The series: Home Front

These are the stories of the people who served on the home front, the ones who worked in the munitions plants, built submarines, canned food supplies, went without and waited for the soldiers to come home.

Narrator: Wisconsin World War II Stories is a partnership of the Wisconsin Historical Society and Wisconsin Public Television, in association with the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs.

Radio News Broadcast: We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese…

Woman: Heard it on the radio, I was kind of in shock. I got a little angry, you know, to think that they would dare to do something like that.

( explosion )

Man: At that time, Pearl Harbor?? Where was Pearl Harbor?

News Radio Broadcast: The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked…

Woman: You saw these pictures of the devastation, couldn’t believe it was happening, couldn’t believe anybody would attack your country in that way.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: With the unbounding determination of our people we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. ( applause )

Narrator: As the United States entered World War II, everyone in Wisconsin found themselves swept up by world events and thrown into extraordinary circumstances. The government called for sacrifices, large and small. Over 300,000 Wisconsinites left to join the armed forces. More than 8,000 never returned.

Nearly every Wisconsin factory retooled, and many operated around the clock to supply the war effort. There were shortages and rationing of everything needed by the troops, from meat and sugar, to tires and typewriters. Life would never be the same. And when the war was over, everyone had a story to tell.

Announcer: Major funding for Wisconsin World War II Home Front Stories was provided by The Ho-Chunk Nation whose people have always shown great respect to their warriors and are proud to recognize the men and women who served the United States during this period of great danger; and by an advised fund of the Community Foundation of Southern Wisconsin; and Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson. Additional funding was provided by Demco and the John E. Wall Family, Duard and Dorothea Walker, the Boldt Company, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Krause Foundation, the Evjue Foundation and contributors to the Wisconsin Program Fund.

Manitowoc

Marge Miley: It was pretty exciting in town that everybody was going to be working.

Marie Ponschock: Work was scarce in our area, up to that point.

Paul Holschbach: You couldn’t buy a job, we used to say in those days.

Marge Miley: The war brought Manitowoc out of the Depression. I think the shipyards got the submarine contract by 1940.

Paul Holschbach: They ended up building 28 submarines. They were scheduled to build 30.

Marge Miley: With the thousands of people working at the shipyards, the town was just booming.

Paul Ponschock: They went out in the outskirts and got people from Valders and Sheboygan, and Green Bay, and whatever, because there weren’t enough people here. Everybody had work.

Marge Miley: It never quite went back to the little pokey town that it was before that. And of course, you had to walk or take the bus, because you couldn’t get gasoline for your cars. And if you had a car, you couldn’t get tires for it.

Paul Ponschock: See, we worked round the clock. The shipyard was open all the time. After one was done, theyted the next one. It was rush, rush, rush, all the way through. And there were no layoffs.

Marge Miley: They recruited a lot of women to work. And one of the things was the women welders that were trained. They made a real contribution to the effort down there.

Hilde Entringer: Welding? No, no, never entered But you got to remember, we had “men” and “women” in those days. That was a man’s job. Would never have crossed my mind. I thought well, what could I do to help the cause? By this time, I was seeing “Rosie the Riveter.” So, I thought, hey, they offered this welding class in the city of Sheboygan, so I signed up for the six weeks. Simple as that. I loved it! I just thought, “Hey, this is great!” You know? Much to my mother’s chagrin. She just could not see me get up at 5:00 in the morning, get on the bus and into Manitowoc and weld. But I did it anyway.

Paul Holschbach: One of the Navy engineer inspectors suggested they hire somebody of small stature to get into the tight little compartments of the submarines, which there were a lot of. I was a lot smaller then. I was, I think, 49 inches tall, weighed about 75 or 80 pounds. And I was 20 years old at the time. I thought, well, I’ve had considerable experience on the farm with machinery, helping my dad, and stuff. I knew a monkey wrench from a pipe wrench, so maybe it would work out. After all, you couldn’t buy a job at the time. So, I agreed to go to work for them.

There was about an 8,000-man crew there, eventually. And I was scheduled to do all the work in tight compartments that the bigger guys, or ordinary average guys, couldn’t get into. So, they assigned me different things to do, and I usually could get the job done for them. I was called upon to crawl above the torpedo tubes on the forward torpedo room. And between the piping and the plumbing, I had to crawl back in there to do something routinely. And I would have a nightmare later on, for a long time, that I couldn’t find my way out.

Marge Miley: When the submarines were being built, that’s when all the submarine crews came to town, because they trained on the submarines. So, there was sometimes three or four crews here at one time, so there were lots of sailors around town. Lots of nice young men.

Rae Todd Kinn: Everybody that graduated from the sub school was then assigned to a sub. And the one Hal was assigned to had been built in Manitowoc, and was ready to be commissioned. He was the Communications Officer. And so, I guess I can’t tell you just what all he was doing because it was all kind of hush, hush. Even the wives weren’t told very much about it.

