Interview with Heber Cottam Jones

Heber Cottam Jones was interviewed by Randall J. Bunn on March 2, 2017 in St. George, Washington County, Utah. He related his experiences during World War II.

RB:We are here to talk about what Heber recalls about the period of World War II and a little bit [of what] led up to that. Before we do that, I would like to kind of set the stage a little bit. Tell a little bit about your background. Where you were born and where you were living at the time World War II broke out.

HJ:I was born here in St. George [Washington County, Utah] on Second East and Tabernacle Street in my grandfather's home. My grandfather was Thomas P. [Punter] Cottam. My grandmother was Emmaline (Jarvis) Cottam. Both of them, in fact all eight of my great-grandparents were sent here to St. George between 00:01:001861 and 1864.

RB:So you have strong roots in Southern Utah.

HJ:Right. When I was two months old, my folks moved to Veyo [Washington County, Utah].

RB:Where is that?

HJ:That is about eighteen miles north of St. George. My dad [Ellis Wilson Jones] and my uncle [Thomas Cottam] had built a little two-room shack and that is where we moved to. I spent the first sixteen years of my life there. Then I moved down here and lived with my aunt for several years [while] going to school in 1945. I went to Woodward Junior High School and then I transferred over to Dixie High School. At that time the high school and the college were together ─ the first 00:02:00two years, eleventh and twelfth [grades of] high school and the first two years of college.

RB:Who were you living with when you came down here?

HJ:My aunt Emma [and uncle Moroni "Rhone"] MacArthur.

RB:What year were you born?

HJ:I was born August 7, 1934.

RB:You arrived right in the middle of The [Great] Depression.

HJ:Yes.

RB:[Tell] a little bit about after you finished school here in St. George [and] graduated from high school.

HJ:I graduated from high school and the college. Then I went on to the University of Utah [Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, Utah]. I graduated [from] there. Actually, I finished my work there in December of 1955. I had been working in Henderson, Nevada for Titanium Metals Corporation. I got out of 00:03:00school in the middle of the school year [and] was going to be a teacher, but teaching positions

in the middle of the year were hard to come by. Salaries were so low then [and] Titanium said I could keep working there. So I continued working with Titanium.

RB:What did you major in at the University of Utah?

HJ:Social Studies.

RB:Were you going to be a high school teacher?

HJ:That was the plan.

RB:When did you finish working at Titanium?

HJ:I was drafted into the [United States] Army in April of 1957. I spent twenty-one months in the Army. When I [was discharged] I went back to the University of Utah with the intention of getting a master's degree; but [in] 00:04:001959 there was no GI Bill [government issued bill for veterans education]. Congress had taken it away. There was no government insurance or any of [those benefits] anymore. So I thought I would work part-time. When I got out we were in that recession and I had a tough time finding a job. I finally convinced a government survey team to let me go out into the west desert with them and survey. While I was out there I discovered there was an opening in the Delta High School [in Millard County, Utah]. I applied for it and they hired me. I started teaching there in the fall of 1959. I taught there two years. Then I transferred down here and taught at Woodward Junior High for a number of years and went to the middle school for a number of years. [Later] I [taught in] the [Dixie] High school for a number of years.

RB:You were drafted in April 1957?

HJ:Yes.

RB:When did you come back to Utah? Sometime in 1959?

HJ:No, I came back to Utah when I [was discharged from] the Army. I went back to Salt Lake City and [attended] the University of Utah for a quarter.

RB:Were you working in Nevada on a survey team in ─?

HJ:No.

RB:No?

HJ:When I got out of the service. Oh! I skipped one part there, when I got out I went to school at the University of Utah. The people at Titanium would not give me my job back. They said it had been eliminated while I was in the service. So I had to find some other employment. [That] is when I went out into the west desert -- west of Delta, Millard [County] Utah.

RB:I was just going to ask you, as an aside, during that time was there any atomic bomb testing that you knew about?

HJ:Yes. I was involved. In fact -- [laughter] I was not going to bring this up, but ─.

RB:[Laughter] The whole down-winder ─

HJ:Yes.

RB:─ history.

HJ:I am a victim of the down-winder [history]. The first bombs they set off above ground down there was in 1951. I remember distinctly the first one that I was aware of, I was asleep in Veyo. I was sleeping out under a shed and I heard this terrible crack! I thought it was an oil stove or something blowing up in town. I jumped up. We had the ladder on the house that we used to get up [on] to clean the chimney. I ran up that ladder and I looked all around and I could not see [anything]. It was a clear morning ─ just dawn. Nothing! Absolutely 00:07:00nothing! And this horrible noise out ─ there had to be an explosion! There was no smoke; no fire; no nothing. I was really perplexed. I turned the radio on a little bit later and they announced that they had set off an above-ground bomb in Nevada.

