To many, Dorothea Lange's haunting photograph of a migrant mother captures the hopelessness and despair of the Great Depression.   The Wall Street crash of October 1929 acted as a catalyst, throwing the American economy into  free fall.  By 1932 over a quarter of the American working population were unable to find jobs.  Others lost homes or savings.  Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal did much to mitigate the worst of the suffering but it did not resolve the problem of jump starting the economy.  Recovery would not come until the second World War.   Suddenly Americans of the 1940s were faced with a new, more dangerous crisis, WAR.  But while we may learn of the Depression and World War II through books such as The Grapes of Wrath or  movies such as Saving Private Ryan, we do not always realize the impact on the  lives of everyday people.  Oral interviews with survivors can help to remedy  that omission.  The following selections are taken from student interviews.
Students who interviewed survivors of the Great Depression and World War II found that hard times varied from place to place. The lives of farmers, who lived in tight knit communities and grew their own food, were little affected by the Depression. This was not true, however, for those farmers living in the Midwest who were driven from the land by drought and dust storms, so dense they were often referred to as black blizzards.[For further Information, see The Dust bowl] Unemployed city dwellers were often worse off.

Survival: Farms

• When the price of tobacco collapsed, a North Carolina farmer lost a lot of money, his daughter recalls. He had to resort to selling vegetables from the back of his truck to raise extra money. Church and community helped the family to get through hard times. Yet she learned a lot. The Great Depression taught her to work hard, value her family and friends, and help people who are in need. [Travis L.]
• The Depression interrupted many lives. One young African-American girl, growing up near Montgomery, Alabama, quit school in the seventh grade to work in the cotton fields with her mother, father, and brothers. Her parents also did housework for a rich landowner. Like everyone around them, they were poor, but still shared whatever food they had with neighbors. [Terrance C.]
• If farmers had plenty to eat, they still could not afford store-bought things such as mayonnaise. Nor did they worry about banks since they kept what money they had under the mattress. As one young girl who grew up in a rural area not far from the North Carolina coast put it, you made do with what you had. Her favorite toy was an iron hoop that she pushed around the yard with a stick. Decisions such as going to church were made on the basis of whether the family could afford the gas. Since machines were expensive, you had to do everything by hand, she remembers. [Danielle D.]
• Even before the depression, many Americans, particularly in rural North Carolina, had a hard go. One young boy remembers his father, who had been wounded in World War I, scrapping and clearing unpaved roads and working for the local railroad. His mother picked cotton in a nearby field, earning about $1.00 a week. The family paid little attention to the closing of the banks since his father put their savings into a cloth bag and buried it in the yard. The problem was that when it rained hard, portions of the bag would stick out from the ground and have to be buried again. One frequent past-time was to walk along the creek bed with his cousins and search for stills used to make moonshine. [Jody W.]
• One Alabama native remembers his father, a foreman of a heading mill that made the tops and bottoms of barrels for flour and other things, struggling to keep the mill running so the thirty five men working for him had jobs. Keeping a family with eight children in clothes was quite a task. Before school started, his mother would order the boys some bib overalls from Sears & Roebuck but make the girl's dresses. People also used patterned flour sacks to make anything from underwear to towels. WPA workers wore blue striped overalls or solid blue if they could afford it. Children in his family started working "real young." By the time he was sixteen, he could occasionally afford a movie which cost a dime, a coke for a nickel and 3 hot dogs for a dime. [David F.]
• To two children of sharecroppers who grew up in Lincoln County (NC) and would later marry, the Depression seemed remote. Neither family had a radio. She graduated after the eleventh grade; he quit school after the eighth at the urging of his father who wanted him to help raise his brothers and sisters and help on the farm. Both had strong family ties. Corn shuckings and wheat thrashings gave families an opportunity to get together. Both were poor. He remembered trading corn for firecrackers at Christmas because they didn't have money to buy them. She remembers annual trips to town to buy a pair of shoes. [Jessica W.]
• For the first three years of her life, she lived in a railroad car. Since one North Dakota native's father worked for the railroad, her family moved when the railroad did. He earned $18 every two weeks. It was his responsibility to plow alongside the tracks to prevent sparks from the engine from starting a fire. Yet this nomadic life suited her. During the summers, she would travel on the train with her father, learning firsthand about different cultures and places. [Katie K.]
• She left school after the 3rd grade, married at 14, and moved in 1923 to a small farming community in Eastern North Carolina not far from the border of her native Virginia. As she put it, "kids back then that were poor like us . . . had to grow up fast." The farm made them self sufficient, even though they brought in extra money by making brooms. They "grew and killed about everything [they] ate," smoking the meat and storing it in cool places. During the winter months, she and her husband would entertain the children by telling them stories. She still remembers a story her husband told of witches hidden in a thicket of woods and vines on their land. Even now she avoids the thicket where creepy demons and mean animals lived in a magic forest. [Caroline N.]
