Conducted by Thomas Saylor, November 4, 2002, St. Paul, Minnesota
TS = Thomas Saylor
MC = Marie Cavanagh
TS: Today is the 4th of November 2002 and this is our interview with Marie Cavanagh. First, Marie, on the record, thanks very much for taking time out of your busy schedule getting ready to move to have this conversation.
MC: You’re welcome.
TS: We’ve been talking a little bit here and I’ll go over some of what I’ve learned from you. You were born here in St. Paul, on the 22nd of March 1921. You were the second of four children, and your folks came from Austria and from Hungary before the U.S. got involved in World War I [in 1917]. 1915 and 1916 they came over here. You attended local schools and attended Mechanic Arts High School until 1938. You were married to your husband, James Cavanagh, in June 1939. Your first two children were born in 1939 and 1942. You were a homemaker at that time. Then in 1944 Jim (about twenty-four years old) was drafted into the U.S. Navy. So you were a homemaker with two children suddenly facing a very different existence. Jim was discharged from the Navy in 1946 and your third and fourth children were born in 1953 and 1956, respectively. You’ve lived in the same house here on Goodrich in St. Paul since 1942, is that correct?
MC: [Nods head yes]
TS: After the war you were a homemaker. Jim worked at Union Brass and Metal in St. Paul before moving to what was later the Gillette Company in St. Paul, and that’s where he retired from, right?
MC: That’s right.
TS: Jim died in 1992 and you’ve finally made the decision to move out of the house you’ve been in sixty years. That must be a difficult decision. Let’s go back a little bit. I’m curious, when the U.S. entered the war in December of 1941 you were already a mother with one child?
MC: Right.
TS: And before long you had another. The 7th of December 1941 [the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii], I’m wondering, Marie, if you remember what you were doing when you first heard that news?
MC: No, I can’t remember.
TS: It wasn’t long before the news was all over the radio and the newspapers. Once you were aware of the fact that the U.S. was at war, how did you react to that new situation?
MC: At the time, I remember that I wasn’t too concerned. I never ever thought that Jim would have to go in the service.
TS: So you thought that because being married with a child that would be safe. And for a while it was indeed okay. Were you concerned how the war would impact you as a wife and mother, as a homemaker?
MC: It was very difficult, really.
TS: You had two brothers and a sister. Were any of them in service?
MC: Both my brothers were. One was in the Army and the other was in the Air Force. My second brother was stationed in England; he was a navigator [on a bomber]. My oldest brother did not leave the country.
TS: So he was on stateside duty only?
MC: Yes.
TS: With your one brother that was overseas, how did that impact you, knowing that he was really in front line combat?
MC: We were very proud of him. We were given—as children my brothers and my sister and I were given some land in Germany that belonged to the family. None of us were able to go over there to take care of this and we had a cousin that was a young girl. She had TB. She lived in a sanitarium and so we turned the land over to her. We remarked so many times when my brother flew in the Air Force that he would always say after he came home that he bombed the territory that was given to us. That’s where they dropped their bombs.
TS: Did you ever go over to see this land that had once been—?
MC: We never had the money. We didn’t even have enough to hire a lawyer. We just signed papers and that was it.
TS: Basically got rid of it that way.
MC: Yes.
TS: How was your brother over there in England?
MC: I think he was there two years.
TS: He flew a number of missions then, in a bomber.
MC: Yes.
TS: He came back okay?
MC: Yes.
TS: You were married in 1939 and lived in St. Paul. How did the war, the U.S. going to war, seem to impact St. Paul as a community from your perspective?
MC: I think everybody was really upset. I can remember one of the things we always did, we could hardly wait for the newspaper. They printed all the names of those that were dead, and we’d go through the newspaper hoping that there wouldn’t be any name we recognized. They printed them on the front page every day.
TS: So you could look and really see if there was somebody that you recognized.
MC: Yes.
TS: I imagine it must have been the case sometimes that you did see names you were familiar with.
MC: Oh, absolutely. In fact, [my sister-in-law] Pat [Ethier] has a younger sister, Colleen, that lost her husband. And it was really a tragic thing. Anything connected with the war was a big tragedy. It was something that we never expected. Just like the same situation now [a reference to the war in Iraq]. It seems that it’s coming.
TS: Marie, did St. Paul itself, the city, seem to look or feel different from your perspective?
MC: No. I can’t remember that there were any organizations that really offered help the way they do today. And yet, I suppose with my husband living with me that really helped me a lot. [After Jim went into the Navy] I couldn’t even tell you how much [my cousin] paid me to take care of her little girl and her, but . . . and I also was able to use ration stamps from her, so that it helped me quite a bit.
TS: Now, just to make sure we have all this on the tape here. Your husband Jim was inducted into the Navy in May of 1944, by which time you were a homemaker with two children. Who moved in with you?
MC: My cousin, Marie Kunst.
TS: And her husband had also been drafted to service?
MC: Yes.
TS: And she had one child?
MC: One child.
TS: So suddenly in this house you had—
MC: Three children.
TS: And two adults. Whose idea was it for her to move in, hers or yours?
MC: Hers.
TS: How did she approach you with that idea, do you remember?
