Alice Usher
Megan Flahive
Mr. Thomas
U.S. History X, Period 7
10 May 2006
Alice Usher
The following interview was conducted on April 15, 2006 at the home of Mrs. Alice Usher. Mrs. Usher was twenty-three when the war started and married a few months before the war broke out. Her husband was stationed on a destroyer in the Pacific theater and Mrs. Usher remained in the States and worked at a factory where she inspected parts for the first guided missile. In the following, Mrs. Usher recounts what life was like on the home front, rationing, and women’s roles at home and in the workplace.
Q: How old were you when the war started?
A: How old was I when the war started? I was twenty-three.
Q: Were you married yet?
A: I was married two or three months before the war broke out.
Q: So you weren’t a war bride?
A: No, we were married in May of 41 and then [the Japanese attacked. He was sent off into the Pacific].
Q: So he joined the Navy?
A: Yes, he was a naval officer.
Q: Did you move around a lot?
A: Yes…. (laughing) everywhere. The first place was Panama. He got sent down there to guard the canal.
Q: Why the canal?
A: Well, they were just being cautious, because it was very vital. The canal was vital. And he had an old fishing boat, ‘cause they were making do, you see, with what they had . . . the fishing boat had I have forgotten how many sailors but he[was the captain and] the boat was just loaded with cockroaches.
Q: Ugh!
A: . . . So the first thing he did was to order all the sailors to take everything out of the boat and put it on the dock. And then they cleaned that ship fore and aft and then put everything back.
Q: How long did that take?
A: I don’t know, but it had to be done or else they were going to sleep with the roaches all over them. I don’t know how the fishermen did it. But anyway that was his first accomplishment. He killed the roaches of the world.
Q: A vital role in the saving of the country.
A: Well, it was vital! (laughing)
Q: What was his station in the war?
A: His station was Panama.
Q: Well, I mean what rank?
A: Well, he started as an ensign. That’s the lowest officer. He started as an officer, but of the lowest rank. Then by the end of the war he was a lieutenant…something.
Q: Colonel?
A: No, not a colonel. There was a first lieutenant junior grade. I guess it was just a lieutenant junior grade. Then he became a lieutenant. And then the war was over….finally.
Q: Did you know anyone else in the war?
A: Oh, yes. Everybody was in the war one way or another. You mean actively?
Q: Yes.
A: Yes, although I was living in Rochester, New York, with my sister and her husband was in change of a factory because he was an executive in Kodak. And they took over Kodak at the beginning of the war . . . So he got me a job, it was just as a job on the line, you know. Not really an assembly line. It was an inspection line. A quality inspection occurred. Some of the parts that they were making; they were just put together. They didn’t know what it was, they were just experimenting. But at the end of the war it turned out it was the first guided missile.
Q: Wow!
A: Yeah. It was a proximity fuse, they called it. If it got into the area of the target, it would hit it.
Q: How else did you contribute to the war effort? Did you do any other jobs?
A: No I didn’t have any other job, except that I was a nurse’s aid. Which was sort of a laugh, because I was the last person to be a nurse.
Q: Did you not like the blood?
A: Well, actually, I did pretty well with it. And ended up at being in the part where the babies were, you know, the birth . . . what shall I call it? I can’t think of the word. It’s where the babies were born.
Q: Were you like a midwife?
A: Well, I didn’t have that much status. I was just a helper. And in those days, after the baby was born, somebody had to hold them and stuff like that [motions suggest swaddling] for I don’t know how long, and I was it.
Q: What a great job.
A: I worked nights actually some of the time; so that was my job after the birth. And then once I was allowed to watch a caesarian operation. And so they put us all in scrubs and stuff. And after I was standing around with several other people, and the doctor beckoned to me and I thought, “Oh, my, what’s going to happen now?” And he just wanted me to hold her arm out like that so that he could put a needle in it or something. He thought I was nurse, you see.
Q: Oh, no!
A: But I wasn’t a nurse. And never had been. We had all kinds of experiences in the hospital. But it was not exactly my choice.
