Transcript: Bill Amyotte Oral History Interview

Conducted by Karissa White and Brian Horrigan, Grand Portage, 2006

KW = Karissa White
BH = Brian Horrigan
BA = Bill Amyotte

BH:  We’re speaking with Bill Amyotte in Grand Portage on August 11, 2006.  This is Brian Horrigan and Karissa White is the other interviewer.  We can start.

KW:  Okay. Good morning, Bill. What is your full name?

BA:  William Neal Amyotte.

KW:  And Amyotte is spelled?

BA:  (spelling) Amyotte.

KW:  Okay.  And what is your date of birth?

BA:  May 28, 1922. I’m eighty-four years old.

KW:  What was the name of your parents?

BA:  My father’s name was Alfred Amyotte.  My mother’s maiden name was Margaret Scott. 

KW:  Was your mother from Grand Portage?

BA:  No.  She was born in Grand Marais.

KW:  Grand Marais.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Was she Indian?

BA:  Yes.

KW:  And your father?  Where was he from?

BA:  My father was born in Canada, Montreal, Canada.  He came over to this country about 1898 I guess.

KW:  Where did he come from?

BA:  It was a little town of St. Cuteen (sp?).  Montreal…or Quebec rather. 

KW:  Quebec? 

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Okay.  So he immigrated from…

BA: Canada.

KW:  Canada.  Okay.  Do you still have family there?

BA:  I imagine.  My father had three or four brothers and I know that they had a bunch of children.  So I must have a bunch of cousins there.

KW:  You didn’t go up there to visit.

BA:  No. No.

KW:  How many children did your parents have then?

BA:  My parents had ten children.  Four girls and six boys.

KW:  Wow.  Were you the oldest?

BA:  I was next to the youngest.

KW:  Next to the youngest.  Okay.  And…well, let’s see.  Where were you born?

BA:  About nine miles east up the lakeshore from Grand Marais.  Caldwell. (?)

KW:  Caldwell.  Were you born in a house?

BA:  Yes.  The house I was born in burnt down and my dad during the war years built a little stone house.  It’s still standing there.

KW:  Can we see it from the highway?

BA:  Yes. Yes. 

BH:  Can I just…one of the things I wanted to clarify was that if it seems like we’re going to ask a lot of questions about your childhood and your boyhood it’s because we’re interested in the whole….

BA:  Oh, sure.

BH:  Not just the war years.

BA:  Oh, I realize that.

BH:  Okay.  And we’ll be talking about after the war too.  We’re still interested in you.  Even past 1945. 

BA:  I realize that.

BH:  Okay.

KW:  Yes. I should have…I usually talk to people about that beforehand. 

BH:  We felt so rushed this morning.  We’re really sorry we got out numbers screwed up here. Our time screwed up.

KW:  So can you tell me one of your favorite or one of your earliest childhood memories or a story when you were a child?

BA:  I still remember very distinctly.  My dad was a commercial fisherman and the fish trucks would come up, pick up the fish and they delivered groceries and different things that were ordered from Duluth. This one morning…I don’t know how old I was but I remember I was laying upstairs in the house and all of sudden I heard this beautiful sound.  It was music. Orchestra.  And dad and mother had bought a Victrola.  You know, phonograph.  And that’s…I’ve heard violins and accordions and so on but never an orchestra.  That music…. I still remember it distinctly.  And of course mother was always interested in us kids learning to cook.  And one time mother had a big…she picked currants off the currant bush and had them in a big pan and she and dad went to town.  I don’t know what they were going to do.  I thought well, I’ll make the jelly for mother and have it all surprised when…have her surprised when she got home.  So I cooked the currants like mother did.  Put it in a pot with water and boiled it and I put it in a bag to strain all the juice out. I threw the juice away and saved the pulp.  (laughter)  When mother got home I told her what I did and she said well now you know what not to do.  So. That was my experience in making jelly.  There was just instances like that.  I had a good childhood. 

KW:  Were your brothers and sisters all close in your age so you had someone to play with?

BA:  I had two sisters and one brother, Gene.  He was older.  And my kid brother. My kid brother was six years younger than me. 

KW:  So you always had someone to play with. 

BA:  Oh, yes. 

KW:  Did you play with…did you have any other neighbor kids that you played with?

BA:  Well, my cousin, Ernie Olson.  They lived about a half a mile from us and then the Torminsons about a mile. 

KW:  Do you remember specific games you used to play as a child?

BA:  Well, we’d always….king of the hill and kick the can. Baseball.  Hide and seek. 

KW:  When you said your parents bought a phonograph or a Victrola, what year was that?  Do you ….

BA:  Gee,  I don’t know.  I must have been maybe four or five years old.  So that’s….

KW:  ‘26-27.  1927.

BA:  About seventy-some years.  

KW:  So that was before the Depression.  The Great Depression.  It was before then.

BA:  It would be about…going in.

KW:  Do you think that your father made pretty  good money as a commercial fisherman?

BA:  No.  No.  Fishing was…in the fall they made money and then he worked in logging camps as a cook.  And there was a lot of years too they didn’t have work.  So it was pretty tough going.  But we always had a garden. Mother canned a lot and all of us kids picked berries.  So we always had jelly and jam for the winter.  And canned stuff.  Potatoes and…then we’d go out in the woods and shoot a deer and we always had rabbit snares and shoot partridge.  So we had…always something to eat. 

KW:  Do you have any stories about hunting as a child?

BA:  I know on the first time mother bought my brother and I a gun.  Twenty-two single shot.  So she was going to take us out to show us how to shoot.  So we went behind a house and a trail.  A partridge flew up in the tree and mother started shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting, missing every time.  And I said give me the gun and I shot it.  (laughter)  Then another time dad was logging behind…close to home and mother was cooking in the camp and I was there. Mother took me out to show me how to set rabbit snares and the first …next morning we went there and had a fox.  A fox in the snare. She had the loop too big.  (chuckles)  So the fox….was chasing the rabbit’s trail. 

BH:  What did you do with the fox?

BA:  I suppose just cut it up.  I think at that time there was a little…a bounty on them I think. 

BH:  You said your mother was also a cook in the lumber camps while your father was logging.

BA:  Yes.

BH:  That was up in Hoagland?

BA:  Yes.

BH:  Did she take all the kids with her?

BA:  Yes.  In the camp there. It was between Caldwell and Oldwin.  In those years you had what you called a stone and timber clean.  From the state you’d apply for a certain lot of timber and you could log it off and that was it. Pay stumpage on it.  But it was called stone and timber cleans in them days. 

KW:  So you said your dad was into logging and he was a commercial fisherman.  Did you notice a substantial drop in work or you know, a difference when the Great Depression hit? 

BA:  Actually it wasn’t…didn’t hit so hard here because there was logging and so on.  But it was… there was less work.  My dad did the stonework on these buildings.  That was during the WPA days. 

KW:  Was he in the CCC?

BA:  No. No.   They say it was the CCs but…they might have helped.  But I know dad did the stonework. That was in the ‘30s.  Maybe ‘34-35.  And a guy named Albert Muller did the log work.  I mean was in charge of the log work.  Because Albert lived in Caldwell and he picked that up on the way back and forth. 

BH:  So that’s these buildings here.  The log schoolhouse and the…

BA:  The community.

BH:  The community building here.

BA:  Yes.  And that over there.  That little stone house that you see that dad built during the war, same thing as this. Looks just like that stonework. 

KW:  So how did he learn how to do  stonework?

BA:  I don’t know. I imagine Canada. 

KW:  Maybe he had worked the same type of job in Canada as a young man. 

BA:  I imagine they did a lot of stonework up there too. 

KW:  How did your parents meet?  Did they ever tell you that story?  No? Okay.

BA:  They were married in 1902. 

KW:  Do you think he came down here then for work or….

BA:  Well, there was a lot of hewing for ties, railroad  ties.  They had to do it by hand.  And I remember dad saying that they had to cut the tree down, cut them in lengths and hew them on two sides.  Ten  cents a stick.  So they had to really do some cutting. 

 BH:  So he came down here to do that kind of work.

BA:  Yes.

BH:  And met your mother who was from….

BA:  Grand Marais.

BH: Grand Marais.

KW:  Did you have a car when you were a child?  Did your parents have a car?

BA:  Yes. They had a Model T.   Used cars.  Always.  Chevrolet I remember.  Plymouth. 

KW:  Did you have electricity?

BA:  No.  Electricity didn’t get up here until…oh,  the late ‘50s I think it was.

KW:  Sure.  So what did you use?  Did you use lamps or candles?

BA:  We had kerosene lamps.  And then you’d have the Aladdin…we had a gas lantern.

KW:  Did you ever go swimming when you were a child?

BA:  Yes. I still can’t swim.  The lake was too cold and the Kadutz River (?)  up in the fourth falls there was nice pool there. That’s where we’d swim there…paddled around.

KW:  Did you get into Grand Marais much to get supplies and…

BA:  Well, yes.   We went to school there at Grand Marais.  They’d do the shopping and so on. 

KW:  Let’s talk about your schooling a little bit.  When did you start?  Do you remember your first day of school and what you thought?

BA:  I started…I was almost seven years old.  I had a hard time speaking when I was young so I was held back a year.  So I was almost seven when I started.  Then I went to two years of high school.  

KW:  Did  you have to take a bus in?

BA:  Oh, yes.

KW:  The bus picked  you up.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  So you went to school in Grand Marais. They had an elementary school or a classroom.  How many students were…

BA:  There wasn’t many in each grade at that time. I think there was about thirty maybe that graduated high school from my class. 

KW:  Did you ever get up to Grand Portage that much as a kid?

BA:  Yes. One of the men from here, Dishop (sp?), Joe Dishop.  Dad came to this country  together from the same…so then we’d come down here and visit and we’d have picnics and so on.