MC: No, I really don’t. I don’t think they lived in a house by themselves. I think they were living with her husband’s family, and I think she felt it would be so much easier to come live with me. I can remember at night every single night we sat and wrote letters to our husbands, which, if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t. There was nothing to write about. Every night we’d write the same thing—what the weather was, what the kids were doing. Then when I would get letters from him, and there were so many portions that were cut out.
TS: You could see things that were not there any more?
MC: Yes.
TS: Marie, how did that function from your perspective, with two women and three kids living in the house?
MC: It was great. We got along very well. The kids were—Jimmy was four and a half years when Jim left and Patrick was one and a half years. And J.J., the little girl I took care of, was a year. They were almost like twins. But it worked out very well.
TS: Marie Kunst. She was outside the home working, right?
MC: Yes. She worked at Buckbee Mears doing some defense work.
TS: Had she worked outside the home before herself?
MC: I don’t think she did.
TS: So here was someone new to the work force. Did she pay you rent?
MC: Yes.
TS: So it was a good deal for her.
MC: It was.
TS: And a good deal for you.
MC: Right.
TS: How long did she stay with you?
MC: Perhaps a year.
TS: When Jim got home, when he was discharged in January of 1946, was Marie already gone?
MC: She was gone.
TS: She had moved on somewhere else.
MC: Right.
TS: You mentioned writing letters a moment ago. What prompted you to write every day?
MC: I suppose we felt we were staying in touch. There was no other way to stay in touch.
TS: You mentioned that it was hard to find things to write about?
MC: It really was hard to find things to write about. I can remember I never wanted to write things to him that were difficult. It was always about the kids. Jim and Pat were three years apart. Jimmy was born in December 1939 and Pat was born in November 1942. There were lots of things to write about, about the kids. And the weather. I remember every time we wrote we wrote about the weather which, who cares, really? But both Marie and I were very content. The kids were good. We seemed to have enough. Having three children, we didn’t have to have the big meals like you have to have when they’re men, so that was easier.
TS: You mentioned the letters, that if there were difficult things that you didn’t write those things. Why is that?
MC: I had a feeling that I didn’t want him to worry. One of them, we had an old furnace that used oil, and at the time oil was rationed. I ran out of ration stamps. I needed more, so I had to go downtown. I can’t even remember where. They did give me more oil, and I can remember I never wrote that to him.
TS: Because obviously he would be powerless to help you anyway and—?
MC: That’s right.
TS: And he might just worry. Do you think St. Paul as a city was brought closer together or changed in any way because of the war?
MC: I really don’t know. I didn’t seem to have outside contact. Just my family and friends.
TS: Your sister, was she in the area, too, in St. Paul?
MC: Yes. She’s younger than I am by about six years.
TS: So she was still at home with your folks?
MC: Yes.
TS: How did your folks get on during the war? Were they both American citizens by now?
MC: Yes.
TS: So it was just the two of them with your sister living at home?
MC: Right.
TS: How did they get along?
MC: Very well.
TS: So they had no problems with running short of certain goods or things like this?
MC: No. I don’t think they had any extra money. I know they weren’t able to give me any help, but this was so typical of everybody. The parents never seemed to be able to do much for their kids the way parents do now.
TS: What did your dad or mom do? Were they both working?
MC: My father worked for the Chicago Milwaukee Railroad. I don’t know what he did. My mother was a homemaker. She stayed at home.
TS: Did you have contact or see your mom on a pretty regular basis?
MC: Oh, yes.
TS: Did they live close to here?
MC: They lived in the Como area [of St. Paul].
TS: That’s a couple miles north of this house where you live.
MC: And we used to take the streetcar. And they would take the streetcar and come down to see me.
TS: Did you depend on your mom and dad at this time for any kind of—outside of financial help, any kind of help around the house or things like that?
MC: No. I think my mother felt that with Marie living with me, between the two of us we could manage, and we did. We did manage very well.
TS: Now before Jim went into the Navy in May of 1944 he worked for Union Brass and Metal [in St. Paul].
MC: Yes.
TS: Did his job change at all? The hours he was working, or the products they were making or these kind of things? He worked there over two years during wartime.
MC: I know he didn’t like it.
TS: He didn’t like the job?
MC: It evidently was tedious. They make brass fittings. I can’t remember that he really said too much, except that he was looking for another job.
TS: He didn’t find one before he went off to the Navy though, or did he?
MC: No, he didn’t, because when he came home he went back to Union Brass.
TS: You had to manage the household finances from his pay packet. From your perspective as a person buying food or managing money, was your family financial situation better, about the same, or not quite as good before Jim went into the service?
MC: Not quite as good.
TS: So his money was stretched.
MC: He allotted me a hundred dollars a month, and my house payment was fifty-two.
TS: That left you less than fifty dollars for groceries and other things.
MC: And gas and electric and oil, clothing.
TS: So money was tight.
MC: Really.
TS: When Jim went into the Navy in mid-1944, how did that impact your financial situation?
MC: We had been buying War Bonds steadily through Jim’s work, and I went through every one.
TS: Were you getting an allotment from his service pay every month?
MC: That hundred dollars.
TS: So you got a little bit every month from him plus the war bonds, and then when Marie moved in a little bit of rent, and that sort of helped you make ends meet.
MC: Yes.