Hilde Entringer: When a ship was finished, we were there. That was a big deal. That was a really big deal.

Rae Todd Kinn: The skipper’s wife christened it with a bottle of champagne.

Marge Miley: They were side launched. They drove these wedges underneath the ship. And then, they were all tied and then they had a gigantic knife that cut all the ropes that were holding it. Then, the thing would slide down sideways into the water, and made a big splash on the other shore of the river. They were spectacular launchings.

Paul Ponschock: It was a thrilling thing to witness, because you all were in it together. And of course, you felt you were doing it for the war effort. So, we had a real national feeling about what you had accomplished.

Roland Soucy: I was sent to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, here, to put the USS Rasher in commission. That was the fifth submarine that was built here. In one of the naval magazines, they described Manitowoc as a haven for submarine sailors. You wouldn’t believe how the people treated you here. It was just fantastic. You couldn’t buy a drink hardly. The shipyard workers would be there, and they would say, “Give the sailor a drink. Give this sailor this. give the sailor that.”

Marge Miley: It probably bordered on being wild, sometimes, in Manitowoc during those years.

Paul Ponschock: We had USO officers. And we had dances for them. And most of the young girls went down there to be their dancing partners. Some of our girls married some of the sailors that left here.

Roland Soucy: Of course, I met my wife the first week in May. And we dated. And I think the first or second night, I proposed. I know a week-and-a-half later, we were married. I never told my children to do the same thing. We were married May 15th. I left Manitowoc to go overseas July 3rd. I didn’t come back for 18 months. And I had a little daughter. It was the first time I had seen her.

Rae Todd Kinn: It was what they called a shakedown. Once it was commissioned, then they would take it out into the lake. And day after day, after day, and just make sure that everything was working properly.

Roland Soucy: Right out here on Lake Michigan. That lake is deep! ( laughs ) It’s very deep. And we’d go out all day long and train.

Rae Todd Kinn: We could go down and watch them take off. And we had dinner aboard one night, which was a very unusual experience. I could never have spent anymore time. I had all I could do to finish dinner and get out of there. I’m very claustrophobic. We were only there two months. Then, the sub left and went to New Orleans. I went with another one of the wives. And we had a roomette, and we were both pregnant. That got real interesting. A roomette’s not very large, especially not for two pregnant ladies.

Then, we went to New Orleans and spent a month there. And then they took off for the South Pacific. I went back to my parents and had my baby. And my sister, whose husband was in the service also, had just had a baby. So, she and I got an apartment with our two babies, and we lived there for a while. And her husband came home and mine didn’t. I got a telegram, as you see in the movies. This was not delivered by military personnel. It was a little man on a bicycle. He came and rang the doorbell and handed me the telegram. And of course, the telegram said they were missing-in-action, because at that point, they didn’t know for sure what had happened. Well, I think somebody knew, of course. But they weren’t declared dead for another year, which was very difficult, because it was the end of the war, and they were finding servicemen on all those little islands in the South Pacific. And of course, you kept hoping that somehow there was a miracle and they escaped.

But then, at the end of the year, I got a letter from the Secretary of the Navy saying they were that he was officially dead. But that was hard, because there wasn’t really a grieving period, because that whole year you were continually hoping, you know, that it would turn out okay. And then, suddenly, it was over. And then, it was almost I don’t know how to describe it. It was just almost too late to grieve then. It was a strange experience, very, very strange.

Five Sons

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: Just a very typical family farm.

Edmund Rohland: They raised ten kids. Eight boys and two sisters.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: We had a huge garden.

Emil Rohland: I’d swear that it was a half an acre of potatoes. It wasn’t. But you’d swear it was when you were out there weeding those darn potatoes, right?

Edmund Rohland: We had huge potato bins in the basement that were full. It had carrots, cabbages, you name it.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: A lot of canning to be done, with a wood-burning stove. Hot, sweltering August days.

Emil Rohland: When we came home from school, at any age, even at seven, eight years old, we would have to carry wood in the hall, ’cause we had two stoves. That was a job for us.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: Feeding chickens, picking up eggs.

Edmund Rohland: When I started milkin’ cows, probably seven, eight years old. They’d give you the tailenders. In other words, those about ready to dry up, or something.

Emil Rohland: The older boys now, they were in the barn throwing silage feeding cows, cleaning the barn, all of this stuff.

Edmund Rohland: My dad was very modern in his way. He owned an early tractor in the area, but he never drove the tractor or car himself. That was always up to the kids. We run most of the machinery. There were shortages, but it was all pretty much behind this effort you know, pulling together on this war effort.

Emil Rohland: I think everybody was out. They had to win this war. One way or another, this war was going to be won.

Edmund Rohland: We was all out there scavenging all the rock piles, picking up iron and rags, and whatever you could get. In fact, we’ve got a picture of my younger brother. He had his bicycle loaded down with scrap iron. In the rural school, they used to come around every couple weeks and pick this material up, and contribute to the war drive or scrap drive.

