help themmake armaments." Where does one draw the line? Well, they never did get to our house. I

was relieved. In the end I came to the conclusion that one never really keeps one's skirtsclean because in a world war everyone's involved if they like it or not.

One of the things I noticed greatly during the war was the prejudice. There was so muchprejudice for so many different racial and ethnic groups. I think people have forgotten,but Peace Dale was largely Italian during the war, and we were at war with Italyeventually, and people began to wonder about the loyalty of the Italians. There was sometalk of shipping them off tointernment camps. Just a little ripple that it might not be safeto have them around here. I thought it was the most awful thing I'd ever heard of.

I can remember an incident of discrimination against the Japanese during the war. There

was this Japanese man I knew, whose sister was in one of the internment camps. Thegovernment at the time was willing to let anyone who wanted to sponsor one of theyoung people, and to let them come and work. A friend of mine, with the help of thechurch, brought this man's sister here. Her name was Mary, and she was the mostbeautiful Japanese girl I've ever seen. Well, she went to South Kingstown High School,and she was very smart. There was another girl at the school whose mother was a teacher,and she was very jealous because Mary got better marks. Letters began to appear in thepaper that perhaps we had a disloyal person in our midst. These were really nasty letters,letters about Mary. She was the only Japanese there, the only Oriental in our midst. Theseletters were trying to stir up hatred against her. Well, Father Greenan, who was the priestat St. Francis Church, knew Mary somehow or another, and he wrote a letter to the paper.

It came out in The Narragansett Times defending Mary. He also stuck a copy of this letterunder the door of the school. The letters ended. I guess it was a really scathing letter.What a terrible thing to do to a young girl like that.

I think that the war had a good effect on women in general. I only knew one womanpersonally who worked, and she was very proud of it. She was a society lady, and shewent into this factory and did all this mechanical work. When she came out she felt sogood about what she'd done. Especially since she'd never done anything like that with herhands. I think the war did a lot for women's morale, because for once they were needed inthe factories and places like that. They could do just as well as a man when they got intoit. I think women also gained more self-confidence during the war.

I don't remember where I was when thebomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but it was sostunning, I had to let it sink in gradually. I had helped to start a program called theCommunity Program for Peace, and we helped to protest testing for other atomic bombs.I also picketed, and leafleted, and protested the Vietnam War.

I think World War II was for a good cause. At first I thought we shouldn't go into it, butafter Pearl Harbor what else was there to do? I realized that there was really nothing else
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to do. I think the cause of the war was to eliminate this militaristic group which reallywanted to dominate the world.

I don't think any of the changes during the war years affected my life, and my life todaywas not very changed by the war. I never lost my commitment to being a peace person.

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Copyright1995

A Teenage Volunteer, Too Young to Join

the WACSEILEEN HUGHES

Story by Ellie Kaufman

We had just finished dinner, and I think I was in the living room reading the paper. Iheard my mother say, "Oh, dear God. They have bombed Pearl Harbor!" I said "What?"and she said "Pearl Harbor. That's Hawaii. Do you know how many troops we have overthere?" and I said "No."

This conversation is one that Eileen Hughes, a petite gray-haired woman in her mid 60's,will never forget. I interviewed her in the kitchen of her Narragansett home. Theatmosphere was comfortable and homey, and Mrs. Hughes seemed eager to tell her story.

Before Pearl Harbor, I didn't realize how serious the war in Europe was. I think that itwas something that seemed very, very far away. We were far away from Japan and far

away from Germany. It was horrible what was going on in Europe, but I don't think Irealized how close it was going to hit us, until Pearl Harbor.

In 1939, I was in junior high school. Like everyone else, I worked an after school job. Ithink I made $10 a week and I worked every night after school. This was during theDepression and everyone was poor. There weren't as many distinctions between whomakes this, and who's in here, and who's down at the bottom. We were all the same and itwas very tough, but everybody pulled together and we managed.
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I spent my money on different things: probably cigarettes that I shouldn't have smoked,movies, ice cream, candy bars. As we got involved in the war, I noticed that many of themovies I saw were geared towards the war, especially after Pearl Harbor. I liked the warmovies because they always make it look like we were winning.

