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Posted on 08/22/2007 4:05:16 PM PDT by SJackson
World War II memories still vivid Pat Coggins Ladysmith (Rusk County)
I was born in 1931. I remember when I was a child of 8 or 9, my father would listen to the news on the radio in the evening as Hitler's troops moved across Europe. I often sat away from the radio with my hands over my ears. In my young mind I was sure war eventually was going to take place in Ladysmith.
Then came Dec. 7, 1941, and war was still a long way away, as Hawaii seemed a half a world away.
But the next day when I went to school, some of my friends met me as I came on the school ground and told me the father of one of the girls in my class was going to have to go. He was in the Naval Reserves, so he was sure he would be called up, which he was. That brought it closer to home.
As the next few years went by, I learned about rationing and all that entailed. It wasn't the worry to me that it was to my mother, but I did learn of her problems with butter, sugar, meat, coffee, etc. I remember she had to buy a pound of margarine if she wanted a pound of butter. The margarine came in a clear bag and was uncolored. Colored oleo could not be sold in Wisconsin then.
There was a small capsule of color in the bag and you had to mash that with your fingers and knead the color into the entire bag. That was a job my sister and I could help do. Then Mother would put the butter and colored oleo in her mixer bowl and combine them. Gas rationing wasn't such a problem for us as for some. We lived in town, so we mostly walked where we wanted to go. My father had been too young for World War I and too old with a wife and two daughters when World War II came. He always wished there was something he could do to help the war effort. Also, the Great Depression still was very vivid in his mind. Our family had to move in with my grandparents for some months until he could find a job where he could support his family.
He had the fear there would be another depression when the war was over. So he wanted a job where he could earn enough to buy a small farm after the war so he could at least raise enough food to feed his family. Somehow he learned of an interview session to be in the Twin Cities for a defense factory job in the state of Washington. In January 1944, my father and mother got on a passenger train in Ladysmith to go to the interview. When they got home, he said he had been hired. He left in February of 1944.
The evening before is still so alive in my mind. I remember him standing behind me during our family devotion prayer. He had his arms around me and I can still feel my tears dropping on his hands.
His mother had come to be with us that day and spend the night. She was not happy to have him leaving. She had lost her husband in a logging accident when my father was 15, the next to the oldest of a family of nine. She said life is too short on this Earth to spend some of it apart. And she was so right.
The next morning he again got on the train in Ladysmith for the long trip west to Hanford, Wash. I have several letters he sent home describing the place where he was working. For the first few weeks, he worked on building some of the dormitories and other things they needed. After his letters of recommendation and work records were checked out, he was put in the actual work at what they were producing there. He couldn't tell us what it was, but he said he was sure it would save many American boys.
On May 22, 1944, my mother received a phone call from a doctor there. He said my father was in the hospital with a very severe case of pneumonia and he also had meningitis.
Mother asked if she should go out, but the doctor said she'd never make it in time. Back then, it would have been by train, not plane. He called back about 5 o'clock that night and said he was gone.
Our world was turned upside down. My sister was graduating from high school in a few days and I was almost 13. What a big hole in our lives.
On Aug. 6, 1945, we learned what he had been working on. They announced on the radio that an atomic bomb that had been produced in Hanford had been dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Another one was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on Aug. 9, 1945.
After that, Japan was ready to surrender. There has been a lot of controversy about whether dropping the bombs had been necessary. Perhaps the second one wasn't. But they certainly brought Japan to its knees.
I believe my father's theory that what he was helping produce would save many boys' lives was true.
My husband as a young farm boy had been deferred, but was finally called to go to Milwaukee for his Army physical. He woke up in the hotel the morning of Aug. 14, 1945, to the cry of a newspaper boy outside calling, 'Extra! Extra! Japan surrenders.'
He read later that the Army was calling up boys with farm deferments for a landing and big push in Japan. That certainly would have taken many, many American lives.
Only leftists lack the native intelligence and common sense to understand the realities.
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I remember many of the stories of his time spent in the Pacific, although most were humourous.
What sacrifices our folks made. I know most would be willing to do the same today if it came down to it.
Thanks for that post. I was in Munich the day Hitler killed himself and held on the Austrian border when the war in Europe ended. But the war did not end for us because we were sweating out going to the Pacific. When Truman dropped the bombs, it did end for us and we could look forward to returning home. I was always glad that Truman did what he did, if only for the way it worked out for me.
Prince was my brothers dog and he told me he was mine now. My oldest brother was in the Combat Engineers and went to England to prepare for D Day. The other brother was bombardier on a B17 flying out of Molesworth England. He was shot down Aug 15, 1944 over Weisbaden and spent the rest of the war in a few Pow camps including Stalag III.
One sister enlisted in the Wacs but served stateside. They all came home and lived full lives. Sisters married veterans , one served in the Navy in the S Pacific and the other was in the 9 Air Force engineers building P47 air fields across France.
We were lucky at home as we lived on a farm and my father was never out of work. We got our war news from 3 day old papers, radio but most of all from the news reels at the Sat matinee at the little theater in town...
I really hope that the new PBS series about WWII does it right. From what I’ve heard it is supposedly as good as the Civil War documentary.
An interesting look at life in WW2.
Scrap metal drives
Then there were the sand buckets in the attic! With instructions for the proper handling of incendiary bombs.
Ration books for almost everything at the grocery store.
Victory gardens. Vegetables everywhere. And after they ripened, canning at home.
Never forget the day that Mrs. Martin, my 3rd grade teacher showed us her husbands Purple Heart.
Geography lessons in the newspaper & radio as the American troops advanced through the Pacific & Europe. (Tunisia, Sicily, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pelieu, Iwo Jima and the list goes on.)
We knew that we were winning the war, not only because the newspapers reported it, BUT because we saw the German POW's working in the fields in central Michigan. When they were being transported to & from work, they rode in trucks guarded by MP's. But they also smiled and waved whenever they saw children in passing cars.
Many "hardships" but compared to other children, we lived in PARADISE. A paradise bought & paid for with the blood of American fighting men.
Thank you very much for sharing a bit of your experience. The American people who lived during that era as some of my folks did remain the most interesting study of society for me. Many books and articles under my belt and an occasional Hollywood film that does some justice to your generation always cause me to buy. Yours is the best.
Especially the Japanese. The A-bombs saved at least a million lives, the vast majority of them Japanese.
Remember the scene in "Saving Private Ryan" where they make "sticky bombs" by putting explosives in their socks and coating them with tar so they can stick them on a tank? Japan had plans like that. Except instead of socks, they were going to use their children. There was a massive nationwide effort to train the civilian population in kamikaze tactics to resist invasion.
Based on everything I've learned and read, the invasion of Japan likely would have been the bloodiest, most brutal campaign in at least the last 300 years of warfare. No quarter asked, none given, and the Allies would have no choice but to kill anything that moves. Iwo Jima, Okinawa, those were bad enough --- just imagine how fiercely they would have defended the home islands.
I don’t buy Japanese anything — I’m stilled miffed about the Bataan Death March.
I don’t think the generations of today would know how to survive circumstances like that. And it still could happen.
Thanks for sharing this bender. My mother is 72 and remembers so vividly going to the cinema and watching the news reels. She tears up recalling the films showing paratroopers on D-Day who had been shot and killed before they could land, floating down to the ground in their parachutes.
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