BH:  Who was that again?

BA:  Joe Dishop.

BH:  Dishop?

BA:  Yes.

BH:  Just like the Norman Dishop?

BA:  Yes. His grandfather.

BH:  His grandfather was a friend of your father.  They immigrated together.

BA:  Yes. They came together.  

BH:  That’s interesting.    So you came up here for visits.

BA:  Yes. Visits.  School we’d come down here and play volleyball against the team down here.  So we got down here pretty regular.  And then the people from here would stop in on the way to Grand Marais to visit at our place. 

KW:  So you had a lot of interaction with other Indian kids and in school was there a lot of Indian kids in school too?

BA:  Not too many.  There was Morrisons from Chippewa City, LaFonts, Wiggins. I think those are the only ones I remember.  Well, the Zimmermans from Grand Marais.  Boostroms, Ursgaard.

KW:  Handful. Couple handfuls.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Did you ever…did any of the white kids of the school there ever tease you because you were Indian?

BA:  Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.  That was an everyday occurrence there. 

KW:  Did you ever band together with the Indian kids and try to….

BA:  Just started taking it for a grain of salt later on.  (chuckles)  After a period of time.  And when our house burnt down, that morning,  when we got out of there it was January 1. We got out of there just with the clothes we had on that day.  And then dad said throw everything out of the windows, the upstairs windows.  All your clothes and bedding and so on.  Everything burnt.  So then the Red Cross or somebody sent up some clothes.  But the shoes I had to go to school  in was women’s overshoes and they had  Cuban heels.  Do you remember that?  I had to put a block of wood in each heel so they wouldn’t….and that’s when they really got to razzing at school about the clothes you wore.  I mean I didn’t have much choice.

BH:  What year was that?  Do you remember?  Or how old were you?

BA:  I must have been in seventh or eighth grade.

BH:  So maybe you were about fourteen. So that was in the ‘30s. 

BA:  I know that one summer I worked back at Hoagland cutting poplar trees for saw logs for making fish boxes. That’s when the commercial fishing was full force yet.  So I didn’t collect any money all summer long.  I had pretty good check coming in the fall. I went to collect my money and the guy that I worked for all summer said I don’t have any money to pay you but I’ll pay you in  fish boxes.  So I had…so that’s what he was selling.  So luckily my dad was going to fish that fall and my uncles.  So I was able to sell  the fish boxes to them to get my money.  So I did have clothes that year to do to school.  But I was fourteen. I remember.  That year. 

BH:  So did you think of yourself as a poor family?

BA:  Yes. We were.  About average.  Nobody was rich then.  Around here then. And I don’t think we ever took relief or anything.  But I  don’t know. 

KW:  Were you able to travel elsewhere, other than Grand Marais or Grand Portage, when you were a child?

BA:  I was on different sport teams like baseball and track so we’d get to Duluth on those kind of occasions.  But otherwise no. 

KW:  What did you think of Duluth when you first saw it?

BA:  (chuckles)  Pretty large.  

KW:  Did you play the Duluth teams in the city?

BA:  Yes. High school teams.  I was…baseball I was pitcher.  And I was good in track. I could run real good.  I got in the service I was the fastest one in our battalion as far as track. 

KW:  Good.  Well, we’ll get to more questions about the service, but I just wanted to ask a little bit about your teenage years.  What kinds of things did you do for fun when you were a teenager?  Entertainment when you were a teenager.

BA:  Mostly I really loved fishing so  I was out fishing all the time and hunting.  That’s about it. 

KW:  Did you go to movies or…

BA:  Yes. When I got into town.  I had a cousin living in town so I’d stay there. I think movies were ten cents at the time.  The old Wigwam Theater.  (chuckles)

KW:  Do you remember some of the movies you saw?

BA:  One of them was “Fools Dance” with Kathryn… no. It was Joan Crawford.  I remember that.  Other than that I don’t remember.  Oh, then of course Dale Evans and Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. 

KW:  Sure.  Did you have girlfriends?

BA:  Not serious.

KW:  Dates here and there?

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Well, one more thing about…because you were born in 1922 so you remember…so you were about ten, eight to twelve, when you were going through the Great Depression.  Do you remember, if you can think back, any important lessons that you learned from growing up during that time and just seeing what was going on?  Any lessons that you learned?

BA:  I don’t know exactly if there were any lessons but I know it was…at that time a job…if you had a job you wanted to keep it and you wanted to work.  Jobs wasn’t that plentiful.  And it proved out in later years because I only held a few jobs.  I think that was the greatest lesson.  That you had to produce if you’re go on with your job. 

BH:  You had a number of older brothers and sisters. Did they work during the Depression or did they also help…

BA:  Well, of my oldest there was…like we had the same as two families. There was five older ones and five younger ones.  The five older ones, they left and they never…they scattered all around the country.  Up to (unclear), International Falls, and then Duluth.  Worked in the steel plant.  And then working in the woods trapping and so on.  And my older sister, one sister, Evelyn, she was next to the oldest, she was shot and killed right in St. Luke’s Hospital here. She was about twenty-two years old.   Boyfriend…ex-boyfriend came down and shot her.  She lived eleven weeks.  He killed himself right there.  But then my other sister, older sister, she cooked in logging camps and so on. 

KW:  Do you have any memories of the actual men in the CCC camps or WPA camps?  Like do you remember seeing them?

BA:  Well, I was in the CC camps.

KW:  You were?

BA:  I lied about my age.  I left school at sixteen, you know. The year I…I lied about my age and I went in the CC camps.  I was there for almost two years.  The Gunflint Trail.  Camp 712.

BH:  Camp 712. 

BA:  712.

BH:  It was up the Gunflint…

BA:  Yes. By North Burrow River.

BH:  North Burrow River.  Okay. Have you ever followed up…reunions or anything with people from that camp?

BA:  There’s one guy that I was friends in the camp with.  We still correspond. He comes up here to visit me.  John C.  Sandgrin.

BH:  What’s his name again?

BA:  John C. Sandgrin.

BH:  Sandgrin.

BA:  Sandgrin. He lives in Wayzata, Minnesota. 

BH:  Well, we’ll look him up. 

BA:  Yes. He’s….

BH:  He’s still…He still comes up here and visits?

BA:  Yes.  He was here last summer.

BH:  How about that?

BA:  And we corresponded together.

BH:  There are camp photographs of all of the guys in every camp.  Have you ever seen one of those group photographs?

BA:  There was one here but I don’t know if I’m on it or not.

BH:  One of 712?

BA:  Yes. I don’t know if there is…there is 712 but it’s before I was in.

BH:  Oh, it was before you were in that. 

BA:  Yes.

KW:  And I had…I copied an article of Cook County CCC camp. There was a reunion or something like that but there’s probably…maybe you’re in one of those pictures.  It’s hard to tell though. The copy. 

BH:  So if you were…let’s see.  You turned sixteen in 1938, in May of ’38, and you lied about your age.  You said you were eighteen. So you started maybe in the summer of ’38 in the CCC?

BA:  It was in the fall.  October. 

BH:  October of ’38.

BA:  They had enrollments in October and April.

KW:  Did you have to drop out of school then or leave school?

BA:  Oh, yes.   Yes.  I was in the CC camp.  In the wintertime I was driving horses or teams getting logs out.  Like in the CC camp if there was a spruce tree or a pine tree and there was a balsam or a birch or a poplar you had to cut them down to liberate the spruce or the pine.  And then those poplar logs or birch logs they saved that and used that for firewood for  heating the camp.  And then they’d be all piled up in a pile and then I had a team of horses. Rented of course.  I was running the horses.  Skidding the horses.  Skid the logs out to a landing so they could be loaded on a truck and hauled to the camp.  Then we had an old shack right there where we were working. Spent all winter in that shack.  Colder than heck.  Then in the summertime I was on what they called lake survey.  Had different  lakes you had to survey for the depth and oxygen content, what kind of grass or foliage along the lakeshore.  If you seen any  animals or birds you had to mark that down on the map.  Every fifty feet you dropped a sound down to find out how deep it was.  And then there was five of us. There was a forestry man in charge of us and then two of us from the camp, enlisted men, and then in the evening we’d come in. We’d turn our maps in  and then the forestry guy would check.  He’d take…I was next in charge.  We’d go out to the deepest spot and we dropped the sound down and got it up if that wasn’t right. So they’d check it for the oxygen content and the bottom of the lake and then what the bottom was made out of.  I mean if it was mud, gravel or rock.  Your sounder had a concave bottom with GI soap in there.  If it came up with gravel in there then you’d know it was a gravel base.  If it came up with mud…or if it didn’t come up with anything you knew it was rock. So that’s how they check.  So we sounded….I was on that for two summers.  That was really…I really enjoyed that.  We’d be out two weeks and come back for about a week to the camp and then back out again.

BH:  It sounds like you were well prepared to be in the CC camp from your boyhood too.

BA:  Yes.

BH:  A lot of experience out in the woods.

BA:  Yes.  We did our own cooking.  We’d…mostly canned stuff of course.  I don’t know how many lakes we surveyed.

KW:  Did you survey some lakes out west too?

BA:  Just up the Gunflint Trail.

KW:  Just up the Gunflint Trail. Okay.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  What kind of food…you said you mostly caught things but did the government sent you food to cook?  That you ate….

BA:  No. We did canned stuff from the camp.

BH:  Canned food.

KW:  Canned food.  Okay.

BA:  Yes.  We didn’t do too much fishing because we didn’t have time.  So once in a while we’d cast from shore.  Get some fish to eat.  But mostly it was all canned stuff.

KW:  What kind of stuff?  Like beans and…

BA:  Yes.  Canned beans and soup and so on. We had potatoes of course.  Fried potatoes.  And bacon.  And we’d have eggs. 

