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Jackson County Counts -- Counting America’s Stories One By
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MY MEMORIES OF WORLD WAR II By Kathleen (Lee) Tuohey (Written February 10,
2001) In 1941 I was 15 years old and a junior at East High School in Kansas City, Missouri. East High School was located at 1924 VanBrunt Boulevard. The Great Depression had been over for awhile and my Father was back at work at the job he had lost during that time (boiler maker/welder for the Milwaukee Railroad). He’d been working 3 jobs during the Depression. People were striving to get back to normal and pretty much were enjoying life again. My first memory of World War II was on Sunday, December
7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I had never heard of a place called Pearl Harbor, but we
heard the news on the radio - no such thing as television yet. We continued to get our news about
the war from radio reports and newspapers. Little did we know then the impact Pearl Harbor would have
on all our lives. War was declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt soon
after Pearl Harbor and boys in my senior class that were 18 or soon would be
18, enlisted in various branches of the service and didn’t graduate with our
class in 1942. In the summer of 1942, after graduation from High School
at the age of 16, I worked at the Commerce Trust Company (now called Commerce
Bank) at 10th & Walnut, Kansas City, Missouri as an “Outside
Messenger.” Outside messengers
delivered certain bank documents all over downtown and even by streetcar to
grain elevators, etc. I had
applied at the bank for a job as a stenographer but because I looked even
younger than my age of 16, I had to work my way up to that type of job. I was hired at $60 a month - $15 a
week in cash. Many times the
bank put $2 bills in our pay envelope in order to get rid of them. For some reason customers wouldn’t
accept $2 bills, so the bank used them to pay employees. Two dollar bills were considered bad
luck at that time. I
didn’t. I thought it was kind of
neat. While working in downtown Kansas City, each payday I
went to Jenkins Music Company on Walnut Street and listened to the latest
records (78's) in a soundproof booth and then would buy one or two to play on
my small record player at home.
My favorite records were mostly the big band sounds - Glenn Miller,
Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and singers like Frank Sinatra,
etc. Talk went around that hamburger at some restaurants may
not be beef, but horse meat. I
don’t know if this was true, but I couldn’t eat a hamburger in a restaurant
the rest of the war years. People started buying defense stamps and war bonds to
help finance the war effort.
Defense stamps were sold for 25 cents, 50 cents and $1 each and pasted
into a book. I can’t remember
because I wasn’t the head of the house, but my cousin, Bill Swegle, thinks
books would have been mailed to each household according to the Census. When you filled up the $25 book with
$18.75 worth of stamps, you could go to a bank and trade it in for a $25
defense bond. If you collected
$37.50 in stamps, it could be traded at a bank for a $50 war bond. There was a $100 bond also. You would save $1 stamps until you
accumulated $75 in stamps. After
holding the bond for 10 years you could cash it in for the face value. If you cashed them in before 10 years
the interest earned was pro-rated.
You could keep your bonds past the 10 years and earn additional
interest. Many older people than
myself purchased many bonds and cashed them in after ten years. I saw this being done when I was
again working at the Commerce Trust Company bank after the war. After the war, many people that had saved in this way
were able to make a down payment on a house, etc. I purchased a few $25 bonds. Many people started riding streetcars to work or car
pooling to save on gas that was rationed, or just to save wear and tear on
their car and tires that had to last, as cars were not being built during the
war. I rode the streetcar. When I would walk to 12th & Walnut, from
10th & Walnut to board the streetcar to go home from work, the
streetcars started getting more and more crowded. Many an evening I would stand, holding onto a leather
strap, most of the way home. I
started walking 2 or 3 blocks further west on 12th Street to
hopefully get on a streetcar and maybe even get a seat. For the first time, in 1942, I noticed there were many black people
already on the streetcar when I would get on. They were stockyard workers coming from the meat-packing
plants. They probably couldn’t
get that type of job in peace time.
They had probably been janitors and maids for the most part. Sometimes the ride home got pretty
fragrant. There was never
such a thing as segregated seating on the streetcars. I never even thought about it. Rationing had started. Women’s nylon hose were scarce because nylon was needed
for parachutes. Women didn’t
wear slacks at that time, so hose were important. When we would hear from a customer or worker in the bank
that a certain store had nylon hose, every woman that could get away, would
hurry to that store to purchase a pair.
(One pair to a customer).