• Life seemed to continue as before for many rural communities. Yet even there, as one Pennsylvanian observed, he and his six siblings missed more and more school in order to help out on the farm and to make ends meet on the family farm. They also knew of other instances where the older children had had to leave school altogether. The only free day when they weren't working was Sunday. They walked together to church and spent the day socializing with neighbors and relatives. For him, the hardest times began after the Depression when his mother died. [Amy S.]
• Exercise to one North Carolina teenager was hoeing corn. Her family subsisted on what they produced on their farm. For cash, they raised tobacco and cotton. They killed hogs, cured the hams and side meat, and stuffed sausage into well cleaned intestines. All around them people raised cattle for milk, butter, clabber cheese, and occasionally for meat. What could be canned on a wood stove was. They picked blackberries, dewberries, white and purple grapes that they made into jellies and preserves. Pickles were made from watermelon rinds. Sundays after church were reserved for meals with family and friends. The family always had a lot of company for Sunday dinner. They ate a lot of chicken. [Emily T.
• Although they lived on a farm, one North Carolina woman remembers her father getting occasional jobs as carpenter, plumber, and general handyman. Not only was money scarce but also certain items such as sugar or clothing were difficult to find. Since gas was expensive, her father had to stop driving his car and put it up on blocks so the tires wouldn't rot. [Carlas S.]
• Since they had little to lose, his family was not as affected by the Depression as others. One Valle Crucis man recalls that his parents worked hard to avoid losing the land that had been passed down to them. While there was a strong sense of everyone being in the same boat, there were some that had lost a lot. But it seemed to him that people who had "too much" lost the most. If a family's vegetable garden did not do well, neighbors would share whatever they could. He was able to find a job with the Civilian Conservation Corps building the Blue Ridge Parkway. But the Depression left a deep impression. It taught him to save "everything" longer. Even today he has to resist " an everlasting urge" to raise food and preserve it in case of harder times. [Andrew H.]
• Work on the farm never seemed to end, one young South Carolinian recalled.  His mother got up before daybreak to cook a huge breakfast, work in the fields all day, cook a large lunch that usually included baked or fried chicken, mashed potatoes, country vegetables, and various pies.  She then returned to the fields for the duration of the day, served leftovers for dinner, and put her family of twelve children to bed.  His father was a cotton farmer who was astute enough to sell his cotton at less than the market price before the bottom dropped out.  Even though he had made the right decision with regard to cotton, he would lose the $200 dollars he had saved in the bank.  In his opinion, Herbert Hoover was a terrible man because he said, “all [that] working people deserved was a pair of overalls and some tobacco.” When he was fifteen, his father died and he had to take over and run the family farm. He married in 1939.  Unlike his family, his wife’s family had barely survived the Depression.  He gave her a nightgown as a present.  One day he found her in bed in the middle of the day, crying since she had thought she would never feel the warmth and comfort of a nightgown.  [Susanna S.]

Survival: Cities and Small Towns

• What one New Yorker couldn't understand was why her bank closed and took her money, not that she had that much. When the bank started paying off several years later, she would receive a check for eleven cents. Altogether, she, her brother and her sister got less that a dollar. The family lived frugally. Only at family reunions did she get to eat "store bought" cookies, cakes, and bread. The family's usual fare was beans and home baked bread. She remembers her mother cooking for "hours and hours" on a little wood-burning laundry stove. Her father milked a neighbor's cow and cleaned its stall so that the family could have two quarts of milk a day. [Khadijah M.]
• Despite the fact that her father had a job as a manager at a local steel mill in her home town of Worcester, Massachusetts, one woman's memories of the 1930s and 40s are tinged with sadness. She lost friends when they moved away after their fathers lost their jobs. At least twice a week, her parents would have people over to dinner. After dinner, they would spend hours talking about the economy. She remembers well the sense of melancholy that accompanied these discussions. The war further interrupted her life. Her husband was overseas when their first child was born. She could not help but be bitter at the world for sending her husband to fight in a war she did not understand. [Alicia C.]
• As an only child whose parents were teachers with a steady income, one New Jersey girl did not have to worry about money. For those whose economic situation was stable, things were actually cheaper. She frequently took a train into the city to see shows, including the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. Summers were spent at camp where her parents served as counselors. Yet as her father realized there were dark clouds on the horizon. In his view, the country was overspending and growing too fast. He anticipated an economic slowdown but never to the degree to which it actually occurred. Like other Americans, her parents were "completely unprepared for the changes that came with the Great Depression." For her, the most poignant memory of the Depression was seeing her friend's fathers standing in line for bread and soup. [Lewis N.]