Q: Was this in Rochester?
A: No, it was in Massachusetts. I lived for a year with the family of a friend of mine. And that was when I was a nurse’s aide. Then when he actually went overseas, after Panama, he did various training jobs – one in Florida and one in San Diego. And I was able to go with him to places. Until he was shipped to the Pacific.
Q: What did he do?
A: . . . He was on a destroyer. And there was one very funny thing. When he filled out his forms to become an officer, they asked what he had specialized in. He put history – H-I-S-T – and E-N-G, by which he meant English. And they took it to mean Engineering. And it dogged him the whole war because he was supposed to know all kinds of things that he didn’t know. That’s the way wars are won. He worked hard, boy. Because there was a lot of math and, you know, things that he had to learn. Oh boy, it was tough, but it was tough on the wives, too. Because they didn’t have enough to do. And the men had too much to do. So anyway, that was the way it was.
Q: Well, how did you feel about President Roosevelt? Did you like him?
A: Yes, I did. Although I think at that point, I wasn’t terribly politically minded. I was just concentrating on one thing: my husband and what he was doing. And whether I could go with him, you see. Yeah, at my age, I wasn’t as into the big picture, too much.
Q: Were you painting?
A: Well, I was just had been two years at an art school in Philadelphia, and then the war started.
Q: And that was ‘41?
A: Well, I went there in ’39 and went home in ’41 to get married. But then my parents moved to Michigan and my father was quite ill and I felt that it was not possible for me to go home and wait for him to come home . . . and so a friend of mine who lived near Boston offered me a place to live and so that was when I went to be a nurse’s aid. And then later, I was able to join him when he was down in Panama, for about a year. And then I forget all the places we went! We cris-crossed the country (laughs)! On train.
Q: I suppose you couldn’t fly?
A: No . . . but there were some very nice trains. And the last place I went was in the San Francisco area . . .’42, I think. Yes, so I remember when the Japanese surrendered.
Q: Where were you when you heard the news?
A: I was in Rochester. My sister let me stay with them. And so that worked out pretty well, because I got a job at Kodak. That was a very good experience for me, because I was just on the line, you know.
Q: I know it was kind of boring, but was it a fun job?
A: Oh, yeah. But it was a bunch of women. That was kind of interesting. They couldn’t make them stop talking. And the higher-ups were very frustrated, because they talked non-stop. And they felt they weren’t doing their job well. But there was nothing that could be done. So the war was won in spite of women. There was one I remember very well. Her name was Prudence and she had come to this country from….I forget what country, but she had been in America for a very long time. And she would just chatter, chatter, chatter all the time. It was better than being silent, you know, and looking at these plastic things ….you had to decide whether they were flat to the table or whether they had been warped. See, they were just plastic. They were one of the first parts of guided missiles . . . And toward the end of the time there, I had been promoted. I had become head of the section. And I had all these chattering women. (laughs)
Q: Were they hard to control?
A: No, not too much. I had to inspect what they used to do. And, you know, we won the war anyway!
Q: We won the war, that’s what counts. What were some of the movies that you watched?
A: Gosh, I didn’t get to the movies very much.
Q: Was it just not popular or were you too busy?
A: Well, because we didn’t have very much gas. And you see, I had to share. My bother-in-law had a car. Any car…you had to get the most out of. Because he had to go to work at Kodak, so we really didn’t do a lot except around the neighborhood. They had a lot of parties in the neighborhood. ‘Cause almost all these families, the men were doing work at Kodak and they were excused from going to the war. And that winter in Rochester, was the most snow they had had there in I don’t know how long. But the snow just built up and built up until it practically buried everything.
Q: How high was it?
A: Well, we were practically snowed in. They was…my sister’s house was on the edge of Rochester, you know, on the lake. So they had to tunnel quite a bit just to get out of the driveway. And I remember the day we all got up on the roof and shoveled the roof.
Q: Did you ever get to go ice skating?
A: No, it wasn’t that cold actually. There was a park between us and the lake. But that was Lake Superior….or no, Lake Ontario. So I don’t believe we could skate on it…no. It would have been rough water.
