Livining History - 1940s

Have a child I always recommend getting a dime on Friday to buy and this is just fine with a great deal of living history to hear it told by those who were there. But 1940 was actually the beginning of my life my career. Everything happens starting after I graduated from high school. To hear it from those who heard it amid the cries There was so much patriotism. There was no complaining about ration. We just accepted it saving that everybody felt they had to contribute to the winning of this or to look into the eyes of saw history being made. We lived through a time when I was hard growing up as a teenager and we were hit with things like hell or losing a president a bomb. Look into the eyes of those who saw it that don't go where Route 20 to now is on the East End and it still has to rule broken.

And I'm certain that many of the people of the same way into the eyes of those who saw the tears I was 15 years old when in 1944 the entire family together with an entire generation in my city were deported to Auschwitz into the eyes of those from whom we can learn. If I had really grown up here I'd have a Pennsylvania Dutch accent for sure. And in spite of my appearance I think I could have survived through the war along with my non Japanese friends. We love this fellow in the eyes of those in the Lehigh Valley who lived in 1940. In

1940 it began with war escalating in Europe. The entire continent was under Nazi control and England and Russia lived in fear of invasion. In America Franklin Roosevelt was dealing simultaneously with Churchill's and Stalin's call for help. The Selective Service Bill and running for an unprecedented third term as president but emerging from the Great Depression Christmas 1940 was the happiest in a decade. Employment was up and people were going to restaurants and ordering steak buying radios and cars and the biggest sales year since the 1929 crash. To me after my wife my old Ranger in the Lehigh Valley railroads added men and trains steel production was on the rise. Like

most Americans most people in Allentown Bethlehem and Easton were isolationists uninvolved in the war overseas. Pennsylvania Germans were cautious about spending money and content to be known as Pennsylvania Dutch as Nazis again were on the march over their 1930. We got a of a depression at that time. I was president of his class and went on high school for three straight years. Captain of the three sports. When I graduated I had six pennies and thirty nine to go to the World's Fair. I spent all day there six minutes. That was thirty nine. Many who marveled at television for the first time at the New York World's Fair couldn't even buy basic appliances TV Hi-Fi and computers had to wait as the authorities had few luxuries of today. Not everybody had cars in those days and our whole relation when we have one relative that had a car the rest never owned and my father never owned a car its entire life with the scarcity in

the terror among many families because of the person not knowing where the next time a brand is coming from. My dad was a teacher. They took half shower and gave half their salaries to the employees. They were employed made a big difference. I don't remember much growing up as a kid because I had to go to work at the age of 13 and I worked all the time. I worked in the worst sweat shops in Allentown Pennsylvania and I used to go to high school I remember the one I'd work at Study night shift with the Acadian knitting mills and I would go to school the next day with Prickley hate in my back in the middle of winter. I mean I worked in the steam rooms and everything. I worked anywhere I could get a job because it was the Depression and it wasn't easy. It was not easy. When I went to school I had passes for the trolley.

I took a trolley car from say six and Hamilton took me out the 17th Street. You go to Central Park by trolley car you could go to just about anywhere with a trolley car. Most most people living in the Lehigh Valley in those years were able to live decently within their neighborhoods by the city. I mean they had all the necessary shops stores facilities for a decent life in the neighborhood. They didn't really have to dry. They certainly went to their local grocer and butcher for their food. And a number of the local farm pharmacy general purpose drugstore for many other things. They wanted. They had been walking all their lives. I imagine at that time having had to be able to go five and 10 and get a hammer or five as a hotdog for five cents. And I mean a good hamburger and a good hotdog at that price and they were nice size. And they were well done. That was the prices at that time. But keep in mind the average worker earned

anywhere from 25 cents an artifact two cents an hour. My father was a shoemaker he had a shoemaker's shop and in his shop they played cards at night while he waited for the customers to pick up the shoes and there was a man named Mr. Guth. We call them Goudey and he was a cabinet maker who worked in a cabinet factory and I heard him telling my father and our friends there that he just got to. He's getting 60 cents an hour. I said wow that's a penny a minute. Rebounding from a decade of depression in the Lehigh Valley where 20 percent worked for Bethlehem Steel discontented labor struck and one for the first time and then up in the 40s and 41 when we were up. Vacations only were for. The supervisor. Hospitalization was on the supervisors. I walked in between her lifts one time and the crime and pulled the whole Damrosch deal on me. All right. They took one of the dispensary bandaging me up send me a whole number of dispensary send me home.

What I hope you come back when you feel better. Management has never been quite reconciled to the union and on the other hand the Union with its local leadership its local leadership and in terms of rank and file opinion was very suspicious of management. They came to me one time said John you're a leader all auditions and 39 40 things are found not while I'm laid off they're hiring people. The reason I got laid off was because I was trying to organize what I had to strike the police. They got a little bored with the people right there. So they overturned a car which I seen personally. That's one thing. Does it stop all come riding down the chase my wife and my mother were all fired up from the street onto the porch. It's a whole. World. Away from the police that day they come out of nowhere.