My brother quit high school to join the army. A lot of the boys did. A lot of the boys inmy class didn't bother to graduate. Everybody was very patriotic and they quit school toenlist. There were very few boys left in my senior class when we graduated. Some of myfriends' fathers were already in the service. My brother was just barely 18 and he wasover in the Philippines by the time he was 19. We were angry to think that things hadgone that far.

I myself was interested in joining the army from the time I was a very little girl. I don'tknow why, but I always felt that's what I wanted. At that time, when I was growing up,the women's army was the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, the WAAC. You could go inat 18 with parental signature. About the time I was entering my senior year of high school

that was changed to 21. I was very angry because I really, really planned on going. Iwrote to the President of the United States and said I just wanted to go and I didn't thinkit was fair. I thought they should let me go, but they didn't.

Instead, I did Civilian Defense. We spotted airplanes. We had to go to classes to be ableto recognize them. I put in over 1,500 hours spotting planes. We had air raid drills andmost of us volunteered and did messenger work. It was kind of scary. We wereblackedout here. All the houses in Narragansett had to be totally blacked out on the ocean side.We had to buy these special shades for our windows and every night, as soon as it turneddark, you had to draw your shades. That was regulation and they had air raid wardens. Ifyou didn't have your shades drawn, they would come and knock on your door and make

you draw them. After Pearl Harbor, a lot of troops came in here and a lot of Navy cameinto Quonset.

As a young person, I went to a lot of USO dances on Saturday nights. That was volunteerand kind of fun. All of these men that were stationed around here were young boys, allaway from home who couldn't always get home for the holidays. So we'd invited themhome for Sunday dinner and things like that. It was fun.

I didn't want to get serious about any of them because I really wanted to go into theservice. Some of my girlfriends did. They were more prone to "I'd like to get married." Iwas still angry because I couldn't go into the service when I had wanted to. I was veryfirm about it. I liked a lot of them, and I loved to dance and have fun, but I did not wantto get serious.

There was much fear of bombing because of the submarines rumored to be floatingaround nearby. I don't think most of us realized that attack was a real possibility. We hadthis attitude, sometimes Americans are like this, that the Americans would take care of it.I suppose we just figured because we were the U.S. of A. nothing would happen.Fortunately, nothing did, but it could have and I think some people did fear it.
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After graduating from high school, I went to work at the Naval Air Station at QuonsetPoint. There were many jobs up there. My mother was a school teacher, and I just walkedright into once-and-a-half of what she was making. It was incredible. It was because ofthe war, there were good jobs for us then. It's an unfortunate thing, but the war broughtprosperity.

Of course, then there was rationing. We were just beginning to get used to having a fewthings more when we got cut back. You couldn't get sugar, and often we'd have the ticketsto get the meat, but it wasn't available. It was a hardship, but you learned to live with it.Some people found ways of getting around it, but we didn't do that. We just lived with it.

When the war in Europe ended, I was here in Narragansett, working at Quonset Point. Icame home from work, and my mother said, "The President is going to make anannouncement at seven tonight." I remember saying "Oh, I hope this war is over." Thatwas the first night that my mother had been able to get some lamb chops at the store. Butwe got so emotional that we couldn't eat because we knew my brother would be coming

home. At about 7 p.m. President Harry Truman made the announcement, and it was likeeverything was so still. Then all of a sudden there was this huge uproar. You could herepeople screaming and it was nothing but one big party. My girlfriend came running up.She was yelling, "Yahoo! Yahoo!" and I went running down. Everybody went crazy. Itwas sad for those who lost loved ones. One of my girlfriends was crying because herbrother had been killed. Still, it was a wonderful feeling when it was over.

Eileen Hughes eventually got her wish and joined the army, serving in the Korean War.

World War II. I think that probably it gave me more opportunities to do more. It's aterrible thing to say that a war does that, but I wonder if I would ever really have left

Narragansett and done what I did, which was the best thing I ever did in my life.