TS: I guess you weren’t saving any money though.
MC: No, I’ll say not.
TS: Before Jim went to service and you had a family income, when you were living off his paychecks, was that difficult as well or was that more comfortable?
MC: No, that was more comfortable. That’s why we were able to buy War Bonds, because we did have a little bit extra. And it’s a good thing we did, really.
TS: Because you used those for living. And you bought this house during the wartime, didn’t you?
MC: Yes.
TS: Was it difficult to make the financial decision to buy a house when the country was at war?
MC: I don’t think we even considered that the war was that close, because we bought the house in 1943. Patrick was born in November of 1942 and we bought the house in March of 1943. The war started in 1941 but I can remember we had no qualms thinking, “Should we really do this because there’s a war on?” It didn’t have that much meaning to it. I think it didn’t because we were young.
TS: You were twenty-two, twenty-three years old, right?
MC: After you get older you worry more about things. [Laughs]
TS: How surprised were you and was Jim to get the draft notice in the mail?
MC: Very surprised. We never ever thought that it would come to that.
TS: What kind of discussions or conversations did you and Jim have once the draft notice arrived?
MC: I can’t remember that we discussed it a great deal. One thing we kept thinking, “Maybe something will happen and he won’t have to go.” We always lived with that feeling, but that never came about.
TS: He had to go.
MC: Yes.
TS: Do you remember when he finally left? Was it from the local train station, the St. Paul Depot?
MC: No, it was from Minneapolis. Jim’s mother and dad, they had a car. We all went out and saw him off. My mother and dad never had a car. They never had a telephone. Really different. Jim’s mother and dad were very good to me.
TS: So you all went to the station together over in Minneapolis there?
MC: Yes.
TS: How was that day for you?
MC: It wasn’t sad. It had to be done.
TS: Having to deal with life as a single mother, in a sense, I want to ask you about the impact for you of things like rationing.
MC: That was a mess. It was hard to figure out what to buy so that you wouldn’t use all your ration stamps or tokens. I think the hardest thing was the meat, the meat situation. The rest of it was fine. We managed. I can’t remember that we were ever completely short of ration stamps.
TS: Why was the meat so difficult?
MC: I don’t know.
TS: Was it that you didn’t get much?
MC: I don’t think you got too much for the amount of stamps that you had, so that we gave the kids scrambled eggs more than we did meat. Eggs, I don’t really know, but they seemed to stretch farther. A dozen eggs can go a long ways.
TS: How did your rationing situation change after Jim went into the service? Did the kind of stamps you got or the amount of stamps you got change?
MC: No, not really, because we all were issued ration stamps: the husband, the wife and the children. When he left we did without his stamps, but then we did without him, too. So it kind of evened out.
TS: Yes.
MC: And children don’t—aren’t as demanding as adults as far as food goes.
TS: So it was easier to feed two small children. Did you do most of your shopping locally at shops?
MC: There was a grocery store right up on Grand [Avenue] and Syndicate [Street], where Kowalski’s [grocery store] is now. It was Crane’s Grocery. That’s where I shopped, because I never drove.
TS: You didn’t have a car during the wartime?
MC: No.
TS: How did the selection of things at Crane’s, because you went to the same place, how did the selection of foodstuffs there change as the war progressed?
MC: He had everything in the store, and he was so good to the kids. I always had to take the kids with me. Took them in the wagon. I don’t think it changed too much. They were very good kids.
TS: Was there a meat counter also at Crane’s?
MC: I can’t really remember that, and yet I don’t know where I got meat. But there wasn’t meat in this store.
TS: Did you have your milk delivered then?
MC: Yes. We had a milkman.
TS: Did you feel you were able to get as much milk as you needed?
MC: Yes.
TS: And they had eggs and butter, too? Delivered?
MC: I can’t remember that, but we did have enough milk.
TS: So from the rationing, I think what you’re saying is, really you didn’t feel that you were really short of anything, seriously short of anything, although meat seemed to be a little problematic.
MC: Yes.
TS: When you had ration stamps, was it possible to trade those around to other people or get them from other people if you needed?
MC: I don’t really know.
TS: Now when Marie lived here with her one child you had, I guess, more stamps.
MC: Right.
TS: Of course, you had more people then, too. Did that make things easier or not?
MC: I think it did make it easier.
TS: Did you share the household chores in a way, too?
MC: She worked all day. I can remember she used to do the washing on the weekend when she was home. She used to do all the washing. But I think that’s about all she did do.
TS: Did you cook most of the meals?
MC: Yes.
TS: Did she work shift work or mostly during the day?
MC: She worked during the day. She was home every night.
TS: So she had breakfast, went off to work. And you cooked so the evening meal was ready when she—
MC: Came home.
TS: So that worked out well for both of you, really.
MC: Yes. Yes.
TS: Were you a person who did any canning?
MC: A lot.
TS: What sort of things did you can?
MC: I canned tomatoes, for one thing. We had lots of spaghetti. And I canned fruit, peaches. I can remember we never bought peaches unless we bought a crate.
TS: Really?
MC: Yes. A crate of peaches. I can remember that my brothers, now they must have not gone in the service before Jim, but at least one of them went hunting, and he got some pheasants. My mother came over one day and we cooked these pheasants and put them in glass jars. We canned them and then sent some to Jim.