I have with those guys they cover it up in the halls they come right up the porch and they walk the walk they kids and people says hey we live here. I don't care you just get in a house while big business and big labor had become impersonal. Small shops and banks knew you by name and doctors still came to your house when it was more of a personal relationship. We all had our corner grocery and I remember I lived on Wall Street there and there was a Achmet store. Paul was the manager of the store. He did everything. He did everything in that store. Everybody knew him and you really got personal service and they had clerks behind the counter. You didn't help yourself. You had to be waited on. They served everything to you from their shelf. And they wrote they had a bag they wrote down the amounts and added it off and you paid for it. And I remember I used to go to the store when I was between 14 to 16 I'd buy bread for seven cents a loaf. Milk for 10 cents a quart. Chicken was like 19

cents a pound beef with 37 cents a pound. And people only earn twenty twenty five dollars a week. Dearies Where's Allentown dary Freemans dairy Rhys's dairy there was a dozen a dozen Build-A-Bear milkman that delivered milk. You had the bread companies our local bread companies who delivered in the wee small hours of the morning. The movies in 1940 was the main entertainment for people they either went to the movies or they stayed home on the radio there were no television in 1940 and the movies did very well. They one of the handicaps in the 40s. We didn't have Sunday movies at that time even they weren't permitted to show up on Sunday in 1940. Decent movies before the beginning of behavior fashion by art by boat bravado by the words sex a sure to see. Me. Fall on. My

knee. Al Jolson sang again in a movie remake of the first talkie opened for Judy Garland and Fred Astaire and. Elizabeth Taylor. He wouldn't understand. Oh no he's ready to go to bed. You didn't run the national alone. I want the horse to. Want me to be human. You're funny. If. That. Is. What your father talking to even the. Young Orson Welles who had terrorized the nation in 1938 with a radio drama about Martians invading Earth was offered a bribe to burn citizen kane. A film admired for decades since. And I think people read the reading today but they also read a lot in those days.

Every week I go to the library and come back with an armful of books and let the kids join me. Same thing but I think in my area and I the amusement park was a terrific entertainment for everybody in the valley. It was economical. There was no admission they could go out there without spending a dime and a lot of them did. There was dancing the big bands at Dorney Park Highland Park and the Empire Ballroom across from Central Park. Well it happened that I've played at the lyric in the pick band and we had a night off Soul Train group that was coming to town at the Empire. There must have been about 10000 people there. So there was about twenty two drummers that are in the contest. You had a contest and of course I knew all his music by heart. I mean I used to practice all the time and they knew how to work the drums so I went up there and I happened to win the contest. And a week later I get a letter.

He wondered if I would go on tour with them for about eight to 13 weeks and that was a thrill in my life. Time. Is little too low for the people. Another reason to be quite old indeed. But there's a dozen new radio stations introduced local talent in variety shows. How many Jolly Joe teamer play pocas and Ray Mulligan serve up his morning mulligan stew woman whose husband granted few women who labor abroad. Though it was radio that ended America's isolationism that told us by of our imaginary fireside that we were now the world's arsenal. Whether you're a field worker or a. Piece of it. I'm a pianist for a home wife. A father or a bank. For

people who are a manufacturer. All of the grooming sacrifice. In behalf of your front brain and your liver. And no one in the Lehigh Valley can forget the day radio told us we were at war. I was at my parents home for the weekend Sunday afternoon on my right Sunday and it was Sunday afternoon right next to the coal stirre radio in our living room listening to a program and all of a sudden I heard this news about Pearl Harbor. I didn't even know where Pearl Harbor was. I happen to know because of my part time service but it was on a real utterly unreal because you couldn't really realize that such a thing was happening. And then you realized being a young guy I know I did that is going to change my life.

My father was just doing hands on radio which was one of those big colorful ones. And I heard him say that they are all fools. And my father never ever said. It clang clang more and. What is your battle station. I went to my battle section with a baseball wrong. If it would have happened two days later I would have been on the Arizona and I wouldn't be around today. One torpedo I want to tell you about Pearl Harbor in those days and that night was to. Have a go to go live to Finder. Yeah I do remember the next day when the president spoke yesterday some by some for. OK that will be dated. December 11th. Nazi Germany declared war on the United States and America's

isolation had ended. Japanese world are watching. Living History 1914. Ask anyone who was a youngster teen or young adult in the 1940s he or she will remember it as though it happened only yesterday. Definitely the draft pulling the numbers out of the fish bowl. I and my husband who was my boyfriend had a number that was way in the future when I have to be pulled out. But he lived in West Bethlehem and many of the West Bethlehem young people went to the Bethlehem Steel and were considered crucial to the war effort. Teenagers and young adults on that fateful day that would live in infamy quickly grew up. We were a generation in the 40s that learned to live by the rules. I think and I think men who were 18 and 19 were men in those days.