KW:  You said in the winter it was cold. How did you heat yourselves?  Did you just have blankets or fire?

BA:  There was a stove but there was…it was mostly tarpaper shacks is what…boards covered with tarpaper.  It was cold.  And then for the horses.  Out there was just tarpaper around the shelter. 

BH:  Did you communicate back with your family from the camp?

BA:  Oh, yes.

BH: Letters?

BA:  Oh, we could…you could come home.  We had to work forty hours a week and if you…if you missed the date because of cold or bad weather then you had to make it up on Saturday. But otherwise you had Saturdays and Sundays off.

BH:  And you could come home.

BA:  Yes. Yes.  When I was on lake survey we didn’t.

BH:  So did you come home a lot then?

BA:  Yes. I would come home at least once a month. 

KW:  So what was your pay while you were in the CCC?

BA:  We got thirty dollars a month and twenty-five of it went home.  

KW:  So what did you spend the rest of it on?

BA: Boltenberg tobacco (?).  That’s about it.

BH:  You weren’t saving it up for something?

BA:  No.

BH:  You were actually using it to support your  family then.

BA:  Yes.  Five dollars a month didn’t go very far. 

KW:  Did you have to wear a uniform then?

BA:  Oh, yes. They had uniforms.  I think they were from World War I.

KW:  So they were green, army green?

BA:  And then our work clothes was like overalls.  You had plenty of clothes.  I mean they….

End of Side A, Tape 1.

BA:  It was over twenty-five below so we weren’t supposed to go out and work but a guy in forestry, Rowfie, he’d hold a match close to it and get it above twenty-five below and actually we wanted that because when you’re in the woods working you’re warm.  So that way you didn’t have to miss a day’s work.

KW:  You were probably used to that anyway.

BA:  Oh, yes.  Yes.

KW:  Growing up here.

BA:  Some of those guys in the camp though had come from the cities and never seen an axe before. They were actually dangerous to be around.  (chuckles)

BH:  Well, talk a little bit about that.  When they…if you met people that…who had no experience in the woods and you were very experienced, what was that like?

BA:  Well, you’d try to help them out.  The ones that wanted to be helped.  And there were some awful lazy guys too.  And there was the guys that kind of sucked up to the foremen.  Stand around in the wintertime around the fire making coffee and that’s  sort of all they do.  And then there was a lot of guys from the cities who were really good workers too.  In the wintertime you’d…for working in the woods there you’d have a peanut butter sandwich and a baloney sandwich and just butter on it and then coffee.  By the time you got to eat your sandwich it would be ice cold  so they’d always a fire and you could toast them and get them thawed out.  Axes…like some of the guys, they’d have…their gloves would get wet and freeze.  Slippery.  Could be cutting on the trees and the axe would go flying out of their hands. If you were too close to them it was dangerous.

BH:  Did you ever see any bad accidents?

BA:  There were some guys got cut pretty severe.  Yes. 

BH:  You didn’t.

BA:   No.

KW:  Were there other Indian people from Grand Portage in there?  In the Gunflint?

BA:  Not when I was there.  But after I got out there was Norman Dishop from here and then Erwin Wiggins I guess.  Then when I was in there of course….I  had two cousins in there and a brother.  His brother Harry was…he was mess sergeant.

BH:  Gene. Eugene Amyotte.

BA:  Yes.

BH:  Was in the CC.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  He was older.

BH:  No.

KW:  No.  Younger.

BA:  No. He was older.

BH:  I’m sorry.  You’re right.

BA:  Yes. Two years older than I am. 

KW:  Okay.  All right.

BH:  I’m interested. Did you ever hear of a special Indian CCC that…

BA:  Yes.

BH:  What was it called, the….

KW:  The Indian Service.

BH:  The Indian Service of the CCC.

BA:  Yes.  They had a camp here at Grand Portage. Then there was another camp down there where…by Blue River.  Judge Magnet Park now.  It was called Transit Camp.  They were older people. Older men. 

KW:  Were they World War I veterans or…

BA:  I don’t know. It could be but….they were older than the rest of the camps.

KW:  Did they try to…regarding behavior, did they try to…did they have rules about your behavior or…

BA:  Oh, yes.  At Grand Marais now at that time there were so many camps around there. On the Gunflint Trail there was two of them.  And then I don’t know how many there was.  There was quite….then Hoagland. So then in Grand Marais they only let one camp at a time come in.  Otherwise they were fighting all the time.  Gang fights.

BH:  A lot of drinking and fighting in town.

KW:  With other camps.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Okay.  So not with the townspeople or…

BA:  Oh, no.  Mostly it was between the different camps. 

KW:  Why do you think that was?

BA:  Oh, I don’t know. Just see who was the best I guess. 

BH:  Well, you get a lot of young men together….

KW:  So you enjoyed that experience. 

BA:  Yes. I did.  I met a lot of nice men….living with people and I still remember a lot of them. 

BH:  Did you continue to lie about your age?  After you got in….you told people you were eighteen.

BA:  Oh, yes. You had to tell them.
 
BH:  You had to pretend you were older.  So you never got found out.

BA:  No.  Well, I imagine they knew.  But I could hold up my end as far as working. 

KW:  You said that you had a couple of cousins and your older brother was in the CCC with you.  Were you guys treated differently by the other white guys because you were Indian or….

BA:  No.   No. There was no discrimination there. 

KW:  Well, let’s talk a little bit about what you did after that.  After the CC…

BA:  I got out…well, I got out in the spring of 1940.   Out of the camp.  The CC camp.  Then with my experience with the lake survey the man who was in charge of us recommended that…the guiding of the Tuscarora Resort on the Gunflint.  So I started there the opening of fishing season in May of 1940 and then I guided until July of 1940 for fishing.  Then in July I enlisted in the army. 

KW:  So you voluntarily enlisted.

BA:  Yes.  Enlisted July 19, 1940. 

KW:  So that was before Pearl Harbor.

BA:  Oh, yes.

BH:  Was it before the draft?

BA:  Oh, yes.  Yes.

BH:  Because they started the draft in 1940. It was the first peacetime….

BA:  That was later on.

BH:  Like September maybe.  Yes.  First peacetime draft.  So you must have heard something was going on.

BA:  Yes.  It was about the time France was falling and I figured that it won’t be long and we’ll be in it.  So I thought I’d get in there and get some training before it actually started.  And I had a brother Andrew who was eleven years older than me.  He enlisted in June of 1940. He was at Seattle, Washington when he enlisted.  So then…when I enlisted I wanted to be in …told the recruiter that I want to fire the big guns.  I don’t want to monkey around with the little ones.  So he said there’s an opening in the 81st Field Artillery.  It’s mechanized artillery and it’s stationed in Fort Lewis, Washington. So then I took my basic training in Fort Snelling and in August, the latter part of August I was sent over to Fort Lewis and my brother Andy, who enlisted in June, he was then what they called 99th  Pack Artillery.  Mule outfit.  He wanted me to transfer into his outfit and I said no way.  So then he transferred to my outfit as the first cook.  And he was good.  He was the cook.  So then we were together for two and half years. 

BH:  What did the army do with mules?

BA:  Pack artillery.  They’d take the little guns, the cannons, apart.  Little barrel on the tube about so long.  Seventy-five millimeters. The recoil…we took the tube off and then the recoil would be on each side of a mule, wheels on another mule, trails on another mule.  You could go any place you wanted.

BH:  Took mules overseas.

BA:  Oh, yes. Yes.  But then they had  (unclear).  They could break them too.  And you never seen a mule (unclear).  Mule went up in there and kicked him off and as he was coming off he kicked him again.  He was convinced to transfer. (chuckles)

KW:  What was he doing in Seattle?

BA:  On the road.  Bum.

KW:  Working. Trying to work.  Find a job.

BA:  He was riding the rails. 

KW:  Okay. That’s what he was doing.

BA:  A lot of that in those days. 

KW:  Did you ever do that?

BA:  Yes. We got a letter from him that…No. I never did that.

KW:  You never did it.  But you got letters from him telling you that he was doing it.

BA:  Saying that he was in the service.  So then I enlisted in July.  Gene enlisted in the Marines in August.  And Henry  in ’42 I think it was.  Ben about ’42 in the Navy and my kid brother Jack in ’45. 

KW:  Where was Gene at when he enlisted?

BA:  And his first assignment was Iceland.  They were…England…they had to protect Iceland from the Germans.  England didn’t want the Germans to get in there so they asked us to send somebody over there for a presence.  So the Marines were there for…I don’t know. Six months or so.  Then after we got in the service…I mean the war…then the Marines were sent back to California and from there they went to the South Pacific.  So Gene was in the battles of Guadalcanal and also Russell Islands.  Then Henry was in Merrill’s Marauders over behind Jap lines in Burma for a hundred and twenty-eight days I think. They had to drop their supplies to them.  That was really a rough go there.  And Ben was in the South Pacific in the Navy and my kid brother Jack was in the Philippines  and the occupation of Japan.  And I spent all my time in Alaska. 

KW:  So you went to…when you enlisted you did your basic training at Fort Snelling for how long?

BA:  Just about…not quite a month. 

KW:  A month. Okay.  Then you went to Fort Lewis.

BA:  Fort Lewis, Washington.  I was there until March of ’41 and then we were sent to Alaska and we were up in Alaska before the war started.  We were on alert there for….in July before the war started. 

KW:  How many men were there with you? 

BA:  At that time there were  very few.  When Japan invaded the Aleutian Islands through Attu, there was only about twenty-five thousand troops in all of Alaska.  So when the war broke out there wasn’t that many. 

KW:  What was your job up there?  Specific job that you had to do.