• Sometimes the Depression make its impact in small ways that were nonetheless devastating to one New Jersey twelve year old. The son of first generation immigrants, he remembers his carpenter father struggling to keep a roof over their heads, working mostly for small firms on contract. In 1933 his father lost his job, the same year he joined the Boy Scouts. He still remembers his father going out every day, at the same time, dressed the same way to look for work. The problem was his family could not afford the six dollars he had to have to buy a scout uniform, money. Somehow, he was not sure how, he got a uniform, perhaps from the Rotary Club that sponsored the troop and gave him the opportunity to spend five years in an organization he loved. [Chris W.]
• The course of some people's lives was little altered by the Depression. One Mars Hill man, the son of a Mars Hill professor, completed his PhD at the college and taught physics at his alma mater for forty-two years. He lettered in four sports and some fifty years later still plays tennis everyday. As a teenager, he got a job with the WPA building a high school. He heard the news of Pearl Harbor on the radio and joined the reserves. After graduation, he was called up. As a scientist, he was particularly alert to the impact of the war on technological innovation, a virtual "technological revolution." [Brad B.]
• One Yadkin county native still remembers how well his mother managed a household of ten, helped people who were worse off than her family, and worked in a textile mill. She was "sweet, caring, unselfish, and loving" to everyone. She would fill a wagon that his father had made for him with food to everyone in his community that was within walking distance. Sometimes she would buy groceries for whole families and he would deliver them. As a result, the house was always filled with company. When he was twenty-two, he was drafted and would serve five years in the US Army in Europe. His army experience was "an unforgettable" and he doesn't "want to forget it." [John Wayne H.]
• One eighteen year old recalls how much his father, a carpenter and a Deacon in the church, did for his African-American community of Lawnside (NJ). Many families, unsure whether they could make it through the Depression, were taken in by his father who provided them with food and shelter. His compassion made the community stronger and more willing to work together. His father enlisted for the draft but he was one of the lucky ones who did not get picked although he did lose a friend at Pearl Harbor. [Shawn P.]
• Born in 1922 in Stokes county, it seemed as if the life of one young girl was bad enough even before the Depression. When she was two years old, her father shot himself, leaving her mother a widow for many years. Since it was important to her to farm the land her father left, she often worked from sun up to sun down when she was not in school. Leaving school after the fourth grade, she lived for a while with her mother's relatives. Things got a little easier when her mother remarried. Still she worked long, hot days in the fields growing flue cured tobacco. For butter and milk, she milked the one dairy cow once a day. After she left school, she hired out to other farmers to prime tobacco, earning seventy-five cents that she gave to her family. When the crops were not in season, she babysat. At 18 she married but eventually found a job at RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company making good money. She worked there until she retired. [Jessica C.]
• Her mother moved to America from Ireland shortly before one Hartford (CT) woman was born. Like her mother, she too would marry right out of high school and begin to have children. This was common, she explained, because for most women college was not an option and because most Americans believed that a woman's place was in the home. Her "job" became even more difficult when her husband, a marine officer, went abroad. She thought Roosevelt was a president "for all the people," helping the country to get through one of its hardest times. [Michael C.]
• One Pittsburgh woman, whose parents had both gone to college, too completed her education at the Universities of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon despite the Depression. Until she joined the Navy during World War II, she lived at home and worked in a library. The family was comfortably well off, although her father, a doctor, had lost money in real estate and rental properties and often found that his patients could not afford to pay him. Many of her friends and relatives also struggled to find work. Educated men, engineers, for example, would all be working in gas stations but it was the steel workers who had it really tough. The companies would frequently fire them a year before retirement just so they wouldn't have to pay them. [Kathryn W.]

• The "biggest obstacle" one Greensboro woman had to overcome was the death of her parents during the depression. After her father's death, her mother did what she could to keep the family going, selling milk from their two cows and planting a garden. When she died, all she had was her two brothers. Church, where she and her brothers spent much of their time, became a center for their lives. [Jack D.]
• Even though he was young at the time, one seventy four-year old still remembers leaving his family's farm. When they drove across and old wooden bridge, their truck was so heavy that one of the tires went through the bridge. His father and uncle had to find a board and slide it underneath the tire. About fifteen years ago, he visited the same bridge and the same board was still in place. He also remembers eating cornmeal mush three times a day and a lot of sugar sandwiches. Even today he can't leave any food on his plate. [Brett L.]

• As a teenager one Alabama native moved with his family to Hickory (NC) in 1937. His father, a high school teacher, never lost his job but did lose some money when the bank he had invested in went under. Church was important not only for its intrinsic value but as a social outlet, where during church picnics or choral events, he could sit next to his "love interests." He was, he immodestly acknowledges, "quite a ladies man." He even learned of Pearl Harbor while at church. On his twenty-first birthday, he enlisted in the Army and served in France for six months. Despite the devastation it wrought, the war had made possible " a huge industrial expansion that had literally lifted the US out of the depression's hole." Women had stepped forward to take men's places in the factories. For him it was a "fresh and exciting" time in American that he would not have traded for anything. [Josh C.]
