Wisconsin World War II Stories

Part 5: Legacy

War Transcript:
The series: Legacy
The names, places and events of World War II still live in society’s memory, carried by the veterans’ stories from a time that continues to affect the world today.

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.

Newsreel:

We interrupt this broadcast to bring you this important bulletin from the United Press. Flash: Washington: The White House announces Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy

It was in this southern part of this mountain area in the province called Bataan that General MacArthur and his men are making their stand

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat

D-Day has come. Early this morning, the Allies began the assault on the northwestern face

Big transport planes dropped supplies to American troops in the Bastogne area. This indicates our forces are still are holding out

As you know by now, Iwo Jima is a tiny island. Mount Suribachi, where our flag went up

I only wish that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day. General Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to the United Nations

I just returned from the White House where it’s just been announced that the United States is now using an atomic bomb, the most powerful explosive yet developed

I am sure. The Japanese offer of unconditional surrender is official. It has been accepted.

Narrator:
The names and places and events live strong in our memories, even for those of us who were not yet born when they were burned into the hearts of a nation. They have come down to us through the stories of a proud generation, from a time that continues to impact the world we know today. That is the legacy of World War II.

Major Funding for Wisconsin World War II Stories was provided by: The John and Carolyn Peterson Charitable Foundation; Duard and Dorothea Walker; Demco, serving society through our nation’s libraries for more than 100 years, a John E. Wall family-owned business; contributors to the Wisconsin Program Fund; and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

All American

Man:
The reality set in that it was time that we would have to do something. And we each made our decisions on what we would do. And I think all of us fully realized that by the time that football season was over, we’d be doing different things other than going to school.
Song:
Now he’s sharp and no lie.
He’s a real G.I.
‘Cause Sam’s got him
Now he’s really a joy
And you must love that boy
‘Cause Sam’s got him
In his khaki suit
He looks so cute

John Roberts:
I remember during my freshman year, when I wasn’t eligible, we were given a job for half-time at the Badger football games, to sell apples out there. We carried kind of a basket over our shoulder and sold ’em. Most of ’em had to be thrown. We were throwing apples in the stands and catching the coins. We laughed about that many times. But we had some bad times in ’40 and ’41. So, I think the coach was looking towards that ’42 team.

Dave Donnellan:
I played football at Senior High School in Eau Claire. And Coach Harry Stuhldreyer came up and talked to us and asked me to play football at Wisconsin. I played freshman football, and in ’42, I played varsity ball. I knew they had some of the best athletes in the area, like Pat Harder and Elroy Hirsch. And Dave Schreiner was already an All-American. So, I think we had a feeling that we had a good team.

John Gallagher:
I started out at the University of Minnesota. I was on the freshman first team. And all the fellas from Eau Claire here, and those that I knew that were in Madison were saying, “You’ve got to come to Madison.” So, in January, I went down to Madison and talked to Harry Stuhldreyer. He gave me a job so I could make enough money to go to school. I worked at Toby and Moons, it was a spaghetti joint, washing dishes. And I got all the meals I wanted there.

Otto Breitenbach:
I was born and raised in Madison. The only school, as far as I was concerned, was the University of Wisconsin. I had the good fortune of playing at Edgewood High School. My love of football was developed there. When I enrolled in the University, I thought this is something I want to do. So, I joined the freshman team at that time and had the good fortune of being a part of the team in 1942. I remember, as everybody else does, in 1941, Pearl Harbor. We were in school, the next day, President Roosevelt’s speech about the declaration of war against Japan and eventually Germany.

Janet Roberts:
Well, I was sitting at a soda fountain when I heard about it. I went home immediately and my mother and dad were really upset because I had a brother, who was a navy flyer and he was already in service. We sat and played Pinochle that night, trying to keep our minds off of what was going on in the world.

Bill Ward:
In the fall of ’41, I was a freshman. I came to campus and always wanted to play in the band, so I went to the music department, where Ray Dvorak was holding auditions. I made it all right. I must have done the right thing, so then Pearl Harbor Day, we all listened to the radio for President Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” address. It got to be a few days later, people were going out to enlist and do things like that. He said, you men on university campuses, we need you. We’re going to need you for training for officers. We don’t have the facilities now, so stay on campus.

Donnellan:
We realized the war was on, that this would be our last year. I think that meant something. And, of course, that was nationwide.

Janet Roberts:
I think we were so young, you know, we just didn’t realize how bad off we were. I just always have loved sports and that was very impressive to be there in that big stadium caught up in the whole scene, the team and the game.

Ward:
Forty-two was a different season. We played teams like Camp Grant. People were going in the service and they were assembling with these various camps and they had their own football teams. A lot of these guys maybe had been playing some pro ball, so they had some pretty respectable teams. That year, we also played Notre Dame.

Breitenbach:
The feeling on the squad. The guys knew we had something good going here, and excitement building each game, and the response of the crowds, the band, the whole bit.