Q: Do you remember some of the music you listened to at the time?
A: Well, you know, I wasn’t terribly into the current music, as I remember it. I wasn’t up on the latest groups. Although I did [listen] during my college experience, just before that. And we had favorite songs then. Well, there was “Begin the Beguine” and….oh, I can think of them, but not right away.
Q: Did you know anything about the Jews and the Holocaust in Europe?
A: You know, I knew very little about that when it was happening. And I think other people did. Some people did. But we were somehow not too aware of it, I don’t think.
Q: So you didn’t really find out about it until the end?
A: Yeah, by the end of the war they were talking about the liberation. But I’d not had a very good idea of what was going on.
Q: Did you ever hear news about Hitler?
A: Oh, well, we knew he was bent on nothing good.
Q: So during the war did you hear anything about the concentration camps?
A: Oh, yeah, I think we were aware of the Jewish Problem, yeah. But I’m afraid I was very closed, just marching straight ahead, you know, and I was too young to be involved in the bigger issues.
Q: . . . .Did your family care for Roosevelt?
A: It’s funny. My father was very anti-Roosevelt and I was always surprised because he was a professor.
Q: Why was he so against him?
A: Oh, he thought he was a spoiled, rich boy or something. And then my father-in-law, who was quite a distinguished historian, said Roosevelt was a great man and a great President. And so I had two views, and I think my father-in-law was right.
Q: Did you hear a lot from Eleanor?
A: Oh, yes. Because she wrote a column called “My Day”
Q: Oh, did she?
A: Yes. She was quite a remarkable person. I think there is a lot of [grief] about her, but in the end she turned out pretty well and did good things. And was probably more influential than any of the women that came after.
Q: So she was quite popular?
A: Yeah. Of course she was homely-looking. Poor thing. Those great big teeth. But she did a lot of good work and went all over.
Q: So, was your brother-in-law affected by the rationing of gas?
A: Oh, well, he got plenty of gas. And there really was plenty of work.
Q: For men?
A: Well, yes. But the women worked during the war. But there was a sort of a boom after the war . . . We declared the end of the war in the end of ’45. And by January of ’46, we were here with a job at Butler. It was very quick. There were a couple months he was with his ship in Maryland and San Francisco Bay which was to be demobilized . . . my husband was in charge of the ship. There were documents he had to shred And he had to burn [a lot of] the papers. Put the ship in mothballs, I guess. And we lived in a Quonset hut – half a Quonset hut. It was a very unusual experience, ‘cause our cooking equipment was pretty minimal. And some of these pots, they were not safe, really. I mean the flavor of the pot was going in the food. We had to make mashed potatoes in the coffee pot or something; it was “make-do.”
Q: That must have been awful! Where did you get the food?
A: We had a commissary, you know, where we could get food. And that was cheap and nice. I had never before seen a grinder, a coffee grinder that was….that you could operate yourself. So I read the directions, of course, what I thought was very carefully. And I failed to put the bag underneath.
Q: Oh, no!
A: (laughs) I had coffee all over the floor.
Q: And coffee – wasn’t it rationed?
A: Yes, I think it was. And butter – my gosh, it was almost non-existent. And we had margarine – that was, you know, white. It was white and it was like lard. And it was in a plastic bag and we had to knead it. And there was a little yellow capsule in it that would break [and make it] a very delicate yellow and then you had to keep going at it. And we had…..we didn’t have nylons. We had lisle. I remember using lisle. But nylon was very scarce, as I remember. It was just coming out. And we had always had silk stockings.
Q: Where was your husband stationed in the Pacific?
A: . . . they were off the coast of Japan. My husband’s ship was one of the ones that was right off the coast when they surrendered . . .
Q: Did you think they should have dropped the second atom bomb?