• Churches were often the last hope to many in need. In the small farming community of Blount Creek (NC), one man remembers there were a lot of people who didn't have food. Individuals did what they could but mostly it was his church fed them, especially during holidays like Christmas. When he started dating at nineteen, he and his date would meet Wednesday nights and Sundays at the church. [Tiffany C.]
• Family was all-important to one Grand Rapids (MI) teenager. They had a "hut mobile," a four door, cloth topped car with curtains on the inside that they would drive to his grandparent's house. Along the way they ALWAYS got a flat tire. One game he played with his friends almost cost him his life. Lots of kids would pass the time in rail yards, jumping on trains. Chased by railway detectives, he tried to grab a ladder on a moving train but slipped and fell under the train. Three cars rolled over his arm, cutting it off but sealing the skin without ripping his jacket. He was five years old. Despite his disability, he lived an active life, becoming an Eagle Scout, and working "in the muck" pulling weeds and at his father's service station. [Jon N.]
• Often family and church were the only things that kept people from giving up completely. To one North Carolina woman raised on a cotton farm in the mountains, "the family was life." She took solace in the fact that while the entire world was in turmoil around them, she could still count on her church and school. Everyday, they saw the homeless and the lost on the road to nowhere. Her father was concerned that one of them might seek shelter in his barn, light a cigarette and burn the barn down. He didn't mind helping people but it seemed to him that they were starting to act different, "desperate." After 1941, the government rationed items such as rubber, and other materials necessary for the war effort. It wasn’t that difficult, she recalls, "the Great Depression had already hardened the American people. It prepared us for that war." [Chris M.]

• As one of twenty one children there was no question one Roanoke Rapids man would start work at an earlier age. He quit school after the third grade to work on the family farm. He even credits the Depression for his family growing closer. As he got older, he went to work for a construction firm in Roanoke Rapids, Stone-Webster and worked on two steel bridges, one just across the border in Southern Virginia, one in Richmond. He also worked as a janitor at a textile mill. For recreation, he played fast pitch softball for the textile's team that competed with teams from other textile mills. He liked going to Washington where he could watch the old Senators play for five dollars. He could drive to Richmond, have breakfast, east lunch in DC, go to the ball game and the Fox Theatre and still have money left over. [Roger L.]

• People in rural areas took work where they could find it. One Ridgeway (VA) boy remembers what it was like to always be "in farmer's debt." Not only did the family lose their car, they lived "from harvest to harvest." When not growing tobacco, his father worked in a CCC camp. Not until 1934 did they get electricity. After high school, he would follow his mother in finding work at a local textile mill, threading and cleaning the loom. He remembers seeing representatives of AFL or the CIO around the mill but these efforts to unionize textile workers more often than not ended in violence and were on the whole unsuccessful. [Marcus L.]

• Even professionals had to supplement their income. One Pennsylvania boy recalls his father, a social worker, was also the janitor at an elementary school. After his father lost his job, he worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). He himself would join the U S Navy in order to get additional training as an electrician. These skills came in handy after the war when he found work in an electric company. He served in Europe but like others, was relieved when the war ended in 1945. [Alison B.]
• Born in 1929, the year of the Wall Street crash, the family of one New York woman had relatives who helped them get through hard times. Her grandfather's hardware store provided a job for her father, food from their farm, and housing for her family. Others in Harrison Valley were not so fortunate. Not until such New Deal relief programs as the CCC and later the WPA began were people able to find jobs. CCC workers built stone walls at Colten Point so people would not fall over the cliff, cleaned up parks, and worked on the roads. [Kim L.]
• Many people moved in with relatives during the Depression. One Elon (NC) woman remembers paying her parents a dollar a week for rent. Along with her extended family--she had 10 siblings who lived within a few hundred yards of each other, they managed to get by. No one ever "went without food on the table." After graduation from high school, she found work at a local cotton mill, while her parents farmed. Her father supplemented his income by running a taxi service to the beach and back. It was his view that of all of the New Deal programs, social security made the most direct impact on people's lives, if for no other reason than to put food on the table. [Jimmy S.]
• One Hoke County native counted her family among the more fortunate in that they held on to their farm, even if "they did not have that much to their names." Economic distress drew people together. She spent much her leisure time attending dances and sometimes going to the theater with friends. When she began to date at eighteen, everyone crammed into the few available cars and donated to the gas fund. Bingo was another favorite activity. Institutions such as family, school, and church were an important part of everyone's lives, unlike today where in her view people are slack about going to church or even talking to their families. The New Deal's WPA also had a direct impact on her community, planting trees and providing work at sewing shops making work clothes for people in need. [Andrew D.]