Ward:
The highlight of that whole season was the Ohio State game. We came into that game, both Wisconsin and Ohio State that year were undefeated.

Breitenbach:
The Ohio State game, you couldn’t get near the place. It was a full house. Our team was playing for the national championship.

Donnellan:
There was a fella named Fred Negus. He did an outstanding job. Schreiner was playing up to his expectations, quiet, but he was a very good leader.

Breitenbach:
He knew the game. He had great hands as far as catching the ball is concerned, but even had great hands as far as defense. People didn’t go very far when they went in his direction. The best way to describe him is he was a tremendous person and, as a result, that spilled over to the other people as well, what I call the spiritual leader, put our program on a very high plane.

Ward:
It was a beautiful, sunny day. It was close, but towards the end, Wisconsin pulled it out and won. I can remember that big celebration. Everybody was jumping up and down. It was a glorious event.

Gallagher:
Fans are fans. I don’t care when it is, war time or peace time, you’re still going to have fans.

Roberts:
Those days, when you were walking off the field, kids were asking for your autograph. We had a such great season that last year, that those other years kind of fell in the background.

Janet Roberts:
I suppose in this day, you’d call it a groupie, but I really liked athletes. I had sort of memorized my sister’s badger, with all the football players, so I knew all of them before I got there. The first time I saw him, right away I knew who he was.

Roberts:
My wife was a hostess at a grill there at the Union, so we got acquainted that way while seeing her after supper each night for a few nights, and things went well after that.

Janet Roberts:
So many of our friends, football players and so forth, were leaving. That was an awakening. I didn’t realize until after he left how much I cared for him, corresponded regularly. I actually got my diamond through the mail.

Donnellan:
Truthfully, we probably thought that it would be another great adventure, you know. When you’re young, you don’t realize that things can happen. I think that was a situation with a lot of us. We looked forward to coming back.

Gallagher:
It wasn’t too long that the seniors, like Schreiner and them, and Bauman, they took them right away. The younger ones, like Grenebaum and Hirsch and myself, all got a chance to go in the V-12 program. And where did they send us, but to Michigan! (laughs) We went to school just like a regular classroom. We were in uniform. They had V-12 Navy, V-12 Marines. It was an officer’s training program. We played football. I think about six of the eleven starters were from Wisconsin on that Michigan team.

Breitenbach:
I had requested medium bombers in whatever theater they picked. I was assigned back to Dodge City, Kansas, where I flew B-26’s and taught combat crews to go overseas. It was a little disappointing, because you wanted to do the most you could under any circumstances that were required. But that was the way the ball fell, so you do your job to the best of your ability.

Donnellan:
I went in the Army, and I joined an armored division and became a member of a mortar platoon. We got into France, just kind of getting broken in a little bit. Then the Battle of the Bulge occurred, and they moved us up, heavily shelled, and there were some hits, and so forth. Yeah, there was strange situations come up.

Gallagher:
Most of the fighting at that time in the Pacific was the Marine Corps invasions. That was in Sipan and Okinawa, Iwo Jima. And I landed on Guam, which was a staging area to be shipped out to the war zones. They were still fighting on Okinawa. So, we felt that’ll be our next jaunt, but then that ended. We didn’t get any reports of the casualties until we got back in the States, really, that Schreiner had been killed on Okinawa. They were on patrol and the Japanese were waving the white flag and then shot instead. I think, when he was on patrol, he ran across Bauman when he was shot the day before, or two days before that. He ran across his buddy, who he played next to. Kinda sad.

Breitenbach:
As a youngster on the team, as a neophyte so to speak, those were two guys I looked up to and I admired them. I admired, not only how they played the game, but I admired them for the persons that they were.

Roberts:
Some of the news was a little slow getting to us, I don’t know just when we found out about Dave, and Bob Bauman at the same time. That was sad to hear about them. They’d only been there a short time when it happened (sighs) But that’s war.

Janet Roberts:
It was just a way of life at that time. We coped, as you do when you have to.

Breitenbach:
It’s kind of hard to rationalize why them and why not me. How could I be so lucky to be living here at the age that I am and their lives were snuffed out in their 20s. That’s hard to accept at times.