Emil Rohland: Well, Hank, the oldest one, was in the Navy.

Edmund Rohland: Repairing planes on an aircraft carrier. Albert, he was in the Army.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: He was the one that ended up in the tank battalion in Germany.

Edmund Rohland: Otto, the next one, he was in the Army. He was in the 77th Infantry Division. Of all of ’em, he had the worst time.

Emil Rohland: And that’s when my Dad got angry, when they took the first brother of mine. It was Henry, he was living in Chicago at the time. He went in the service. My brother Al, he goes to the service. My brother Otto, he’s going to service.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: In one of his campaign speeches, Franklin Roosevelt had said that he would never send American boys to fight in a foreign war. And so, when his sons were going off into the service one by one, he was very unhappy with Franklin Roosevelt. And I won’t even tell you what he said about him.

Emil Rohland: He said more than, “darn, darn Roosevelt.” He said something different. ( laughs )

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: I know my mother would be making bread. It seemed like it was something she was doing all the time, was making bread. And tears would be running down her cheeks. And we knew that she was worried about her sons. Especially, maybe, we’d heard something on the radio news that would involve, you know, the one that was in the South Pacific, or the one that was in Europe. It was a terrible time.

Emil Rohland: Soon as I got to be 18, I had a deferment. My dad went down and got it, because he had three boys in the service. And Edmund was smaller, right? So, they gave me a deferment. I didn’t like this. I wanted to go into the service, okay. So, what do I do? I write a letter to the draft board in Loyal, that town is not too far from here. And tell them that I felt that my brother was more than able to take over the farm, and I was available to be put into the draft.

Okay, the letter came almost immediately. We have accepted your enlistment. Report to the draft board so and such a date. My sister I picked up that letter out of the mailbox. And my Dad was just angry. And I could see his point, right? Here he had the kids farming, like Edmund and my sister, you know. And his boys were going, one at a time.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: And then, my brother Edmund, though he still doesn’t like to say it, volunteered and went in.

Edmund Rohland: Actually myself, I volunteered. I didn’t tell them that at the time, but I did. I turned 18 on December 11, I wasn’t sure. I had broken a leg as a kid riding a horse. I got thrown off the horse one time and broke a leg. And I had kind of a bulge. I didn’t know if they’d accept me, but I wanted to find out. So, I went down to Loyal to register, and I said, “Can I go down and take a physical?” They said, “No, not unless you volunteer.” I said, “Okay, I’ll volunteer.” The leg was no problem. They took me as I walked in, which I kind of wanted to go anyway. Patriotic fever was high then. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a lot different than it is today.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: I was about 15, and my kid brother was 13. And that’s At that point, the two of us were responsible for running the farm.

Edmund Rohland: It was kind of rough on them at that time too, because none of them was too acquainted with driving tractors, or anything.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: It didn’t bother us. I think, probably, we were pretty proud of ourselves that we could, you know, handle things. It built character, if it did anything.

Edmund Rohland: Mother felt terrible. She spent many a days looking down the road, wondering if we was coming home or not.

Emily Rohland Fijalkiewicz: I had an aunt that had only one son, and he was in the service. And she was visiting one time and she told my mother, “You have five children, it’s not so hard for you. You have five sons in the service. But I have one, so if something happens to him it’s worse.” And she said to my aunt, “Aunt Annie,” she says, “I have five fingers. Which one won’t hurt if I chop it off?”

Powder Plant

Donald Kirner: Everything moved so fast. We had to be out by March 1, 1942. And you take 85 farms, farmers looking for another place to move, and to move, to get ready to move. Being young, I was 13 years old, I thought it was kind of interesting, because of seeing so much going on. But it wasn’t very interesting to the farmers that were trying to cope with this whole thing.

When government people started coming around, taking pictures, and this is hard to believe, but the government would come to the farmers and say, “Well, here’s a dollar, may I talk to you?” Well, once they said they had the dollar, that gave them the right to come on the farm anytime they wanted, and which they did. Well, the high majority of the farmers didn’t agree with the price, which was kind of natural. Then, it took about a year before it was finally settled in court.

There was a number of houses moved, and a lot of them were tore down for scrap or whatever. Our home farm was tore down. And a fellow was building a house in Eau Claire. He used the lumber, and the doors and all that for that house. I think because of the fact that this was where they grew up and lived all their life, they just didn’t want to leave, a lot of them. They had beautiful, beautiful places. The Julius Steidtman home was just one beautiful all brick, two story. It was just an elaborate home. He did not want to leave. And the day that he had to leave, why his son had to carry him out of the house and put him in the car. And he died shortly after.

William Sisson: I had a two-year deferment on the farm, to stay out of the draft you might say. And during the winter time, work was a little bit slack on the farm, usually, so we could get a permit to go work in a war plant. It was on one day that I got the letter from the draft board that they released me to come to Baraboo to work. And the next day, I came down here and they hired me. And I worked that same day yet. So, that was how short they was of labor.