TS: Did they get there in one piece?
MC: Yes.
TS: Did you do more canning than you had done before rationing became an issue for you, or had you always been a person who canned?
MC: Always. From the time I got married I canned.
TS: Do you feel that the canning just supplied extra or different kinds of food, or was it something you really needed to make ends meet?
MC: When you bought a crate of peaches it was certainly much more reasonable than buying a pound. I still feel that way. I still feel like I have to go to the grocery store and buy extra things, and there’s only me.
TS: Old habits die hard, don’t they?
MC: Really! [Both laugh] And I gradually cut down on the canning. But when all the grocery stores that came into being, it just seemed easier. And when I had four children it was more difficult to can.
TS: And from 1939 to 1956 you had young children around on a regular—?
MC: All the time.
TS: Until the 1960s your kids were not all in school.
MC: Yes.
TS: The neighborhood here, around where you’re living here. Did this neighborhood—how was it impacted by war? People that you knew around here.
MC: They were very neighborly, really. Now the neighborhood has changed so much. I think there are only three of us left in the neighborhood that are old neighbors. Everybody knew everybody else, and it’s not like that anymore.
TS: How is it nowadays?
MC: They kind of just stay by themselves.
TS: They live in the neighborhood, but they’re not part of it?
MC: Right.
TS: That’s interesting. And before, what I hear you saying is that you knew your neighbors and really knew how they were doing.
MC: You visited with them, and those that had gardens used to bring me tomatoes and things like this. That’s how it changed. Even when the city has nights where they have block parties they don’t do it so much anymore. There were probably two block parties that I’ve been to and then they stopped. It has changed.
[Tape interruption]
TS: So the neighborhood was something that you were able to—people asked about you I guess, and you asked about them?
MC: Right. Yes. You always knew if they were sick. It was really nice.
TS: Did you get extra attention, in a sense, from your neighbors once they knew you were living by yourself and your husband was off to service?
MC: I think so. They used to stop in and see if everything was okay. It was really nice.
TS: When Jim was working here before he left for service, you mentioned that you had purchased war bonds. Why did you buy the war bonds?
MC: I think we felt it was patriotic and we were saving money.
TS: So it made financial sense, too.
MC: Yes.
TS: Did you feel like you should buy them, were almost pressured to buy them?
MC: Oh, no. It didn’t seem to be too much pressure, although they were bought through Jim’s job. They took care of all the paperwork and everything, so it was easy enough to do.
TS: Did Jim mention anything about how things changed at Union Brass and Metal once the war started?
MC: When he came home, I think, right at the time when he started back to work they weren’t really happy to take these men back that came back.
TS: The servicemen?
MC: Yes.
TS: They had to take them back though.
MC: Yes, they did. I think maybe that caused the feelings that they had, that they had to do it. He wasn’t there very long before he went to the Tony Company, which turned into the Gillette Company.
TS: When he was working before he went to service, on a day-to-day basis, did he say anything to you about how things at work were changing? About people coming and going or the atmosphere at the shop?
MC: I think it changed a lot each week. He’d come home and he’d talk about the different ones that he was friends with, and before you know it they left the job and somebody else came to take their place. It was a constant turnover.
TS: So, unlike the 1930s maybe, when Jim started there, when jobs were harder to come by, suddenly people could move around to something else.
MC: Right.
TS: That’s very interesting. And yet he . . . grumbled but he stayed.
MC: He just didn’t like the job. He didn’t like what he was doing. Then when he got into the Tony Company, he just loved that job.
TS: He stayed there until he retired, you said. So there was more turnover at the job, people coming and going.
MC: Yes.
TS: When the war was on, actually before or during the time Jim was in service, how closely did you follow the progress of the war?
MC: Pretty close.
TS: Was this through radios, newspapers, conversations? How did you get your news?
MC: I got most of mine from the newspapers. I still am a big newspaper reader. I can’t remember that we listened to the radio a great deal. I can’t even remember when we had our first television. It certainly wasn’t when other people had it.
TS: It certainly wasn’t in the 1940s. So the newspaper was where you got your news.
MC: Yes.
TS: Once Jim was in service, how did that change how you followed the progress of the war?
MC: When I’d get a letter from him, in reading the letter, even though there were portions of it cut out, I would try—I kept maps here and I would try to figure out where he would be, but it never really worked out that way.
TS: You never quite had it right?
MC: No. Then when he came home we talked about that. I can remember saying, “I thought you were at a certain place.” And he said no, he really wasn’t.
TS: If he told you in the letter, it was censored.
MC: Right. But you know, he didn’t have any idea of what life was back here, because I can remember getting a letter from him, and he wanted me to go down to the Kodak Company—I think it was down on Robert Street—because he said they told them in the service that if the wives went down they could get free film and send it to the men. I had no way of getting down there. I wasn’t going to go on the streetcar and carry three kids with me. So I never did get the film for him, and I think he was not happy about that.
TS: Was it true that you could get free film?
MC: Yes, it was.
TS: But for you every place you went, particularly after Marie moved in, you had to take three kids with you. Two of them little kids.
MC: Right. And Marie didn’t have a car either.
TS: So the two of you had to get by on where you could take the streetcar to or walk.