Ace of Aces

Newsreel:
This week, a hero fell in our ranks, the Army Air Force’s Ace of Aces Major Richard Ira Bong. Age 24 from Poplar, Wisconsin, a town you probably never heard of until a P-38 lightning fighter blazed it’s name in white-hot lead across South Pacific skies. Poplar, Wisconsin, population 461, sent 64 of her sons to war, one of them was Richard Ira Bong, a stocky farm boy, who was first to crack Captain Eddie Rickenbacker’s record of the last war. Dick Bong, a sandlot ball player, who shot 40 enemy planes from the sky. Dick Bong, clear-eyed youngster with puffy red cheeks and turned up nose, who was to become the Army Air Force’s ranking Ace of World War II. Tonight, Dick Bong is no longer with us. He leads a great formation of other brave airmen into the infinite, flyers who gave their lives so the Army Air Forces might spread strong protective wings around the world. Perhaps the person most fitted to pay tribute to his achievement in this war is a man who attained a similar position in World War I, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. Here with us tonight is Captain Eddie in person.
Eddie Rickenbacker:
In thinking of Major Richard Bong, I find it impossible to regard him in the narrow aspect of an individual. When I think of Dick as a friend who is no longer with us, he ceases to be just one man who died. Instead, he becomes every American whose road to war was a one-way street to the supreme sacrifice. When I think of his mother, wife and father, my heart goes out to them because, to me, they represent at this moment, every American family that has jumped to buy victory with the precious life of a father, husband or son. You see, to me, Major Bong, like every American who has met his death in this war, is an example of the tragic and terrible price we must pay to maintain principles of human rights, of greater value and life itself. We cannot mourn the death of one without mourning the death of all. Richard Bong, by virtue of his courage and skill as a flying fighter, obtained a truly heroic stature that will remain an everlasting inspiration.

VJ Day

(cheering and horns blowing)
Announcer:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Bob Johnson in front of the Riverside Theater in downtown Milwaukee. This is the kind of day you wait three and a half years for and after it finally comes, you hope to high heaven you’re never going to have to wait for another one like it after you consider the cause. You can already hear an awful lot of crowd noise down here, hear the multitudes of people on either side of the streets. I really wish you could be here. Right in front of me is a little fellow. He’s got a purple hat on with a yellow visor. He has a horn. He isn’t blowing. I think the horn’s worn out. What’s your name, young fellow?

Boy:
Billy.

Announcer:
How old are you Billy?

Boy:
Seven.

Announcer:
Do you know what all this noise is for, Billy?

Boy:
Yes.

Announcer:
Why?

Boy:
Because we won the war.

Announcer:
That’s right. Who did we win over?

Boy:
The Japs.

Announcer:
That’s right, we fought the Japanese and we won, didn’t we? You want to remember this day, Billy. You’ll remember it a long time. Here’s a lady over here. What is your name? What do you think of this great celebration?

Woman:
I think it’s just wonderful. I wonder if my two boys are all right.

Announcer:
I have a hunch that they are and they’ll be home one of these days. How long have they been away?

Woman:
Two years.

Announcer:
That’s a long time, isn’t it? A long time of waiting. Think of how happy you’ll be. It’ll be another V-J Day for you when they come home, won’t it? Well, don’t you worry, they will be, too. There’s a gentleman over here, what is your name sir?

Man:
Harry.

Announcer:
Well, Milwaukee certainly turned out proud. Any relatives in the service?

Man:
Yes sir, lots of them.

Announcer:
They’re all coming home before long, aren’t they?

Man:
Fifteen nephews, I think.

Announcer:
Think there’s a chance they’ll try it again?

Man:
I think they’re scared of us.

Announcer:
I think they are, too. I think we’ve got the Emperor scared out of his kimono. I think so, too. I think more and more people are hearing about this every minute because they’re coming in in greater numbers. Every once in a while a flag comes down the street. Here’s a lady here in a lovely red dress. What do you think about all of this celebration?

Woman:
Oh, I’m so happy. This is the happiest day in three years. My husband is in Guam, and he’ll be home sooner than I expected.

Announcer:
Did you think it would end this soon?

Woman:
No, I didn’t, I thought it would go into next year.

Announcer:
When your husband comes back, he’ll return to a very lovely wife, thanks an awful lot.
What is your name fellow?

Man:
Arnold.

Announcer:
What do you think of this Japanese?

Man:
I think it’s best thing

Announcer:
Do you think this is ever going to have to happen again?

Man:
I don’t think so. We’re going to be safeguarded against that.

Announcer:
Do you think the Japanese are going to remember Pearl Harbor as long as we do?
Man:
You bet it.

Announcer:
I guess they will. I never saw so many happy people in my life. Just a minute, here’s a lady we’d like to hear from. What is your name?

Girl:
Patsy.

Announcer:
Do you know what all this noise is for?

Girl:
Because the war is over, it’ll bring home my daddy.

Announcer:
Oh swell, isn’t that fine. Thanks an awful lot Patsy. Goodbye.

Surrender

[Editor’s note: Learn more about how Wally Klunk and his fellow Marines landed on Bougainville.]

Man:
This is Private First Class Al Bershard. I have the great honor of introducing our Commander in Chief, the President of the United States

I think I know the American soldier and sailor. He does not want gratitude or sympathy. He had a job to do. He did not like it, but he did it. And how he did it. Now, he wants to come back home and start again the life he loves. For some of you, I’m sorry to say, military service must continue for a time. We must keep an occupation force in the Pacific. We are all waiting for the day when you will be home with us again. Good luck and God bless you.