We worked in what they called the green powder area. It was in what they call the mix house. And they took the raw materials and mixed them together to make the ingredients for the powder, for 30 caliber, and 50 caliber, and 105 cannon powder. I lived too distant, so then I stayed at the dormitory or barracks that they built. More or less a temporary set up, but we were warm and comfortable.

We would work a shift, I think it was one or two weeks is a swing shift. It would be from 8:00 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon, and from 4:00 to midnight, and then from midnight to 8:00 the next morning. You’d just get used to one shift, and then they’d transfer you to another. And it just worked out that my day off came on Christmas Day. I left home about 6:00 in the evening on a bus, and I had to be at work at midnight that same night, on Christmas night.

Carol Hulterstrum: My sister went in to talk to the teacher about something, and mentioned that I was looking for a job. And she said, “Oh, there’s a job out at Badger that’s open. Maybe she’d like that. That’s a real interesting place. The pay is so good.” When I went to apply for my job, I said, “Well, give me a contract to sign and I’ll be back on the first of June.” And he said, “Oh, we don’t have contracts, because everything is so up in the air. We couldn’t manage to have a contract that would suffice for the situation here.”

It was a strenuous, strenuous situation. The school was in constant change. We would be changing rooms, and changing groups of children we were be working with. There had never been a school that was open 24 hours a day. When the parents worked at night, then, the kids stayed overnight at school.

Some of these gals, whose husbands were overseas, were just having a great time and they’d put their kids in nursery school for a week, or ten days, 24-hours-a-day, and just have a great time. This one child, we had to tell the mother to come over and give it a bath every Saturday night, so that the child wouldn’t forget who the mother was! ( laughs ) There wasn’t a lot of that, of course. But there was a lot of crying, ’cause kids would get lonesome for their parents. We gave them extra care, and tried to give them some security.

My Dad

Richard Haney: My dad spent a lot of time with me. When, when he came from work in the afternoon, he’d get changed out of his suit and tie, and get down on the floor and play with me with my farm animals. In good weather, we’d go outside and play catch with a football. And I actually thought I could really tackle him.

In the summer of 1943, less than a year before he went into service he just loved to go fishing, so we took a one-week fishing vacation up to Westfield on Pleasant Lake and rented a cottage up there. My mom liked to swim, and so she swam a lot in the lake. And I remember sitting in the rowboat, and watching him fish. And that was just a wonderful vacation.

But then, in February of ’44, he was drafted. His basic training was at Camp Blanding in Florida, where he was in intelligence reconnaissance training. And he came home on what was called the delay en route for two weeks in July of 1944. We had a great time, running up and down the sidewalk together and throwing the football around. We just had a ball. And then, I remember vividly when he left. We went over to the train station in Janesville. And I remember being completely, just fascinated, obsessed, by this big duffel bag that my dad had. And in one of the pictures, I think I’m even looking over at it, rather than at the camera.

My dad was 31 years old, and he volunteered for the paratroopers, and went through paratrooper training. He was in the 17th Airborne Division. And that kept him in training in England longer, but just as the 17th finished training in England, the Battle of the Bulge broke out. And the 17th Airborne Division, my dad, were sent into combat in the Bulge. And that was a frightening thing.

I missed my dad just terribly. And one day in the dining room, she said to me, “Well, we’ll go, one of these nice days, we’ll go up to Wisconsin Dells for a little trip.” And I started getting teary and weepy, and I said to her, “Well, you tell me we’re going up to the Dells because Daddy isn’t coming home so soon.” And then I said to her, “Well, maybe Daddy will be home on Monday.” I was getting impatient. She wrote that to him, that story to him, in a letter, five days before he was killed. And that letter came back to her.

After the Bulge, the Division was regrouped in France. And they then were used in the air drop over the Rhine River on March 24, 1945, six weeks before the end of the war. And that’s when he was killed, in that operation.

I’m one of the lucky ones. There were, I think, 183,000 children who lost their fathers in World War II. And, I think, probably today, the vast majority have absolutely no recollections of their fathers. And I do. And that makes me one of the lucky ones. And I was also lucky that my mom always talked about the memories of him, to keep those memories alive.

A Whole New Avenue

Gladys Hritsko Ripon: Rough. Rough. We had bosses that were rough. On the Monday morning, I come to work, gotta be there at 8:00, punch in and that machine starts. Sewing them gloves eight hours a day. Our Army contract at the Navy Works was to make Army gloves.

And my boss was the kind of a boss that was like this. And he glared at you, you know, and you started working. But I was not in the mood. I don’t know why. Why did I blow up like that? I never have been that type of a person. He said, “I want you to fix these gloves.” He laid them down in front of me. And I said, “You know what you can do with those gloves, Herman? Here, you fix them. I’m going to join the Army.” I got up and I gathered up whatever I had, a pair of scissors.