Usually a line had already formed clear outside the store. Some girls would purchase a leg paint that made it look
as though you had on hose. You
needed to be careful not to cross your legs as the leg paint may smear. We got some sort of coupon to use when purchasing new
shoes. Shoe rationing was
started February 9, 1943, according to an article in the Independence
Examiner. Each person could
buy three pair of leather shoes
a year. There were other shoes
available that were of imitation leather and they were ugly and you didn’t
have to have a coupon to buy them. Each person in our family was issued a food ration book
and the head of the house (my Father) got a gasoline ration book. The
Government issued the ration books.
Meat, sugar and butter were rationed. Each stamp would allow you so much meat, so many pounds of
sugar, etc. or so many gallons of gasoline. These stamps were of different colors. If you had a friend or relative living on a farm, you
may have been able to get extra gasoline from them, as they could get an
unlimited amount as they were responsible for feeding the nation. When we wanted to visit my brother that was in the Air
Force at a camp close by, neighbors that didn’t have an automobile gave my
Father some of their gasoline ration stamps so we could make the trip. Cigarettes were very hard to come by. Even though I didn’t smoke, I would
get in any line where cigarettes were being sold, so I could get a pack for
my Father. Cigarettes were
scarce because they were sent to our soldiers. Many young men that had never smoked before the war soon
became smokers - also drinkers. Since meat was rationed, we never seemed to have enough
ration stamps, so we ate a lot of SPAM (canned meat) because it wasn’t
rationed. We fried it, baked it,
and ate it plain. I still can’t
eat SPAM because I ate so much of it in those days. “Stoopers” If a storekeeper knew you, sometimes they would put a
rationed item under the counter where you paid and when you went to pay (if
nobody else was around) they would pull out that scarce item for you. My Mother was the recipient of many
of these “stoopers” because her friend was on the cash register at our
grocery store. These items were
called “stoopers” because you stooped down to get them for a customer. My older brother, who was living in California wasn’t
drafted yet, but enlisted in the service because he felt guilty that his
little brother was in the service and he wasn’t. He came back to Kansas City to enlist. He went to Officer’s Training School
and became what was called a “90-day Wonder.” This meant in just three months you had sufficient
training to become an officer. In 1943 I asked for a Leave of Absence from my job at
the bank and went by train to California to live with two of my girlfriends I
had worked with in Kansas City at the bank. My girlfriends had gone out to California to work and
wrote for me to join them. They had rented a small cottage behind a house in
San Fernando Valley ($65 a month) and needed me to move there and split the
rent three ways. My Father told
my Mother he couldn’t understand why I wanted to go and leave my good
home. However, he drove me to
the Katz Drug Store in our neighborhood where I purchased my first
suitcase. I went by train and it was packed with
servicemen and women and children going to join their husbands and fathers in
the service. Many people stayed
up all night playing cards and talking.
I remember playing poker
with some of the servicemen. You
couldn’t sleep because of all the noise in the cars and people going from one
car to another. The day after I arrived in California I applied for a
job at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank.
I wanted a job actually working on the planes (like “Rosie The
Riveter,” as that was good money), but they hired me for office work,
probably because that’s what I had been doing. Many days on my lunch hour I would walk out to the factory
to see a show put on by entertainers, some of which were movie stars. Of course, the shows were for
patriotic reasons and to sell war bonds. One Saturday night I went out with my girlfriend Helen
Green and her boyfriend Harold and his
Marine friend. We went
dancing. When we came home and
the guys let us out of the car, my friend’s Marine dress hat fell out on the
ground. We didn’t discover it
until the car drove away.
I kept the hat to give to him the next time I saw him or his
friend. I never saw him again. When I left California I gave the
dress hat to my landlady for safekeeping in case this Marine returned looking
for it. He was shipped out
shortly after I met him to the Pacific Island of Tarawa and I later found out
he was killed there. Mostly servicemen would be in town on weekend passes and
young men of military age that were 4F (unfit physically for military
service) would be in town working.
Young men at that time that were 4F were embarrassed that they were
not in the service. WWII was
such a patriotic time. On the
very first date I had in California we went to a theater in North Hollywood
and saw a live show called “Ken Murray’s Blackouts.” The name was appropriate because the
coast of California was under blackout orders. Civil Defense offices were set up to protect citizens in
case of an invasion of our country and in the meantime to enforce “blackouts”
where needed. Blackouts were
turning off of lights at night or covering windows to block out light so
planes flying over could not detect a city. There were gun emplacements along the beaches to protect
the coastline. When one of my girlfriends, Dixie, that I was living
with got married, my other girlfriend and I couldn’t afford the whole $65 a
month rent on our little house and it seemed to be a good time to go back
home. I had to get a written
release from Lockheed because it was a defense-related industry and when I got back to Kansas City I was
required to go to work in a defense-related industry. I had wanted to go back to the bank
where I had been working.