Harry Whitehorse:
We were supposed to watch the army disarm. They were supposed to bring in the armament and throw it on the ground, stuff like that. They took their ship’s company and made them march in with the Marines. They would take you and say, “Okay, here’s a gun. Go with them.” Everyone had a Thompson submachine gun, everybody. I mean, the sailors– some of the sailors didn’t even know how to use them. Here they say, “You don’t have to use them. Just hold them.” I was an expert rifleman. My Uncle George used to say, “When you go hunting, here’s a bullet. That’s all you need, because we don’t want any more game than you can shoot with this one bullet.” When we first landed, it was raining or misting. We got on the beach, there were these Japanese fishermen bringing in their nets. They were all full of shrimp, little bitty shrimp. As we’re hauling them in, they’d get a handful of them and just throw them into their mouth. We said, “Geez, how can you eat those things? They’re still alive.” The people were real nice. They understood that the war was over.

Walter Klunk:
Then we got to Japan and there we went into Nagasaki. We couldn’t believe it. You know, you see everything just boom, just flat, two-foot rubble most of it. It’s the most beautiful harbor you’ll ever see in this world. It’s just awesome, really. That’s where, the submarine pens weren’t touched. They missed most of that stuff, so they really didn’t knock out their industrial stuff. It just happened to hit in a residential area, with the hospital and all the doctors. That was a tragic thing. I saw the people that were burnt. It was horrible. A lot of them, their faces were disfigured. They were walking around, some of them, but it was terrible because they cleaned out– all the hospitals completely were blown up, with about 80% of the doctors. So they didn’t have, really, the medical stuff was ruined. But all the rich homes and that, back in them houses, never touched. Railroad tracks– They had planes and all those mountains, and big artillery stuff. You could have pounded that all day with 16-inch guns, bombs. You wouldn’t have touched it. The minute you landed, they would’ve come out and they would have blew us right out of the water. That’s why, when someone says they were against the atomic bomb, I took issue on that. I said, “Listen, if that wouldn’t have happened, I don’t think I’d be here today because they were waiting for us.”

Bob Sonnenberg:
You know what this young punk did? They had electric trains. Where does that go? That goes to Tokyo. I said, “It does? I’m going to go down there and see what it’s like.” Everything leveled. I get up to Tokyo, they were all laying low because I guess it was better to be safe than to be sorry. They didn’t know what was going to happen. You can’t blame them really, part of the war game.

Klunk:
I was acting Sergeant by that time and I had my own jeep and I could go anywhere I wanted to go. I got to meet a lot of people, a lot of Japanese people. I was invited into their homes. When you go in there, you take your pistol off, your shoes off and you lay them down. They would protect you. If anyone else tried to come in there or bother you, they would give up their life for you. That was their custom. Really, our major job was to protect them from our own soldiers. That was my job.

Whitehorse:
When we were ashore, they were having the Japanese Army come in and lay down their arms, they had their guns. They’d lay them down. Their pistols, they’d lay them down, but when they were coming towards us, it was about six wide and as far as you could see. There was just thousands of them, you know. Then, some of these officers had these big Sumari swords, big long swords. They didn’t want to lay theirs down, because they said they belonged to the family. We had an officer that was pretty good. He would take their names and put them on their swords, so afterwards, they got them back. But a lot of the officers took those swords, took them home. That wasn’t good for the relationship between the peoples.

Announcer:
Attention, the people of the world, World War II is about to come to its official closing. We’re on the Pacific fleet flagship U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay for the signing of the surrender of Japan.

Sonnenberg:
We were at 1,500 feet and were watching on the fantail, that’s the back end of the main deck of our ship, the Wisconsin. They were signing the peace treaty on the back end of the Battleship Missouri, which was tied up to the dock. A 19-year-old, how do you think it makes a man feel? Look at what’s taking place, a world event taking place, and here I am only 1,500 feet away from them watching MacArthur sign that peace treaty, and with the Japs. How many can say that?

Douglas MacArthur:
The issues involving divergent ideals and ideologies have been determined on the battlefields of the world. And, hence, are not for our discussion or debate. It is my earnest hope and, indeed, the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.

Announcer:
Symbolically, during the latter part of the signing of the document by the representatives of these allied nations, the sun, which has been behind the clouds here at Tokyo Bay until almost the very end of the signing, came through the clouds and we have sunshine. It shone down on the assembled might of the vast allied fleet here on this broad stretch of water.

Sonnenberg:
You see, that truly makes an impression on a 19-year-old.