BA:  Mostly…I was in artillery to begin with and cook.  Then I ended up as a mess sergeant.  But I was on the line for quite a while.  Firing the guns.  Practice.  The outfit I was in was seventy-five millimeters.  B Battery of the 81st and then C Battery was one fifty-fives.  We had one fifty-five millimeters, howitzers and we had one long  tom OGPF with a sixteen foot tube on it.  So that would shoot for a long distance.  The 4th Infantry Regiment was the ones backing us up.  Protecting us.  Every artillery outfit has to have infantry with them to protect them.  They were the 4th Infantry and they were dug in on …started in July of 1941.  They were dug in the low range of hills around Anchorage. They were in there like moles. 

KW:  So you were close to Anchorage.

BA:  Yes. Yes.  Fort Richardson, Alaska.   Elmendorf Airfield was our….

BH:  This is before Pearl Harbor.  But Americans must have sensed that they needed to protect the Pacific and Alaska.

BA:  Oh, yes. Yes.  Yes.  They were…they’d sent us up there in March of ’41 saying that we were up there to test the recoil mechanism on our artillery pieces. Well, they knew what it was.  That was not to let Japan know that we were starting to build up fortifications.  When the war broke out, the day the war broke out I was…we had a little shack. My brother and I had a little shack about fourteen miles out of the post up on Eagle River and we’d go up there fishing every day…time we had off.  Go up to the little shack and fish.  And I happened to be up there during that time. It was about fourteen miles.  You had to snowshoe across woods up to there.  I was coming back and I was all by myself.  Coming back, snowshoeing back and where I always went by was the ammunition dump and here the 4th Infantry was out there with a machine gun and wouldn’t let me go by.   I had to…who the heck I was and I never had any identification on me.  Finally they let me go by and then I’d always come…right the middle of Elmendorf Field and I’d just walk across the runway into our barracks.  There you couldn’t because…so then I had to walk way down to the end.  About  a mile down to the end.  Another mile back up. 

BH:  And that was because the war had broken out?

BA:  Yes.  The war had started that day.  That’s when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.  Then we loaded up all of our equipment, went to our gun positions and we stayed there for a couple weeks.  We’d have positions like to blow up Murrow Field.  That was a civilian airport. Another position to blow up the ports, all the wharves and so on.  And then different radio stations and stuff like that to keep from them from going to the Japs hands.  The radio stations, what I’m talking about is the beams for guiding airplanes. They had beams all the way across Alaska for the airplanes to follow.  So we had to blow those up.

BH:  You blew them up?

BA:  We would if the Japs landed.

BH:  Oh, I see.  You weren’t doing it preemptively.

BA: Oh, no. No. No. If they…then we had different shells if the Japs came in to shell us from submarines.  We had depth…I mean shells that would go underwater and then explode.  For the submarines.

BH:  Right. I’m interested in your little shack up in the woods.  How did you get…did you just get passes?  Weekend passes or something?

BA:  Yes. My brother and I and one of the other cooks.  We had eighty men in a battery.  Normally you have a baker and then a cook on each shift. Two cooks on each shift.  You’d come in at noon and cook supper.  Then you’d cook breakfast.  Then you’d cook dinner.  Then a baker, he did all the baking.  Like for pies, cakes and so on.  So everybody were pretty good cooks.  So we’d have the cook do all the baking.  And then we’d start…we’d cook breakfast, dinner and supper and then we’d come in the night before and do our baking for our day shift.  That way we had four days off.  So we’d take off.

BH:  And that was permitted?

BA:  Oh, yes.  Yes.

BH:  So being a cook was a good job.

BA:  Yes. Yes.  To find where the old shacks were…they must have been trappers shacks or something.  You’d go along. You’d find where there was spruce trees, a grove of spruce trees and usually there was a cabin, old shack in there.  So this one on the Eagle River, we repaired it and used that. 

KW:  So you said you had to go …use snowshoes.

BA:  Oh, yes.

KW:  Did you use snowshoes here when you were growing up?

BA:   Oh, sure.

KW:  Did you make your own or did…

BA:  Oh, yes. We were issued…in the army we were issued snowshoes and skis.  Both.  We had a forced march on skis and snowshoes.

KW:  Did you know how to make snowshoes when you were growing up or did you buy them?

BA:   No. No.  I know we bought a couple pairs from people here.

BH:  Portage people.  People who had made them here in Grand Portage.

BA:  Yes. Yes.

BH:  So they were traditional snowshoes.

BA:  Yes. Yes.  The square toes and flat.

KW:  So you knew how to snowshoe before you went up to Alaska.

BA:  Oh, yes.  Yes.  Well, in the wintertime…I mean  in the CCs too.  We had to use snowshoes a lot there. 

BH:  Do you think it was just an accident that you got sent to Alaska?  I mean with all this northwoods experience?

BA:  No. It was just luck of the draw.

BH:  Really?  So they could have sent somebody from Florida to Alaska?  (chuckles)

BA:  Sure.  But the outfit I was in they were from Iowa and Minnesota and I know there were a couple from North Dakota and Michigan and Wisconsin.  So really from this northern area.

KW:  Did you meet other Indians  in the outfit?

BA:  Yes. There was one guy…I don’t know where he was from but he was a big guy (chuckles) and he’d…every day we’d wrassle and he’d pin me.  Zoom!  And he’d get off me and (chuckles) he’d take off. 

BH:  An Indian guy?

BA:   Yes.

KW:  What was his name?

BA:  I don’t remember. 

BH:  But he wasn’t from Minnesota.

BA:   No. He was from some other….but he was a big guy.  He was good guy. You know.  Nothing vicious about him. 

KW:  I have a question.  You said…I want to back up just a little bit.  Before…the reason why you enlisted.  You said that there was some feeling that Americans were going to be drawn into the war eventually.  Was anybody ever opposed to that or what did they think about that?  About being drawn into the war.

BA:  There was none that I knew of that was against it.  I never…there was a lot of talk about it and around the area, around Caldwell, there was a lot of Norwegians and that was about the time Norway fell too, to the Germans.

BH:  Yes. ’40.

BA:  But it was just the idea in my own mind that we’d be drawn into it. 

BH:  That’s a good question because in fact…well, in 1940 when you’re down in Fort Snelling I want to hear more about basic training at Fort Snelling too, but there were people talking against the war.  I mean against Americans going into the war.  People like Charles Lindbergh.  Did you ever hear about that?

BA:  No. There was Father Coughlin .  He was radical in those days. 

BH:  Do you remember hearing him on the radio?

BA:  Oh, yes. Yes.

BH:  When you were down in the cities or up here?

BA:  Here.  We had radios.  Battery radios. 

BH:  What were the kind of things he was  saying?

BA:  He was just so radical about…I remember about different social issues and also against the war.   Mostly social issues.  He was pretty radical on things.   Lindbergh… I never heard too much about him.  After I heard of course that he was against the war.  And of course Roosevelt said that we’re not going to send our boys overseas.  But we did. 

BH:  Well, right there in what, May of 1940, is the Lend-Lease Act I think.  When we start sending ships overseas.

BA:  Well, if we didn’t get in there we wouldn’t…I think it would be altogether different than it is now. 

BH:  Can you talk a little bit about what Fort Snelling was like?

BA:  I was in the outfit…basic training …with the 3rd Infantry Regiment.  That’s the one that’s guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and so on.  It’s one of their companies.  One of the companies from the regiment was at Fort Snelling.  The guy that gave me the basic training was an Indian man or Indian guy from World War I.  And boy, he was rough. (chuckles)  He’d just run the heck out of you.  I had an awful time in basic training.  Be marching along and he’d say halt.  I’d stop right now.  You’re supposed to take a step.  So I’d run into the guy.  The guy’s would run into me.  Amyotte! See that sign down there in the field?  Go down and see what it says.  Run down there.  Come back. Are you tired?  No, Sir!  Run down again! (chuckles)  Stuff like that. 

BH:  Did you have any good times when you were there in Minneapolis?

BA:  There was one…well, I didn’t have any good times. I couldn’t wake up in the morning.  I was on KP all the time.  Then one day, Sunday, I was laying in the barracks and the sergeant came through the barracks and says any volunteers to serve in the regiment of infantry in the Philippine Islands?  I was thinking, gee, that would be nice to go over there and see the country in a different part of the world. Then I started thinking about Andy’s out in Fort Lewis.  This way I’d get to see him. Oh, I’m not going to volunteer.  If I would have volunteered I would have been on the Death March.  Just something like that can change the whole history.

BH:  There were a lot of Minnesotans from Bemidji….Brainerd, I mean.

BA:  Brainerd.  Yes.  Tank outfit.

BH:  Yes.

BA:  Yes.  Well, there was two from here.

BH:  From Portage?

BA:  Yes.  Bernard Sirette (sp?).  He survived.  And Francis Bushman got killed over there. 

BH:  In Bataan.

BA:  Yes.  But Bushman got killed on Corregidor.  Bernard, he survived the Death March.

BH:  Did you get any time off while you were on basic training?  Did you go into the city and do anything?

BA:  No.  I didn’t have.  I never even left the post.  I think I had ten cents on me.  (chuckles)

BH:  We hear about dances that they had at Fort Snelling and girls would come out to…

BA:  Oh, that’s….

BH:  Didn’t happen to you.

BA:  At that time soldiers were the dogs of the world.  Women didn’t want anything to do with you. Girls, the decent girls….none of…people looked down at you.  All the people looked down at you.  When I came back from Alaska, I was unloaded from the plane, coming down…they were carrying me down the ramp and a bunch of women on each side are hugging  you.  I said you know, it would have been a lot better if you did this when we left instead when we’re coming back. 

BH:  Why do you think that was?

BA:  I don’t know. A lot of times…you’d see them…I suppose there were some guys that…soldiers, you know, that might have been pretty rough.

BH:  Soldiers had a bad reputation before the war.

