Personal Interview of Jean and Marianne Deis

I interviewed my grandparents, Jean and Marianne Deis, on April 23, 2006. My grandmother lived in New Jersey with her mother and four brothers. Her two older brothers enlisted in the war as soon as they turned eighteen. The rest of the family was at home living very poorly and in fear of the war and for their relatives. My grandpa grew up in Dayton , Ohio near Wright Patterson Air Force Base. He was much better off than my grandmother and did not have any close relatives in the war. He was drafted, but deferred so he could graduate high school. By the time he graduated the war was over.

Siobhan : Tell me about your experiences and what you remember about WWII.

Marianne : In Ohio where your grandfather lived, they were in the farm land, dairy land and they had access to a lot of food we didn't have access to. We didn't have access to butter for one thing, and during the war that was all rationed. Okay, to continue every war changes society and WWII changed the society dramatically from what it was before the war. Now just before the war we were at the tail end of a very deep depression, the worst depression that we've had in my lifetime. And everybody was out of work. People were just very very hungry and food was given to us free we were all on relief and getting hand outs from the government, and you had food stamps to go and buy food with your stamps. And that was all the surplus food, but anyway, that was the depression and this was a picture of the poor kids. There I am, poor kid, and there's my brother. And every summer, they would send us off to camp free of charge and we would have a vacation. And that was one of the nice things they did for us. There is my mother and there I am being kissed goodbye. And I thought you'd like to have that. So that was the depression. When the war started, it started very slowly; it started in Europe with Hitler. The worst thing Hitler did was to kill 6 million Jews. And all of these Jews were being persecuted and before he actually put them into the concentration camps, where he annihilated them, there was a period when the Jews were trying to escape. And I remember going to a little store where these people were a Jewish couple and they owned a little store, and my mother used to buy my underwear there. And one day, I think it was 1938 or 39, I was in there and this man interrupted his wife and he said he had a letter from Germany from his relatives and they were very unhappy, concerned people and I felt a vibration of that as a little girl. I knew something was terribly wrong and they were almost in tears after they read the letter. They came out and told us they had no news from relatives they had taken off to concentration camps by Hitler and it was a terrible time. The first time I realized how awful it was. We were not in the war until 1941 because we did not want to get into the war. But Japan , realizing Hitler had everyone excited and worried and occupied, then thought it was time to attack the United States . And without telling us, we had Pearl Harbor on December 17, 1941 and Japan attacked us at that time, totally unexpected. Their diplomats were still in Washington , D.C. , negotiating something, I don't know what. But, while that was going on they attacked us at Pearl Harbor . When that happed, Franking Delanor Roosevelt, who was president at that time, could no longer stay out of the war, because there were to camps those that wanted to enter the war and those who wanted to stay out of the war. So we got into the war, and the minute we got into the war, all kinds of factories sprang up because we had no munitions, and we had to supply the soldiers, we had to draft the solders. We had to clothe them, feed them, make camps, and army camps spread out all over the United States . And all these people had to be housed and fed and taken care of and that was an industry. And then we had munitions industry, we had to build all kinds of weapons. And further on be invented penicillin, all the chemists went to work and that was the conception of antibiotics that was the first major change. The other major change was that with all the soldiers at war the women were left at home and there were not enough workers. So, the women came out of their homes. Mothers, daughters, young girls, all the women who had never thought of themselves as a working force suddenly became a working force.

Siobhan: Did your mother work?