Home Again

[Editor’s note: Explore Herbert Hanneman’s vivid oral history recounting the brutality endured during the Bataan Death March and as a P.O.W in a Japanese steel mill. Watch additional footage of Lyle Hougan describing battle humor and the making of a “gung ho soldier.”]
Announcer:
Listen, the time is getting close when G.I. Joe will come home. In fact, he’s been coming home already. Are we, in the home front, ready to face him, to help him become readjusted, to help him regain his foothold in society? You say we are. Remember, the veteran who comes home is a social problem, the major social problem of the post-war world. Not always, but often, he’s a problem because he’s maimed, crippled, destitute, cold and in hunger. These things he is from no fault and desire of his own, but solely because we’ve used him up, sacrificed him.

Herb Hanneman:
The first time that I got weighed, I weighed 90 pounds. I swear, by the time I got to San Francisco, I must have weighed almost 200. Eventually, those of us from the Midwest around here, they put us on a hospital train and we came to Galesburg, Illinois. We pulled in at night. The next day being Sunday, they weren’t ready to take us at the hospital. So, I think the nurse in charge of our car, we talked her into letting us go downtown Galesburg on a Saturday night. She even called some taxis for us and we didn’t have any money. We hadn’t been issued money yet, but the taxi drivers wouldn’t take any money. We went downtown and went into a bar and couldn’t buy anything, but nobody would let us go thirsty, believe me. Of course, we were in no shape, two beers and we were drunk. That’s exactly what happened. We got back to the railroad car and about the time they were going to take us in, the doctor said to us, “Hell, they’re drunk. We can’t examine them.” So they put us back on the car again. We slept it off and waited until the next day. Then, finally, I was able to get back to Madison, Wisconsin. Low and behold, I found out that my girlfriend, before we had gone in, was still single, so I found her. Low and behold, she was willing to go out with me. One of the things they did for us, when they gave us our discharge, as P.O.W.s, they gave us a vacation to a city of our choice and a couple of hotels of our choice with all expenses paid for two weeks, except for liquor. They wouldn’t pay for any liquor. By that time, I had proposed to my dear wife and she had accepted. So, we got married and we had a two-week honeymoon in Chicago. Our room number was 1215 and that’s the total amount of my bill after two weeks because most everybody, with my uniform on, could see I’d been a P.O.W., they wouldn’t let me buy drinks. Occasionally, we could buy drinks and that was at $12.15.

Man:
The army discharged me. Ever since then, until a little while ago, I was a soldier impersonating a civilian.

Announcer:
Impersonating a civilian?

Man:
I wore no uniform and I drew no pay, but in my heart and the way I thought, I was still a member of Company K.

Announcer:
What about your family?

Man:
They needed help, too, at least as much as I did. They tried hard, but they just couldn’t understand me, the stranger who came home in the body of their son.

George Bloczynski:
My brothers, there was four of us in. Ray went down through Africa and up into Italy and Sicily. Vern, I guess he stayed in England all the time. John was a navigator on an airplane. None of them injured or anything. It was quite a thing to come back. I boarded ship and came home. I stopped in Milwaukee. I had my uniform cleaned and pressed, shoes shined. I came home a Marine. Mother couldn’t believe it. She said, one came home and he was kind of in his cups a little bit. Next one came home, he was a little worse than that. Next one came home, he was worse yet. She said, “My gosh, when I thought of you coming home–” because I was the only one that really got into the shooting end, you know and she knew it. She says, “When I thought of you coming home, what in the world is he going to be like?” I come home cold sober. Folks had prepared wonderful meals, Thanksgiving-like, you know. I couldn’t eat it. Golly, my stomach just wouldn’t take that food. Mother said, “What’s wrong with you? Your aunt and I worked all day preparing the meal and you don’t eat.” I said, “I just can’t eat good food anymore.” She says, “Well, what do you want?” I said, “Make me some potato soup for goodness sake.” I said, “That’s what I want.”

Man:
Maybe we’re just about the same guys who went away. I’m sure most of us are. And we both ought to be glad we are because we’ve got to live together, all of us. It’s just that, well, some of us have spent a few weeks, or months, or a year living with fear and horror, that’s all. It did something. It was bound to.

Woman:
Yes, you were there, while we’ve just gone on living on Main Street, no wonder our thoughts and ways must seem small and narrow to you.

Man:
No, I wasn’t going to say that, but it’s a little bit true maybe, yeah. Except that, don’t forget, it was that same Main Street I wanted to get back to so much I could taste it.

Lyle Hougan:
I went back to the farm, I had a home to go to. We got back here to the Stoughton area and, of course, we were kind of at loose ends, we didn’t know just what we wanted to do. I stuck with it for a while. My folks were pretty lenient because we didn’t behave too well because, I suppose, part of it was celebrating being alive. So, some of our weekends got to be pretty hectic. Most every Saturday night, at least, we’d have to go out and make the rounds. We got to be kind of clannish. You learn to sort people out. Up on the front line, you just about knew who you wanted to have alongside of you that you could depend on. There were several cases, a few out on the farm where the boys were kept out of the draft by picking up an extra farm or something like that, you know. We didn’t appreciate that. It didn’t make any difference, they wouldn’t have been any good anyway. In general, we were treated pretty well. Most of them were glad that you came back and showed it, but some of the families you know, that had lost somebody were a little bit jealous. You can’t blame them. And you could tell that. You tried to kind of ease over it, you know, and that was an undercurrent there. How come he came back and my boy didn’t?