RB:Was this about 1951?

HJ:Yes.

RB:When you were working in the west desert were they still doing testing in the late

1950s?

HJ:Yes, they were, they actually did above [ground] tests up until about 1962.

Then that ended. They did a lot of them in the 1960s. I do not know what stimulated them to do so many; but in July, the summer of 1962, they set off a 00:08:00lot of bombs then. And the fallout all came through here. One time, after I had come back here, during the 1960s they stopped all the cars over here at Santa Clara [Washington County, Utah] and washed them off and told us to stay inside; that sort of [precaution].

RB:Is that right?

HJ:Yes. At the same time they were telling us it was harmless. It will not hurt you and that sort of thing.

RB:[Laughter] Right, then we found out later on. Were you ever a part of any subsequent health testing or [screening] afterwards when they were ─.

HJ:I was aware they were checking people's thyroids. They have an organization here now and they have had it for a number of years. I was just there this

morning talking to them. I have forgotten what it is called. Anyway, it is a screening organization that is done by the IHC [Intermountain Health Care] and 00:09:00also the federal government. I am a victim of that. I have been diagnosed with a problem.

RB:Are you currently experiencing some health difficulties?

HJ:Yes.

RB:That is what I understand. Do they think that is related to the testing?

HJ:Oh yes.

RB:Is that why you are a part of this monitoring and testing in the group?

HJ:Yes.

RB:Let us go back to World War II. You were born in 1934 and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii took place December 7, 1941. At that point, you were about seven years old?

HJ:That is correct.

RB:What do you recall about the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor?

HJ:It was a Sunday. I was in this same area that I was telling you about when this bomb went off in 1951. I had been sleeping, but I was still in bed. I was listening to the radio. There was a thin wall between the bed and the radio and I heard [about the bombing] on the radio. I always used to listen to news broadcasts in the morning. I do not remember exactly ─ there was a [fellow] named Elmer Davis ─ Elmer Davis and the News. One [program] was sponsored by Sperry Pancake and Waffle Flour.

I was listening to one of these broadcasts. I do not remember just which one it was, but the announcer came on and said something to the effect: "We interrupt 00:11:00this program to announce that the President of the United States, [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt, has just announced that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor." That was the first I had heard [about] it.

RB:Had you been aware of any of the problems internationally with the Germans, the

Japanese or preparation for war?

HJ:Vaguely. I have always been ─ even at that time I was kind of a nut for the news. I always listened to the news. I had heard rumblings about it, but I did not understand the full impact of it. I was aware that there was a problem, but as far as thinking the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor, I had no clue. I was aware ─ people had talked about [Prime Minister Benito] Mussolini, for example, [and] people had talked about [Adolf] Hitler. More so of those 00:12:00[fellows] than the Japanese; however, there had been some talk about the Japanese bombing in China. But to me, at six years old, that really did not mean a lot. I know they used to set us up on our desks at school and sing a little song, When the Ships Come home from China or something like that. I was aware that there were places like that; but I was not fully aware of the impact of it.

RB:Do you recall anything that your parents said around home after that event on [December] 7, 1941?

HJ:Well, they were concerned about it. That is about all I could tell you in that sense. My parents pretty much lived in poverty. They were more concerned with The [Great] Depression than they were about Hitler. But, yes, they made some comments about it.

RB:After that, how did the war affect your life in Veyo, Utah?

HJ:Very much so. [Laughter] Things shortly began to change very drastically. We had been living in an era of poverty. Real poverty! Everybody! It was not just us. There is always [some] poor and some a little better off. The people at the top were not really living very high off the hog. When this war came along, things began to switch, all sorts of things, so to speak. There became a shortage of labor almost immediately. They drafted the young men out. The [Civilian] Conservation Corps camps disappeared. Within a few years the young 00:14:00men from [age] eighteen to about thirty were all in [military] service.

RB:What was your father's livelihood at the time?

HJ:He [worked at] anything he could find.

RB:Did he do farming at all?

HJ:He did a little bit of farming. He worked part-time for the electric power company ─ anything he could do to make a dollar. He was even in the CCCs for awhile. He worked for the WPA [Works Progress Administration] or PWA [Public Works Administration]. I do not know which one. It was one or the other or both. Making a dollar a day [at jobs] like that. The war changed that. Jobs became more plentiful. In fact, there was a scarcity of labor. [You] began to see the women moving out of these little rural towns and going into the war industries 00:15:00in the cities. Even then it became obvious. Many, many things changed. Do you want to continue on that subject?