A: I have often wondered why they had to do the second one. They could have dumped it somewhere where there weren’t people. And made the same point. I was just worried about my husband….they were fighting over there. And they said the ship that was the most dangerous in the U.S. military was the Missouri. Well, the ship was a battleship and they were following a kamikaze plane. And it kept getting lower and lower and lower. And pretty soon it was running into the fleet. And so they called him up in their phone and gave him a piece of their mind, I guess. “Stop fighting! Stop firing at us.” Well, and then there was one time when a missile went right through the destroyer and didn’t hit a thing. Didn’t hit one thing. It went right through and out the other side.
Q: Was your husband in danger?
A: No, because it wasn’t a hit. But they did go home with hunks of torpedo. They were sub chasing. That wasn’t too much fun. But they don’t….you know, those people who were in the war, they didn’t talk an awful lot about it.
Q: So your husband didn’t really talk about his experiences in the Pacific?
A: No. He didn’t really expand on it, that I remember. You know, on a destroyer they have a bunk that is right under the ceiling and it’s metal, you know. And it must not have been very comfortable. And then they were often on four hour shifts. And they would sleep for four hours and then work for four hours. It was tough, but I think for my husband, it was the best time in his life.
Q: Why do you say that?
A: Because it was different and because it was exciting and they were doing something purposeful and it was an adventure.
Q: So he had some adventures out at sea?
A: Yeah. And they got in a typhoon one day. And if you can imagine a destroyer in a typhoon, it was like a cork. (laughs) . . . You couldn’t get seasick. I would have been out of there in two days. Well, you had some more questions?
Q: Do you remember when you heard the war had begun?
A: Yeah, I do. And I remember where I was when we got the word that the Japanese had surrendered.
Q: Oh really?
A: Yeah. The war was declared….the first inkling that it was going to be a war was in August of ’41. And then we got in the next year . . . I remember where I was when Pearl Harbor….when we heard about that. We lived in Charlestown for about five months and then . . . moved to Ann Arbor. My husband was finishing up his Ph.D. And his father was very wise. He was a…you know, he was a historian. And he said, “If you’re going to join the navy, get your degree first.” And he did. And so he had a Ph.D. when he came back. And all of his friends were working to get their degree, and they had families and it was so much more difficult, you see. We got out of the navy in the fall of ’45 and he was at work at Butler in January of ’46. But it was funny, because he had his thesis – it was really a big, fat thing. And he asked me if I would take it in, because he was not going to be able to. And so I went over to the grad school and handed everything in and they said, “Did you write that?!” I thought that was rather rude. (laughs) “You, you little thing you?” But I did type quite a bit of it.
Q: Where were you for most of the war?
A: I was living with my sister and her family. In Rochester. Yeah. I was there. For over a year. I think. It seemed like a long time. The winter was wild. Every morning we go to the window and see whether it was little higher. And I remember that there was a time I was working the shift that got off at midnight. . . And where we lived was quite a long way from the plant and so you had to arrange a ride over to the guardhouse and there was man lived down the street from us – where my brother-in-law and sister lived. And so he would bring me home at midnight. And they had a time there in the guardhouse and I was sitting there and I saw a notice that said, “Mr. Ogden is expecting a woman at midnight.” So I never asked about that one!
Q: Did you get updates of the war in all the papers?
A: Yeah . . . It was quite scary at times. You know, you felt you didn’t know what your future would be, if your husband was killed in the war. And that happened to people that I knew. So it wasn’t all fun, but I think I was worthwhile. I had a job and it paid pretty decent. Oh, I was gonna tell you about the day the war was declared over. They closed the building about 2 o’clock, instead of 4. Because everybody wanted to go out in the street and jump around. And there was one little old lady that was working there ever since I started. And she wanted to finish her day. And I was in charge, and I thought, “I don’t know. I guess I have to stay if she wants to stay. She has a right.” So I was sitting there and she was sitting there and everyone else was gone. And then the door opened and the manager stuck his head in and said, “What are you doing here?” And I explained to him. And he said, “Well, we’re closing the building.”
Q: Was she inspecting the parts for the missile? What did they look like?