GI Bill

Announcer:
This fall, America’s colleges and universities are playing host in a large scale to a new kind of student, veterans getting a free education under the G.I. Bill of Rights. What do these soldier students think of the educational deal America has given them?
Man:
I’m sure that there are a lot of prospective dischargees listening in right now. I know they’d appreciate a word of advice from you fellows.

Man:
Well, I think the fellows will have to make up their own minds. I earnestly believe this is a chance of a lifetime for those that are seriously interested in education. I’m single and getting along on $50 a month, where as I used to get $246 as a B-24 navigator. I figure getting an education will pay off in the long run. There are thousands of other ex-soldiers here who feel the same way about it that I do.

Larry Landgraf:
I was anxious to get on with it when I came home. Unfortunately, in little old Hayward there wasn’t much as far as employment was concerned, till I met my girlfriend’s cousin, and he suggested I look into going to the University of Wisconsin. The G.I. Bill, I think, was probably one of the best government programs that they’ve ever done.

John Cumming:
Boy, that was a wonderful program because it gave you an immediate opportunity. I had no money. My folks didn’t have enough money to send me to a University. Because of that, I was able to get training at the University for my undergraduate work and then later graduate work.

Bob Swanson:
The maximum you could get was 48 months of schooling from them. My last check from my G.I. Bill was to type my PhD thesis. So, my education was paid totally down to the very end. So, I graduated from college with a zero debt. It was just an absolutely fabulous thing.

George Miller:
Depending on how long you’d been in, you got a month of education for every month of service. I think that was it. I had been in for 44 months, so I got 44 months of education. They paid all of your fees, your tuition. They paid for all your books and you got a subsistence allowance along with that.

Swanson:
Seventy-five dollars a month for housing, and so forth. Of course, in those days, $75 a month was big money. Most of the men there were G.I.s and we didn’t have much housing in Menomonie. We had 30 double units there for if you were married and had at least one child, you could live there for $20 a month. There was great camaraderie, of course, with these people there. They had been in all of the services everywhere.

Announcer:
Good evening. We have now begun to work towards the goals for which we fought the war. Now we can get on with our job of building a greater America. Within 10 months, the army plans to discharge approximately six million, and the navy, 2,008,000.

Cumming:
I realized that war meant death and destruction, which it did, but it also brought a new life for people. These people that had seen the world and were able to make a real contribution. They were ready to do it. I was about 20 something. I came back and I was ready to jump into anything.

Landgraf:
I had one year of Extension up in Hayward and I had mediocre to poor grades. When I got back, I saw what education could do, because I had an opportunity to apply for Officer’s Candidate School. I sailed through everything until I came to math. I had some problems with that. I said to myself, if I had a college education, I could have been an officer, I could have been a pilot, who knows what would have happened, what road that would have taken me down. Then I started studying and I ended up graduating with honors, even making up for my poor grades the first year.

Swanson:
The heads of the big universities were opposed to the G.I. Bill, many of them. The president of Harvard was not hot on it because he said you’re going to have all of these loafers coming back out of the service and they’ll just hang out for four years in these colleges just fooling around. Well, they hadn’t figured on what these guys were like, of course, because especially those who were married, they were taking as many credits as they could take because they wanted to get out and get a job right away. Many people, who had been very poor students in high school and early college, turned out to be exceptionally fine people.

Miller:
There’s no question the veterans kind of dominated the campus, set the pace for it. They were by and large very good students so that there was always an academic quality to the life. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed myself more in my entire life than I did in graduate school. I knew why I was there. I was working hard at it, but at the same time we were having fun.

Landgraf:
I can remember coming down to the university. We were part of the biggest class that the university had up until that point. They were amazed at all the G.I.s because, when they came back, they came back to study. They didn’t come back to join fraternities. They didn’t come back to play around. They didn’t come back to go to the Badger Tavern. I’m sure we held the professors’ feet to the fire.

Cumming:
It created a trained category of people that were really helpful to the new economy in this country. We were an available labor supply that could perform all the functions and activities to build a new civilization here in America. We were eager to make use of that. You know, you’ve got hundreds of thousands of trained people immediately out into your industries and your universities and everything. And you trained a whole generation, our country did.

Swanson:
Somehow you wish there was a way that we could do that all the time, but this was just a group that really fell into it right.

Miller:
So many people were able to get an education that would not have gotten it otherwise, higher education. It was a major contributor to the whole society. It was a happy time for everybody. The prosperity that just never came to an end. I look back on those years with great pleasure. I think lots of people felt the same way that I did. Yeah.