MC: Yes.
TS: That impacted what you did.
MC: Yes.
TS: I guess the decision to go somewhere was a real decision.
MC: That’s right.
TS: Did you attend church in those days?
MC: We belonged to St. Luke’s, which is on the corner of Summit [Avenue] and Lexington [Parkway, in St. Paul].
TS: Right. The big church on the corner.
MC: And of course I couldn’t go when the kids were small, but we belonged to St Luke’s. It will be sixty years in March. I still belong to St Luke’s. I’m going to miss it when I move.
TS: Because it won’t be right up the street anymore.
MC: Right.
TS: Were you aware of any volunteer programs through the church that were aiding in the war effort?
MC: No, not too much. I can’t remember that there were even food shelves. There must have been. I imagine there were many people that were in my predicament that had children and probably didn’t have enough food, but I can’t really remember. I know if there was I never had any part of it at all.
TS: Let me move to a couple of specific things here. On the 12th of April 1945 President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt died suddenly. I’m wondering how you reacted when you heard that news?
MC: We were very upset, I can remember that. We always had a soft feeling about him because he was handicapped. He was our president during the war. When the war started. I think that had a lot of meaning. Now presidents don’t quite cut it. [making a reference to President George W. Bush] [Laughs] That one that’s been coming here [campaigning] for Norm Coleman [for the 2002 Senate election], it just drives me crazy. He ought to stay home and do what he has to do.
TS: You mean Bush?
MC: Yes.
TS: Well, we vote tomorrow, so that will stop and then he won’t come here anymore.
MC: Right.
TS: About the same time that President Roosevelt died, April 1945, Jim was stationed off the [Pacific] island of Okinawa.
MC: Yes.
TS: When he was in basic training at first, were you able to communicate by letter fairly regularly?
MC: Oh, yes. He was only gone for about three months and then he came home. Then he went to Brooklyn. They sent him to Brooklyn, to the Navy Yard there. I went to New York to visit him.
TS: With the kids?
MC: No, just myself.
TS: When was that?
MC: Jim’s mother and dad took the kids. It had to be within six months after he went, because he was at boot camp for three months.
TS: Was it winter when you went there or just fall? Do you recall?
MC: I think it was fall, but it was nice. I went by train, and there weren’t enough seats for people, so I stood most of the way. The weather was nice. I stayed—he had gotten me a room in a house with some Jewish people. He took me one day to the base and showed me around. And while I was there, there was a terrible storm. Trees were down in the streets. It was kind of a bad time.
TS: So the train was pretty overcrowded?
MC: Yes, it was.
TS: Did you get a seat for part of the trip?
MC: Part of it. I think we kind of interchanged seats. Somebody would get up and tell you to sit for a while. It was difficult.
TS: How long did that trip take to get to New York?
MC: It had to be over a day. And I remember coming home from New York I had an uncle that lived in Chicago. I stopped in Chicago and stayed with him for a couple of days. My feet were so swollen from standing up that I had to stay there for a couple days.
TS: So you did stand on that train for quite a while. That train was crowded.
MC: Yes. I can’t remember that there was food. We must have packed a lunch at home, because we certainly never went to the dining car or anything.
TS: How long did you stay in New York with Jim?
MC: About four days. And it was not a very good visit. It was a waste of money.
TS: Why do you say that? You hadn’t seen him for months and months. What made it a bad visit?
MC: Because I was not comfortable. It was hard. And the place where I stayed I was not happy with.
TS: It was a private home?
MC: Yes.
TS: Did Jim know the people?
MC: No. But I think maybe they got this through the Navy base. I think there was some help in getting places. I suppose everything was so new to me.
TS: You’d had a long train ride for starters.
MC: Things that I never had done before. I was glad to come home.
TS: Did that make you sad in a way, that the visit hadn’t gone better than that?
MC: Right. It did.
TS: Was that the last time you saw Jim until he was discharged?
MC: Yes.
TS: Not a very good way, not good memories to keep in your mind.
MC: No.
TS: How was the visit for him? Was he also kind of frustrated that things hadn’t gone well?
MC: He never really said. I could never tell, really. I know when I first got in it was at the big station, Grand Central Station [in New York City]. When he had written to me he said he would meet me underneath the big clock that was at Grand Central Station.
TS: The famous one from the movie [The Clock], right?
MC: Yes. And you know, when he finally saw me, I guess I had lost so much weight he didn’t know me.
TS: He didn’t recognize you?
MC: Isn’t that strange?
TS: Yes. How did you take that?
MC: It was different. It was different. Different life.
TS: In a sense, you knew you had only a couple of days. Did that put pressure on you to—?
MC: A lot.
TS: It put pressure on him, too, I guess, in a way.
MC: Oh, yes.
TS: When did you learn that Jim was going to be going overseas?
MC: I think I knew that when I was in New York.
TS: That he was going to be heading out.
MC: Right.
TS: And you knew to the Pacific as well?
MC: Yes.
TS: Did that change or increase your level of anxiety at all? Being in basic training and being in Brooklyn are different than being in the Pacific.
MC: We sat here and worried every day.
TS: Because now it was a little more real.
MC: Yes.
TS: Really, you were powerless. You couldn’t even really know where he was.