• For a North Carolina boy who had been working since he was thirteen and whose farm had no electricity, running water or telephones, government programs like the CCC were a godsend. He left his home in Evergreen for Fort Bragg. At Fort Bragg, the men lived four men to a tent. The CCC provided them with clothes, socks, and shoes. His job was to to erect poles for electricity and telephone cables. He was paid thirty dollars a month, some of which he was required to send home to his family. When war was declared, the CCC ended. But the memory of the Depression did not fade away. He still stocks up on items such vegetables and saves money so that he will be prepared for another depression. [Kelly W.]

• To many, Franklin D. Roosevelt brought the country through the darkest days of the Great Depression and World War II. Admired by many and hated by a few, Americans saw him as one of the great presidents, if not the best. In their view, he helped the poor and middle class by creating jobs, boosted the economy, worked for the 8-hour day, started social security "a blessing for us old people," and was a great war leader. One woman "loved his voice" as he reassured the country in his Fireside Chats that it had nothing to fear but fear itself. Businessmen disliked him because he supported regulation and reduced their profits. [Paige A., Travis L., Marcus L., Jimmy S., Libby F., Danielle D.]
• One North Carolina woman growing up in a farming community near Winston-Salem remembers kids on a school bus arguing about the president, one side supporting him, the other calling him "Franklin 'Devil' Roosevelt." In her opinion, he did a good job under the circumstances. When you are attacked as the United States was at Pearl Harbor, you have to fight back. She remembers how tall and straight his wife Eleanor stood. She was handsome, rather than pretty. She recalls a story she heard about Eleanor. It seemed that when the first lady was visiting South Carolina, she went into the homes of some blacks and noticed her picture. She asked the children if they knew who that was and they said, "No, but our mama said if we didn't stop sucking our thumbs we would look like her." [Emily T.]
• The first person in his family to graduate high school, one Edgecombe County man would complete his undergraduate degree in industrial education at North Carolina State University. Although he was in school during the war, he vividly remembers the beginning and end of American participation in the war, the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the 1945 dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war, he thought, had strengthened the country by exposing more Americans to new ideas that led to new advances. Like other Americans, he was ambiguous about Roosevelt. He felt the president's failure to prepare for an attack he knew was coming overshadowed what he had done to deal with the Depression. He was also critical of Roosevelt's lack of candor regarding his disability. [Rand M.]
• The attack on Pearl Harbor distressed one Woodleaf (NC) senior because every boy in her class of thirty enlisted or were drafted. Two would be killed. She would never forget when she first found out about the Holocaust when Movietone News showed the liberation of the concentration camps. After the war, the returning soldiers took advantage of the GI Bill of Rights to go to college and to buy homes. It was the beginning of the baby boom generation since so many marriages had been postponed first because of the Depression and then the war. In her view, Franklin Roosevelt was a great leader, averting a revolution by the army of the unemployed. His optimism and activism shut down banks (for four days) and put people to work with the WPA and the CCC. His fireside chats helped to unify the country. She also admired Eleanor Roosevelt. She was a highly intelligent, compassionate person who acted as her husband's eyes and ears, traveling extensively and reporting back to him. She was criticized for being too liberal and for not staying home as women were expected to do. She had a great deal of sympathy for the underprivileged and disadvantaged and publicly spoke out for the rights of black people. [John H.]

• Even those too young to fight vividly remember the outbreak of World War II. It was, one eleven year old recalls, "a dark and dreary day" when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, not unlike how people felt after September 11. He finds many similarities between the two events. The Japanese knew our weaknesses as did the terrorists, both used unconventional means of warfare, and specifically targeted icons of American supremacy. He desperately wanted to enlist but was only 15 when the war ended. His most unforgettable memory was the prayer his mother said before each meal. She asked God to take care of the soldiers fighting to preserve peace, to bring a quick end to the conflict, and to restore a harmonious world. [Chris W.]
• Many Americans got the news while at the movie theatre. It was there that the one twenty four year old first heard of Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the Navy and was assigned as a torpedo specialist on a destroyer. Destroyers were the front line of defense for the bigger ships. At times, he was not even certain of what ocean he was on. Three of the ships he served on were lost at sea. [David W.]
• Now ninety eight years old, one Garner native still hates war but grants that sometime it might be necessary particularly when you are dealing with people like Hitler. Pearl Harbor was "horrible. . .just like New York." While other looked to help, she fixated on the deaths. Her husband, who fought in the Pacific, really had a thing for the Japanese when he got back. *After Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans living on the West coast were rounded up, told to dispose of their property and belongings, and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. She disapproved of Hiroshima and Nagasaki since so many innocent lives, including children, were lost. Nor did she condone Roosevelt's use of the bomb. (Truman made the final decision but there is little reason to suppose that Roosevelt, had he lived, would not have reached the same decision if it ended the war more quickly and saved lives) [Brent C.]