And I was on the third floor, and I came down these narrow, little steps. And I passed my father, who was on the second floor. And he looked up and he saw me. He said, “Where do you think you’re going?” And I said, “I’m going to join the Army.” And he stopped. I can still see him looking over that machine, you know, he said, “If you’d get home and get some sleep,” and this and that. And I kept right on going. The old Navy Works had this big arch. I walked up to the train station and I got on that train. And there I sat.

I went into Milwaukee. That’s where they had the recruiting station. So, I made my first call that night. He said, “Where are you?” And I said, “I’m in Milwaukee.” “What are you doing in Milwaukee?” I said, “Well, just call me Private First Class. I’m in the service.” And it was just dead silence.

I was hired because mom and dad lost two of us. My brother enlisted first, and then I enlisted second. Our parents come from the old country. Women were to stay home, and keep house and have children, and you know, that. So, you see, we sort of moved out of that rank. After Pearl Harbor, they were short-handed. So, they decided to try the women, for one year. That’s what started it, but they had to put us under the Auxiliary, because we were not regular Army. It was more or less that you were going in on a trial basis. You had to prove to the government that we, as women, can handle the training. And we were trained very hard. But it was the best decision that I made for me and my personality. I wasn’t ready to settle down. I wanted more out of life. It was interesting, you know. It opened up a whole new avenue for me.

Relocation

Marti Suyama: Actually, when I was growing up, I hardly knew where Wisconsin was! I remember hearing of “Oshkosh B’Gosh.” ( laughs ) But, never realizing I’d end up living here. I was born in Fresno, California, but grew up in Reedley. There are very many Japanese farmers in that area. It’s the San Jaoquin Valley. And it’s known as the Fruit Basket of the nation, of the United States.

Allan Hida: My father was what we call an “Issei,” or first generation. He came as a small boy to Sacramento. My mother was born in Gilroy, California. And so, she and her three sisters were American citizens.

Marti Suyama: I just started my junior year. And I had done well in school, so I was offered scholarships to go on to college. And I would have been the first one of seven children to go to a regular four-year college. Then along came Pearl Harbor.

Allan Hida: After Pearl Harbor, things started to happen, such as we were restricted in being able to move more than five miles from our house. We were not able to go outside after dark. Then, on February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt saw fit to incarcerate us, or certainly enable the military commander to incarcerate Japanese-Americans on the West Coast defense area.

I was going home from school on May 8, 1942, and they placed upon all of the light poles a sign, that about two days later, my father had to go to the Sacramento city auditorium. And he had to sign up the names of the people in the family. We were given name tags. And in this particular case, on May 15, we had to report with what we can carry. It was a day that our freedom was lost.

Many of us felt, we’re American citizens, and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will protect us, and it won’t happen. But in the final analysis, if you had one-sixteenth Japanese blood, you were part of the group that was being evacuated for 300 miles from the Pacific Ocean inland in California, Washington, Oregon and a little bit of Arizona.

Marti Suyama: So, we were all removed, and went inland to the relocation, or concentration camps. We had very nice neighbors, very close neighbors. The neighbors came to say goodbye to us. They put us on trains. We went on a train. They had all the shades drawn and they had military police.

Allan Hida: In many ways, the people did feel, you can’t fight city hall, and you’ve got to go. And after all, they had the United States Army there with rifles and bayonets, and you don’t have a whole lot of choices. These barracks that we were placed in, was a 20 x 25 room, covered with tar paper. And it had loose windows. And we had a potbellied stove. And in our case, we had five individuals in our room with Army cots.

Marti Suyama: And it had no partitions, or We hung up like sheets or partitions that way. But there really was no privacy.

Allan Hida: It was kind of an emotional shock to many people that were used to the privacy of their own homes.

Marti Suyama: It was all like mess hall, Army-type food. They served a lot of lamb. And Japanese people don’t eat lamb. It was hard on our parents. So many people got depressed. My camp was called Posten, and we were right on the Colorado River. And so many of the people who were depressed walked to the Colorado River and committed suicide there.

Allan Hida: About the end of 1943, early 1944, they started to allow, especially students, that wanted to go to some college or university, if the FBI would clear them, they allowed them to go. They were given a train ticket and $25.

Marti Suyama: My brother says I couldn’t afford to go to college, so, I decided I would go to beauty school. And originally, I went to Salt Lake City, which is very close to there. And I was waiting to be enrolled in the school. And the woman that owned the school, they told me that I never would have got in ’cause her son was killed over in the Pacific by Japanese. And she had no intention of letting me enroll.

And that’s how I came to Wisconsin, then. My brother says, “Well, come out here.” My brother, who had never gone to camp, my brother George. He lived in Chippewa Falls, and he recommended that we all come to Wisconsin to live. He said, “Wisconsin has very nice people.” He liked it here. So, slowly, we all moved to the Wisconsin area.