Marianne : No my mother stayed at home, there was no way she had a different kind of personality. But most of the women who could, she had five children at home, most of the women who could went to work. And of course, my two brothers enlisted they both enlisted in the Merchant Marines, this is the older brothers. They enlisted as soon as they turned eighteen. They both entered the Merchant Marine Academy. Well one didn't like it, so he became a submarine sailor. He didn't like that either he got terribly frightened when he was under the water. So, they took him out of the submarine and they transferred him to a lighthouse and most of the time was in Newfoundland , which I think is in Canada . And most of the time he stayed there watching the lighthouse, but he was so distressed by the war that at one time he tried to kill himself. So, you can't think of the war as not affecting people's lives drastically. And that was the thing that he told me, that he had tried to kill himself because he scared himself so much he decided he would never do it again. But nevertheless he was never a healthy person emotionally after that, I can't say mentally, it wasn't mental it was psychological and emotional. The other brother did very well he liked the Merchant Marine very well. He became an officer and he was in the Merchant Marine, when the Merchant Marine, well what they did they supplied the people on land, they were the backup. And Dwight D. Eisenhower, made his landing on the beaches, my brother was out on the ocean and he was the supply line, and you would think that was a safe place to be, but it wasn't because in the course of that battle either a submarine blasted his boat or whether he was attacked by the air and he was in the bottom of the ship and hearing the explosion he ran up out of the ship and hit his head on the stair so bad that he gave himself a concussion. He wasn't killed but we received a telegram and my mother when she heard he had been injured she thought he was dead and they were just lying to her, saying he'd been injured. And the minute she read that telegram she threw herself on the floor and she cried so hard and screamed and yelled I finally had to jump down there on the floor with her and said, "Mom, he is not dead they don't care about your feelings and they wouldn't tell you a lie, they're telling you the truth. Believe me they're telling you the truth." And she started to calm down when she realized that was probably true, the government didn't give a darn about her they were just doing their job. So she felt a little bit better, and eventually when he was discharged, he went to the hospital because he developed asthma, and he had asthma all of his life after he had that injury. So that was the story of my brother Vincent, he also was in the war that was fought from the south of Italy . Because they were landing on the shores from the North which was around the North Sea, they were landing on the beaches of France . But also form the south there was another war going on in the South and the British was there and the Sahara desert and all that kind of stuff. But my brother came up to Africa and he landed in Africa for awhile and he had to always carry a knife because the Arabs would attack American soldiers with knives, so he said he only got off the ship once and he had a great big knife with him which was eventually brought home. But that was an attack that was coming up into Sicily and then on into Italy , they were trying to attack this war from the South and from the North because the war was so widespread, all over Europe . They were attacking England at first. Germany attacked Poland it attacked Holland and then finally it attacked England . The Germans developed rockets, which was another development that came out of the war, it is very important to keep in mind all the things that changed and developed the sciences went crazy during the war because they had to create superior things to the enemy. So, they developed the V-2 rocket and this would come all the way form Germany , it would fly through the air and land in London and it was burning London . And England had to send all of its children way out into the country. If you lived in London and were a child you went out to the country. And a lot of Jews had immigrated to England and then form there they went to Canada . And so did the English, there were many English families that went to Canada . And we were very afraid. My mother and I used to lay in our beds scared to death, once we heard about those rockets. One night she said to me, "Do you think they could every reach us?" And I said, "I don't think so, we do have the Atlantic Ocean between us." And I was wondering how powerful it could be and I suppose today that could be possible. So that was the V-2 bomb which was a very important thing. And we knew we couldn't stop that bomb we had nothing that worked like that. We had to go there on foot and with armored divisions hand to hand. And we got into France and we had the help of the French underground movement, there was an underground movement all over Europe , but the most famous one was the French because they were occupied by the Germans and they hated them. And anybody who had anything to do with the Germans during the war, when the war was over those French people all had their heads shaved so the people would know who they were. And of course they were probably ostracized once they were identified with their bald heads, most of them were women. And also there was a government, when Germany occupied France the French government, Paten was the head of it. All of those people were in big trouble when the war was over. I don't know if any of them were jailed, I doubt that. So we finally landed in France and fought our way and took possession of Paris and fought our way all the way to Germany . There's a very famous battle called the Battle of the Bulge and General Patton was in charge of that battle and it went on and on and my American soldiers were killed. I want to talk now about coming up through Italy . They had to fight town to town all the way up Italy because Italy was run my Mussolini and they were also fascists, they were fighting with Germany . That was the big Italian mistake and when the Americans were coming through they were getting a lot of help form the Italian underground. So finally, they did take charge of Rome I guess and Mussolini was found and I think executed by the Italians and they strung him up and his mistress upside-down. It was his big mistake because he was a very popular man in Italy 'til that war, nobody likes a loser. But, they couldn't possibly win that war morally and technically. You can't conquer that many people at one time and succeed it just isn't possible. Rome couldn't do it, Alexander couldn't do it, all of your famous warriors they couldn't do it. So that was World War II. This is a picture of my cousin, now this cousin was in the navy and he died a hero because they were bombarded and his best friend was down in the bottom of the ship and the ship was on fire and he went down into that flamey, smoky mess and never came out again. He went down there to rescue him, he was Bob Pocaroba. The USO was the United Services Organization and it was a club house for all of theses service men to come and party and they were given food and there were always girls there to dance with and lots of food and drink. Here my brother is dresses as an Arab because always as a kid my mother would wrap him in a cloth and put charcoal on his cheeks and he would go out on Halloween as an Arab. He won a prize I think he got the first prize.