RB:Yes, let us go back to that. Tell about some of the experiences in the war period from 1942-1945 and how [they] affected your life.

HJ:At school we started a scrap drive; paper, rubber, aluminum, metals of all sorts.

And of course we were doing it as a community also. Money ─ the war cost money and there was a big push on to buy war bonds. We call savings bonds now-a-days; 00:16:00but they were war bonds back in those days. At school ─ I do not remember whether it was once a month or once a week or what it was; but periodically we would bring a quarter, if we had one, and buy a stamp. After you [had] enough stamps ─ I think the figure was $18.75, but I am not sure of that; but it is close to that. When you [had] that many stamps you could [buy] a war bond. It was worth $18.75. You could redeem it in seven years, or something like that, for $25.00.

RB:Did you do that?

HJ:That was big money! Yes, I think it took me all during the war to get one bond. [Laughter]

RB:Did you eventually cash it in?

HJ:Yes! We did eventually get a bond.

RB:Great!

HJ:We would take [buy] the stamps regularly and there were war bond drives all the time. We were doing that as [youngsters] in school! We [received] a little 00:17:00newspaper that they called The Weekly Reader, I believe it was. I do not know. There are two or three different ones; [and] these [newspapers] would have little stories about the war in them. We would kind of keep up with that. In school, for some of the lessons, they would have us write letters to the people in [military] service. Simple little letters; but they would answer them. They did not put a stamp on their envelope. They would write 'Free' in the corner.

RB:Right. Did you know anyone personally [who] was serving in the war?

HJ:Yes! I sent letters to two or three different ones. Yes, I did know them personally. In fact, in the community I think I knew everybody who lived there personally. [Laughter]

RB:Yes, I am sure you did. [Laughter]

HJ:I think there were only seventeen families ─ come and go a few. [Laughter] 00:18:00In addition to that, as these boys would leave, they would always have a big party for them and sometimes a dance. After awhile they would stop the dance and they would have a little program. They would give the boys usually a little case that had shaving equipment, a toothbrush and [personal items] in it when they left. When they would come home on furlough, of course, they would all be in their uniforms and they would have a big dance and a party for them again.

So there was all of that kind of thing going on.

There was a negative to this, too. The psychology of the country began to change 00:19:00quite a lot. [There] would [be] a lot of public pressure on these young men to go into [military] service. This woman over here might say to this one over here, "Is your boy too good to go? Mine is in the service!"

RB:Okay; so [there was] peer pressure.

HJ:"Is he a draft dodger?" You began to get a lot of this kind of pressure on young people. Even when some of them probably should have stayed home because their parents were sick, or something, and they [were] needed to run the farm. They would say, "Well, I cannot put up with this" and they would enlist or wait until they could be drafted in a few months and then go. There is something there that you should consider as far as the public pressure goes. In addition to that, of course, you would have blood drives, [The American] Red Cross drives. You would put a little [notice] in the window, "I Gave", with a red 00:20:00cross on it.

RB:Is that right?

HJ:Then, of course, there is the negative to that, too. Once in awhile a young man would get killed or be missing in action and they would call these Gold Star Mothers. They would put a big [gold star banner] in their window. We had that happen, too. In addition to a shortage of workers, there was a shortage of about everything for the war effort, [like] gasoline.

RB:Did your folks have rationing books in your home?

HJ:Yes. Every member of the family had a rationing book. I brought some of [those] to show you. These are actual stamps that were in the rationing books and you would have to tear [out] so many [when making a purchase]. They would publish every week or month; I do not remember how long, when you could buy 00:21:00certain [items]. Like, you could get peanut butter this week. You might be able to get cottage cheese next month or whatever. You would have to tear [stamps] out of your book along with your money to buy [the items]. Let us say you had a big family and you used up your rations [stamps]. You could only buy three pairs of shoes this month, [but] you have a family of ten [children]. Maybe the fourth pair was really in bad shape. They had these kinds of [situations] that you could make a special request from the OPA, the Office of Price Administration, for an extra pair of shoes or whatever it was that you were in desperate need of. Sometimes you could get it. Sometimes you could not; but there was a way to 00:22:00try to get it.

RB:It sounds like an exception to the ration limitations,

HJ:In addition to that, of course, for certain types of things you had to have ─ [looking at photographs].

RB:What do we have here?