I mean they really were they were grown up they were they were very and women too. I think we were way ahead of our we looked old at that time I think. And then I took a teaching position in eastern teaching wasn't quite for me and my father had been in the Navy and at that time they were taking people and women into the Navy and I decided to apply and I was not selected for the first class of waves because I took older teachers who had had some experience and I had just started teaching so they chose me for the second class of waves. We lost the carrier Lex and we pulled 660 mama out of the water on her and that was like losing your left arm to the fleet. That was our that was our lady. The lady LIX. That was in months. Everybody didn't want to lose what we did. The flag of the rising sun soon flew over Hong Kong Indochina Burma

the Dutch East Indies and then Singapore. We know submarines that their big fleet now everything Japan had was headed east toward GMH the stage area and we were off the coast of Alaska and then a planet where we got the straight dope. I heard it I know it because I wrote it down then I wrote on the paper. Suddenly we found ourselves fighting across both the Pacific and the Atlantic. And I arrived over there in London in the first week of December of 1943 and was there until August 1945. And during that time for the first two months we didn't hear too much bombing but after that unbelievable we were waiting. See our submarines did one hell of a good job on tracking that fleet coming towards us. Then five or six carriers you're watching all the guns going up toward the bullet and everything else and they had the balloons in all things

so that they couldn't come in low. But all of a sudden they heard the splash up there and looked up and to this day if I close my eyes I can see that big lift off are coming down and crashing someplace. No wonder we get them. Oh it was fun. That lasted for days for days day and night day and night. I didn't sleep for four days. I didn't I couldn't sleep on the way. Any minute any second down through the fog in the morning till a night you figured this is it. Any second you could get blown out or the you and some infested waters where there were battleships ahead of us. There were aircraft carriers are ahead or we were chasing them. Every place you went during that period of time it was fire. Every building was broken. All that glass you could grab anything you wanted to but you saw bodies all over the place. It was unbelievable. Now instead of like this we're like this now we're going in and in and in

and then we got 10000 nine thousand eight thousand seven thousand six. We're all sweating now. It's just crazy. You're going to raise that before you know I forget the exact yard but it could have been as close as 4000 yards. There were sitting ducks. And he turns broadside. Geez oh man the first idea. Minneapolis She gets two hits. She barely made it back. Well two hits. We get one or two hits in the front two missiles and the back with the two on the front. It our magazines and a powder on them thing. I can hold her at number one. No not a turn to here. There's a big shaft like yeah and it's open at the bottom of everything. Everybody under the

terrific blast everybody in there was instantly killed. Some other bodies battle stations. My best friend was that one and the most heavily damaged ship in the history of the United States Navy to ever come to port on her own power and therefore probably be on that ship. On the homefront. The Lehigh Valley had never been more productive. Or been subjected to rationing. It was a fire. Life was different at that time of people. And in spite of what you would think they should be happy. They were very. Eager to do it and very cooperative in doing it because it was for the war effort. The gasoline ration for instance the basic ration was the A-stan. This provided four gallons per week per stamp. Now let's assume the automobile had a

gas usage of 15 miles per gallon. That meant one stamp would provide 60 miles of travel per week. Well now we grew up in that day and age when we didn't go out and find boyfriends. They found gasoline was rationed. And so you can just see me once or twice a week and maybe another boyfriend once or twice a week. And Bob always said that he coasted half the way down from Bethlehem to ready because he didn't have much gasoline and therefore he had to figure out where he can get where he could drive. We didn't have a movie house in the town of Red. How But we managed to get over to Quakertown to trainers because they had about the best food in the in the area. This is is that has to be true verse for legitimate reasons. We're not nearly as great in the Lehigh

Valley as they might be in various places for instance in the upper Midwest when I wouldn't get silk or nylons in there only ran once. I remember when spring came I was out in the orange trying to Brown my legs but we didn't use leg makeup and the big problem at first was the stockings had seams trying to draw a seam up the back of your leg was almost impossible so soon we were not very with that and then seamless stockings came along too. So I used to kid my mother when I came home for what she had in the bathroom a lot of toilet paper and I said why do you hate me. Well it's rationed if I don't get it. I won't be able to buy it. We were pretty self-sufficient. My mother may soap me so we saved all our drippings and our fat. We really had to be very careful how we use things and we didn't waste them.

The ration provided three pairs of shoes per enrollee per person in the family. Well I would venture to say most Lehigh Valley County families in those years rarely bought more than one pair of shoes per adult. Maybe two or four children particularly when they were very young or growing up. I was working with the Red Cross tying shoes together for the Russian war relief. We had piles and piles of shoes and we were matching them up and getting them ready to be shipped to Russia because Russia had really been devastated in the early days of the war. When I went to school Garber hornes school we had the chance to buy stamps. I remember 10 cents twenty five cents and you got a little boy just like a green stamp looking in a more modern era get 1875 to I bought 1875 you got a $25 bond and that

was how we participated in the war effort by contributing our dimes and quarters toward building up to an 1875 fund. Everybody pitched in. Because. Scarcely. Either. But we were fortunate in the Valley because there were so many farms. And so a lot of farmers were able to come in and sell you things that you couldn't normally buy like in the big cities. Everything was rationed so I think basically here we were pretty. Pretty secure. Growing up in the Lehigh Valley half a century ago seemed normal. So preoccupied with war. What I remember about the trollies I worked for that reason resistance to 73 Turner and I used to carry the bottles of those steps were the soda jerk. Yes. She was a chemist and she made a bomb. She put a bomb on the trolley tracks. It would blow the load trolley right off the trap. The. You know. We night we never admitted that we did it. The real purpose of the victory garden was a.