BA: Yes.  Yes. See a woman, a young woman walking down the street.  Instead of meeting you she’d cross the street. Instead of meeting you. 

BH:  You weren’t heroes yet. 

BA:  No.

KW:  Did you see women much in Alaska?

BA:  There wasn’t very many there. Anchorage at that time was only thirty-five hundred population.  So there was very few. 

BH:  Were any women stationed in Alaska at all?

BA:  No.  That was before…I mean they came in later.  But again there wasn’t….then after the war started all the dependents, women and dependents, they were shipped back to the States. 

KW:  So when you were in Alaska what did you hear about the fighting that was going on?  You know.  In Europe. Did you hear much about what was going on in Europe and then…

BA:  Oh, yes.  We listened to the radio.  You keep abreast of it.   Then mother would always write.  I got a letter at least once a week from mother.  So she’d tell us what was going on at home and so on. 

KW:  Would she write to both of you in separate letters or in the same letter?

BA:  In separate.  Yes.  And we’d each write separate letters to her too.

BH:  Did you save any of those letters?  Do you have any of those letters?  Did you save them?

BA:  I did for a long time. Now I don’t know what happened to them.  They were in the old house there,  the stone house.  There was a little cabin behind there.  Mother had a whole bag of them from all of us.  I don’t know what happened to them. 

BH:  If you find them let us know. 

BA:  Yes.  After mother died my kid brother inherited the property and then he sold it.  So I don’t know what happened to the stuff. 

KW:  I have a question about….is that running out?

BH:  We’re just about ready to flip it over.  Do you want to switch subjects here?

KW:  Well, kind of.  Did you ever…did people ever treat you differently when they found out you were Indian while you were in Alaska or in the war?

BA:  No. There was no problem.  No. None whatsoever. 

BH:  But were people interested in the fact that you were Indian?  Did they ask you questions like…

BA:  No.

BH:  Kind of like John Wayne movie questions?

BA:  No. No. 

BH:  No.

BA:  No. There was…I can say I think there was only three of us, my brother and myself and then that big Indian.  That’s the only ones that I know of. 

End of Tape 1.

KW:  I have a question about when you first heard about Pearl Harbor.  You described where you were at.  What did you first think about that?

BA:  The first thing I told was…guys there at the ammunition dump.  Those poor Japs.  We’ll beat them up in a couple days.  (chuckles)  I didn’t know the extent of the…I didn’t think the Japs would be that tough to beat.  Of course all the propaganda, you know.  That they can’t see, can’t shoot or anything. 

KW:  How long after did you find out about the extent of the damage at Pearl Harbor?

BA:  Oh, within a couple days.

KW:  A couple days.

BA:  Yes.  And then every morning when we were on the post we had to leave the post at five o’clock in the morning and go out to dispersal areas.  The big shots figured that if the Japs were going to come over and bomb they’d be bombing between five o’clock in the morning and eight.  So we had to stay out in the dispersal areas until eight o’clock. You couldn’t smoke and you couldn’t have a fire or anything to keep warm.  Just stood there for….our guns were there of course.  Then we had to get…wait for orders for our depart…home.  And we did that for, oh, gosh, practically all that winter.  Then every once in a while during the day too or evening you’d get orders.  You’d have to go out to a certain gun position.  You might stay there for a week.  You couldn’t… like I  was used to up here.  Like if I was going to sleep outside I’d cut balsam boughs down and put it on the snow.  Tramp the snow down and put balsam boughs on there and make a little shelter.  The first time I got in the gun position I did that.   They wouldn’t have… I had to tear down my little shack.  Had to take all the balsam boughs away.  Had to sleep right on the snow.  Had to take your clothes off right down to your underwear and take your clothes and put it in your sleeping bag.  Turn your boots in with you in the sleeping bag.  Otherwise your boots would be so hard and froze that you wouldn’t be able to get them on in the morning. 

BH:  So your job was strictly…was it…you were trained to be defensive too where you would  get…to shoot on…to fire on the enemy if they showed up?

BA:  Yes. Yes. 

BH:  As well as to blow up the installations if they were…

BA:  Yes. Oh, sure. 

KW:  So you couldn’t do anything. Like read or….you just had to…

BA:  Oh, yes.  You could…I mean but it was nighttime. I mean it was still dark at five o’clock in the morning.  Until…it didn’t get light until about eight thirty, nine o’clock. 

KW:  So what would you do then?  Just…

BA:  Just stand there.

KW:  Just stand there and be ready with your gun….

BA:  No, no, no, no.   Sit around. Stand there. 

KW:  The 81st Field Artillery Battalion.  We were just handed this booklet.  Bob Swanson. 

BA:  There’s a picture of me in here.

BH:  A picture of you in this booklet on the 81st.

BA:  Yes. Right there.

KW:  He’s pointing to a picture with an arrow that says Bill.  Oh. 

BH:  Where did that picture come from?

BA:  I don’t know.  It was part of the biography of the…

BH:  But who had the original picture?  Do you know?  Whoever did that book?

BA:  Yes. Yes.

BH:  We’ll probably try to find it.

KW:  Yes.  A World War II reunion in Colorado  Springs, Colorado on August 24, 199?.

BA:  Yes. He’s dead now.

KW:  The guy who did it.  The chairman?

BH:  Right. 

KW:  All right.  Well, we’ll…

BH:  Try to track down the pictures.

KW:  We’ll take pictures of that.  Okay.  How long were you there total in Alaska?

BA:  Forty-two months.  

KW:  Forty-two months.  Wow.  So like...let me think now…four years?  Less than four years?

BH:  Three and a half.

BA: Forty-eight would be four years.

KW:  Yes.

BA:  I was in five years and one month.  In the service. 

KW:  Okay.  Total.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  And you were in Alaska until 1945?

BA:  No. ’44. 

KW:  ‘44.

BA:   Yes.  Then I got injured.  My hand injured.  Then I got sent back to the States and then I was sent back to the nearest army hospital which was Clinton, Iowa and I was there for eighteen months. 

KW:  How did you injure your hand?

BA:  Well, it’s a long story. (chuckles)  I got it smashed.  I had it where I shouldn’t have had it. 

BH:   You lost a finger.

BA:  Yes. I got osteomyelitis.  They kept chewing away on it and bone…they had to take…remove the finger.  This finger was way back here before they removed it.   So it was just sticking out like that.

BH:  That was part of the injury.

BA:  Yes.  And then this. So anyway, one good thing happened when I got back to the States…or back to the hospital.  My wife now was taking her last six months of cadet training for a nurse and that’s how we met.

BH:  In Clinton, Iowa. 

BA:  Yes. At the army hospital.  Schick General Hospital.  So we’ve been married sixty-one years in July.

KW:  Wow.

BH:  Congratulations.

KW:  Congratulations.

BA:  Last July 25.  So that’s one good thing that happened. 

KW:  Where was she from?

BA:  Belle Plaine, Minnesota. That’s about forty-five miles south of Minneapolis. Southwest. 

KW:  Sure.  What is her name? 

BA:  Vera Peltz.  (spelling) Peltz. 

KW:  So she had enlisted in the army too as a nurse.

BA:  They discharged them five months and twenty-nine days so they wouldn’t be eligible for any benefits, for GI benefits.  But they had their choice.  Cadet nurse program.  They had their choice of army hospital, navy hospital or a mental hospital to take their last six months of training. Well, she happened to pick the army hospital.

KW: And good for you that she did.

BA:  Yes. Yes. I got pictures of us when we were going together.

BH:  Wonderful.   You’re taking a picture out of your wallet and oh!  Boy, that’s beautiful.  I can’t wait.

KW:  Oh, yes.

BH:  Do you mind if we borrow this picture to scan it?  I mean we won’t take it today. That’s a beautiful picture.

KW:  Yes.

BA:  Yes.

BH:  That was taken in ….

BA: ’44.

BH:  And was that photograph taken in Iowa?

BA:  Yes.

BH:  Or Minnesota?

BA:  Yes. Iowa.  I was…I had…staff sergeant.  My rank was staff sergeant.  And each one of those bars is six months overseas. 

KW:  So you were recovering and you met her right away or…

BA:  Yes.  She’d…I was getting penicillin shots every three hours and she’d come around and give the penicillin shots.  So I figured I’ll get even with her.  I’ll marry her.  At that time penicillin you only got twenty-five thousand units and so they had to do it every three hours.  You’d be on that regimen for ten days and then you were off for a week and back on it again. 

KW:  So how long did that last for then?  That regimen.

BA:  Oh, gosh.  From when I first got injured until I’d say June of 1945.  Over eighteen months.  Osteomyelitis, you know, is in the bone. It’s hard to get rid of it. 

KW:  So you had to follow that same pattern eighteen months. 

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Were you able to …were dating and…

BA:  Oh, yes.  I could…but I had to be at the hospital to get those darned shots of course.  And then once in a while it would stop draining and then I had a furlough.  The first furlough I had was in October of ’44.  So that was the first time I was home since I enlisted.  So it had been almost four years.  Over four years. 

BH: That was a long time. Did you expect to stay in that long?

