Age 24

1. How old were you when World War II started? 
I was 24 with a husband and 3 kids.  One of the kids was a baby under 1 year old.

2. What were you doing on December 7th, 1941?
I was getting ready for church when a neighbor came and told me that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.  I ran to the radio and listened all day.  The news was all over the radio.

3. Did you have to use ration stamps to buy sugar and gas?
Yes, we had specific stamps that the government gave them.  We had a farm so we didn’t have to use meat ration stamps but most people in cities had to use them.

4. Did you or anybody in your family go to war?
No, because we were farmers and they needed food for the war.  My husband worked at an armament factory making bullets in Salt Lake City.

5. Were you scared when the whole thing started:  If so why?
Yes, because I thought that my family would have to go to war.

6. Did women have to work?
Yes, if they didn’t have kids, but if they had kids they could work at home.

7. Did you know someone who was sent to war and didn’t come back?
No, but my brother-in-law, Grant, was in the war in Italy.  It was a test camp for the new bazooka gun.  The gun exploded in the barrel.  He lost an arm and broke both legs and took out his stomach and insides but he survived.  They thought he was dead and took him in a basket to the hospital.  They left him in the basket for three days.  He survived so they sent him to New York City to a better hospital.  Then they sent him to the hospital in Brigham City.  They used maggots to treat the infections in his legs.

8. How were the Japanese people treated in Highland, Utah?
They were treated well and did not have to go to the interment camps mostly because they had big farms that produced a lot of food that helped the war.

9. How did you feel when the war ended?
Happy!

10. Did you feel that the war changed your life?
Yes, we had to do things that we didn’t have to do before.

The picture is of me and my husband and son posing with Margarete Schauffele.  She is a German girl that came to live with us as a foster daughter until she graduated from high school.  He brother also came to live with us.  It was a program started by our governments to help the kids understand that we could be friends after the war and all Americans were not bad people.  She had some very strange views of America and Americans when she first arrived.  She was like a daughter to us for the rest of her life.