Navigating

Song:
Coming in on the wing
And a prayer
Announcer:
Coming in on a wing and a prayer, you think you can land that crate?

Man:
I think so sir.

Announcer:
What happened?

Man:
We were smacking our target, dropped our eggs. All of the sudden the navigator sees it coming in plenty fast.

Fighter Pilots/Soldiers:
Approaching off right wing sir.

Right. Here he comes.

Look at that baby drop.

Give it to him! Give it to him!

How’s our hot lead tape?

We got ’em. That’s shooting men.

Hey, doesn’t that motor sound bad?

Our left wing’s plenty shaky, too.

We’ll make it somehow, and brother, what a story we’ve got to tell.

Oh, boy.

Song:
From the name on the wing
And a prayer

Oscar Boldt:
You knew you were going to be in it one way or another. The thing that I found interesting in reflecting back on this, is that we all were willing to go, we wanted to go and I often think of Ernie Pyles’ comment that they went to war with a little more thought than it was the right thing to do. I never wanted to be a pilot for good reason. On my first airplane ride I got airsick. I always liked math and navigation seemed the best place for me. So I was classified as a navigator. I’m not known for early success. I was slow to maturement. But on the navigation, I got to the point where I could predict very accurately when we would get home. If you’re in a plane, the belly of an airplane and somebody tells you 30 minutes or 12 minutes, that’s a relief to them. Well, if I told them 12 minutes, they looked at their watch. In 12 minutes they looked down and here’s their airfield. So, they started calling me “Hero,” and I liked the idea of the recognition. I was no hero. My crew wasn’t a hero, but we did our part. During the service, you have a lot of goals, one is to survive. Second is to try to make something of yourself. Third is to improve your lot and that’s why so many took advantage of the education that was made available to them. The construction business, my grandfather was in it, my father was in it, I’m in it, my son’s in it, and I hope my son’s son will be in it. It’s a wonderful business to try to run as a navigator. Money in a construction project is gas on a bombing run. If you use too much gas, you can’t get to the target and get home, or you can get to the target, but you can’t get home. Construction projects are the same thing. You use too much money, you can build the building and go broke, or you can not build it and get home and go broke, the same thing. Every day I used it. We have to watch the winds.

Changed Lives

[Editor’s note: Read Annette Howard’s oral history to learn more about her experiences as a woman Marine.]
Segment from “Ozzie and Harriet”:
That’s probably Sergeant Mulligan now.

Woman:
Well, thank goodness the room’s all in order. Let’s go let him in.

Woman:
Good evening. I’m Sergeant Mulligan of the Marines.

Man:
Why, I, I, I(laughter)
Suddenly, you’re a girl.

Woman:
Oh, no, I’ve been one for years. (laughter)

Woman:
I’ll tell you what we’ll do. First, we’ll have a nice home-cooked dinner, and then Ozzie will take us all dancing at the parade for Sergeant Mulligan. Come on in. What’s the matter, Ozzie?

Man:
Well, I’ve gotten used to girl cab drivers, girl policemen and even girl telegraph boys, but I never thought I’d see the day when I’d be dancing cheek to cheek with a Marine. (laughter)

Annette Howards:
My parents separated, so my mother raised four children by herself. We lived in a middle class neighborhood, very ethnic. My brother grew up with friends that he went through elementary school all through high school. So, all these boys were just like my brothers. Our home, our dining room was their clubhouse. When the war came, all these boys decided to enlist. They weren’t going to wait to be called up. They were scattered to the four winds. So, I lost all my brothers, like eight of them all at one time. I told my mother I want to enlist in the military. Of course, that was a big no no. Girls just didn’t leave home. So I waited. I knew I had to be 20 in order to be on my own. I decided I’m going to wait for the Marine Corps. If you go, you’re going to go with the best. This is how I felt.

Ruben Hale:
I had such a backwards start down in Arkansas. We had good schools in the city, but in the rural area, the county put very little money into the school for blacks. They didn’t build a building. We went to school in the church house. I was a farm worker, working the farm. I could have been deferred, but I preferred to go in the service. Most of my friends, who had declared themselves farm labor, they told me that, “Why are you going into the service? You’re going to get killed.” Well, I’m still here and they gone.

Howards:
Somebody messed up marching and we got chewed out. The worst thing they could call you, don’t ask me why, but they were called bucket heads, like you were empty-headed. I sat and I cried. I got that one cry out of my system and then you began to take pride in what you were doing. When we got our uniforms, then you felt like a Marine. It just all came together. You always felt, with apologies to the other services, that you were just one cut above the best. This is the way a Marine feels.

Hale:
I felt good about being in the army because, when you’re going in, they give you this military mechanical test to see where they can fit you in. As far as mechanical, I worked on this farm. I was just a young man, but when the tractor would break down, the boss didn’t take it to the shop, he put it to me. I would fix it. So, when I went in and took this mechanical test, I scored so high, they wrote me out right away and sent me to a special school.