Allan Hida: We stayed there until August of 1944. At that time, my father had already left and went to Milwaukee. And by, by August 20, we followed him there, so that we could be in Milwaukee to attend high school at that time. So, that’s how we ended up here. And we’ve been here ever since.

I Still Cry

Jean Lechnir: It was a very traumatic time. And I just had a feeling, I just got a feeling my husband’s going to go. The first thing my husband did was, he knew I was expecting this baby, so he went to the draft board and he asked them if he could please stay at home until the baby was born, and then he’d go. They didn’t even give him the courtesy of telling him yes or no. They just sent him a notice, “You’re going.”

It was a lost feeling, a lost I was lost. What am I going to do? How am I going to pay my expenses? I had no money. Everybody in town was very, very thoughtful and, “Don’t worry Jean, when you get some money, you can pay me. You don’t have to do it now.” The whole town was like that. They kind of stuck together, and looked out for each other. And it was a wonderful feeling.

The baby was born in October. My husband was well, he was down in Arkansas and he couldn’t get home. And what really hurt, was another gal was in my room, and she had had a baby about the same time I did. And they let her husband come home from the Navy. And he was with her. It really got to me, because I was alone.

It was Christmas Day. And we were I had one duck, you know, to feed, and I had this aunt, and her husband and my grandfather for dinner. Well, you can imagine how far this these people ate like, well, gangbusters but it was all I could afford. I had it, and they picked it clean. And just as we were getting through, the doorbell rang. And the baby started the baby boy, he started to cry, so I went in there and picked him up. And I answered the door and my husband was standing there. And we thought he was on his way overseas.

Well, you can imagine the riot. Everybody was just screaming and hollering, and yelling and crying, and everything. I said, “How’d you ever get home?” He said, “We all sneaked home.” The guy that signed our pass, his initials were P.D., and his last name started with C. We covered our pass up with the last part of his name, and we didn’t get checked till we were on the train coming from Chicago to Prairie du Chien. When he checked us, he said “Boy are they ever lenient with their passes,” he said. You get all the way from New York to and New Jersey to come to Prairie du Chien for three days?

It was great. And he got a chance to see the baby boy. We were all together for, well, half a day and all evening. And the next morning, they had to leave again, but they got away with it. And they didn’t get themselves in trouble, because New Year’s Eve, they were on the Queen Mary and on their way overseas.

When I got a letter from Ray knowing he was going into Germany. And you know, is he going to get back or isn’t he? And then it gives you the cold chills. After all, I mean, there were a couple of my friends got letters that the one, her husband, the minute they landed on Omaha beach, he was he didn’t even get up the beach he got killed.

When they still play that “Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night in the Week,” I still cry. Because my husband and I always had to have it a week. We got a baby-sitter. We always went out on a Saturday night. They were playing that a lot. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and “Saturday Night’s the Loneliest.” Those were the two songs that they sang all the while our guys were gone. It still, after 60-some years, still brings tears to my eyes, and remembering how darn lonely I was.

Good Jobs

Nellie Wilson: I’ll always remember Mrs. Zink, because she was in charge of the occupational readiness for the girls who wanted to be nurses. That’s about the only role model I’d ever seen, that I wanted to pattern my life after. So I went to the auditorium, and Mrs. Zink stood there and said, “Oh, before we get started, I may as well tell you now, if there are any black, Negro girls in here, you may as well get up and go back to your homerooms, because there is no place in the state of Wisconsin that will accept you and train you to be nurses.” That’s what I remembered about high school, more than any other one thing.

I ended up doing like what all the other girls did. House work. Discrimination just existed. It was said that the government decided some of these companies would either hire some black people, or they would not be getting government contracts. Now, I couldn’t pinpoint who said it, when, where or what. But I do know after they started talking like that, a lot of other black people went to work in defense industries.

I heard about the good jobs at A.O. Smith. Not so much what you did, but for the money that you got paid. There was a training program, in my case, it was East Division High School, where they taught you to read blueprints and work with precision instruments and the old turret lathe. Well, it happens that Mrs. Zink saw to it I had a strong math background. So, there was no problem for me going in there and doing that type of work. I worked with the men who were making the parts, where I was the final inspector on landing gear, and measuring airplane propeller parts to a thousandth-of-an-inch.

It was a great job. I couldn’t believe it. I’m talking about somebody who started out with black on this side and white on that side. I started out from Texas, then come here and settle into Milwaukee. We went to school together, but that was all. You know, black on one side, white on the other. And it never crossed my mind that I would have the authority to stop a white man from doing his job. That’s the way it was. But if the white man’s job was wrong, it was stopped. Period.

They weren’t always happy to see me. ( laughs ) But I learned how to come up to them and tell them that job, you’re not going to do anymore today unless you straighten it out. It’s that simple. Once they felt that I knew what I was doing, though, they didn’t have a problem. Fact of the matter, that’s the only time I felt like a full-blooded American, during that time I worked at that plant on the east side. Best job I ever had in my life. I think now, that even after all I’ve seen, that if I had a chance to start all over again I would look for that job. It was a great job.