BA:  Well, it’s a war.  We didn’t know what the war was going to last.  But, like I said, my brother and I got separated. My brother Andy.  We got separated in ’43 it was. I had a hernia operation and at that time they kept you in bed for twenty-one days. You couldn’t even get out of bed for anything.  You had to…flat for twenty-one days.  And after you got out of the hospital for three months you couldn’t do anything.  You just sit there every day.  You  couldn’t…you weren’t returned to duty.  In the meantime my outfit was…when I was in the hospital, my outfit went to the Aleutians. So Andy went down there with them. That’s how we got separated. Then from the Aleutians…well, they went to …there was St. Lawrence Island up in the Pribilof Group in the Bering Sea.  That’s where they went.  One battery went to Nome.  That was C Battery.  A Battery, B Battery went to St. Lawrence Island in the Pribilof Group.  And they were there for…through that one winter and then the next spring they went back to the States and then from the States they went over to Europe and they went through the Battle of the Bulge and so on.  According to that biography there they expended thirty-nine thousand rounds of one fifty-five millimeters and each shell was ninety-five pounds.  So there was a lot of explosives going up.  So that’s how my brother and I got separated.  I ended up in another outfit.  I was the 761st MP Battalion and that was for civilian travel control.  We didn’t have anything to do with military personnel.  We had to guard radio stations like these radio beams for planes. We had to guard airports, platinum mine down…platinum in southeastern Alaska and, like I say, all the ports.  Seaports.  People traveling into Alaska and leaving Alaska had to report to the headquarters of our outfit to get permission.  I was mess sergeant there.  We had two hundred and fifty men in that outfit and we had to serve two breakfasts, two dinners and two suppers because one crew would be coming on, one crew went off. 

KW:  And then shortly after you injured your hand?

BA:  Yes.  Well, I was in that outfit for…it must have been a year.  A year or two. 

KW:  When in 1944 did you have to go to Clinton, Iowa, to the hospital?  When did that start?

BA:  September of 1944.

KW:  So then you had your first furlough in October and you came up here?  How did you …did you take a train?

BA:  Yes.  From Clinton, Iowa to Duluth and then from Duluth it was bus.  Right to the house.  Just got off.

KW:  So you went alone.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  You weren’t dating Vera yet at that point or….

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Oh, you were. Okay.    How long were you here for?

BA: Oh, just…I think it was twenty-one days or something like that.

KW:  Did your parents have like a party or something for you?

BA:  At the Caldwell Town Hall they had a gathering there.  A dance.  And took up a collection.  Gave me the money.  In Grand Marais you were a hero.  Any soldier that come home was a hero.  Boy, I couldn’t have… in a beer joint beer was free.  Everything was….they were really, really…

BH:  There must have been some women who wanted to get your attention too I would imagine.

BA: Oh, yes.  There was.  I wasn’t bashful.  (chuckles)

BH:  You were bashful?

BA:  I said I wasn’t.

BH:  You weren’t bashful. Okay.   But you were already dating somebody back in Iowa.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  So then you went back.  How did you get the penicillin administered when you were visiting?

BA:  In the arms.  And then at night you’d just bend over and they umph!  Pull your pajamas down and give you….

KW:  When you were up here visiting did you…

BA:  I was off it for…

KW:  You were off it by then.

BA:  Then also you could get a furlough and go down and work in the defense plant down in Burlington, Iowa.  I worked…I think I had two passes or two furloughs to go down.  I worked…we were loading bombs, big shells of TNT. They loaded it there and then they’d go into a bay.  There was only ten shells and two people allowed in these bays.  And there was concrete walls and the ceiling was just tin roof.  So if it blew up it only blew you up instead of blowing up the whole facility.  My job was …the TNT was filled right up to the top, the neck of the shell, and you had to drill down about three, four inches. That’s where the fuse would fit.  You had…they furnished all the clothes that you wore. You couldn’t wear anything magnetic on you.  And the tools that  you used, the drills was bronze so there wouldn’t be any sparks.  I think  I got a dollar ten cents an hour.

BH:  So you were furloughed from the hospital? 

BA:  And did they let you go and work?

BH:  Yes.  There was quite a few of us.  The ones that were ambulatory.  Like I say, when …my hand would stop draining for a while and then I could go.  But as soon as it started draining again then you had to come right back. 

BA:  Where were you living then at this time?

BH:  They had barracks and a cafeteria.  PX.  You could get a coupon book for anything else.  I worked the midnight shift always.

BA:  Was that pretty good pay?

BH:  A dollar ten at that time, yes.

KW:  Was it a full time job then?

BH:  Oh, no. That was just for…that was a war plant.  It was a huge complex there.  They  loaded…like we made…loaded the bombs and the bombs of course, the shells and the casings were made some other place.  All we did was fill it up with TNT.  Then there was another building there where the women were working making little fuses for rifles.  Rifle fuses.  I imagine there was maybe eight, ten thousand people working there. 

KW:  Was it dangerous to load the TNT into the…

BA:  Oh, yes. 

KW:  Did they have safety standards or anything…

BA:  Yes.  If there was lightning, any lightning in the area they shut everything down.  And then, like I say, like you’re only allowed so many shells in a bay and then so many people.

KW:  Sure. That’s probably why they paid so well.

BA:  (chuckles)  Yes. 

BH:  Did you witness any accidents?

BA:  I didn’t see any at all.

BH:  That’s good.

BA:  But TNT itself, if you have it in the open, it will burn.  It won’t explode.  It has to be confined.  A lot of stuff that….they steam the TNT out of the shells and then they’d…when it hardened again they’d take it out and burn it. 

KW:  So you did that for how long?

BA:  A month at a time maybe.  I was down there twice. 

KW:  What did you do other times when you weren’t working?  Did  you…

BA:  Well, down there we’d have…softball and of course we’d go down into Burlington and hoist a few beers and so on. 

KW:  So you had a group of friends that you hung out with and…

BA:  Yes. One of the men that was on the ward with me, we worked down there together twice.  His name was Knut Nelson from Raleigh, North Dakota. 

KW:  Knut?  (spelling ) Knute.

BA:  It was actually Wayne Nelson but we called him Knut. 

KW:  Knut.

BA: He was in the 90th Division. He got injured real bad at battle….Omaha Beach. 

BH:  That’s right.  That was…so June of ’44 is D Day. 

BA:  Yes. June 6.

BH:  But you were not yet back here in the country.  But you must … you heard about it of course.  When you were in Alaska.

BA:  Oh, yes.  Sure.

BH:  A real turning point in the war. 

BA: Yes. That was touch and go there for a while. 

KW:  So you were dating Vera the whole time that you were in Iowa?

BA:  Mostly.  Yes. 

KW:  So you were there from September of ’44 to ….

BA:  August 14th of ’45.    I was discharged V-J Day.   It’s coming up Monday.    Sixty-one years ago. 

KW:  Yes.  And during that time too President Roosevelt had passed away.

BA:  Yes. April.

KW:  So what did you feel about that?

BA:  Well,  I felt bad about it but actually you didn’t pay too much attention to it.  I mean  you didn’t think it was going to affect anything.  Other than everybody had to…I know I was…first time I voted.  In fact Vera and I voted together….was for Roosevelt.  We had absentee ballots and we voted together. 

KW:  So you didn’t think the war would be affected or…it was already kind of winding down at that point.

BA:  Yes. Yes.  Well, it was in April. The war in Europe lasted until May.  I mean of course Japan was still fighting. 

KW:  So let’s get to the V-J Day, the end of the war.  You were in Iowa still.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Okay. And what had you heard about the bombs that were dropped?

BA:  It was just the headlines in the paper about how they dropped this atomic bomb and then…waited a few more days and they dropped another one and then finally we got the…Japan surrendered.  But I know…I remember the paper, the headlines.  It was an atomic bomb but….some kind of a new bomb and it finally came out it was atomic.  But a lot of people today think that that was the wrong thing to do but you look back at how many of our troops would have been killed if we had to invade Japan and how many Japanese would have been killed.  Actually I think both sides came out ahead by dropping the bomb.  And Japan wouldn’t have surrendered very easy. I know that. 

BH:  Do you remember what people were saying about it at the time? 

BA:  Wasn’t too much then.  No.  No.  But people are saying it’s the wrong thing for us to do.  Killing people…that many people.  Oh, take the first bomb.  Seventy-seven thousand I think it was it killed.  And the second one was a little less.  If we would have invaded it would have been a lot more than that and there would have been a lot of our troops.  They figure there would have been over a million that were casualties on our side. 

KW:  So what was your feeling, your general feeling, about when the war ended?  Obviously you were relieved.  I mean do you remember any things that you heard or what people were saying about….any rumors or anything….

BA:  The truth started coming out about how the Japs treated our prisoners and how cruel they were. I mean beheading people, beheading our men like Doolittle’s men.  Beheaded three of them.  Beheaded them.  And then a lot of the guys tied up and beaten.  All that came out and then you seen the prisoners of war when they’re released. Gosh, they were nothing but bones.  A bunch of them came in from when we invaded the Philippines.  I mean liberated one of the camps there.  A lot of them came down to Iowa General Hospital. And even then, that must have been a month after that, they  were nothing but bones yet.  You know. They were starving the people to death.  So there wasn’t a very good feeling for Japan to begin with. I mean after the war. 

KW:  What did you hear about the occupation afterwards?  You said your brother Jack was in the Philippines.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Did you ever receive letters from him about what they were doing or…

BA:  Yes. He said when he first got there he said these people are really starving. They were hungry.  They were in bad shape.  So he said that a lot of the GIs tried to help as much as they can but they were limited in what they could do.  So actually the hard feeling against Japan didn’t last long. I guess  we’re a pretty forgiving country. 

BH:  All of the Amyotte boys survived the war?

BA:  Yes.  Henry, my oldest brother, he was the one in Merrill’s Marauders, he got the Bronze Star.  He got Presidential Unit Citation.  Rifleman Badge.  Victory  medal, good conduct medal.  Asiatic-Pacific with three battle stars.  So he was in a rough one.  And Gene got …Guadalcanal, you know, that was a pretty rough go there too.  But Ben, he was in the South Pacific.  Navy.  So I don’t know what they had.  Andy and I of course were in Alaska and then Andy went to the Aleutians and he got separated.  He didn’t go over to Europe.  He got separated, I think, and discharged in ’44.  And then Jack, he was in the Philippines.

BH:  Did you ever get together with all four of your brothers who had been in the service and talk about it?