Table of Contents

Copyright1995

Wife, Homemaker, and Civil Defense

Volunteer

BARBARA DREW
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At Green Hill, the government built towers across the street from our house. They alsobuilt what was supposed to resemble, and did very closely resemble, a normal RhodeIsland farmhouse. Actually, it was occupied by the soldiers. And towers were built on thebeach. There was communication between the towers. And every night, a truck camefrom Camp Burlingame loaded with vicious attack dogs. The men that were trained to

take care of the dogs patrolled the beach from Moonstone to Charlestown, and backagain, all night. No civilian was allowed on the beach after curfew, which was beforesunset.

The soldiers were looking for ships. They were looking for submarines. They werelooking for any signs of life that might be the enemy in the waters between Block Islandand the mainland. They on occasion discovered certain things. They found an officer'scap on the beach, right there at Green Hill. There was a place in Charlestown, which atthat time was a little community building, where all these things were brought. The menfrom the United States government decided where they came from and why they werethere and so on and so forth. It just wasn't our beach that was selected, it was being done

universally, I'm sure.

The coastline was a very dangerous spot. Every night was ablackout night. Every nightwe had to pull down these black shades -- very unattractive shades, so the lights from ourhouse could not be seen from the outside. There was a man named Mr. Holberton whowas the warden. He came by every night to make sure everybody was in total, totaldarkness. And if you insisted on displaying lights, you could be arrested.

I considered what she had said. The U.S. government seemed dead serious about keepingAmerica safe. I guess pulling down your shades every night was a small price to pay forthe safety of you and your children. Curious about other ways in which the war effort

affected her, I asked about how the rationcoupon worked.

Well, this area was excellent. I never had any problems. I had a ration for my gasoline. Ihad an "A" coupon and that's all I deserved. My husband had a "B." Doctors, ambulancedrivers, and private ambulance drivers had, as I recall, a "C" coupon.

Near the end of the interview, I asked her how she personally felt about World War II.

I think a lot was covered up. We never really knew what happened. I knew the outline ofit, but I never knew exactly what happened at Pearl Harboruntil the end of the war. Idon't really feel that the war changed my life to any drastic extent, except that it lead me

to a, well, little more feeling of independence.

wondered if she thought the war era was a better time in comparison to the GreatDepression. Her response was immediate.

No. I found the war being worse in every way -- no comparison. More distasteful. Moredevastating. The Depression was money. These were lives. The war was lives.
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Copyright1995

A School Teacher Minds the Home FrontHELEN OSLEYStory by Aileen Keenan

As she eagerly describes the active life she led during World War II, Helen Osley's laughlines are visible. Her excited manner reveals her story as an elementary school teacher,intimately and cheerfully involved in the war efforts.

I graduated from Rhode Island College of Education in1941, the year the war started. IrememberPearl Harborvery plainly. I had gone somewhere that afternoon with a friendof mine. We were coming back from Wakefield, at the intersection just past the bicycleshop. The car radio was on and the announcement came on. We were just plain excited.

That's all anybody talked about.

I didn't know much about the war in Europe and Asia. We would discuss it in college inour history courses. I read the papers and magazines. But it still seemed very remote andvery removed. Because we were right on the water, everyone did have a feeling that ifanything happened, we would probably be one of the first to know, especially when theystarted building Fort Greene. That was a big fortification down at Point Judith. We werein a bad situation. We had Newport across the bay and Quonset right up the bay.

I knew my husband would be going. He probably wouldn't have had to, except he wantedto. Everybody felt it was their duty. The work he was doing at Fort Greene was deemed

important enough not to be called. He had a couple of deferments, but he refused the last,and he went in. We were married two months before he went to Officers Training Schooland soon after he went to Scotland.

I taught at Narragansett Elementary School. I hate to tell you what we were paid, $17 aweek. So, that's your big pay for teachers in those days. I truly think it was awfully hardfor the teachers who boarded in town. By the time they paid board, they didn't have muchleft.
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When I first went to teach, that was in the fall of 1941, I had a list of my students, andthere were probably about 25. Soon there were over 40 students. This was because of FortGreene and Quonset. Quonset was booming. Construction was going on everywhere.Many, many people moved into town. These were children of transient workers, really. Ihad children from all over the country. Their parents were either in the service, or they

were working at Quonset. I think that that was good for the children, too, to meetsomebody from outside the community.