German POWs

Harry Hetz: We left Oran, when through the Straits of Gibraltar into New York Harbor. And that was probably the most impressive day of my life. It was a beautiful October day, 29th of October, 1944. And the captain of the troop transport ship that I was on, with hundreds of others, he allowed us to go up on the upper deck. It’s hard to convey, you know, somebody who’s been through the war, and all the things I experienced, and so on Berlin, the bombing raids and this and that, you know. I’d seen pictures of the southern tip of Manhattan. I’d never been there, but here I am, you know. It’s just like in the movies, my mother would to say. ( laughs ) Land of the free and the home of the brave, so to speak, you know. That’s when life began for me. It sounds strange but it’s true.

Kurt Pechmann: We were then shipped out to different towns, just like migrant workers. When the corn harvest was done, we went down to red beets, from red beets to the onions and carrots, and so on, see, so. Whenever the harvest was done, we worked We went to a next town, to the next camp. We were with the bus, maybe 15, 20 guys. The guard, he was sleeping in the back while we did our work.

Harry Hetz: There was a canning factory in Waupun, might still be there. We were there for about four or five weeks canning peas, zillions of peas.

Kurt Pechmann: Up in Barron, we were on the pea harvest. The camp, there was 240 or 250 guys who were divided. Some of them worked in the pea vinery. It was used like a threshing machine, the vinery. When they brought the vines with the peas to the vinery, and then they went in the canning company in Barron, or in Rice Lake and Cameron, and put them in cans. Almost every town we went to, we worked in canning companies.

Harry Hetz: Then it was up to Galesville, which is north of La Crosse, and worked in a canning factory in Onalaska.

Kurt Pechmann: We worked in Libby, MacNeil, and Libby in Hartford canning milk, and peas, and carrots and red beets.

Harry Hetz: We came down to Milwaukee. And there was a good-sized camp at Billy Mitchell Field.

Kurt Pechmann: We worked in the hemp mills in Juneau, cutting hemp. And then we also went to the milk factory in Juneau, in the milk co-op, a farmer’s co-op in Juneau. And we replaced civilians and high school kids. And the high school kids and civilians, the people before us, they turned out about one railroad car a shift, see?

Didn’t take long, the boss came and pulled the chain to the machine to run faster, and we turned out three railroad cars of condensed milk in the same time. Matter of fact, when we came in the first week there, the manager at the factory, he took us out for dinner in town, in American restaurant in Juneau, can you imagine? A bunch of prisoners of war people coming in there with the “POW”s on the their back, going in a civilian restaurant?

Harry Hetz: See, Wisconsin’s a little different from many other places. For better or for worse, there’s a lot of Germans here.

Kurt Pechmann: We knew that there were a lot of Germans here, but we didn’t know there were that many. Because no matter where you talked to, or any farmer, “I talk German. Ich sprechen Deutsch.”

Harry Hetz: It was just like home. People were so kind, and so decent. And I remember one episode, when I was in Billy Mitchell Field, I worked in a sauerkraut factory. I don’t know exactly where that was, there were a bunch of POWs sitting on one side of the conveyor belt, and a bunch of little old ladies from Wisconsin on the other side. And I remember clearly, one of the ladies, after we’d been there a couple of days, you know, she looked at me. Well, it turned out that she had had two boys who were in the Infantry in Europe, and both survived. And she looked at me, and she said “Jeez,” she said, “You know, I’m looking at you, and you remind me so of my two boys.” And she said, “I just can’t believe that you were over there trying to kill one another.” And I said “Well, I wasn’t trying to kill. I know what you’re talking about,” I said. By that time, I spoke excellent English. And she just, just couldn’t … And it’s true I mean, these things happen in war, you know. But the people in Wisconsin are great people.

Something Else

Dorothy Zmuda: I fell in love with him the minute I saw him. I met George swimming at Bukolt Park. They had a raft out there. And we went there every day. I was out there on the raft. And when I dived off, and was swimming back, I looked up to the high board, and there he was standing up there. And I thought “Ooh!” So I swam around. And he was yelling, “Get out of the way! Get out of there. I want to dive!” And I wouldn’t move out of there, I kept swimming around. Finally, I left there. And then, when he came down, I talked to him. And we got to be friends after that.

He graduated that year, 1940. And that’s when Roosevelt called up the men. He was in the South Pacific. And I wrote and sent him gifts, and he’d write back. One day, my brother came home. And he said, you know, “Why don’t you come to Milwaukee. There’s jobs everywhere. They’re begging for workers.” So I said, “Okay.” So I packed my few clothes in a paper bag. I didn’t have very much, you know, and I went with him.

After the war started, everything ran night and day. It was exciting. It was dirty. It was noisy! And when you go over the viaduct on 35th or 27th Street, you look down there, there were trains, and factories and smokestacks, and it was just shooting out of there, the dirt was shooting out of there like mad, but it was exciting. It was really exciting for someone like me who lived in Stevens Point, who never saw anything.