MC: Right.
TS: Or what danger he was in.
MC: Right.
TS: How did you handle that?
MC: It was not easy.
TS: With letters that you sent to Jim, could you betray the fact that you were worried or did you try to keep up a positive face?
MC: I tried not to let him know.
TS: Did you know he was at Okinawa when the battle was on?
MC: No, I didn’t.
TS: Probably just as well.
MC: Yes. Really.
TS: When did Jim come home from the Pacific? Was it after V-J Day [in August 1945], after the end of the war?
MC: It must have been right around that time, because I remember him saying that he saw the ship where they signed the papers [ending the war, in September 1945].
TS: That would be the battleship USS Missouri [anchored in Tokyo Bay]?
MC: Yes. The Missouri.
TS: So if he saw that, it was already September. So sometime between then and probably December, he was shipped back. Let’s talk about that. The end of the war in Europe was in May of 1945, less than a month after President Roosevelt died. Jim was obviously still in the Pacific. What impact did that have for you that the war in Europe was ending?
MC: Then we looked forward to the war completely ending. We felt that it wouldn’t be too long before the war would be over.
TS: So there was a little optimism that this would speed the whole thing along. What was the situation in St. Paul at the end of the war? Were there celebrations in your neighborhood or in St. Paul?
MC: No, but there was downtown. I can remember I went downtown on the streetcar with—it must have been one of Jim’s sisters, because he has three. There were so many people, and they were hanging out of the windows of the streetcars and screaming and throwing confetti. It was a big celebration. I don’t know what prompted me to want to go down and be part of it. That was so silly that we did that. But there wasn’t the fear that people have nowadays when they do that.
TS: So that was one of the things that you did want to participate in.
MC: Yes.
TS: That’s interesting. In August came the end of the war against Japan. I’m wondering what your reaction to that was?
MC: I don’t know.
TS: That was going to impact you more directly, wasn’t it? Because Jim was in the Pacific.
MC: Yes. And when he came home he said that he had been in the Marianas [Islands, in the central Pacific] for a long, long time. I had no idea really where he was.
TS: So your guesswork hadn’t been very accurate, as it turned out.
MC: No.
TS: With the end of the war, you knew that things were going to progress and Jim was going to come home from the Pacific now?
MC: Yes. I think at the time we felt that the danger was over with.
TS: One of the reasons that the war against Japan ended so quickly was the U.S. government’s use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time, August 1945, what did you know about those weapon?
MC: Nothing until it happened. I think at the time we really couldn’t grasp what had happened. The pictures they had in the newspapers of the people with their faces all practically gone. It was a terrible thing. I don’t think we ever really got over that feeling that—I suppose it was a way of ending the war, but it was pretty drastic.
TS: Of course, the end of the war in the Pacific that the atomic bombs brought impacted you personally, because Jim was not going to be part of an invasion of Japan but rather would be coming home.
MC: Yes.
TS: Did that cause any kind of mixed feelings in your mind?
MC: It did. I felt sorry for the people that had to go through that. Terrible thing.
TS: Have your feelings changed on the question of atomic weapons since 1945?
MC: A lot. I don’t think they should ever be used. And I think they are going to be again.
TS: You fear that?
MC: Yes.
TS: The end of the war in the Pacific, you could foresee that Jim would be coming home. As a married man with two children, he’d be one of the first to be discharged, and indeed by January 1946 he was home. Was he home by Christmas 1945 already or not?
MC: No. He was discharged January 16th of 1946.
TS: Did you meet him at the train station here?
MC: In Minneapolis.
TS: Do you remember that time when Jim arrived home finally from the service?
MC: Yes. It was great. The kids were really excited. When he came home we had to go again to the railroad station in Minneapolis. He was late getting in. He was supposed to come about nine, and his mother and dad came with car and we went over there. It was the Milwaukee Railroad Depot. He didn’t get in until about twelve-thirty. Then we came home to the house here and I can remember Jim was holding Patrick, and Pat at that time was almost three, he was born in 1943. He was holding Patrick, and of course Jim and Pat were little and they didn’t have too much to say and they were very tired. I kept saying, “I’ve got to get the kids to bed.” Then Patrick looked up at Jim. He was sitting on his lap and he said to him, “When are you going home?” [Laughs] It was funny. Jim’s mother and dad got a big charge out of that.
TS: Let’s talk about the adjustment process. What kind of adjustment process was there suddenly to Jim being back in the household and Marie being gone from your house?
MC: But you know, it really wasn’t an adjustment. We just went back to living the way we did when he left. He went back to work shortly after he came home, and that was the end of it.
TS: You already had a house, so you weren’t looking for a place to live in a very tight housing market.
MC: Right.
TS: Jim had a job waiting for him. What would you say was difficult in the adjustment process to having things back together again?
MC: It was hard to change to have him back again. I was so used to doing everything myself. That was hard.
TS: Did you like having someone back to help with some things or, in a sense, had you learned to be your own person?
MC: Both, really. Getting meals was harder after he came home than it was when it was just Marie and the kids. For some reason or other, I don’t know why that was. I guess I wasn’t used to cooking for a man. And they eat differently than kids do.
TS: A little more, for starters.
MC: Yes. So it made a difference.