• Several industries in Reiffton, (PA) converted to making anti-aircraft guns and other war materials. One senior in high school worked evenings and weekends as a chipper in a foundry where they cast huge housings for propeller shafts for ships. He remembers Pearl Harbor as if it was yesterday and one month before his eighteenth birthday, he enlisted in the Navy. He was trained as a radar repair technician and served aboard the USS Oregon City, a new class of heavy cruisers. His most vivid memory was the dropping of the atomic bombs. After the war, the economy underwent a huge industrial expansion, women were recognized for their contributions to the war effort, and workers got better jobs. He wouldn't change being part of it for anything. [Charles P.]
• Pearl Harbor would galvanize the country recalls one veteran who now lives in Gaithersbury (MD). Boys quit school to enlist, people began to anticipate what they would do if America was bombed. They also held scrap metal drives. Used cars, for example, were reprocessed to make weapons such as guns and tanks. He enlisted in July 1945 and was assigned to the USS Kenneth Whiting. Originally designed to repair and refuel seaplanes, after the war the ship was used to observe the effects of Operation Crossroad. Operation Crossroad sent captured Japanese and German ships as well as retired American ones to a deserted Pacific island of Bikini where the effects of the atomic bomb were tested. Two bombs were to be tested, one from the air and the other detonated under water. Yet his most unforgettable memory was "the niceness of people" during the war. When the service trains would go through towns, people would always have something for them such as hot chocolate and cookies. [Chris Y.]
• Not everyone was sent abroad. Some remained in the United States as part of a homeland defense. One North Carolinian enlisted in the US Navy in 1943 and was assigned to the Navy Auxiliary Air Station at Harvey's Point, North Carolina. The danger from German submarines was real. At the beginning of the war, people along the East coast did not even turn their lights out but this soon changed and blackouts were common. Overall he thought Roosevelt did a good job with what he had to work with. He generated a lot of good ideas that led to good government programs as for example the WPA. [Ashley F.]

• For one married couple, the war brought different tensions. He enlisted in the US Navy even before the US entered the war. He took part in convoying ships to England, delivering lend lease supplies to Russia, helped to build bases on Newfoundland, went to North Africa on the U.S.S. York, and was sent to the Pacific where he stayed until April 1945. At the time he was on a destroyer. While attempting to refuel, his ship got caught by a typhoon with winds up to 170 miles per hour and 100 foot waves. Three of the destroyers were sunk with the loss of 800 lives. One of the greatest changes came after the war when many women who had gone to work in the defense factories and elsewhere decided to keep on working, his wife among them. During the war, she had worked in a cotton mill making the material used for uniforms. She still remembers the sound of the train whistle as the men left for war. With the men gone, somebody had to work in the mills and factories and it was the women. [Paige A.]
• Arriving in 1938, one Italian immigrant felt pulled in two directions. Pearl Harbor led to his enlistment in the US Army but the thought of going against his home country "was one of the hardest decisions he had to make." By 1942, he was in Europe. On a number of occasions, he barely escaped death. On one occasion he was the second of four men to dive into a foxhole. The man on the bottom suffocated, the two on top were shot. A few weeks later a grenade was tossed in the same foxhole but did not go off. These near misses was nothing however when compared to taking part in the 1944 Normandy invasion, "a horrific event in his life." To him, Roosevelt not only "brought our dying country out of a depression, but also saved the world." [Emily C.]
• A year before Pearl Harbor one Siler City man was among the first to be drafted. He was assigned to Company A 17th Armored Engineers. Their job was to find and lay mines. He was sent first to North Africa and then Sicily. He arrived in France three days after the Normandy invasion. Other soldiers called his company "Roosevelt's Butchers" in part because of their patches which read "Hell on Wheels." His most unforgettable memory was being surrounded for two days and nights by Germans, unable to move until they radioed for help. After the war, many were uncertain of what they wanted to do. He had left school at thirteen to work in a factory. This uncertainty about his future and the trauma of war he, like many other veterans became an alcoholic. [Todd B.]
• A Washington native got a job at the Navy yard making guns for ships after high school. He actually heard about Pearl Harbor when he left a movie and newsboys on the street were shouting, "Extra! Extra! Bombing at Pearl Harbor." He realized that this was a pivotal moment in American history. In 1942 he enlisted in the Army. After two years he was shipped to Greenland where it was cold, windy, and icy. They had to wear cleats on their shoes so they would not slip on the ice. Greenland was a refueling stop for planes heading over the Atlantic. Sometimes the planes would not be able to take off again for two weeks because the wind was so bad. Temperatures were well below zero. Roosevelt was a "Triple A, Great president. He also admired Truman, especially after he fired General MacArthur. [Rachel R.]