HJ:That is what I was not going to dump out yet. This is what I wanted, right here. These are little plastic or fiber tokens that if you wanted meat, for example, you had to have so many of these for a certain type of meat ─ for chicken or beef or whatever it was. The red ones were for meat. I do not 00:23:00remember what the blue ones were for; but in addition to the stamps, you had to have these and money to get certain types of products ─ sugar, which was particularly scarce; certain types of oil. Cooking oil and that sort of thing was pretty scarce. They regulated that by these kinds of [tokens].

RB:It says on here, OPA blue points.

HJ:Office of Pricing Administration. Blue points. So you had to have so many blue points to get so many pieces of whatever it was you were going to [buy] ─ like sugar or meat or whatever the case may be.

RB:Just a minute.

[TAPE RECORDER TURNED OFF]

HJ:These other tokens were put out during the war and they are plastic. Before 00:24:00the war they looked like this [calumiaum]. These are tax tokens. Each one of these little ones is a mil. You notice on your tax notice you are taxed so many mils; that is one tenth of a cent. You could actually buy things before the war with these [tokens]. [The] Peter Paul Candy Company put out a little candy bar they called Peter Paul's [Little] Giants; which was about half of one of these Mound bars you buy today ─ coconut covered with chocolate. This is one mil and that [one] I think is either two and a half or five [mils]. I do not remember which.

RB:Was this during The [Great] Depression?

HJ:Yes. When the war started, they switched that to this [plastic] so they could use this metal for war purposes and used this.

RB:Used [the] plastic instead.

HJ:Now these plastic ones came in three colors. There was orange, gray [and] green.

RB:Is it a light gray? No, those are the same.

HJ:Not gray ─ green. There is a green one. These did the same purpose as these. These are separate. [Referring to small fiber coin.] These had to go with the rationing. In addition to that, we used to have to have a metal tag when you killed a deer or put your cow out on the range. They quit [using] these during the war and put paper on them.

RB:It sounds like the war affected how the rationing was controlled by the 00:26:00substance of the tokens they used.

HJ:They controlled the prices and they controlled the amount of goods you could buy. In addition to that, you will notice here is a penny that was printed only in 1943 and it is not copper. It is steel and zinc. Now that one is not a very good example, [but] that is the only one I have at the moment. It kind of looks copper-ish because it is corrosion; but it is not copper.

RB:And the reason they did that was to ─.

HJ:To save copper. But you get the idea. You [asked] how did things change? These are examples.

RB:Right, and they tend to be administrative types of control.

HJ:That is what they were.

RB:But because the war occurred these things happened.

HJ:Became scarcities. This is how they attempted to cure it.

HJ:What do we have there?

RB:Some mil tokens.

HJ:Give that to me, please. Now I noticed all of this as a [young boy] because [I was] used to taking a little piece of aluminum to the store to buy something and now [I had to] have these pretty colored plastic ones that do the same thing. [Do] you get the point on those?

RB:Yes.

HJ:In addition to that, there are always people who do not want to follow the rules.

RB:Yes, of course.

HJ:So little black markets sprang up where you could buy some of [these items] that you needed, rationed [items], without [using] the ration [stamps or tokens]. There was one little store here in town. [Chewing] gum, for example, 00:28:00Wrigley's Spearmint gum became very scarce. Once in awhile you could go to this black market and if you had enough money you could buy a little bit of gum. In addition to that, the gum companies put out a fake gum they called Orbit. When you would chew it for awhile it would crumble.

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:But it was gum for awhile!

RB:Was the reason gum was rationed because of the sugar?

HJ:The sugar in it. The locals often chewed pine gum or squaw bush gum that you got from the squaw bush or from the pine tree. I did that myself because I used quite a lot of that type of [gum].

RB:[Laughter] Would you make that at home or was it just something natural off the tree?

HJ:You would go out in the forest ─ the squaw bush grows along the streams.

RB:What was that exactly? It was part of the ─.

HJ:[It was] the sap.

RB:You would just chew the sap?

HJ:Yes.

RB:I see.

HJ:If you watched these squaw bushes, there are little white bubbles that come on, especially if it has been scratched. It did not have to be.

RB:What did it taste like?

HJ:It is hard to explain it without ─.

RB:[Laughter] Was it bitter or sweet?

HJ:It was not bitter and it was not sweet. It has a unique taste about it. The squaw bush has little red berries on it that are salty. But you could eat the berries and chew the gum. The gum comes in sort of little clusters sort of. I 00:30:00have no way of telling you the taste without you trying it.

RB:Okay.

HJ:I have some squaw bush bushes up at my place at Veyo [Washington County, Utah]. If you want to come by I will give you a sample.