I found this first job at a place called Badger Meter Manufacturing. They were making fuses for bombs. When we first got there, the men that was the beginning. Women were just starting to come in those shops. Well, they were furious. “Oh, look at that skirt.” I can’t even say some of the things they said. They really resented that the women were coming in and taking these jobs. But who was going to do it? Someone has to do the work. And so we went in there and did it. Didn’t know we were making history, but we did.

I was going to evening classes at Layton Art School. One evening, the teacher came in and made an announcement that Allis Chalmers was looking for a graduate student to work in the advertising department. And I thought, “Well, I just graduated,” ( laughs ) You know, not from a college, that’s what they wanted. And I got the job! And everything was wonderful after that.

There were soldiers, and sailors and marines in Milwaukee like you wouldn’t believe. All day and all night. You know, Great Lakes training was there, Fort Sheridan with the soldiers. And they all liked Milwaukee, so when they had a leave, they all came to Milwaukee. The people were very good. There were USO parties everywhere. The VFWs and the American Legion had USO parties everywhere. Every weekend, there were parties. We’d go there and entertain the boys. They had food and drink, anything you wanted, dancing. And people had parties in their private homes. So, it was just fun in a way. A lot of these people met and got married later.

We had a lot of fun, but there was always the war. There was a war. And these boys were scared to death. They were 18 years old, never been away from home. It was sad. You had to feel sorry for them. You had to be nice to them. You couldn’t do anything else. But can you imagine that? And then to know you are going to go to war, and maybe be killed besides? It was something else.

This young man was an engineer. He used to come down to our office quite a bit, and we got to be friends. And I went out with him a few times. Then he came along one day and he said, “You know I’m going to be shipping out pretty soon. I’m almost through with my studies. I’m going to be shipping out pretty soon. You want the diamond ring?” And I said, “No, I don’t want a diamond ring.” I didn’t. “I don’t even know you!” I didn’t. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I don’t know your parents. We didn’t, you know, I just But other girls took the rings. They had a lot of boyfriends. And if the boyfriend gave them a ring, they took it.

VJ Day, everybody was thinking, “Well, maybe we should go downtown. Maybe we should go downtown.” I think everybody from that office building was going downtown that day. No one was going to stay behind. Those trains were just filling up like you wouldn’t believe. People were It was just jammed with people. Oh, they were yelling and screaming, and they had flags and, you know. You know, well, they were celebrating already.

We passed the Wood Hospital. And when we went past there, the young men were sitting. And they were covered with blankets, and in their robes. They were out on the lawn. That’s where they sat. Well, all these people were yelling and screaming, and they suddenly quieted down. Because hey, here were these men, they weren’t yelling and screaming. They had fought the war and they lost their legs, or whatever. They were very somber that day. They were happy that the war was over, so everybody kind of quieted down in the streetcar. At least ours was very quiet when we passed. Then, they started. A few blocks later, they started screaming and waving the flags again, you know.

And I when I got home, my landlady was all excited. “Oh, Dorothy! Your young man was here! Your young man was here!” So, when my sister got home, she said, “George is home. He’s going to come back tomorrow at 11:00.” So, when it started getting toward 11:00, I was hoping one of them would open the door. Somehow, I felt that would be you know, I haven’t seen him for five years, who am I going to see right now, you know? Well, my sister said, “No way! I’m not opening any door. I’m staying right up here.” And I said, “Mrs. Hayes! Please open the door!”

He was ringing the doorbell. “Ding, ding, ding,” it was going. Slam! I heard her slam her door shut (laughs ) and locked. And I said, “Oh God, I guess I have to do it after all.” So, I went down there and I opened the door. And I said, “We don’t need any potatoes today,” and I slammed it shut. Would you believe that’s what I did? (laughs) Then I opened it real quick, and I grabbed him and hugged him. And I think he didn’t know what was happening to him, poor guy. Then I grabbed him and put my arms around him, and told him I was so glad he was home.

It was romantic, of course. And the neighbors would watch him come down the street, when they’d come home. He’d come to my house in his uniform. And my landlady said, “All the neighbors are watching him. They think he’s such a good looking young man,” you know. And they’d watch him walk up and down the street. Everybody was so happy to see a man come home, you know, from the service, that they just all watched him. They just watched the men come home. It was such a thrill to see a man alive coming home from the war.

Announcer: Major funding for Wisconsin World War II Home Front Stories was provided by The Ho-Chunk Nation whose people have always shown great respect to their warriors and are proud to recognize the men and women who served the United States during this period of great danger; and by an advised fund of the Community Foundation of Southern Wisconsin; and Philip J. and Elizabeth B. Hendrickson. Additional funding was provided by Demco and the John E. Wall Family, Duard and Dorothea Walker, the Boldt Company, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Krause Foundation, the Evjue Foundation and contributors to the Wisconsin Program Fund.