Howards:
The men accepted us. It took them a while, I think it took them half a day to accept that the women could do their part, that a woman mechanic can lug along a big heavy toolbox by herself. She didn’t need a leg up to get up on the wings of a plane. She’s very capable of doing that, that we women were very capable of doing what the men were doing. By the end of the day, we were just another marine. They had WACs with the Army, the WAVES with the Navy, SPARS, the Coast Guard, but the Marine Corps, they asked General Vandergrift what he wanted the women to be known as. He said, “They are known as Marines.” We didn’t have an acronym, but they did call us BAMs, B-A-M-S. If anybody called me that, I said, “You better mean Beautiful American Marine or you’re going to get a kick in the shins.” But we were known as women marines. That’s what they felt, the esprit de corp of the Marine Corps. I know, if I see a marine on the street or if somebody has a marine sticker on their car, I can walk up to them, put my hand out and say, “Semper Fi, mac.” And he will greet me like a lost brother.

Song:
Bring on those
Wonderful men (applause)

Announcer:
Nice going, Virginia. Thank you. And that, fellas, ties up the good ship mail call for another week. But before we leave you, there’s just one more thing that I’d like very much to say. I’ve seen how much entertainment has meant to you men. It’s important to you, but not half as important as the job that you’re doing for us. Remember the future you are building. This is George Murphy saying goodnight. (applause)

Hale:
After the Japanese surrendered, they started processing us to go back to the States. They told us, when we got off the ship, that everybody had to go get a haircut, You’ve got to look clean, and everything. We don’t want anyone going home, looking like a vagabond. You have to notify your family that you’re back in the States. We didn’t have telephones down in Arkansas in the rural area, so I had to send a telegram to notify my people. When I got to my little home town, nobody was there, not a soul. They had a curfew in the town. So I’m there with my bag on my shoulder and walking down, the town is dark. Some people came by and recognized me and they said, “You can’t walk the streets after 12 o’clock.” Well, I’m walking. What else could I do? Then, when I got home, my wife and everything, they were surprised, “Why didn’t you notify us?” The next day after I was home, the telegram came. When I came back, I was a much smarter, wiser person. I did not want any part of the farm. I ain’t working the farm no more. I’m going into something else.

Howards:
My sisters said to me on more than one occasion, “Why do you make such a big deal out of two years?” But those two years were the best years of my life. I think that really shaped me, made me what I am. I’ve never regretted it. The only thin I regret was that we were never given the opportunity to stay in service. Once the war was over, you were handed your discharge papers, your pay to go home, goodbye, go back to the kitchen. I miss it. I wasn’t ready for civilian life, to become a brand new bride, a mother right off the bat. I suddenly became the traditional housewife with the husband the head of the family making all the decisions, where, for two years, I had been on my own, making my own decisions. Now, suddenly, he was the head of the family. It all, very suddenly, reverted back to the way it was. That was a very difficult time.

Hale:
I don’t regret going into the service at all, not at all. I had an attitude that I’m going to make it no matter what happened. I had read about the Milwaukee School of Engineering. I came to Milwaukee. When I finished, then went to a company in Cudahay. That was the type of work that I really wanted. When I got inside that plant, I said, “This is it. I’m not going to ever have another job.” I saw what I wanted and with my engineering training, I had no problem climbing the ladder. I went from a common laborer to one of the top management.

Howards:
We were going to the Women’s Memorial, the dedication in Washington. They encouraged anybody, who had a uniform, to wear their uniform. I wore my dungarees. I wore both set of dungarees. That’s what I paraded around in, my dungarees. Over 30,000 women showed up there. Even those 60 years, we’re all approaching our 80’s and you see these women, they still take pride. Oh, they looked wonderful. Then they had a candlelight march over the bridge. We weren’t marching, we were just walking and talking. Then somebody in front of us evidently was a drill sergeant. She starts singing cadence. And all of the sudden, we found all the people around us start chiming in, singing back to her and we were marching. It’s hard to explain. It’s like 60 years just melted away. We were marching across the bridge. It was a very emotional weekend.

Narrator:
We are who we are because of the things that happened to us in our lives. We are also who we are because of what happened to a very special generation, the generation that gave us the legacy of World War II.

Announcer:
Well that wraps me up and puts me away until tomorrow about this same time. Thanks for your cards, letters and requests. It’s really swell to hear from you. Tomorrow, then, this is your G.I. Gal Jill saying good morning to some of you, good afternoon to some more of you, and to the rest of you, goodnight. This is the armed force’s radio service

Major funding for Wisconsin World War II Stories was provided by the John and Carolyn Peterson Charitable Foundation; Duard and Dorothea Walker; Demco, serving society through our nation’s libraries for more than 100 years, a John E. Wall family-owned business; contributors to the Wisconsin Program Fund and the National Endowment for the Humanities.