A: Oh, well, they were all about the size of a checker. But they were empty in the middle. They were almost like a little tire, except that they were flat. And one thing you had to do was test them to make sure that they lay flat. Because the plastic would warp sometimes. And if they didn’t sit right, they didn’t want them. And, oh, we had barrels of them, my God! And that was the one thing. As director of the unit, I had to go through them and double-check and then I had to write on a page. Very hard work (laughs) I had to write: so many and so many rejects.
Q: What where they for?
A: I’m not real sure. But they assembled those with other parts. Now we had to inspect a tube, a very primitive thing that was like a little cigarette that was filled with wax and had a wire sticking out of each end of it. That was held in there by the wax. And you had to look at each end of those to make sure whether there was bubble or anything, if they were full of wax. They were an electrical gadget that was a part of the new proximity fuse.
Q: When did you find out it was [the proximity fuse]?
A: Oh, my brother-in-law wouldn’t tell me until after the war.
Q: Did he tell you?
A: No, I can’t remember if I asked him finally. But it became generally known. It was one thing that won the war against Japan, I think. Because it could zero in on the plane….by radio, really . . . Of course now, they have much more sophisticated weapons….when I think of what we were doing. It was ridiculous.
Q: So you made missiles?
A: Yeah, I know. It was the beginning of guided missiles. It was the first one, I guess.
Q: So, I guess there wasn’t a lot of international travel.
A: No, oh, no. But we certainly criss-crossed the country. And I remember one time we were on a train …from there we went to Miami . . . and we got the most wonderful little apartment that you could imagine. It was in old-fashioned Florida apartment and some friends of ours that we entertained they were so jealous because they had… all they could find was maid’s room. But we had really a very beautiful place and it was $11 a week. That was pretty nice. And also the wicker furniture and all, you know. We weren’t there very long. About four months, I think. But when he would go off to the base, sometimes he would go as early as five o’clock, and there I was. What’ll I do?? You know. So I looked up the Red Cross, and they always had work to do. And in San Diego I would go every day to the Red Cross and sew pajamas for the troops.
Q: How nice!
A: Well, there was a cute little man and he was a tailor. And he was retired, so he organized the tailoring. And he would lay out a sack of cloth, maybe this thick [motioning for about 1.5 inches] and make sure they were all smooth and in order. And then he would take some electric scissors and cut them out.
Q: Oh, wow.
A: And that’s what I had to assemble. There were several ladies that helped sewing those. One day he cut off the end of a finger! That was a terrible day!
Q: I couldn’t imagine that!
A: Well, it was probably just the tip, but still…
Q: Where did this happen? ….San Diego? Miami? Charlestown?
A: ….oh, yeah, I was in Charlestown, Mass. That’s where the navy yard was in Boston. And I’ll never forget what I had to do there to keep myself in the loop while he was on the base. And we were….we had a room right on the beach. And it was a very nice house, but we just had a room on the fourth floor. And they gave me kitchen privileges in the basement. So I would cook supper in the basement and carry it to the fourth floor. Yeah, it was kind of primitive. But there was a very nice grocery store down the street and butter was very hard to come by. We had margarine. But one day I was in that little shop and the guy reached under the counter and he gave me a pound of butter. It was like gold! I don’t know why I got so privileged, but anyway it was wonderful.
Q: Oh, wow! Your luck!
A: Well, you can imagine when your life revolves around a pound of butter.
Q: So I bet you rationed that out!
A: Yeah. Well, the margarine was very primitive in those days. And it tasted awful! And they were beginning to have cake mixes. And they were terrible, too.
Q: What else was rationed?
A: Well, gas
Q: Was it expensive?
A: I don’t think it was too expensive. Most people had what they called an “A” card. If you had a special job, you could get a “B” or a “C” card, but most of us had an “A” card. It allowed you to get the gas you needed so you could get to work.
Q: Did you have a ration book?
A: Yeah, we did. Butter and eggs and meat…I can’t remember all the things we had in our ration book.
Q: So did you have coupons….how did it work?