BA:  Oh, yes.  Yes.  We have…there’s a picture here in that book there of all of us.  All my  brothers.

KW:  Oh.  This book?

BA:  No. That other one you had.

KW:  Oh.  That other one.  I don’t know what happened to it.

BH : Not this 81st Battalion.

BA:  Not that one.

BH:  It may be in one of the notebooks that Bob has.

BA:  The one from Grand  Portage.  Interview from Grand Portage.

KW:  Oh, yes. Oh, that one.

BH:  Oh, of course.

KW:  Sure.  This one.   The big Grand Portage book.  Okay.  So you got married in June of 1945.

BA:  July.

KW:  July.  Okay.  July 1945.  Did you get married down there or…

BA:  Grand Marais.

KW:  Oh, Grand Marais. Okay.  So she came up here to live with you in Grand Marais.  One more thing about the war.  What do you think was the most difficult thing about your  war experience?

End of Side A, Tape 2.

KW: …hunting and fishing.

BA:  Yes.  So it was about like here only of course you’re away from your family.  I met a lot of good friends.  In fact one of  my drill sergeants from the artillery from Fort Lewis,  Washington,  we corresponded right up until this year when he passed away.   Quite a  few of them send Christmas cards yet.  So I met a lot of good friends.

KW:  So overall you feel that your experience during the war was  positive?

BA:  I think so.  There were times when it was really rough.  The wintertime there and to sleep outside.  It was rough then.  But nothing you couldn’t put up with. 

KW:  Sure.  So I was just going to ask you a question about your marriage, your wedding.  You got married in Grand Marais in July of 1945.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  So you both traveled up here with the understanding that you were going to live in Grand Marais?

BA:  Yes.  And when… I had to go back.  I had a twenty-one day furlough and then I had to get back I think August 1 and then I was discharged the 14th.  So then when I was discharged I went to St. Paul and got a bus from there to Belle Plaine and stayed in Belle Plaine for about a month and then we got a… moved into Minneapolis.  That’s where I started working. 

KW:  Okay. So you got married up here but then you lived in Minneapolis.

BA:  Yes.

KW:  Okay. Where did you get a job at?

BA:  To begin with I went to school for a year.

KW:  On the GI Bill?

BA:  Yes. Yes.  That was under Public Law 16 they called it for disabled…ones that were service connected disability.  I went to school for a year.  Cook and baker school.  Then I cooked in the restaurants in Minneapolis for a while.  Rainbow Café. At that time I think wages were ninety cents an hour.  I had Wednesdays off.   So then I started scouting around.  I got a job at General M ills Flour Mill and I started there in September of 1946.  Then I worked there for twelve years.  Then I got interested in a union.  You know the union representing the flour mills. So I run for a union office and in  1957 I  was elected president of the local union that represented all the flour mills, feed mills, elevators, grain elevators. There was forty-seven different contracts.  So there was about eighteen hundred members in the local.  I was elected president of the local.  Then that was a part time job.  I worked part time for the union and part time for the flour mill.  Then in 1958 I was elected business agent and that was a full time job.  Then I was elected every two years  until 1970.  Then I was promoted to the International Grain Members Union.  That covered all of the United States.  And before I was even elected to the International …or promoted to International I was sent out on a lot of different organizing…I was sent out to Idaho organizing the potato processing workers.   And then Omaha, Nebraska, (unclear), Mississippi, all over the place.

KW:  Wow. So you got to travel a lot.

BA:  Yes.  And then when I was in the International I was responsible for ninety-seven different contracts.  I’d have to oversee the contracts and help negotiate contracts, help grievances, handle grievances.   So that was wide experience as far as…so like I said, I didn’t have too many jobs.  I think the work ethic through the Depression years taught you to hang onto a job.  And evidently I was doing a good job because  I was elected every two years.  By secret ballot.

BH:  Which mill did you work in?

BA:  General Mills.

BH:  Which one?  Do you remember?

BA:  Yes. It was right down on the riverside.

BH:   A Mill?

BA:  Yes.

BH:  Washburn-Crosby A Mill?

BA:  Yes.  Well, by that time there was…A Mill was Durham and they had a C Mill.  That was flour, the patent flour.  And they had an F Mill.  They had a feed mill.  They had a rye mill.

BH:  And you were at which one? 

BA:  I was in packing-loading department.  I had to help pack the flour house. So that would be…we had a utility building they called it where flour would come in and we’d pack it up in bags.

BH:  Have you been down there in recent years and seen what’s happened?

BA:  No. I  understand it’s all…the utility building I think is still standing.

BH:  Well, the A Mill burned. 

BA:  Yes.

BH:  In 1991.  But they made into a  museum now. The ruins of it became a museum.  So it’s all about flour milling. 

BA:  Yes.  Where the power plant used to be we’d go into the office…where the platform, the loading platform over the river, down in there is a bunch of old waterwheels.  I mean stones.  You know, the millstones.  Dig in there and you get all those nice stones up. 

KW:  Where did you and Vera live when you first moved to Minneapolis?

BA:  We rented a little apartment for I think it was thirty-two dollars a month and you had cooking privileges.  Then we moved about two or three times.  Then we bought a house in 1949 on 1856 East 42nd Street. It was right off Longfellow and 42nd Street.  We lived there until 1974 when I had to retire on account of heart attacks.  So then we had a summer cabin by Park Rapids and we moved up there.  The summer cabin was fine for just weekends or so on but living there steady it was too small.  But I had some property out in the country by the little town of Sipeka (sp?).   So then we built a home there and we lived there until two years ago and then we’d spent the summers here for twenty-some years.  Then we sold there two years ago and moved here permanent. 

KW:  So you live in Grand Marais now?

BA:  No. I live here in Portage.

KW:  Oh, you live in Portage. Okay.

BA:  Down on the Bay Road.

KW:  Sure. What did…did Vera continue her nursing after the war?

BA:  Oh, yes.  Yes.  She worked for forty-two years  in nursing. 

KW:  Which hospital did she work at?

BA:  She graduated from Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul and then she worked at Swedish Hospital for a number of years and then she worked at the VA Hospital. And then when we moved up to …by Park Rapids she worked in the Park Rapids Hospital in the emergency room for ten or twelve years.  So she’s retired.  She retired when she was sixty-two. 

KW:  Did you have children?

BA:  Yes. We have a daughter and a son.  He was killed in a plane crash in 1998.  Had his own little plane.  Took off and got about three hundred feet up in the air and the motor conked out and come straight down and killed him and another guy with him.  That was an awful shock. 

KW:  It would be.

BA:  Yes.  He was forty-eight when it happened.

KW:  He was born in 1950?

BA:  1950.  September 1950.  My daughter was born in 1946.  She lives up here too.

KW:  So you had her right away after you got married.

BA:  Yes.  About a year or two. 

KW:  So your wife was working. Vera was working. Because I know that…like during the ‘50s there was an increase of women who stayed at home and raised their children.  Did she ever feel any…do you remember?

BA:  No.  She wanted to work.  She took quite a bit of time off for after the baby.  And then it was…we had it pretty well figured out that when she went to work I was home. You know.  Come home from work.  So that’s the way we had a babysitter. One of us was home all the time.  When I was in the union of course I worked always days.  But then of course when we were in negotiations sometimes it was half the night too  but then she’d work afternoon shift. 

KW:  So her work was pretty flexible then?

BA:  Oh, yes.  Yes. 

KW:  Did they have daycares or places like that if you needed….

BA:  No.

KW:  No.

BA:  If we needed a babysitter the gal next door, she was around fifteen or so, she’d babysit. 

KW:  What kinds of things did  you and Vera do when you needed a babysitter?  Entertainment wise.

BA:  We’d go to football games in Minneapolis…I mean Gophers.  Out to baseball.  We liked to fish. And we’d go down to visit her parents. They lived on a farm down in Belle Plaine.   So we’d go down there a lot and then when we were there we’d go fishing.  And we’d go out and eat.  So we had it pretty good. After we started working…we weren’t hungry or anything. 

BH:  How did you get interested in unions?

BA:  Well, talking to the old timers there.  They were working for thirty, forty years.  Pension.  Maybe one pension from one company.  They worked forty years and you had eleven dollars a month pension.  And hospitalization was practically nothing.  And I figured…I was young.  You know. I was in the twenties.  Well, I was thirty-five when I was elected president.  So it was unusual…they figured it was unusual for a young guy to start worrying about pension and life insurance and so on.  But I made that my project.  I wanted a pension to be built up and I wanted hospitalization and I wanted life insurance and I kept harping about that and kept harping about it in all the meetings and finally people started taking notice.  Then another thing I figured was wrong.  A guy could be hired off the street, sweep the floors and the guy whose been there for fifteen, twenty years, is a second miller, top job in the mill, maybe getting fifteen cents an hour more than the guy right off the street.  That was wrong.  Now the job I had was one of the lower classifications.  I was a flour packer.  That would be…they start a sweeper, a trucker and then flour packer.  So I was about the third from the bottom.  But I was fighting for the top guys to get wages too.  And that didn’t go over very good with the majority of the guys in the lower classifications. But there again, I kept harping about it and they finally seen  the light.  Because you couldn’t…the company was for that too.  To give the top people more money and hold down the people that were just hired. Because they couldn’t get people to promote to these jobs.  Why would you promote to a job…from a steady day job to where you had to work around the clock?  Like the ones in the mills.  And so that’s another reason what I was…I kept fighting for that.  Women.  Women’s rights.  There was women doing  the jobs that men were doing but they were getting ten, fifteen cents an hour less than the men for packing flour.  I’d say I could get off machine packing flour for twenty-five pounders.  The next day a woman would be doing that and she’d be getting fifteen cents an hour less than me.  That was wrong.  So I was always arguing for something like that.  Like Cream of Wheat. That was  in our union.  There was a lot of women working there.  Their wages was way lower than the men doing the same work.  Northrup King.  The seed packaging. Same way there.  So that’s…when I was discharged and wanted to go to school, the VA gave me a test to find out what I should be doing.  The first thing I was supposed to be an artist, the second a social worker. So actually that worked out right in the union. 