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:Anyway, you get the message on the black market and the shortage of things like

grease.

RB:I do.

HJ:Now in addition to that, everybody was encouraged to have a victory garden. You would plant your own vegetables and eat what you could.

RB:What do you think the purpose of that was?

HJ:Well, to save food for the Army and for foreign countries that had been damaged and people [who] were hungry.

RB:So, if you grew your own you did not have to rely upon buying the produce.

HJ:Exactly. It was to save food to ─.

RB:To be self-sufficient. Then the food grown commercially could be used elsewhere.

HJ:Yes. Another thing [happened] during The [Great] Depression ─ people got 00:31:00used to buying things out of catalogs. Sears, Roebuck [and Co.] and Montgomery Ward were their hardware stores and merchandise places. This continued during the war, but there again was a shortage. There were certain things you could and could not buy. So you had that type of [situation]. Repairs became more important than buying new [items]. A good example of that would be with shoes. Most poor people had a shoe last. Do you know what that is?

RB:No.

HJ:It is a little metal stand that has a metal shoe on it. You put your shoe over the top of it and if you had nails sticking in your heel you could take your hammer and hammer the heel down. Or you could get a kit that had a new heel in it, or a new sole, and you could glue it and tack it onto your shoe with these lasts.

RB:Sounds like some cobbler tools.

HJ:That is exactly what they were. There were very few new cars. You had to learn to repair your car. They had a speed limit of 35 miles per hour in a lot of places.

RB:To conserve gasoline?

HJ:To conserve gasoline. To get gasoline, if you had a car, you had to go to the OPA office and get a stamp to put on your windshield. You either had an 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D' [sticker].

RB:What did that mean?

HJ:That means that if you were a doctor, for example, I do not remember whether his was an 'A' or a 'D'; but he could get all the gas he needed to get to run around. But if you wanted to go on vacation, for example, you probably had an 'A' and only could get three or four gallons where he might get ten.

RB:So it depended on your status?

HJ:When you pulled up to the gas station, [the attendant] would look at [the] sticker on your car. You would give him so many stamps out of your little stamp book and he would give you whatever [gallons of gas] you were entitled to have. 00:33:00So, when you [ask], "What were some of the changes? I am trying to give you some of the changes.

RB:This is very interesting.

HJ:Good.

RB:What kind of car did your folks have? Or did they have a car?

HJ:This may surprise you, but if you take direct lineage, I am the first person in our

family to own a car.

RB:Is that right?

HJ:My dad did not own a car. My grandpa, on my father's side, did not own a car.

So, we did not have to worry about it.

RB:[Laughter] Gasoline and buying and rent.

HJ:But others did. Tires ─ it was very difficult to get new tires and so we had re-tread shops. You would take your tire in and they would re-tread it for you. You might do that two or three times. Having a [tire] repair kit was a big 00:34:00deal in those days. Nobody gets a repair kit anymore. But in those days, you might have three flat tires going from here to Veyo. You would have to stop and pull off your tire.

And all those tires in those days had tubes. So you would pull the tube out, find the leak, scratch it off, then you had some rubber glue you would put on it and then a little patch. You would stick it back in, take off again and hope you made it home!

RB:When you had the tires re-treaded, you took it to a tire place and they did it. They had the machinery ─.

HJ:They had a big mold. They would put the tire in this mold, pour rubber around inside the mold and come out a tire with a new tread on [it]. Some were done quite well. Others you would be going down the road and the whole tread would come off.

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:Yes, it was big business. Even getting air for your tires was sometimes a 00:35:00problem. Most everybody had a hand pump. You had to pump [it] like this. Some of the service stations had a little compressor [where] you could go in and get your tires filled up.

RB:[That] would be a little easier to do.

HJ:If you were out in the middle of nowhere, you had your tire pump in your car and pumped it up by hand.

Another change -- movies. During The [Great] Depression talkies came in. The first movie I went to I paid my way in either with eggs or vegetables of some sort. We saw that they had set up a screen in the schoolhouse. When people came in they would pay whatever the [fellow] could use ─ [that] was the ticket. He would show a 16 millimeter show or 35 millimeter. I do not remember which. I 00:36:00remember there were a lot of shooting in the shows and Hopalong Cassidy-type [movies]. You have probably never heard of Hopalong Cassidy.

RB:I do remember. I was ─.

HJ:[The] Roy Rogers and Gene Autry crowd.

RB:Oh yes! So that was during The [Great] Depression?