Club psychological it was to help people feel they were making a contribution they were adding in some way to the war effort and feeling that we were superior in our ability to counteract any attack. Probably again I don't think it was as strong in the latter years as it was during the war years. I mean they really filled us with propaganda. Now probably the civil defense program at its very beginning in the early part of the war was meant to be to prepare the people for the possibility of air raids. The most important thing would be that the training of the volunteers to do various jobs in the case of the emergency it might be to help dig up persons who were caught in a building a bomb to building to administer first aid if everything was dark the opposing planes would be unable to find where the cities were.

So everything was made black and there were air raid wardens. They walk through the streets and I can remember they had whistles and if they saw a crack of light coming from your house you got the call to your attention awfully fast. You had to put that light out aircraft recognition glasses. I took those with my students and they knew me as an English teacher and as a Latin teacher and as a coach of the girls basketball team. But they weren't sure how I do an aircraft rescue mission and they were so concerned about me after we had the exam they said how did you do. How did you do. Fortunately I passed. You worried about maybe the next one was going to be a real thing you did. And I do remember one time when two planes came very low over the school building and the children ducked

they actually ducked in class. I thought it was going to hit too. But did you ever have to identify an aircraft. Never. Ever. But what we didn't have to do we had arm. Drills air raid drills at night. Every community did of course and we'd have to go down to the school. I think our children took it very seriously. And I know that some of them a lot of them had brothers and sisters but I also remember an eighth grade student who dropped out and he was well developed and he went into the Marines and was killed. My dad was also drafted. I was afraid I fear there was there was fear. I mean I didn't want to make an impact upon me. Some neighbors are no longer buddies flying around the place anymore. And one of them was a sailor was a chef in the Pacific I never saw him again. A girl

went down the hall crying uncontrollably sobbing. You saw her. She you just know that her brother just killed. And I also was eating a well-worth if you encounter a five and dime and some gal the waitress behind the counter was told that her brother was killed. Kind of place the tower and she just broke down. I'm Jennifer shift. Well on the way I mean you know I lost my husband overseas. The flight went out and they heard they had to report to her to report every hour. And after the second report there was nothing. And to this day we have no idea what happened to the plane. It's listed in all the Bermuda Triangle books but this the Navy has never sent any indication as to what happened. It was just one of those things the plane disappeared.

We all had small children one that one woman had four children another one had two and I had two and we just had to we had to accept it. My children were cheated. We collected tin cans and we need it and we did all sorts of things for the war effort. So and we bought as stance saving stands in school the cans and the metal and the rubber all that stuff like that. And you did so with pride. Also like my contribution to the war effort we're proud that that is also the time I learned about the power of women because I did six thousand two hundred cans and I was sure I was going to win the $25 sitting by that sort of super size. I remember we got in the market for one or two pounds of scrap iron. I don't know how. There wasn't a deep amount of patriotism and people didn't hesitate to stop and pick up hitchhikers especially if they were in uniform. There was no fear. It was

as one of my friends said Oh what a wonderful war one time because people were so helpful to each other and so considerate and so kind. It was an era I'm so glad I lived at that time because I haven't experienced that for a long time. It was just a very warm feeling of community. Yes in the 1940s everyone was really expected to pull their weight to do their share. They were not applauded if they did their share. They were just regarded as having done their share. They've done what one normal person was expected to do. I think the people at home helped win this war just as much as the soldiers did. They did their job here and they provide us with the equipment they provide us with a clothing all of them we need it and we need it. Well we had to win the war. It couldn't have been done without the people here at home.

They were just as important to the war effort I think as the soldiers on the battlefield. You're reliving history living history. In 1940 even with many young men fighting overseas and many women taking their place high valley factories life went on as best it could be challenging. I had a boyfriend overseas and several friends over as you did. And he wanted to know what I write to him. So I did start to write to him and then somewhere along the line when I pick up a record for him. So I picked up a record for him. I figured I was going to see him after he got home. One that again it's a record having a child. Well my husband was overseas was a joy. My mother said Why did you want to become pregnant. Suppose something happens to Bob overseas. I said that's exactly why I want a child and when the baby was born

I saw all the daddies come in to see their newborn babies. And of course to see their wives as well. A lot of these daddies were in uniform but our daddy was overseas. He was in Hawaii at the time. It was absolutely the only daddy who did not get in to see his baby and that was a little bit hard. There were so many birds that I was put into the hall of the hospital the next day they put me in a ward between two other beds. I could touch the mother on this side and I could touch the mother on this. The voice had become commonplace in the media and as one of the reactions to the wars so many married war marriages were very were consummated under very hurried circumstances without the divorce rate increased tremendously

immediately after the war. Some of them some of the young people did go to Elkton Maryland because they could be married there very very quickly very little red tape in some cases they were young people who didn't want to be pulled into the service and thought they could avoid it by getting married. But my father said well everything is being rationed. Shoes can get gasoline you know but they can't ration passion. Injustice in the 1940s was not confined to war nor to the enemy. U.S. wartime production might not have been so miraculous had a presidential order not forced industry to employ non-whites as other than janitors or had another not ordered the Navy to recruit blacks to serve their country as more than porters and Messman.