Instead I had to present this written release letter and was employed
by Western Auto Supply Company’s Home Office. They were defense-related because they sold tires,
batteries, etc. While I was working at Western Auto I was able to get a
set of automobile tires for my Father.
Tires were nearly impossible to come by. People that couldn’t get new tires had their old tires
re-capped. Western Auto was situated right by several sets of
railroad tracks and the building was very close to the city’s main train
depot (the Union Station).
Hundreds of trains would go by every day, and many were troop
trains. Occasionally, when young
girls (including me) would be outside on a lunch hour we would throw a note
with our name and address on it to the servicemen hanging out of the train
windows hoping they would write to us.
I corresponded with one serviceman that way. There were USO’s (United Servicemen’s Organizations) and
Service Men’s Clubs in various parts of town, especially near a train or bus
depot. There were places
servicemen could go to clean up, write letters, get some food and
entertainment, before traveling on. The train stations and bus depots were always crowded,
day and night, with servicemen leaving or arriving and families meeting them
or leaving to join their serviceman somewhere in the states. Everyone listened to their radios and read their newspapers
to learn the latest on the war.
Also, when you went to a movie theater there was always a newsreel
that contained something of a patriotic nature about “doing your part” to end
the war. President Franklin
Roosevelt would be on the radio every so often to talk to the American
people. These broadcasts were
called Fireside Chats. People were asked to save any cooking grease and metal
and turn it in to be used in the war effort. My Mother saved her grease in a big can and we turned in
pieces of metal, such as old pots and pans that had been hung onto during the
Depression, at a collection point. There were lots of packages of food and essentials being
mailed to servicemen, all through the war, but especially at Christmas
time. My Mother even sent my
brother, who was overseas, eggs dipped in wax. This was supposed to keep them fresh but it didn’t
work! My brother told us after
the war that they mostly stole eggs from chicken coops as they moved across
Europe. I wrote to several servicemen that I met either at the
Service Men’s Club, where I volunteered, or met through other friends. Several times a week when I got home
from work I would have several letters from them and sometimes a package such
as one containing salt-water taffy from New Jersey, and a beautiful gold
bracelet from Italy or a satin pillow top. The satin pillow tops seemed to be
a universal gift that servicemen sent home. They could be purchased reasonably, I’m sure, at their
base PX (Post Exchange). These
pillow tops were shiny, bright-colored satin with flowers painted on them and
things such as, MOTHER or SWEETHEART painted on them in large letters. They were gaudy - but it was the
thought that counted. Any mail coming from servicemen was postage-free but was
censored. In other words, some
words or portions of sentences that may divulge critical information would be
blacked out or cut out of their writing by their unit commanders.. V-Mail was put into effect. This was a way for the Post Office to eliminate the weight
of so much mail that was going overseas on planes and boats. V-Mail was a thin piece of paper,
about 6" long by 4" wide.
It was a photocopy of the original letter. The V-Mail would be folded to make its’ own envelope, thus
ending up being about 3" X 3". I still have one of these from my brother Jerry when he
was overseas. Stars in Windows When a family had a member in one of the services, they
would display a small flag with one white star on it in their front
window. If they lost a family
member in the military, they would display a gold star flag in their front
window. My parents displayed a
2-star flag for their two sons in the war. I don’t know where the flags came from. Many housewives that had not worked during their
marriage, went to work during the war.
My Mother felt guilty not working outside her home and she got a job
in a cookie factory on the line.
She was so tired at the end of the first day, she was lying on a
daybed in the dining room when my Father got home from work. His supper that was usually ready on
the dot of 5:00 was nowhere in sight!
This job didn’t last long.
We teased her for years after this. When the war was finally over and peace was declared May
8, l945, the word spread like
wild fire. I borrowed my
Father’s car, picked up my girlfriends and we drove to the huge Union
Railroad Station and then to downtown Kansas City to join the
celebrations. The Union Station
and the downtown main streets were totally packed with revelers. Next was the wait for our military to be mustered out
and come home to pick up the pieces of their lives and start over - - get a
job, get married, have babies, go back to school, buy a house and a car (not
necessarily in that order). Everyone got busy making the glorious adjustment to
peacetime! |
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