TS: Were things still in short supply right away?
MC: They didn’t seem to be. I can’t remember that there was anything that really disturbed us. The only hardship I felt was the time that I had to go down and get more stamps for oil.
TS: Other than that you said your ration stamps were—you weren’t living a life of luxury but things were okay?
MC: Yes.
TS: How about after 1946, when Jim was back? Were certain things still in short supply?
MC: No. They didn’t seem to be, and it was wonderful that he had a job that he liked. He worked every day in the morning and came home late afternoon. It was years later that he went into shift work.
TS: By choice?
MC: No. It was the company’s choice. That was not good. I had a meal to get for him before he went in the afternoon, and then the kids came home from school and I had a meal to get for them. That’s all I was doing.
TS: Cooking and cleaning up.
MC: Yes. But that was the hardest thing. I think that bothered me when he went on shift work.
TS: How soon was it that you and Jim got your first car?
MC: I can’t even remember what it was.
TS: Was it pretty soon after he came home or was it a while yet?
MC: It was a while.
TS: Do you recall thinking at that time, 1946, “The war is over I’d like to have a car but we can’t afford one?”
MC: Always.
TS: So you wanted to have one?
MC: When Jim was here all our married life—he died and we had been married fifty-two years, we never had a brand new car. We never had a new house. Now I’m getting a new apartment. [
[Laughs]
TS: So there was a bit of—would you say there was a little frustration on your part as a homemaker that we couldn’t have a car?
MC: Yes.
TS: Would you say you were happy in this neighborhood and in this house?
MC: Oh, very much. When we bought this house we knew nothing about this neighborhood. I was from Como, he was from the East Side [of St. Paul]. And we came out here. It took me a long time to adjust to living here. And now it’s just, I looked for a long time at apartments and I went all the way out to Woodbury [a residential suburb, east of St. Paul]. I decided to try and find one in Highland [Park neighborhood of St. Paul]. That’s where I’m going to be.
TS: So for you, staying in St. Paul is a good thing.
MC: Right.
TS: To conclude, I want to ask a couple questions. During the time of the war, whether Jim was home before he went in the service or when he was in the Navy, what did the war mean for you, personally? What was it all about?
MC: We could see the writing on the wall. We’d hear of different ones whose numbers had been picked.
TS: And Jim had a draft number.
MC: Yes. It was just something you adjusted to. You knew you had to do it. There was no other way. There wasn’t any reason to get terribly upset because it wouldn’t change anything. I think I depended on having my mother and dad, and Jim’s mother and dad help a lot.
TS: How much different would your life have been if you didn’t have in-laws and parents to depend on?
MC: I would never have made it.
TS: So you really depended a lot on family. What do you think is the most important way that the war changed your life?
MC: It makes me not want to go through another one.
TS: Do you have grandchildren who are of military age?
MC: Yes. Patrick’s children are older. Gregory is the youngest. They have three boys, and Gregory is studying law at Columbia in New York. They are the oldest. Then I have another grandson who is Michael’s. He graduated from St. Olaf [College in Northfield, Minnesota] with a degree in music. And now he’s in Oregon. He just got a fellowship for school. He’s taking courses because he wants to teach music, and he’s taking courses that will, if he graduates, enable him to teach high school or college music. All the way down to my first great-grandchild, who is two.
TS: I’m wondering after 1946, when Jim was a civilian again, how much did he talk about his time in the Pacific?
MC: He talked about it a lot.
TS: Really?
MC: He did. He talked about the people he was with, and he corresponded with them, for a long, long time. I know one was from New York. Then gradually that fell off. But one thing that he did that I didn’t like, he came home and used terrible language. Really. And the kids were here. They were little. It was something…
[Tape interruption]
TS: You noticed the language immediately.
MC: Really! And I told him that he couldn’t do that with the kids. He just did it unconsciously. It bothered me a lot.
TS: He was at Okinawa, and obviously that was front line combat duty. Was that something he would speak about fairly openly?
MC: No. He was very hesitant. He did talk several times to different people that were here at the house. His friends that came to visit. Then he talked about the Japanese soldiers that were killed and were just laying on the shore. It was hideous.
TS: As his wife, were you curious to know about what he had gone through?
MC: Not really. It upset me.
TS: Would you say you were, in a sense, happier to not know?
MC: Yes. He brought home some pictures. I don’t know whether he had taken them or somebody else had taken them, pictures of the Japanese dead soldiers, and I made him get rid of them.
TS: You didn’t want to see them?
MC: Oh, no.
TS: Pretty graphic pictures?
MC: Yes.
TS: How did he talk about his experiences there? As upsetting or as something he was proud of or just matter of fact?
MC: I think he was really proud of serving in the Navy, but he didn’t talk about it a great deal. I really think he wanted to forget it. I really do.
TS: Was he a person who was bothered by bad dreams or nightmares that you recall?
MC: No. He had migraine headaches.
TS: That’s something he hadn’t had before he went in the service?
MC: I can’t remember that he really did, but he had them afterwards.
TS: Is that something that he thought was connected to the war?
MC: No. He never really said that. There are quite a few in our family now that have migraines.
TS: So it could be a genetic thing as opposed to—?
MC: Yes.
TS: And bad dreams or nightmares about wartime service were not something that bothered him.
