My real-time remembrances of World War II — being born in 1943 — are limited to the evening my father, Ed Johnson, arrived home after his discharge on a train at Durand, a solitary depot outside of Yates Center. I sat on his lap on the way to Humboldt; I remember it well.
Over the years, Dad talked little about the war; Mom did occasionally.
She may have had a fetish for ironing clothes. She ironed everything, even handkerchiefs and bed sheets. If she washed it, she ironed it.
On Dec. 7, 1941, a Sunday, she was at the ironing board. A cabinet model radio — we still have it — was playing typical big-band swing music in the background. Then came: “We interrupt this program for an important news bulletin!” The Japanese had bombed ships anchored in Pearl Harbor.
Many ships were sunk or extensively damaged and the island base was a shambles. Fear was the West Coast next would be attacked.
Mom’s response, she admitted later, was: “Oh … (a rare expletive for her) that means war!”
Dad was training with an Army unit in Louisiana when I was born. He came home for a week when I was six weeks old. We next met more than two years later.
During his absence I had surrogate parents in my grandparents, Sherman and Ada Oliphant, with whom Mom and I lived.
As a toddler often wearing overalls and a little straw hat to mimic my granddad, I was unaware of what was going on, only that “my daddy is in the Army.” That’s what I’d say when church ladies came to visit Mom, then I’d point to his photographs. Often the women would tear up at my young innocence, Mom told me years later.
Another story: Families were notified by telegram when something occurred to a loved one. Mom always feared the fellow who manned the telegraph key at the Santa Fe depot would drive up in front of our house. One day he did. Mom’s heart sank to her toes, but she recovered quickly when he jumped from his jalopy and yelled: “It’s good news, Violet. It’s good news.”
Lean times affected many on the home front, living from one ration allocation to the next, although granddad had a good job at Monarch Cement. We didn’t have a car. He walked the mile or so to and from Monarch each day, clear skies, rain or snow, for his 3-11 p.m. shift.
When Dad came home in 1945, he also hooked on with Monarch. He retired 33 years later. Near the end of his life, as was true of many veterans, he became more talkative about the war. He gave an in-depth account of his role in the Normandy Invasion when the Register ran a special section for its 50th anniversary on June 6, 1995.
I had the pleasure of wriing his story, which included trying times in Belgium.