A: Well, you had so many coupons for say butter. Like three or four coupons. I can’t remember exactly the amount for different articles. But there was quite a lot of rationing. But it’s amazing when you think that the country was able to continue to operate itself with very little discombobulation. In Europe, they were down on their upper.
Q: Sounds like there was a lot of national pride.
A: Oh, yes. We were saving the world for democracy. Well, it was [exciting]. It was an exciting time in a way, but, of course, there were some horrors too. I mean the first battles for the Pacific were endless. Because the Japanese at that time were pretty well prepared. And we weren’t.
Q: Did you ever hear of Rosie the Riveter? Did you see her picture everywhere?
A: Yeah, though I didn’t do anything as exciting as that.
Q: I think you did something pretty exciting: building missiles!
A: Yeah. Without knowing it!
Q: But building missiles is pretty important.
A: Yeah! But a lot of the guys I knew were pretty far up the chain, because they were, I mean one of them even worked on the Manhattan Project. But they were just college graduates. And my brother-in-law had gone to Harvard Business School. So that’s why he got his business in the factory. But I think he had already been at Kodak.
Q: You say Kodak. Do you mean like Kodak film?
A: Yeah. It’s where they manufactured the film.
Q: But during the war they produced missiles?
A: Yeah, well, they all had to readjust. But they weren’t exactly missiles. You see, they were parts of missiles. And for instance…I’m just guessing…the plastic thing that the film was rolled around, it was just the tester parts . . . what we had to do. I mean, I think, the machinists could do that.
Q: So you didn’t know the Manhattan Project was going on?
A: Well, we were aware of it. Besides, I had a very good friend and they were in Indianapolis for a while. And I got to know them because we had connections with other people. And he was a very brilliant physicist. And he worked on it. But then I guess he didn’t have that anymore, and he had to get a job. And he got a job here at….what’s that chain link fence thing? I can’t remember. But he didn’t like it here. It was a little too bucolic. So he went up in the upper echelons -- brains! He had a real brain. Anyway, some of us had to do the grunt work.
Q: Yeah! So news got around the factory?
A: Yeah, but we did ignore the bosses and talked quite a bit. Yakity, yackity, yack! Well, you know, it was really possible to talk and inspect these things. It was a simple job.
Q: I’m sure it wouldn’t interfere with just inspecting those plastic things.
A: …well, we could probably pay more attention…..but we won the war! (laughs) Well, it was an experience. And I never anticipated that. So the first part of it I was a nurse and the second part of it I was building missiles.
Q: It’s so interesting that you didn’t even know.
A: What we were making?
Q: Yes and also that you were building missiles. I just think that is so fascinating, because we hear of women being riveters, welders, but not missiles!
A: That’s right. It was a break-through. I think it helped win the war. Because the kamikazes were doing a lot of damage.
Q: So you enjoyed working?
A: Well, I was pleased to be….I didn’t know what I was going to do while he was gone. So I think it worked out quite well. My sister had three children. So I helped with the kids and the cooking and so on. …. But we really managed pretty well, in the war. I mean as far as food was concerned. We were really not suffering at all.
Q: Really? Not even with rationing?
A: I don’t know . . . in parts of Europe, they were really short of things.
Q: So (did you know a lot of what was going on in Europe?)
A: Oh, yes. We would get news of Europe. And of course we followed everything because we were interested in our own particular troops.
Q: And you corresponded through letters?
A: Oh, yes. We were able to correspond, though of course there were things you couldn’t talk about. I think you could(n’t) mention like sinking a sub or something.
Q: Well, thank you so much for this interview! It was so interesting to hear your stories!
A: Oh, thank you very much.
Q: I just think this time period is so interesting and I really loved hearing all you had to say!
A: Oh, well, you’re welcome. It just seems like a long time ago. I’m sure it does. I suppose you think of it in the same way I think of World War I. Because I was born before the end of World War I. Although I was not very aware of it. I was a baby. But then I escaped the ‘flu. You know, that year – the year I was born - was the year everybody got the ‘flu. Oh, yeah, they had many deaths of the ‘flu. It was a real epidemic.
End of interview