• One California man, who had broken his back earlier and so was unfit for combat, was sent to the Army's Specialized Training Program (ASTP). The purpose of the program was to calculate what parts would be needed for jeeps and trucks after they had been in battle and to also determine how many trucks would be needed to supply rations and munitions to men on the front line. In 1944, he was shipped to Europe landing at Le Harve, France. By early 1945 he was in Western Germany. He was leaning against one of his trucks when four German soldiers ran toward him, looking for someone to surrender to. He also took part in the liberation of Ohrdruf Concentration Camp. He saw the mass graves and the partially burned bodies that had to be cleaned up before the troops could move on. His reply to critics who claimed that the Holocaust never happened was "Don't let anyone ever tell you it didn't happen, because it did." War in general was very confusing when you are a part of it he concluded. Nothing ever went according to plan and things came out of nowhere sometimes, like the four German soldiers wanting to surrender. [Alan M.]
• In 1938 one sixteen old who had lied about his age enlisted in the army. He was sent to For Derussi in Hawaii but was re-assigned before the Japanese attack. At one point, he was selected to organize and train three battalions of black troops in anti-aircraft artillery at Fort Bliss, Texas. The battalions were broken up after failing to meet inspection after three cycles of training. He was assigned to the 109th Infantry regiment which gained fame when it captured two big guns on Omaha beach during the 1944 Normandy invasion. While reconnoitering through a minefield, a German mortar shell hit and killed his lieutenant. He flanked the German position and with his BAR cut a German machine gunner in half. He also remembers liberating a hospital with 150 starving Russian Jewish women. [Vu T.]
• Because one Asheboro man was married, had a child and worked in a plant making material for parachutes as a mechanic, he was not drafted by the Army until late in the war. Wherever he was stationed though, his wife would follow on "a slow hot train" if necessary. As he was training for an invasion of Japan, the war ended and he was sent to Europe instead. As part of his duties, he had to guard Nazi & SS troops. He remembered two of the prisoners in particular, a woman who spoke five languages and the wife of the German air marshall, Hermann Goering. He also stood guard for one day at the Nuremburg War Crimes trial where the top Nazis, including Goering were tried. [Shane U.]
• Twin brothers, born in Jefferson (NC) joined the army in 1944.  Both would serve under General George Patton and his 3rd Calvary. Assigned as machine gunners (guns were mounted on jeeps), they were sent to Austria to round up German as prisoners of war, among them members of Hitler's elite SS.  One of the brothers barely escaped death when one of prisoners attempted to escape by grabbing his M-1 rifle.  He survived only because the German could not  release the safety on the gun.  He also took part in the liberation of Dachau.  "What a terrible sight!  Corpses lying like corwood all stacked one on top of another men, women and children.  Those that were not dead in actuality were the walking dead ...The sight of the ovens was etched upon my mind for eternity.  This horrendous injustice of humanity, especially to innocent children, was the act of an insane man." Now sixty nine, he will never forget what he saw as an eighteen year old.  With tbe war in Europe ended, he returned to the United States to prepare for the invasion of Japan.  In 2001, he was one of the American veterans who participated in the liberation of France honored by France. [Cassandra F.]

• The devastating effect of Pearl Harbor strengthened the resolve of many to defeat the Japanese. One Colorado man enlisted in the Navy in 1944 and would see action in Guam and Okinawa. The action in Okinawa was particularly "hot and heavy." He would be in Okinawa when the atomic bomb was dropped. His most terrifying memory of the war was when his ship was attacked by a Japanese suicide bomber. The kamikaze plane barely missed his ship but struck the mother ship with a loss of ninety lives. His other memory was happier. His ship was only about 400 yards from the U. S. Missouri when the peace treaty ending the war in the Pacific was signed. [Nathan S.]
• One Henderson (NC) man was drafted into the Army in October 1941, two months before Pearl Harbor. Trained as an airline mechanic, by January 1943, he was on his way to India. The CBI (China-Burma-India) was one of the centers of the Allied war effort in the Pacific whose responsibility was to make sure supplies of gas and other war materials reached China. He also helped to train paratroopers, and serviced the planes for the dangerous flights over the Himalayas. [Jennifer S.]
• Drafted in 1943, a Williamston (NC) man received extensive training as a medic before being shipped to New Guinea. In December 1944, he was assigned to a ship scheduled to take part in the liberation of the Philippines from Japanese control. As the naval convoy moved through the narrow and mine-filled straits of the Linguian Gulf, his ship was struck by a Japanese kamikaze plane but managed to keep going. While the navy pounded the shore, and smoke screens obstructed the view, he landed armed only with a gas mask, pistol, and rations for four days. The fighting was intense, the injuries numerous, the facilities to treat the wounded makeshift. Not until later were they able to construct a hospital. The war would finally end on September 2, 1945, his birthday. [Jan-Marie B.]