So what really changed was that prosperity came to the country because everyone was building things and working and so the depression ended. We became more of an industrial nation and we haven't had a big depression, we've had recessions but we've never had a depression like that ever ever again. So that was 1945 when the war ended.

There were Japanese people in this country that were all rounded up and put in camps and there were a lot of German people that were persecuted by other Americans

Jean: Some of the Germans were all for America . Anyhow I grew up in Dayton , Ohio which was an air force base, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, and it was the headquarters for air development. It's very famous and they have a big airplane museum there. I saw some of the first jet planes there and before that all the airplanes had propellers to fly. And I didn't grow up as poor as your grandmother did. My mother was working she had a job. But I do remember that you couldn't get butter, but we had a relative in the city about twenty hours away who knew what farm to go to so you could buy a pound of butter. And they had a connection that you could get coupons to buy gasoline, which was close to unknown then. The government issued them but you could only get so much

Marianne: Well food was rationed, we had ration books, and mostly it was for sugar which we didn't use too much of and I didn't miss butter because Italians don't use butter it's all olive oil. And we were so used to a shortage of food from the depression I don't think having a ration book bothered us. I didn't feel as deprived as other Americans did who were used to living very plentifully with lots of baking and lots of butter. But the Italians had a different kind of diet and the best thing that happened to us was when Franklin D. Roosevelt gave us coupons for relief to use at the grocers instead of money. That was the beginning of food stamps. FDR is still so beloved because he started a program of responsibility of the government for the poor. That kind of thing wasn't going on before; if you were poor you were alone in the world. That was the beginning of social consciousness in the government and not only that it was a change of attitude that women had about themselves. They went to work made their own money, their husbands were away and they became very independent. That was the beginning of the national organization of women because women's consciousness about themselves was greatly altered. They were very independent women; they could make their own decisions because their men weren't there to help them. So that was a great big social change and then in medicine there was tremendous change in attitude. Everything had been the status quo and people thought this is the way life it then they were given an emergency and they found out we got to do things differently. If were going to win this war, we have to do things differently, we have to think differently, we have to utilize our resources differently. And the main resource was the people they had to get the bright minds to work and one of the first things they did after the war was over was to get all of that team of German scientists and bring them over here to start the aerospace business. And of course the chemical use of medicines developed and the pharmaceutical companies were started by that. So life really changed dramatically, and I'm sure there are changes that I am not even aware of. There were social changes, scientific change, and industrial change. Bad social implications came with the new role of women because it caused resentful husbands.

A lot of the soldiers came back mentally damaged. For instance, my brother became damaged and he never was the same because after WWII he signed up again and went to Macarthur's occupation army in Japan and he was in Japan for about three years and he liked that very much and then he signed up for the Korean War, and that was a real war and he never was the same after that. So his life was pretty much broken after the Korean War and he became a homeless person because he could not take responsibility. And he lived off disability money that he got from the government, he couldn't afford and apartment he could just afford food and a few clothes. And her probably lives in a homeless shelter if he is still alive, but he lost all contact with us after my mother died, we just don't know where he is, he may be dead.

So, war makes a lot of positive changes but the worst thing that it does is it kills people and some of those who come alive are not the same ever again. Many divorces took place; even now people come back and divorce their wives. There is nothing good about war accept the scientific aspect

Siobhan: Is there more you would like to add Grandpa?

Jean: I told you I grew up in a German community which had been for two generations or so. I remember we had people staying in our homes, army officers, air force officers, and they needed places to stay and there was not room for all of them at the base.

Siobhan: What did your mother do?

Jean: She was a secretary and she worked in lawyer's office. Things were quite peaceful in Ohio . We had planes flying everywhere and we had army and air force personnel all over the place, but it was peaceful. I grew up not to bothered by it. Except, my last year in high school I was drafted, but they gave me a deferment so I could graduate and when I graduated the war was over.

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