HJ:And in the early part of the war. Now, what I was getting at, is these movies started coming in and they would have trailers [news reels] on them that would tell about the war and the next movie that was coming along. There were a lot of propaganda movies, radio programs and some newspapers, to stir up people to hate the Japanese and the Germans. To get them busy for the war effort.

RB:So the newsreels were a part of that?

HJ:Newsreels and books like this. This was not a book in those days. This was a 00:37:00compilation of cartoons put out by [the cartoonist at] the Arizona Republic [Phoenix, Arizona], Reg Manning, during the war. There was a [fellow] named Muldoon [who] put out a [book of cartoons] ─ about the experience of GIs in the Army. The main character in here is this little fellow here -- Little Itchy [in the Reg Manning book]. If you look through some of those [cartoons], he is encouraging people to commit hari-kari -- making fun of the Japanese. A lot of these [news] reels did the same thing. They would have some Oriental [fellow] ─ make him look really mean, whipping a white man to stir you up and make you angry at the Japanese. And they did not call them Japanese either.

RB:So, these books were available?

HJ:These books came out after the war. These came out as individual cartoons in some publication.

RB:And then someone published the collection?

HJ:Yes.

RB:Interesting.

HJ:There were a lot of those that came out during the war. The movies were full of them. The government was pretty adept to make the psychology of the people to be unified. There was a negative part of it, too, in which people would hate other people or put pressure on you to go into [military] service; this sort of [issue] that came as a result of the same.

RB:Were there any Japanese-Americans [who] were in this part of Utah that you knew of?

HJ:Yes. There was a group out on the Escalante desert. [They] suffered some 00:39:00abuse as a result of it. Rural people generally take it or leave it in a sense; but it was not so much the Japanese, but you have these draft dodgers that would often come. During The [Great] Depression you had a lot of tramps, we called them, come through. They would cut your wood or [do chores] for a meal. During the war these [men] would come in and pretend they were writers or artists. They were out looking in some obsolete area to write their book. They were really draft dodgers. They would get in somebody's home in a little place like Veyo and that was hiding! If they had done that at home, of course, they would have been picked up and taken to jail or forced into [military] service. But they could come out here in these rural areas, pretend they are writers and are writing a book. They would get a room in somebody's backyard. So you had quite a little 00:40:00bit of that [activity] going on. A lot of the radio programs were geared up to unify the public. I would dare say the country was more unified during the war than it has ever been since. It has been going the other way. We are crumbling.

RB:Right. Well, there was a very strong common enemy it seems like. So what you experienced was both intentional through the media and the government, but also in the patriotism of the people perhaps?

HJ:Yes, very much so.

RB:Do you recall the president giving radio addresses during the war?

HJ:All the time. He gave what they called fireside chats. He would come out and 00:41:00say things like, "My friends," start out with something like that. I remember one particular part of one of these early speeches. I noted his accent. He said something like, "I did not want war. Eleanor did not want war." Do you get the idea?

RB:Right. Different than your common speech here?

HJ:Yes. Our common speaking is not common. [Laughter]

RB:Right. [Laughter]

HJ:I picked that sort of thing up very quickly.

RB:Was he popular in this area?

HJ:Very popular among the poor people, but there was an element, like there is now, [who] were very conservative and hated him.

RB:Yes.

HJ:Just hated him.

RB:Even during the war?

HJ:Even during the war.

RB:Okay.

HJ:During the big election of 1944, there were quite a lot of people [who] had 00:42:00some nasty things to say about him. I remember we used to get a little newspaper called The Grit. I do not remember how often it came -- whether it was twice a month or once a month or something like that. It always had on the top of it pictures of Roosevelt, [Joseph] Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, usually Charles de Gaulle [and Winston] Churchill was always there. They called it the Big 4, the Big 5 or the Big 3. If it was Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin it was the Big 3.

RB:They were the allied leaders?

HJ:Yes. Then they would add sometimes de Gaulle; sometimes Chiang Kai-shek.

I followed these things rather closely. I was fascinated by it all; even when I was a [youngster].

RB:[Laughter] Right.

HJ:They would have maps in this newspaper that would show where the Russian Army was. They called it the Red Army ─ the Russian Army and the Chinese Army. They would split the Chinese in a piece called the Communist section in the ─ they did not say nationalist most of the time. They had some other term they used. That slips my mind at the moment. But it showed where our armies were. I think we had eight armies at the time. We had a lot of people.

The German generals and the American generals [were] facing off. They had the German [Gerd von] Rundstedt and [Erwin] Rommel and those [men]. They would have them pictured showing a colored area where the Germans were making progress and 00:44:00where they were being pushed back. You would have the American generals like [Mark] Clark and [George] Patton and that crowd. The British [General Bernard] Montgomery and that bunch.