Growing up a fourth wall street we lived in a little United Nations neighborhood. There were people of all nationalities and colors that live there and as children we didn't know the difference. We didn't realize that there was a difference between the kids we all played together went to the boys club went down to Fountain park swimming. We didn't realize that people were different from each other because we were all one big neighborhood. There were Hungarians and Italians and Jewish people. We we played together we lived together. We were all in the same boat because it was during the Depression period and. We were all in the same boat. We were poor and we didn't realize we were poor. I heard the news that Jackie Robinson was was going to be playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I felt very great because I. Felt an association with him because I knew that. I was one of the first graduates of college and he would be the one where the first. A person one of the first athletes to be

accepted into the major leagues. But. He was exposed to much more prejudice and I was in the immigrant melting pot of the Lehigh Valley. Racial prejudice was mild in contrast to the south. I also saw there in North Carolina signs which said white and colored. There were water fountains which said white and colored. And this. Always puzzled me. I wonder what type of water was that colored water. And. I was told that. This is where you drink you cannot drink at this fountain Mark White and that's the first time I was exposed to that at home. Elmo Jackson was a football and basketball star both at Muhlenberg College and at Allentown High School where we beat Bevoir. That was. It was a very festive time you know. We would walk down the street and people would reach over and grab me. Great game elbow. And I felt very good. Very important. And. It just was a great

period. Of my life. I just enjoyed beating that high school. And they knew it. I think. The war with tyrants abroad affected everyone. And on the home front festering racism surfaced in a tyranny of rumor fanaticized by war. You can just imagine Pearl Harbor was a shock. I mean it was beyond belief. And yet our neighbors even the public officials were very kind in the beginning said don't worry we know you guys are trustworthy loyal and on the evening of July 4th 1942 we were convoyed in army trucks to post in Arizona and as we got there and as dusk was approaching we could see all these tarpaper barracks right in the middle of the desert.

And it must have been way over 100 degrees. We were down behind barbed wire. There were guns pointed inside the camp not that we could go any place or do anything. There were about 110000 innocent people condemned to concentration camps. Ten of them spread out throughout the country and out of that 110000. I'd say about 70000 were U.S. born American citizens for the Ikeda's of the ME is it was as though all Pennsylvania Germans in the Lehigh Valley had been rounded up as Nazi spies. If we had been living in Lehigh Valley when the war started I'm quite certain that we would not have been placed in a concentration camp. Our parents came from Japan and they were not allowed to become citizens and they were not allowed to buy property because they were not citizens. That

was until we were born here. We were born here so we were citizens naturalized citizens are citizens by birth. We recited the Americans creed. We listened to Benny Goodman and jitterbug to his tunes. Watch the Hollywood movies just like any other American kids. The self-doubt. I wonder if we are inferior. I wonder if we do harbor some ill feelings against our mother country and my Mother Country us. The internment was a gross indignity for which our government apologized for decades later but much worse were Hitler's death camps. Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps. There were five additional ones in Poland all of which served to exterminate innocent

men women and children mostly Jewish victims from all over Europe and when transports arrived at Auschwitz they can't can face to face with Dr Josef Mengele who was always at the railroad tracks and making selections arbitrarily without talking to us or without asking anyone any age or anything. He simply waved his thumb to the right to the left and those who were waved to the left which included all children under the age of 15 or 16. A pregnant women. Able bodied mothers with their children. Anyone with a physical disability and anyone who according to them was too old to work work or marched into the gas chamber. Upon arrival I saw my mother walking away from me and I ran after her. I wanted to be with my mother. When a man who was a prisoner himself and worked at the wheel world siding grabbed my arm and sent me very firmly to the right side I have no idea why he

was so angry or for I later found out had I followed my mother I wouldn't be here today for late but battalions of two hundred fifty a Jewish able bodied man and took us out to the frontline in Poland in the Ukraine. We didn't know exactly where we were because we walked without a wheelbarrow pick axe and shovel threw out hundreds and hundreds of miles. Many of my comrades died. We've been married for 51 years. We celebrated their 50th anniversary last year. Many couples like the Freemans of Allentown met and fell in love under the inhuman conditions imposed by others in the 40s and. Pleasure years ago.

And as long as lovers. We still love us. Is there a message in there for kids today. Well I guess there is a message. That you can't get along. If you just leave your prejudice at home. You can't get along. You're reliving history living history the 1940s. I was in five bottles in my time the battle of the bulge is one of my most memorable thing and I just was lucky that I got out of line and I know I'll never forget that under show all the time with the first bombs the Germans were sent to England all night long all you heard with these bombed. And are you followed the armored division all the way in through Aachen through the Battle of the Bulge

all the way up to Berlin in the Lehigh Valley. Bethlehem Steel joined in the effort to launch two ship today U.S. shipyards and to make Canon shell bombs Mack Trucks bulldog growled across Africa and Europe as it had in the first week. Rosie the Brit could be found in the Lehigh Valley Mack Trucks Bethlehem Steel making camouflage in our apparel. I remember doing pointer's dances in the Empire Ballroom. For Castle Castlebar and. Community Park out near fullfil. We went to the movies a lot because there wasn't much else we could do. But gradually there were many boys around the day either. Women were needed in making war planes thousands a month by converting auto and truck planes and building others such as one in the Lehigh Valley now known as Queen City

Airport consolidated faulty. What are the real failures of the war effort throughout the United States was right here in Allentown. Now the single real plane was ever produced there in the approximate year and a half in which that plant was in operation. Now they're putting another operator on a ship no matter what the hell you want with an elevator on the ship. The thing was that we're going to get the operators up and down you know and nobody nobody got off the ship. Pretty sure when a whistle blows everybody off the fantail everybody off the deck get down below out of sight everybody well before the water comes up you are bored with it torch. Holy mackerel. And I mean they came on board about 15 people a secretary of state and all that stuff come aboard and boxes and boxes of the RS drinking water and even a couple of cases of champagne and man they really brought it on board.

