Biography Hawaiʻi; Harriet Bouslog; Interview with Steve Sawyer 11/5/01 #1

SEE That's great If you could just you can't tell you can't tell whether you got any of it or not Yeah, we didn't you didn't get it. They didn't get it. So if you could just go over again how you got out here All right Do you want me shorten it maybe a little bit you do whatever you want to do You don't want me to tell about the Quakers Quaker meeting house or the all the

Holy Rollers We have that but you have that we might have it. Oh, okay. All right. Just get us well. It's just okay arrived here Take it what I would like is take it from the point where you're talking about Being pacifists and not wanting to kill people. Yes, why you yeah and That's why we After We rejected the idea of trying to raise $2,500 a piece for for uniforms and whatnot and Soon become British ambulance car drivers volunteers in Libya. We decided to come to Pearl Harbor and They needed

Shipfit is and welders whatnot and though I'm a fifth generation of printers Nathan Sauron son and Boston 1838 established They didn't need any printouts, but they need laborers so We arrived My friend Al was a month ahead of me when he became a Guard in the contumant area and when I came I was In the laboring shop I was clean out Ballast tanks and submarines in the dry dogs and Which wasn't terribly pleasant and Because I because it has so much wah-ha they They went ahead and kicked me upstairs at the shops at Prentinus office. I

Became an expedite and That was there were about 30,000 Workers at Pearl Harbor and only about 5,000 who were doing any work that three shifts and Most of them were making knives or rings and whatnot but my job was to locate material that had come in it and being misplaced and so the What they needed so I Worked with that for a period of time and then incidentally we found out After the war at the highest casualties Per capita Bond none on either side With the British ambulance co-drivers in Libya. We were very fortunate and seems that the

Rommel was running rampant in Libya and he General Rommel anyway from there They I was transferred to the Moloft Which was shop 1126 which combined the shipfitters and the Welders and the Moloft is where they laid out The longitude rules and whatnot of the ships and on the floor. I was big floor and it seems that the Iowa Had been hit below the waterline it was in Dry dock and my job was to requisition material In to the shop I was getting I was a Third class of second-class helper. Maybe I was making 82 cents an hour 88 cents an hour and

the it seems that the The people wish shop Master and the Quartamann instead of I was requested to bring in 125 pound armor plate and They didn't have too much of it So I brought our requisition and they brought it into the shop and In the wisdom of the master of the shop and Quartam and they decided to drill the holes in the shop rather than taking it down to the The Iowa which was in Dry dock Well, they drilled the holes wrong So all hell broke loose they fired the master of the shop the Quartamann and If you understand bureaucracy They try to pass the blame down to me. I

Had why was the lowest man on the totem pole and I told him to stick it up their nose and I quit and I went into the concession business and hello I Was living at the cause of parliament new one away in CA I set up a couple of recording studios and I had a hoopla game. It's the About four hours at the service men had off in the afternoon and that was it was The streets were jammed with With sailors and soldiers Marines and I did that for Good period time I did very well But then they wanted to There was a Quartamann

I'd been shipped oh, yeah, I'd been shipped it down to Well the dry docks because of the of the Fiasco of the 125 pound armor plate and the Quartamann That's when I told stick his job up his nose and so I left well then they I was in the Naval Reserve And so he made his point to try to get me to draft draft me and whatnot, so I Went to There was an area with the Tested you and whatnot and so End up to the last minute they were swearing people in and I just walked away and

But it turned out because I I had one bad eye and I had been Troll that I was key to frenic or something and the So they didn't induct me So I went off sailing in the sunset by myself, so to speak Anyway that On VJ day It left on the Matt Sonya and went back to the mainland with a friend Gorman Nolan and Went to his home in Detroit Spent some time there and then went on to New York Then I went on to Boston and my friend was in the Merchant Marine This was during the war. I'm I'm going backwards, you see

and We sailed to Europe to Lahav and to Naples and brought back You see in November 45 brought back 6,000 troops 144 seconds and that's when I I I got Back again to Hawaii and Jumped on the Lurling half an hour before the sailed and wound up in Super Fiji Pango, Pango, Samoa Aquaman Zeland and Sydney, Australia Is this all coming together? Well, we're going right to Harriet But it's helpful to know

and so that's And I became a member of the Marine Christian Stewards Union which was the Hugh Bryson in any tangent who related became official with the IWU over here and they were branded as being communist dominated and all that nonsense and they wound up The leadership got too far ahead of the membership which Harriet British never did and so Then I met Ralph Fawzbrink who was sort of still at for MCNS here in

Honolulu in 46 I came back and then from there Jumped to I went to the US Car Business and in 1948 I met Harriet at a precinct meeting, a democratic precinct meeting and at that time there was a big fight between Kenji Kimball and many of the they were members of the Democratic Party but they were really in sheep's clothing. There were Republicans and they were anti-Nabah and whatnot in the 1948 democratic convention

came up and Harriet I was a swing vote to elect her as a county committee man they called and so she went to the 1948 convention with Johnny Wilson and some other Democrats and I recall she was telling me when she was up there who was the country and so a country and so it was ok ,

of all Kazakh and party and more so uh Humphrey's new Harriet and uh he said to somebody what is that communist doing uh here you know he was supposed to be a liberal from was it Wisconsin or something like that i think anyway uh she came back her husband Charlie Busslock had gone to borough of some place uh he'd been uh joined the service i was inducted and uh they were pretty much separated and uh they they