MC: No. No. I know we didn’t go to many movies, but once in a while we would get somebody to stay with the kids, and he never wanted to see war pictures.
TS: In one sense, he had pictures and would talk about some things?
MC: But he didn’t really want to see it.
TS: That’s very interesting. How would you, when you think of your husband when he came home, in what ways was he a different person?
MC: He was crabbier for a long time. He would become very impatient with the kids, and he hadn’t really seen the kids as they were growing up. I think he just didn’t know what children would do or were supposed to do. It took him a long time to make that adjustment.
TS: Really, for several years he had been in a child-free environment.
MC: Right.
TS: Did he feel pressure, do you think, to suddenly be a father again, be a wage earner?
MC: Yes. See, the thing is that the kids never went to him for anything. They came to me. But I was the only one they had. They weren’t used to this.
TS: Did that bother him?
MC: Yes, it did. He’d always say, “Daddy can do it.”
TS: How long did that go on?
MC: I think when the kids started school, then that changed.
TS: So he felt a little outside, or frustrated, when he got home.
MC: But he was very good to the kids. Michael was the third child. He was born after Jim came home. About ten years later, in 1953.
TS: Did the kids ask much of him as far as his wartime service?
MC: Oh, yes. They were pretty proud of him. In fact, as they grew up, as they got older, they could not believe that he got to go when he had children.
TS: It was certainly not that common.
MC: And you know, like right now I’m so glad Danny’s back in school because I think maybe this will keep him from having to serve. I don’t know if it will.
TS: Were your kids curious to know from Jim what he had been through in the Pacific?
MC: Oh, yes. In fact, one time for his birthday they bought him a model of an LST [Landing Ship, Tank, supply vessel used at island invasions]—that’s the kind of ship that Jim was on—and then he built it. In fact, I just had given it to one of the grandsons and they were pretty interested. They wanted, and you know with [my brother-in-law] Orv Ethier being where he was in the service [Orv Ethier served on a destroyer in the Pacific from 1941 to 1944] . . .
TS: So that kept it alive in the family. More so than if there wasn’t that connection.
TS: Right. Now from what you knew from Jim as your husband, you knew of his wartime service, did he, in a sense, censor what he told the kids about his wartime experiences?
MC: But see, by that time, I had him talked into thinking before he really said anything. Then it had changed. He stopped the bad language. It worked out real well.
TS: When Jim got back from the service in 1946, how were you a different person? In other words, how are you different from the person that he left?
MC: I think I was like the kids. I really didn’t go to him and ask him to do some things that I should have asked him to do, because I was so used to doing it myself. I had to.
TS: Did you change that slowly over the years?
MC: Oh, yes. Because he always said—or I would tell him that I would need something from the store and he’d say, “I’ll go.” And I would say, “No, I really have to go. It’s too hard for me to tell you exactly what I want.” By that time we had a car. He would put the kids in the car and he would sit out in the car and then I would shop. Finally, that changed. He said, “This is not good.” I don’t know how we worked that out. I guess he did start to go to the grocery store.
TS: But there was definitely—I hear you saying there was some adjustment period.
MC: It really was.
TS: In a sense, both of you in your mid-twenties had begun to become, not different people, but to become whole people.
MC: And you know, as I said, Marie would always do the washing on the weekend when she was home. She washed all of our clothes. Hers and her little girl’s and Pat and Jim and mine. When Jim came, I would wash on the weekend, and he couldn’t understand that. He said, “You’re supposed to wash on Monday. Do this on Monday and this on Tuesday, Wednesday . . .” I said, “No, I’m so used to having the washing done on Saturday.” Then finally I thought, ‘That’s silly. It doesn’t have to be done on Saturday.” So I changed the wash day. Just things like that. We couldn’t agree sometimes on simple little things. It was an adjustment.
TS: That’s interesting. In a sense, from the outside, your situation looks strikingly similar. You were married before, you’re married after. The kids were there. The house was the same. Jim’s job was the same. And I think what I hear you saying is, it was the little things. It was the human relations things that took some time, some tinkering.
MC: Yes. And the fact that I didn’t work. I used to go to all the PTA meetings for all the kids. Jim was never interested. I don’t know why he wasn’t. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested in what the kids were doing, but we never had any trouble with the kids. He never really had to go to find out what the trouble was. Then I got into volunteer work. I worked at Cretin [High School]. I worked at St Luke’s. I worked at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ as a delegate from St. Luke’s. I worked there for twenty-two years, doing cooking.
TS: So you kept yourself busy outside the home, too.
MC: A lot.
TS: Did you ever want to have paid employment, really collect a paycheck, or were you happy with the freedom that this gave you?
MC: Yes. And Jim was very good about handing over his paycheck. I took care of all the money.
TS: You were experienced with this now, weren’t you?
MC: [Laughs] And I saved quite a bit.
TS: It sounds like the wartime experience was difficult, yet helped you grow as a person.
MC: Yes, it did.
TS: That’s the last question I have. Is there anything you’d like to add before we conclude?
MC: Just that I hope that the country straightens itself out, because to look forward to another war is very hard.
TS: Let me thank you very much for this. I’ve enjoyed this very, very much.
MC: You’re welcome.