And before you know it we were out. So they come on board agree on it and then we went to to. See the reasons for the delay was a man was dying he was dying. Believe me he was dying. That's why the trip were the ship was delayed. Well I looked down from my director and nerves all of you are in a wheelchair. That's when I started to cry. This guy now is gone over and they're going to decide what the future for is something got to be wrong here. Yes he can do this. And boy the tears just come on in my eyes the most respected man in my life right there should never never been put up for the fourth term never Ironically John F. Kennedy once said that everyone remembers where they were the moment they heard the president that died today.

If I was the saddest. Day of My Life one of the saddest days of my life because I was the only president I ever knew. And I thought he would always be my president. I would listen to him over the radio. We didn't have television. And he made me feel so secure. With his voice. You know any time I heard him speak. I knew things were all right. When he called upon people to be patriotic and to offer a form of sacrifice. He phrased it in a way that it sounded as if it was a privilege to let a man run in his condition. He shouldn't have allow that. And somebody started yelling and I look around to see what had happened. They were yelling at the president oh my gosh it's like losing your dad or something. We only ever knew one president. We only ever knew one pope and we only ever knew when they were in for a long time.

You know we were all products of the Depression we were all people could experience some of us at first and the various relief and recovery projects which the New Deal had sponsored. We several of us at least we if say every one of us in our group had experienced the importance of the minimum wage and maximum or act for instance of the deductions for Social Security. They knew even if there was dying they know the vice president was going to take over and they didn't want Henry Wallace So they put dumped in and put Joe before you know it Trumans a couple of months in office Trumans the president. That was a good choice. No I didn't know who this man Harry Truman was and I didn't think he'd be. If they are you know I will get replaced FDR. But I found out later that it wasn't too bad. It was a very good president.

Truman was an almost completely unknown to the general populace as he was to most people in Washington. And and I think everyone was pleasantly surprised to learn as the days passed and the weeks passed that the new president was a quick study a quick learner and had begun to take up the take the reins of office in his hands and to actually begin to use them. Truman Truman of course everybody had great misgivings about the end of the world because Truman would never do. But he should fill those shoes. It did. I thought as much of a as any president. I mean he would take balls off any body and the Marshall Plan and different things that he did. I mean I thought he was a good president. Then we had the big strike we had to strike and I had a meeting in Washington and having We settled the

strike immediately. That's the kind of pressure that he wore as did many communities the Lehigh Valley contributed its share of men and materiel to World War II. Bethlehem Steel turned out 73 million tons of guns shells bombs and ships. And then there the action begins. On one side I said holy quites all this trouble in the Pacific. Well I got to be right up front. It's like a front seat. America has been in three undeclared war since Not since World War One. There so many casualties as in World War Two. Not since the Civil War. What's more at stake the threat to America's very existence. Far more bullets. In fact we fired our whole magazine. All the bullets we had we form within a 24 hour period. No ever shipped United States history ever did that and we kept firing and firing and firing. By early.

May. May 8th I believe. Came the final complete surrender of the German armed forces. The war in Europe was over. There remained only Japan. The war against Japan might take a long time. That might entail considerable a large number of casualties but that might be the most trying and and costly part of the entire war effort. We didn't even spend much money on telephone calls. We wrote letters and when he was overseas he wrote every day so that there was one month when I didn't get any mail and I was very very concerned about his safety. It so happened that he was working on where to land the planes in Japan at the time of the invasion which they didn't have to do and of course we were glad they didn't have to do it. But he was not allowed to write to me at that time. So here we are stuck in the middle of the night around midnight. You could

feel it like this. And hey come on we're all ships at sea. Get out something on this way up. We were going that way too. What a relief. Oh Holy Christ. And they told us something big is going to happen in the morning but they don't know want because they didn't know they never fired one. And that. Of course. Was the time the bombs on Japan. We never went in. Oh what a lucky son of a gun I was. Yes I think everyone was very much surprised at the rapidity with which the war ended. People didn't know about the atom bomb. Even Truman didn't know about the time he took the oath of office. They really have no. Everybody out in the street hollering really big time was paying them when everybody was late it was a very very happy

time and I was at a time where you saw a lot of activity but it felt good. It felt good to know it was over. We say it was like a vacation and everyone was hugging and kissing and jumping around and my boyfriend kissed me in front of my parents. I was in my little town of Bangor Pennsylvania. I was back now I had finished what was basic training in uniform. The war was over. I had a pretty girl on my arm and every body was they were throwing toilet paper off of a trust building in the blood Barbes Eldin confetti was raining down on you and it was during August 45 when the news came at V-J Day. And at 14 that you know he smoked a cigar for the first time in my life and there was a tremendous relief because everyone realized that this sudden end to the war