• A student at Rutgers when the war broke out, one New York native was drafted into the Air Force. In Miami, he received training as pilot. By 1944, the Allies were hitting the Japanese hard, moving from island to island on a plan laid down by General MacArthur. His targets were the islands around New Guinea, San Jose, Mindoro in an effort to re-take the Philippines. Retired, he still misses flying those planes. [Fred S.]
• Drafted in 1943 by the Navy but because he needed a hernia operation, one twenty-four year old had to wait until 1944 to go to war. Sent to Pearl Harbor, he was assigned to a communications unit located in an underground building. Since Pearl was no longer under the threat of an attack, his "best" memory was sitting on a Waikiki beach. He lost friends in the war however, pilots shot down over the English Channel. The war matured him. After the war, he enrolled at UNC where he made straight A's. He appreciated the ground he walked on "even though [he] did not actually fight in the war." The only things he kept from the war were his uniform and a dollar bill that had Hawaii on the back. [Laura C.]
• The shock is what people remember when asked about Pearl Harbor. One twenty year old had been aware of the war in Europe and even had friends fighting there but not until Pearl Harbor did he sign up for the Marine Corps. He was sent to the South Pacific and then to the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. He still remembers the shock when he took part in a cleanup operation in the Philippines. It was a heavily bombed area with dead bodies everywhere. At one point, several hundred starving Japanese surrendered to his commanding officer. He lauded Roosevelt for his part in the development of the atomic bomb. While the bomb took a lot of lives, it also saved American lives, speeded up the end of the war, and allowed him to get home for Christmas. [Kevin C.]
• Now eighty, one retiree sometimes reminisces about his days as a fighter pilot in the Pacific. He flew more than 1500 hours in a Grumman Avenger torpedo plane. The plane was quite large with a fifty-four foot wing span and a crew of two, all of whom survived the war. He had a few close calls. One time his side window was shot out, another while flying over the naval base in Honshu he could see nothing but the orange lights of the ground fire aimed at him. At the end of the war, he flew over the victory parade, amazed at the Allies’ naval superiority, ships as far as the eye could see. It was an unforgettable and amazing sight. [David S.]

• To one Methodist minister and his wife, America's very existence as a nation was dependent on the outcome of the war. They had no doubt that Hitler's ultimate goal was to rule the entire world with the same iron hand he had been using in Europe. After Pearl Harbor, they saw both men and women lining up before recruiting stations while others went to work in defense plants. Gas, tires, meat, coffee, sugar, silk stockings, nylon, Kleenex tissues, bacon grease, scrap metal were all saved and turned in. Everyone wanted to do his part to help win the war. While some Americans thought Roosevelt was a "satan," most Americans believed him to be a savior. His death in April 1945 shortly before the end of the war was a time of national mourning. The end of the war brought many changes, the most important in their view, were the entry of women into all kinds of professions, from garbage collections to corporate offices and the elevation of the United States as a primary world power. [Lucas W.]
• Not everyone wanted the United States to go to war. Isolationist sentiment was particularly strong in the Midwest. The war had revived the economy and people were once again working. While most people in Fort Wayne opposed Hitler and the Nazis, they were divided on the issue of direct involvement. As one Indiana teenager put it, Pearl Harbor evoked "a wave of paralyzing disbelief," not dissimilar to the shock many Americans felt on September 11. Too young to fight, yet eager to help, he and his friends worked through the Scouts to provide moral support. [Chris H.]
• Women as well as men lives were changed by the war. One Sanford woman set aside her plans to attend college to go to work for Western Union. Everyone seemingly knew someone whose names would later appear as dead or wounded. Her husband-to-be, seriously wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, was kept as a prisoner of war for 5 days without medical attention but miraculously survived. Despite the "booming" economy, ration books were a "pain." People complained about shortages, sugar and coffee for example, but no one was deprived of necessities. Meat was also rationed and when their cow, Buttercup was hurt, they had to slaughter her. This led to comments by the children whenever meat was served of whether or not they were eating Buttercup, much to the amusement of the adults. [Jeff M.]
• One potential enlistee found himself recruited by the Navy as a skilled typist. Stationed at Fort Bragg, he noted that the services competed for recruits who seemed to get younger everyday. An officer confronted by a puzzled draftee when asked to list his beneficiary replied, that was who got your stuff, after your boat sank. Daily he heard stories of the fierce fighting going on in the Pacific, including the gruesome account of the battle at Guadalcanal. A "big-to-do" event at the end of the war was to drive cars again. [Libby F.]