Because of supplies, food was rationed. You had stamps for everything, clothing, shoes,things like that. It was sort of a job, juggling all this. Also, gasoline was rationed. You hadthese little books for everything, good for a certain length of time . If you ran out beforethat, too bad. So it was kind of fun figuring out what you were going to do.

Sometimes the store would get a bunch of stuff in, but you were only allowed to take somuch. There was a lot of hoarding, and a lot of black market stuff going on. People madesome kind of deal under the table and would all of a sudden come up with a few steaks.

We never went without. We never starved or anything like that. My mother was a verysmart shopper.

When rationing was first announced, I worked on the Rationing Board. All the teacherswere asked to do this. People had to come and give their names, occupations andaddresses to pick up these books.

How did people show their patriotism?

Mostly by going along with civilian defense protocol, obeying all the different rules andregulations. You had to take some kind of course for any of the civilian defense work. I

worked as an air raid warden for quite a while and that was kind of fun. You could go outand stop cars. Order people off the street. It's silly when you think about it. We had agood time.

They had air raid drills, like fire drills at school, except this was a total town thing. Thesiren would go off. We wore helmets and had these belts and a billy club and a flashlight.People were ordered off the streets, to go to a safe place if they possibly could. Cars hadto come to a halt. I had to patrol on Narragansett Avenue. Whenever we heard the sirengo off, I strapped on my helmet, belt, and billy club and took off.

At the old town hall, there was a huge switchboard connected to Newport Civilian

Defense, that had to be manned all the time. I put in a couple of hours a week. Every oncein a while, a light would flash there and you had to say, "Narragansett Headquarters," andthey would say, "Just checking." And then every once in a while they would pull a fakealarm. When this buzzer fell or whatever would go off, I had to get in contact with everyperson on the Civilian Defense Board to notify them that there was an attack imminent.They would say an attack was within ten minutes and I had to get everything coordinatedin that time. I was scared to death!
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Blackouts were another thing I did during the war. I would go out one night a week withthis woman who lived a couple houses down. We had a certain area that we had to walkto make sure that there were no lights shining on the east and on the south - towards thewater.

How did you spend your leisure time?

I would go back and forth to friend's houses. There was a good bit of that during the war.Somebody would call up and say, "We're going to have a pot luck dinner. Bringsomething." And all of us would meet over there and everybody would bring something.It was fun.

I wasn't particularly happy when my husband went overseas, especially when I found outI was pregnant. He didn't see his first child until she was almost two. I was able to sendpictures. He didn't get all of them. We used the V-mail. It was an envelope and the writingpaper at the same time. It was very, very thin, and you had to write quite small. Then you

could fold it up and down again, and mail that. That was, I think, because there was somuch mail going it helped on the weight. Our mail was censored. You had to be carefulabout what you said, and they had to be extremely careful about what they wrote back.

Every other day, we went to pick up mail and to mail our letters to our husbands. At thesame time, we would go across the street to the market and say to Bill, "Are there anycigarettes?" He would say, "I saved a pack of these for each one of you." We never knewwhat it was going to be. There were some pretty weird brands.

Stockings were awfully hard to get. Of course, most everybody wore silk stockings.Nylon was just beginning to come out, and you couldn't get them. So, during he spring

and fall, I used to paint my legs with leg make-up.

We planted avictory garden. I shouldn't really call it a victory garden because my fatheralways had a garden. My father worked for the electric light company, but he was really afarmer at heart.

We saved paper and cans, all your cans. After you used them, you rinsed them out, tookthe label off, took the top and bottom off them, and then flattened them. You could savequite a stack.

Looking back on it now, I was fairly young, and the war was exciting. There's no getting

away from it. It was an exciting time. But it was a scary time, too. You had so manypeople that you knew and loved and all of a sudden they weren't there anymore. I hadgood friends who were living in the same way that I was. We comforted one another. Wesaw a lot of one another. We shared letters that we got and other things. But when it wasover, it was sort of, well, the war is over. Let's get on with our lives. Our real lives now.

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What did you do in the war, Grandma?

After my husband went into the Seabee's I quit my job at Gibson's and went to work in awoolen mill, Lister's, which before the war was just a normal routine job. When the warstarted they need wool very badly so this was considered a service job. In other words, it

was important.