with Japan meant that tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of American servicemen would not become casualties of war either by death or by wounds. And we really didn't know what was really going on as young kids. But we realized the war was over. We would be coming home and everybody was talking about going home. That was the dream. And I couldn't wait to get home. I wanted to come home. Instead of coming home by by plane service I was and of course we came home by cattle. They didn't need us any more but they shipped us home by cattle boat. I got a phone view of this thing through the range finder a range finder and what I can spot a cigar on a guy that was close. And I just saw this damn thing. I just couldn't get my hands off. Well I could go from one guy and go from MacArthur. Then you got the admirals and you get all three. Then you got all of them I forget money they're

all lined up there. And the Japanese of course the Jap I guess it was my mom for what her name was but they were all back there in the phantom of that ship. And I just kept looking and looking and looking and looking. And before you know they're signing papers. Oh I wish I could have had a picture of that. And you saw it with your own eyes. I saw it with my own eyes. The war was over but much more significant to me was very much a personal thing. My daughter was born that day and it was only a few days later that I learned about this the cablegram from my sister but that was really what was important to me on beach day. You you're reliving history making history then after the bombing came the boom. Couples who had put their lives on hope. Now rushed the stores maternity wards and

wheeled her tempered by a new Cold War. They lived as though there were no tomorrow. The big question was where to buy the house not when to buy. When was not. Could they buy. Yes they could. They saved steadily during the war so they had a very comfortable nest egg. And the consequence of this was the tremendous explosion of new living spaces the suburbs with their separate houses each with its bit of green and shrubbery with certainly one if not two cars in the garage. All the modern utilities in the house and when we finally in 1949 built our home it was a wonderful moment for me because there was something that really belong to us. I now had ground that I could plan that we have started our

family fairly soon we can start our household and I can get back to work in the civilian world and things will be normal of course we never know what normal is. We paid $629 for the car and that was a brand new Studebaker to have. It was a white one it was beautiful. And I had that car when I went in the service. I stored it when he came when I had that car and I only had like 3000 or 4000 miles on it and I was one of the few people that had a new car you couldn't buy a car. 1946. Finally before we move into our own home we did get an apartment watch here and what a luxury that was and it didn't handle much of that time. But it was better than working in your kitchen sink on a scrubbing board. Nancy what else did we have that we have that there's so many things that you just don't even think about that now. It took

a long time before we could even get a telephone. We were on the waiting list for a telephone for a long time. Well when I came out of the Army the first thing my mother told me there was an and a paper they want electronic technicians to work at Western Electric and they were interviewing people and I went for the interview and I was hired I was one of the first people they hired and I went down in a department called test set construction. They didn't have a plant at that time. They were manufacturing crystals on Franklin Street in Allentown. We built test sets to test the crystals and then they started manufacturing tubes. That was their principal business a gallon Tamplin at that time. I got to the highest grade I could get into the part arrives and I got a dollar fifty four cents an hour and the minimum wage is only twenty five cents so I was earning for 40 hours. I had a $70 paycheck this year so I know a paycheck. Not at that time. If you bought a car you could pay a car off for $29 $39 a month if you're renting a home you could run an apartment for 35 or 40 dollars a month. I bought a home in 1940

seven after I got married and I bought a home in East Allentown a half of a twin with a garage two car garage for $500. And I was able to get a mortgage for 8 0 0 0 0 and I put $500 down and I bought the home but my mortgage cost me $59 a month for the first 10 percent of all. Well Lehigh Valley experience as did most of the dust up over to the door through the areas of the country. The impact Impacto reconversion upon industry and also then the determination of organized labor to get what is regarded as the fair share of the post-war profits for its membership. Well in the 40s you had a job at Mack trucks or Bethlehem Steel. Those jobs were considered good jobs. They had benefits because of the strength of the unions at the time unions were very strong and they got benefits for their employees but even today they couldn't get the people I worked

out after that they made good money. But I'll tell you what they put it in the hall they put it in a car. And some of us didn't like 47 I got better. But I didn't have that much. But it was all because of being prejudiced the that was. 25 cents an hour till the unions got in there and we got our lives interrupted by military service had to readjust to normal civilian life with government help for college and home financing through the G.I. Bill and through rehabilitation. And I remember that when my brother came home and you know we started living through some of the things that he had experienced even an airplane going overhead he jump into a doorway right away. You know when my husband came back to Allentown and to the Reading station after four and a half years he decided he was sick and tired of

schedules and clocks and he wanted a little bit of freedom and symbolic of that. He opened the window of the passenger car and threw out his watch. I went through high school. I just wanted to see the bill all right. Just wanted to see if I could get this studying again. And I did. I got to studying back and I went to the booze and I did with his Navy. I'm just too shook up. I can't. So I went to Muhlenberg for years. Then I went teaching in Belvedere high school for two years when not to not leave for half a year and then they just as I go to school to start so I quit teaching. I love the football basketball baseball coach and I love that. But I just couldn't. I hated to leave it. But then I called up my buddy but he got me right in and I stayed there for 30 years for many communities like the Lehigh Valley the 40's can be measured in Lost Lives immeasurable or the

lost opportunities of youth. If things would have been different and I wouldn't went down in that stupid recruiting stage just to see if I could pass a test if I wanted it done that I would have probably been a major league star even cursive has told me this and he often told me that boy I thought you would make it all the way a couple of people told me then I thought I could too. But there it is. It didn't happen. Last two was our innocence our insulation from the outside world as we refocused on a new cold war on disarmament on helping through the Marshall Plan to rebuild past enemies and on curing disease. But I do recall in the late 40s the polio epidemic years. I. Remember I remember it. I refuse to go to bed at night for fear that I would contract this disease.