RB:Did you follow [this] pretty closely?

HJ:I did! I did not really understand the whole thing; but I was really into this business. [Laughter]

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:Anyway, if you would put a picture after the war in say 1950 and put out a calendar like that, they would run you out of town!

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:I remember near the end of the war when they [set] off the first atomic bomb in New Mexico. I do not know how long after they did that [when] it began to circulate; but the word finally came out that they had developed a new bomb and 00:45:00it was going to end the war. Everybody, of course, was excited about it. You hear people talk today about that it was an immoral thing to do, maybe they should not have done it and all that sort of thing. From what I could remember and what I saw at that time, they would have skinned the president alive if he had not used that bomb!

RB:Yes.

HJ:I mean the whole attitude was, if we have got a bomb that will stop this war, use it! And I think he recognized that. There was an old [fellow who] was kind of a controversial fellow. He talked to a bunch of us [youngsters] one day about that time. He said to us, "You know some day the scientists are going to come up with a piece of energy that you can hold in your hand that will power a ship 00:46:00across the ocean and back." We laughed and said, "You are a crazy man." [We] made fun of him.

RB:Something in science fiction.

HJ:And he was right. [Laughter] At the time, we thought he was crazy.

RB:Do you recall when FDR died?

HJ:Oh yes.

RB:Tell about that.

HJ:It came over the radio that he had suffered a stroke down in Georgia [at] Warm Springs. What did [they] call that place? It slips [my mind]. He went down there where he could take these baths. I think the nation was pretty much [in] mourning

There was a handful of people who were jumping up and down saying, "This is 00:47:00great!" But the bulk of the people, I think, were pretty sad about it. Roosevelt made a pretty heavy mark on the country.

RB:He did. He was president for quite a long time during a couple of very turbulent periods.

HJ:It was not just the time either. The things that he did, he gave people hope, especially poor people.

RB:Yes. Do you remember when the war in Europe ended?

HJ:Yes. People just thought it was terrific. The radio really played it up. In local areas people were out in the yard shouting [and] saying how great it was.

RB:Were there celebrations in Veyo?

HJ:I do not know what you would call a celebration in Veyo. [Laughter]

RB:[Laughter] With seventeen families maybe it was not so big.

HJ:There was jubilation.

RB:How about when they dropped the bomb in Japan?

HJ:Everybody just hooted and hollered. This is great! It will teach those ─ well, they called them 'little yellow bastards' and things like that.

[END OF SIDE ONE]

HJ:[People] thought they got what they deserved. You have to remember too, that they had lost a few people. Some of the families had a gold star in their window. They kind of thought this was payback.

RB:Did you ever attend any funerals for servicemen coming back?

HJ:Yes. We only had one funeral that I can remember, in Veyo. The boy [Lloyd Chadburn] died while training in the [United States] Navy of a mastoid infection. That was before penicillin was commonly used. Apparently, they did not have enough for him and he died. We lost two boys during the War. The other 00:49:00one [Garth Cottam] we never recovered his body. He was shot down in an airplane at the battle for New Guinea. Yes. I went to this one fellow's funeral. It was a pretty ─ I do not know what the adjective is ─ you would not say [that it] was necessarily exciting. It was a time people would not forget.

RB:You have lived another seventy years, or so, since World War II. In your opinion, has there been any other times in our nation's history that compares to that?

HJ:No.

RB:Not the Vietnam War?

HJ:I have mixed feelings on how that is being handled, even today. When the boys 00:50:00came home from Vietnam they were not treated very well. But on the other hand, the thing that I think has been left out of it, we were having some real problems in this country before they went into Vietnam. A lot of these [fellows who] went in there had been on dope [drugs]. We had these communes and all kinds of deregulated life. We have a tendency to kind of forget that and think only of, was this [fellow] a hero because he went over and fought? The Vietnam War was not very popular; and for good reason. I think I would be run out of town 00:51:00for my views on it.

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:I think clear back in the early days that we made a mistake by taking over the French's job there. The Vietnamese pretty much ran the French out. We had to decide whether or not to pick up their problem; and we did pick it up. As soon as we picked it up, we had another problem. They wanted to vote to determine whether they would be communist or non-communist. Ho Chi Minh was very popular. He was as much a nationalist as he was a communist. I think that if they had of let him go they would have probably gone communist, but I think it would have saved us a lot of pain, blood and money.

RB:That is interesting. That decade of the 1960s and into the 1970s would have 00:52:00been totally different.

HJ:Exactly! And I think it would have been different in our favor.