At the mill the government used to send out all the Purple Heart soldiers to talk to us andtell us that we couldn't take time off, and pushed all this patriotism on us. One particularday I had the day off and they went to my house. I wasn't home. It would have beenembarrassing to have soldier with a Purple Heart on asking why I wasn't at work.

What kind of work did you do at the mill?

Well, the wool would come in just like they sheer it off the sheep. It was dirty and they'dput it in like, they called it a carding machine, and it would be probably a hundred foot

long. They took that and it would be in rolls and would go into a barrel, you know likeyou'd take cotton and push it into a crack. Those barrels would be brought to my aunt'smachine and she would put it through, maybe eight or ten of those barrels. It would makea big ball and a roll almost like you'd have a ball of rope or twine. I think I go $27 aweek, so it did pay more. The soldiers needed woolen blankets. At the time allservicemen were issued their clothing, their blanket, their bedroll, the whole bit. Theblankets that came home after war had traveled all over the world.

The wool was all used for the defense; what they called a defense contract. If the factoryfulfilled its contract and did good work it had an "E" for excellence. The mill had an "E"-- it was on a flag that would fly over the plant. We were very proud of it, because it

meant that we were doing our part.

Who took care of your baby while you were at work?

I had a young baby and I had a place to leave him in a nursery. At the mill I worked everyday and I had all my evenings off, and Saturdays and Sundays, so that I was home alonewith my son. I used to take him to Bristol on the trolley and we'd have picnics on thebeach.

I was lucky in that there was a Salvation Army day nursery on the street I lived on. Theyonly charged $3 a week. After I moved to my own little apartment in East Providence, I

used to have to take my son on the trolley car, bring him over to the nursery, and leavehim there, and go back down the street and get on another trolley and get to work, and thesame thing at night.

If he was sick I either had to stay home with him or take him up to my sister's; maybe hisgrandmother would take care of him. One time he had scarlet fever, and the doctor puthim in the hospital. The doctor figured where I was all by myself and my husband was in


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the service, it would have been too much to be at home with him. This way I could comeand go to work.

Was there a shortage of food?

Beef was very short. People ate a lot of chicken, and if you could get fish, eggs. Spamwas a basic commodity. Everybody ate it. I remember a place downtown that sold horsemeat (See Ration). My sister and I decided we would try it so we bought a couple ofpounds of hamburg and a couple of steaks. We cooked the steaks for our husbands and allthe while we couldn't eat them because we knew what it was, but the men thought it wasgreat!

Did you follow the course of the war?

Oh, yes! We would listen to the radio at night and they would tell you. One particularSunday night the Germans sunk the Wales and the Repulse which were British ships.

When you're listening to it on the radio, it was like it was actually happening. It's veryprofound to think this is actually happening somewhere in the world and you're sittingsafe in your house. There was one particular program which made a big impression onme about a woman called the "Beast of Belsen," her name was Elsa Koch. I never forgotthat name. She used to make lamp shades out of human skin.

How did you keep in touch with your husband?

They had what you call a V-mail letter. It went through like a micro-dot, micro-film Iguess it was. You wrote these letters and they went through a computer and when yourhusband opened it, it was like an envelope and a sheet of paper, and if anything was said

that wasn't right it was just blocked out. I did get a few letter with the pieces cut out. Ifthere was anything very interesting or important in the back of it that went too, and youcouldn't just use one side of the paper because it was a premium, especially for the menoverseas.

What was it like when you heard the war had ended?

They had a big victory parade in East Providence. I allowed my son to go with all hisfriends and they marched in it, and he was just a toddler. At that time we were all sonaive, not only young people, even adults, grandparents, the whole world was naive, untilafter the war.

Do you think the war changed you?

After the war things changed because women found out they could go out and they couldsurvive. They could really do it on their own. That's where I think women's lib reallystarted. So the whole world has changed.

Everybody's more aware of everything. We were very sheltered up until 1941.
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I think it made us more aware. It made me mature. When my husband went in the service,I often used to think if anything happened to him, our baby was my completeresponsibility. At 21 that was quite an awesome thing to think that you had a small humanlife that you were responsible for.

ref-life would never be the same again

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