Also the Lehigh Valley began to lose its farms to highways and to suburbs and to lose industries made obsolete by the dawning era of technology. Well Mr. Darrie was a sock manufacturer he owned 40 Stockwell's in the 1920s and he built this house in 1922 in 1924 and at the house that is a large Joe as 22000 plus square feet. It has a ballroom at least 150 a cocktail on Jesse's 90 has a big indoor pool we have 56 rooms and a house that was array on and nylon that came into the marketplace. That actually stopped the. So here and Mr. Derry lost every one of his properties he had at that time including the home because of the demise of so wayside the silk and clothing industry which was big. We had trucking. We had metal Fabula they have ribbon Mills made a ribbon for the sewing industry we had shuttle company to make the

shuttles that were used in the mills. There were a lot of businesses that existed in the 40s that are no longer here today. But we won on many fronts in the 40s and achieved many firsts. The first upward mobility is termed in the 80s where a family had multiple cars multiple houses and multiple income. Pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier and a bell x 1 rocket plane leading to landing Neil Armstrong and moon and Sojourner on Mars. The air force was formed from the Army Air Force the first success of television and routinely reaching audiences even larger than FDR is fireside chats on radio. The first electronic digital computer ENIAC leading to today's personal computers and Internet communications. The first HMO and large scale day care established by a shipbuilder and Kaiser for his employees. The first success of big labor. The steelworkers and auto workers

affected Lehigh Valley most. The beginning of America. Assuming the principal role in world leadership leading to 50 years of relative world peace the first thermonuclear bomb leading to nuclear power generation in the Lehigh Valley by the Lehigh Valley is credited with national significance both in a world of war and in the world of entertainment. The first cable TV system a U.S. service electric and I built the first drive in in space and ever operated with in-car speakers. There's a sunset drive in a mountaintop Pennsylvania right outside of the 1940s. What was the pivotal decade in our history. Why first it brought an end to the Great Depression. Now the way in which it was copied to is not the way we would like to end a depression namely by pouring billions into a war effort. But it did bring an end to the depression. Secondly it did make lead to a complete

victory over the fascist powers. The final score. For America at the end of the 1940s saw one third the unemployment six times the national debt and two and one half times the prime lending interest rate. Today the national debt is one hundred times as great and interest rates are at least 10 times the cost of living in terms of popular luxuries has gone from seven hundred dollars for a car in 1940 to one hundred twenty five dollars for a pair of sneakers today. The 1940s were pivotal in the Lehigh Valley because of a flood that destroyed the canal system from our Native American roots. We have owned our existence to river transportation suddenly washed away but by the end of the 40s our economy began to change with construction. The Lehigh Valley Thruway with expansion of the Allentown Bethlehem easting airport at Lehigh Valley International.

And in the new era of technology spawned in the 1940s with Western Electric and successfully manufacturing the first transistors in the 50s we had learned to live with. An expanded federal government and to regard the federal government as a primary tool to solve a certain large scale problems necessary for the survival of our type of culture our type of civilization. Fifthly we had become accustomed to a much more fluid way of life for many families today not just those whose eyes witnessed in the 1940s were the most important years of the 20th century when mankind saw his own worst cruelty and when he witnessed his own greatest achievement in overcoming that cruelty. A time when mankind's spirit was at its highest. As FDR said to Churchill It's fun being in the same decade with you.

I think it was a great time. It was a great time. It was big dances. It was going to Central Park to the dancers going up to town late to dance. It was going you know being able to walk all over town without being able to go on your own and your parents never really had to worry. I told everybody I live at the right time. I like rules and regulations I have been home I have my family and I'm in the Navy just like in my cars. You mean rarefied but I still have to I have to see some reaction. I really do I'm sure. So talk to a three year old pilot sitting by will say. Oh hey alma mater the rise of our

east eastern high school high school. So you're the one school we will strive for. The school will go or die for Joe you're a ok. I just enjoyed beating that half of high school. And they knew it. I think. It was a much much simpler time. And. Everybody pulled together. There was all this pulling together and that's why we want to work on. Want to know more. Read Allentown a 225 year history

with section on the 1940s by Malin Helfrich. No ordinary time. By Doris Kearns Goodwin Truman by David McCullough and 1940s Today magazine. Music of the 1940s can be found on CDs by the Rockstone back big band for videocassettes of this program living history the 1940s. It's a common contact w LDP TV or Robin Miller filmmaker in Bethlehem. Promise me that one before you're going to be around do hundred years before you have be here. I'll be here. I'll be here. Well. He is the. Only