um so when in 1950 her it's still married to Charlie Busslock they um she was running for the Constitutional Convention and uh the republicans cherry met the district in Latakia in Kahlua and uh she only lost by 400 votes she beat out the head of the republican party um trying to think what his name was at the time and uh but uh she was thankful that she wasn't elected because she said she she said you'd have to be a chameleon and change your your spots all the time she didn't realize but the politicians if you wanted to be a good politician and uh

anyway she was pleased and so uh she'd put her husband through Harvard she worked at three jobs and uh he was going back to get his master's or his PhD i forget which and uh she said to uh Charlie once you can see that nice young fellow at Aloha Motors she wanted a car with automatic transmission and so Charlie came down with Nobby Suzuki who we later married all living up in chairman park placed she was a schoolteacher a very nice person and uh so um Harry was the last to know that uh Charlie was having a fair was uh Nobby Suzuki

anyway uh so uh I sold the car was a convertible Osmo build with automatic and but she had told Charlie that she didn't know how to back up and she wanted me to teach her how to back up so I went up um this is after Charlie had left and whatnot and I uh went up about two o'clock in the morning and uh uh was kind of early to teach somebody to back up but um so uh that's how I became involved with Harriet and uh

it um so she got a divorce from Charlie and uh it's a bit of a pompous ass but uh that's just my my my belief so then we uh because her it was in the in the news all the time uh I didn't believe in marriage i mean i i was a devotee of a church but in char and uh anyway uh didn't i give you a copy of uh don one and hell all right well that was my philosophy but because uh in 1950 you didn't live with somebody if you were in the um your hallies and hold on a little

it was uh uh the church's uh thought it was very sinful and so uh they would attack Harriet under her effectiveness as an attorney so we went up to Las Vegas and got married on the last thanks, Roosevelt thanks giving day November 22nd 1950 and that was start of a 48-year relationship which was um a wonderful relationship because Harriet was a free spirit and

i guess i was a free spirit too so he worked out very well so what else would you like to know you met up with her and married her at a time when she was absolutely at the center of everything so i was hoping we could go over a few things uh first of all if you could just talk about her relationships with certain people that were very important to her could you talk about her sort of career with Harry Bridges? yes well when we went to uh Las Vegas and got married we stopped back in San Francisco we stayed with uh Harry and Nancy is next to last wife she had been a um dancer in the entertainment field

what that and um Harry was very fond of Harriet he got her to come out to Hawaii because you couldn't trust any lawyers out here and he knew that uh and she said well look uh i've never tried a case i've never i don't have experience but he said all we want is somebody we can trust so she opened up her law firm Mara Simon's came over but he couldn't practice for two years and uh so she uh opened up the law firm in 1946 as i recall and uh at that time i think they were at pure eleven

but uh Harry was a remarkable guy and uh he knew that he said uh he used to say to Harriet uh don't worry Harriet he said in the end he used to say to her Harriet you're one tough cookie and uh she was when it came to uh the courts or the male show minister lawyers uh she would uh wouldn't take any lip from them or the judges or whatever uh in fact um McLaughlin who wanted to become the Medina of the Smith Act case here in Hawaii Harriet filed over the objections of her

uh part in Mara Simon's a supplemental affidavit of bias and prejudices and uh i was in court at the time and the course the FBI were hanging around and whatnot they were trailing everybody and uh McLaughlin almost said apoplexy on the bench because Harriet had the ability to quote from the uh fed second or uh whatever logbook uh and uh McLaughlin used to have to take a recess in order to go back to so figure out what's he just didn't have the knowledge and then he said to her because Harriet used to pace up and down when she uh in court and uh he said to her you act like you own this court and because she uh she uh gave him a hard time

but he had sold out to the big five before that he was uh evidently um he was fairly bright and but he was uh he was uh the catholic church had had him by the knarkers or whatever you want to call it uh he was evidently a staunch catholic and the catholic church was opposed to the OWU they felt that uh the OWU was communist they were going to overthrow the government by force and violence which was utter nonsense you know and uh so uh that was uh a little vignette that uh was quite quite interesting now as far as uh what else did you want me to uh talk about how she how she worked

how she worked with the OWU with Jack Hall and how she worked with the union membership well Jack Jack uh who was uh pretty much an alcoholic but he was very sharp and he uh respected Harriet's uh ability because uh she wouldn't uh take any nonsense from you know she she she she was articulate um she was good looking and uh she was very successful in what uh in keeping the uh union from being damaged by the big five they tried everything that they possibly could and she worked uh day and night

I spent many uh uh night until four and five in the morning um picking out uh law books and the uh in the territorial Supreme Court Library and um but she had uh good relationship with Jack um and uh Louis Goldblatt used to come over quite a bit uh but uh they respected Harriet because uh um they knew she wouldn't sell them out and that that uh was very important for the union and they uh I think that uh let's see as far as the membership

because she kept her the name boss log which uh the Filipinos you know they they uh yet they the name uh is very uh people think that it might might have been Filipino you say and um I remember in 1951 I think it was uh labor day went to uh Kauai uh labor day and she spoke there and uh she said uh brothers and sisters and and went on and she said uh it's uh boss log for business and so here for pleasure

which got quite a quite a rise from the uh membership and uh you know she was uh very well liked by the membership the rank and file there was a lot of politics in the uh among the uh leaders of the LW but that's typical you know most uh organizations as uh anyway that's uh anything else that you cottage yes