RB:Interesting perspective.

HJ:But that may not be true. That is my thinking.

RB:I understand. Are there any other [issues] that you think of [that happened] during World War II that you have not expressed?

HJ:One thing here I have in my notes ─ just as the war was beginning we had an America First movement, like you do right now. People like Charles Lindbergh and Joseph Kennedy were pro-Hitler people at one time. It was not until the war was well under way that they began to see the error of their ways. There was a lot of kind of anti-American ─ what is the term? ─ attempts to change our 00:53:00psychology, our loyalties, toward Britain and France in favor of the Germans and Italians. Mussolini made the trains run on time, but what was the cost? Hitler built the freeways, but what was the cost? I mean, what did his neighbors think of him? We had a kind of a movement in this country. We had a Nazi party in this country. And we had an America First group led by this same crowd that we are going to make America do this and to hell with the rest of you! Well, it was painful. It was wrong, frankly! I think maybe there is something to be learned [from] there [for] today.

RB:Seems like we are coming around to some similar viewpoints.

HJ:We had an organization during the war called the USO. It stood for United 00:54:00Service Organization. It was largely a volunteer thing. All over the country people tried to make the servicemen feel at home; be entertained. Young girls were recruited to go dance with them. It was a unifier.

RB:Was there a USO in Southern Utah?

HJ:I do not know if there was an official USO or not, but they had the trappings of it.

I do not know whether there was an official organization here or not.

HJ:There was an [American] Red Cross unit that did a lot of the same thing; but I am not really sure whether we had an official organization here or not. I was 00:55:00not here in St. George a lot of that time, so I really do not know what went on there.

A couple of other things ─ women's status was raised greatly by the war. Young women all over the country went into war industries to work. They went into the services as WACS [Women's Army Corps] and WAVES [Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service]. I think it changed the status of women all over the country.

RB:Was that a good thing or not?

HJ:Yes, I think so.

RB:Yes?

HJ:Yes. I think another thing ─ the armed services were segregated during the war. I think that is one of the things that caused the whole civil rights movement. I think these [fellows] came home and demanded to be treated human. I think one of the biggest things in this country, I am talking [about] Utah, that has been neglected, is neglected now and unappreciated, is [that] Utah, probably 00:56:00as much or more than any state in the union, benefited from this war.

RB:How so?

HJ:The government spent a lot of money here [that] it did not have to spend. It pulled us out of The [Great] Depression, it put people to work and laid a base for our economy that shifted it from agriculture and mining to war industries which eventually spread out into all kinds of industries. You take something like Hill [Air Force Base, Ogden, Weber County, Utah], Tooele [Ordinance Depot, Tooele County, Utah], Dugway [Proving Ground, Tooele County, Utah], the Remington Arms [Company, Salt Lake County, Utah] and the big Clearfield [Davis County, Utah] warehouses that they used for supply. That changed Utah's economy totally! Forever! Now you find these same kinds of people getting up every other 00:57:00day and writing in the paper hating the federal government. We were a disaster economically before the war! Since the war we have been moved right to the top!

When I say the top, our employment [record] has been good! And our economy has been good! Some of these [fellows] want to float up and say, "I did it." But the government did it ─

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:─ when you get down to it. What else do you want to know?

RB:If you had to sum it up, what was your impression, as you think back to that time in your life, of World War II?

HJ:I think my life was cut into three pieces. [There was] The [Great] Depression ─ total poverty! People who were born before World War II or were aware of 00:58:00themselves and their situation before World War II, are a total different [people] than [those who] came after World War II. When people today talk of poverty, [they] do not know what poverty is! The programs that came to us as a result of the war ─ just take the GI Bill. [It] changed the whole country! One of the best things that ever happened in this country! You [have] the Federal Reserve System that came in during The [Great] Depression and [it] was expanded. The Marshall Plan! [The United States economic aid to European countries devastated by World War II.] We used our resources to help others to help ourselves; and it worked! Today you have people preaching, "If it does not 00:59:00effect America, do not do it." If we can't gain from it, do not do it! What kind of an attitude is that?

RB:[Laughter]

HJ:We are what we are because of what we did! I do not know. What more can you say? [Laughter]

RB:I [have] surely appreciated [your time]. These are some [very] good comments. [Thoughts] that I have never even heard about and I have studied about World War II somewhat. I appreciate your comments from the perspective of someone who grew up during that period as a child. Yet you were quite aware of changes and [the] impacts on your life.

HJ:[Inaudible]

RB:Alright. Thank you very much.

HJ:You are welcome.

[END OF SIDE TWO]