BH:  That’s really interesting because I wouldn’t have predicted that from what you were talking about from being such an outdoors kind of guy and  independent, working in a factory and becoming a workers’ rights person. 

BA:  Yes.

BH:  Did you think of yourself as…

BA:  Yes.  And it was a big headache at times.  It was rough going.  Like on a grievance.  You’d have to tell a person if he’s right or wrong.  If you told him he was wrong of course then you were…you’re butt. But that’s part of the job. 

BH:  Was there ever any labor action, any strikes?

BA:  Oh, yes.  We had strikes. Yes.  We had strikes up in Duluth. I had to help with  their negotiations.   Duluth. And we had strikes in Minneapolis in the flour mills.  1947 we had all the flour mills shut down. I wasn’t in the…I wasn’t an officer.  I was just a member of the…but all the flour mills in Minneapolis were shut down. I think it was down for twelve weeks.  And that’s when I first started working and doing stuff for the union.  I was on what they call the bumming committee. We’d go around to all the different stores in Minneapolis and get food.  I mean, you know, then we’d have a soup kitchen.  Make soup and sandwiches and so on.  I kept track of everything donated and then I’d have to report to the …at the union meetings about where…who donated and so on.  If you were going to buy groceries go here or go there.  So that’s how I first started.  And then 1954 General Mills was on strike and General Mills was contracting out to different mills around Minnesota to mill their flour and so St. Cloud had a flour mill and the union one Sunday go down there to organize the flour mill. So they sent me down and I was successful to organize the flour mill.  And then a couple months later,  Appleton, Minnesota there was a flour mill there.  I didn’t get that one organized.  But they sent me…starting about 1954 International sent me all around the area to organize. 

BH:  Isn’t this the time though when flour milling is starting to decline in Minnesota?

BA:  Oh, yes.  Right now there’s only…I  think there’s only one flour mill…no, two flour mills in Minneapolis.

BH:   No.  I mean in the ‘50s and ‘60s and  ‘70s too.  Wasn’t it also already in decline then?

BA:  Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.   When I left the local in 1970 I think it was….1969 or’70, we had eighteen hundred members. Now there’s less than three hundred in Minneapolis.  General Mills is shut down.  Pillsbury is shut down.  King Midas.  Russell Miller. And the elevators…before there was a crew in each elevator.  Now all the Peavey elevators, they have one crew and they go from one elevator to another instead of having a crew in each one.  Cargill’s the same way.  Farmers Union.  Now it’s Harvest States… I think it is. And then down to Savage, Minnesota the oil plant, Cargill oil plant shut down.  So it’s declining.

BH:  But you saw it through some of the first years of those declines though when people were getting laid off and…

BA:  Yes.  When General Mills shut down in 1967 I think it was, they laid off…I mean everybody was laid off then.  And before that the feed mill shut down and then they went in with a new milling system in the A Mill.  They shut down the Durham mill and they put in  the Bemis System, short milling system and quite a few were laid off then.  Pillsbury, after that English company bought them out and they cut back and Pillsbury went out of business itself and then another company  milled there for a while. Now they’re …General Mills bought Pillsbury.  They’re out.  Pillsbury’s shut down now. The A Mill. 

KW:  So that was around the ‘60s and yes.  So during your time down there in the ‘50s you said that you and your wife weren’t hungry.  Did you notice a rise in peoples’ incomes throughout the ‘50s?   You know, they say there was a post-war economic boom during that time.  Did you  notice that a lot?

BA:  Vera was looking…she’d save for things.  She was looking at one of the…our yearly earnings shortly…you know, in the ‘40s or early ‘50s.  I think it was twenty-five hundred for the year.

BH:  For both of you. The total.

BA:  Yes. At the mill I was getting…I started at a dollar five cents an hour and if I worked forty hours or forty-eight hours, then I’d take home forty dollars.  And out of that you had to pay your retirement.  A small amount went into  retirement and the company matched it.  And then you had to pay hospitalization and there again the coverage was very poor.  It was a really high deductible.  Of course too….when our daughter was born in 1946 the total bill was seventy-five dollars. Hospital and the doctor bill.   So things were a lot different.  Prices were different. 

KW:  Yes.  Did you notice a lot of people moving out of the city into the suburbs or any…because they always talk about suburbs.

BA:  I didn’t pay any attention to that.  We bought that home there on 42nd Street and we stayed there until 1974.

KW:  Could you find yourself buying a lot more things like appliances and television and…

BA:  Yes. I remember the old Admiral television.  Screen about like that.  And then…oh, it was hotter than heck there one year and Vera was working the midnight shift and trying to sleep during the daytime. I remember taking the kid’s wagon.  Went over to the hardware store around the corner from us and bought an air conditioner and installed that.  Then the first car I bought was a ’28 or ’29 Ford Model A Coupe.  The daughter…I was gone…we got our daughter.  She was just a little kid.  We got on the streetcar and went over to buy this car from a friend of mine and got in the car driving it home, Shelley was going down…all of a sudden she started crying. I said, what’s the matter?  I thought you were going to buy a car. Not this old junker.  (laughter)  A little kid like that.

BH:  You bought an old car in the early ‘50s then.

BA:  Yes.  It was…

BH:  It was already twenty-five years old it sounds like when you bought it. Or more.

BA:  Yes.  Paid seventy-five bucks for it.  (chuckles)  Then…

BH:  You were thrifty.

BA:  I had that for a while.  Then I bought a ’57…no, it wouldn’t have been ’57. Some other car.  Used car.  A couple of them.  Then in 1960 I started buying new cars.  (chuckles)

KW:  Do you have any more questions?

BH:  I just wondered what you would…maybe you already asked the same question about what do you think the effect of the war…your war experiences on your life in Minneapolis as…your working life and later?

BA:  Well, mostly likely I would never have met Vera and I would have been up here most likely working in the woods.  One brother, Gene, he went to…after he got out of the service he moved to Beloit, Wisconsin. He worked there. He had a good job. He was production manager  for (unclear).  They make the big engines.  Diesel engines.  So he had a good job there.  And then Ben went in the Navy.  He worked in Duluth steel plant. He retired from there.  And Henry, he guided and worked in the woods.  And Andrew worked for taconite plant at Silver Bay and he trapped.  And Jack, he worked in the woods. So I imagine that’s what I would have done.  I worked every day. I mean I didn’t…never fired from a job or….when we were discharged from our service you could work…I mean you’d get twenty-two fifty I think it was  they called it.  Or twenty fifty.  You get twenty dollars a week for fifty-two weeks. You know. Just staying home. I didn’t….I never went for that.  So as soon as I got discharged I hunted for work.

BH:  And the GI Bill made a difference.

BA:  Oh, yes. Sure.  Not only for myself. Well, I went to that one year of school.  Cooking school.  But I mean, everybody else it helped so much.

BH:  Did you use it to buy your house too?

BA:  I got a GI loan.  Yes.  Four percent interest.  Our house was ten thousand one hundred dollars.  And the payments were sixty-some…sixty-five or sixty-some dollars.  I was worried.  How am I going to make those big payments?  (chuckles)  You know.  Never missed a one.  And we had it paid off early. 

KW:  I have one final question and I think we’re going to wrap up here.  But the question has to do with the name of the project which is called…this project here of getting interviews is called Minnesota’s Greatest Generation and it’s going to be for an exhibit in 2008 at the History Center in St. Paul.

BA:  Oh.

KW:  But the reason why it’s called Minnesota’s Greatest Generation is people who came of age during the Great Depression and experienced the war and then the post-war. So like yourself for instance.  So basically I  just wanted to know if you agree with being called a member of the greatest generation.  Do you agree with that and if so, why or if not, why?  Do you feel that you’re a member?  Do you feel that you are in the greatest generation?

BA:  (chuckles) Well, I don’t feel any different. I think every generation contributes to the economy and our country and so on so I can’t say that.  We might have been during the Depression and so on an unlucky part of a generation but I think the work ethic and so on that we did have….I mean we had to have it and a lot of it carried over.  But I can’t see that because I was born in the ‘20s or the ‘30s or…that’s really better than the people that were born in the ‘50s or ‘60s.  Everybody has…contributes to our country. But it’s good to feel that I was part of it. (chuckles)

BH:  I think you made…you and your generation made a real contribution through the war and…

BA:  Oh, yes. 

BH:  And what legacy you left. 

BA: Well, I don’t know if you noticed or not but…of course our country was attacked at that time and you can see pictures of how people were all lined up volunteering and so on.  Since then…I don’t know. Like when you went in the service you swore to defend our country.  Right or wrong.  Now the people have the idea that if you don’t believe in what they’re doing they’re not going to defend it.  That’s wrong.  Our country is first.  And somebody’s in charge…I don’t believe in this war right now. I think that was a bad, bad mistake getting in there and how we get out of there I don’t know. But there again, people are protesting against it and so on.  Those guys over there, they didn’t go over there on their own. They were sent there.  We’re going to have to back them.  Like the Viet Nam War.  I don’t know if you remember Fraser, Congressman Fraser from…congressman from the 5th District.  At a union meeting he was at the meeting and he was talking about how we’re going to have to get our men back from Viet Nam and I got up and I told him. I said you sent those guys over there and now you’re trying to get them back without even….all these guys were killed and so on and what good is it.  You wasted…and you sent them over there.  Now get them back in an honorable way.  (mutters)  He kept harping about that.  I believe that if we sent troops overseas to fight back them.

End of tape.