Elizabeth Montgomery
Melody Cutsinger
Mr. Thomas
American History X, Period 5
28 April 2006
Personal Interview
Melody: So why don’t we start off by telling me your name.
Elizabeth: My name is Elizabeth Montgomery. I graduated from Knightstown High School in June of 1942.
Melody: So what was life like pre-WWII?
Elizabeth: It was calm.
Melody: Like, the few months before it.
Elizabeth: Well we didn’t know this was happening. We were in a small town, just high school kids. We didn’t have any idea this was happening. Although there were two young men who had graduated high school in 1940, they went down on the U.S.S. Arizona in Pearl Harbor. But of course, we didn’t know that till later. Communication wasn’t like it is today. It was 4:00 in the afternoon before we ever heard about Pearl Harbor. It was on a Sunday afternoon. I remember because my boyfriend and I had a date to go to the movies on Sunday night. We walked everywhere. It was a small town and we didn’t have a car. Even though it was a small town, and this is something that has changed, we had 7 grocery stores in a town of 2500 people. And there were hardware stores, three or four banks. Everybody did their shopping and their living right in the small town because a lot of people didn’t have a car. We had two buses that ran along U.S. 40. The Greyhound went everywhere and there was one called the Swallowline. That went from Indianapolis to New Castle. People rode this if they wanted to do their shopping in a bigger town. We had no hospital; we had five doctors in town. The closest hospital was in New Castle which was the county seat. But people lived very calmly. Everybody knew everybody in town. We noticed that before the war, people we knew then and all their families lived in the area, or in the county; within driving distance (30 to 40 miles). But the ones that went off to war married in other states and found work they wanted to do out there and their families are scattered, much more so than the ones before WWII. And of course, WWII was only 22 or 23 years after WWI. I can remember my mother talking about knitting socks for the soldiers in WWI. That seemed like such ancient history to me because it happened 20 some years before. I was born in 1924 and from 1924 to 1929 we lived on a farm. Our mode of travel was a horse and buggy. In the wintertime, we had a one horse sleigh. My mother would heat up rocks and wrap them with our feet so we could go to church 3 miles away on Sunday. But WWII changed a lot of that. My mother, in the spring of ’42, bought that last washing machine the furniture store in Knightstown had. They stopped making things like that, everybody went into war production. In fact, I don’t think they made any automobiles in 1943 or 44. When the rationing started, we had little ration books with tickets. I think the first thing they started rationing was sugar, because it was imported, we imported so much sugar, and silk. We had silk hose that came from Japan. So you couldn’t get them anymore, they were sheer, like nylons, with a seam up the back. So during the summer, women would put makeup on their legs and take an eyebrow pencil and made a seam up the back of their legs. We had rayon hose, which were very heavy. There were so many things that came out of the research and the manufacturing that was done in WWII, like nylons. I can remember that they had aluminum drives. They would put a big bin up on the town square, and women that had aluminum pans, that they could get along without, took them up there and donated them for the war effort. As these men went off to war, my husband found out that he had tuberculosis when he went for his draft. So he was not able to go. Out of the seven close friends of his, he and his other friend who was blind in one eye were not able to go. But they both went to work in the war plants to make war material. They worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day. There was no choice, they wanted to do this though, and it was the only thing they could do for the war effort.
Sugar was rationed, gasoline was rationed, and an awful lot of our other food was rationed. Some of the bakeries stopped slicing bread. Every body drew their drapes and curtains and window blinds each night, so that the lights couldn’t be seen, in case foreigners came in airplanes. They had these gold stars that they hung in the window, with a blue border and white background. If you had someone in service you had a red star, if someone was killed you put a gold star there. We had a family in Knightstown that had 5 sons in the service all at one time. One of my husbands other friends was in the navy, and he was on the U.S.S. Indianapolis when it went down. He was an only child, and his mother lost her mind over it. She just couldn’t cope with it. She was waiting for him to come home. We had war bond rallies. In fact, for wedding gifts or babies that were born, they got war bonds. And little children could buy stamps, they could take coins and buy stamps and fill a book. When they got enough, they would get a war bond. Many people started their children’s college education with war bonds. We had notable people, like Caroline Lombard, who was killed when she left Indianapolis, after she had been in Indianapolis for a war bond rally. Notable people went to cities and encouraged people to buy the bonds. We didn’t travel, they cautioned us not no use anymore gasoline than we had to. But as I said before, there were a lot of good things that came out of the war, medical things too. But there was an awful lot of tragedy. And I can understand why there was hatred. We knew a man who went back to the Philippines as a missionary. There was a Philippine family that just hated everybody. Their 15 year old son was playing in the yard when the Japanese had taken over. Two Japanese soldiers came into the yard and cut him to pieces with their sabers right in front of his parents. So you can understand why this carried over like this. We had some friends who were prisoners of war, who were very, very mistreated. We don’t realize the depth of the sacrifice that these men made when they went off to war. This one friend of ours who went into the navy was gone for 27 months before he ever got to come home. And these two close friends of my husbands, George and Louis, went onto the navy. They met up with each other D-Day on the beach in France. George was helping unload the boats and up came Louis. It was just unbelievable, some of the things that did happen. I can remember a man that I worked for, was sent overseas to England. He said that he never saw so many Brussels sprouts in all my life, because that’s what they raised in that particular area, and that’s what he got to eat 3 times a day. But at least he did have food. It was unbelievable, some of the things we found out in the concentration camps.
Melody: When you first heard about the concentration camps, did you even believe that it was really happening?
Elizabeth: There was communication, not instant like today, but we did believe it. I have been told, and have heard, and possibly there was some of the media that did try to distract the people and tried to help them think that things weren’t as bad as they were. But for the most part the American people realized what was going on. They prayed, we were encouraged to pray.
I think shoes were even rationed, you weren’t supposed to have anything you absolutely didn’t have to have. We learned to eat things that maybe we hadn’t eaten before. When my husband worked at the Delco Remy, he had a friend that managed the Kroger store in Knightstown, and he was being moved. He talked to my husband about taking over this Kroger store during the war. So my husband did, and he worked there longer than he did in the factory. He always got his shipment on Thursday morning, and people knew that. They would be in there, there would be some women that would get upon the counter and try to reach things and throw them out in the crowd. People were so desperate to get something. Coffee was rationed. But the stamps were adequate, especially when our son was born in 1943. We got a ration book for him. Well, all I needed for him was baby food, so I had extra stamps. So I shared them with other people. The stamps worked out just fine, if people were careful with it. We were afraid that we would get attacked, so we had to be cautious. We did everything we could for service men. It was a heart rendering time. And it was very frightening. Living in the inter part of the U.S. was different than living on the coast. Young women followed their husbands everywhere that they could until they were sent overseas. You just did what you had to do, you didn’t think about it at the time. I think the country pulled together more because they felt that was the only way we could win the war. Is there any other questions?
Melody: I heard that some people had Victory gardens.
Elizabeth: Yes, everybody had a Victory Garden and shared it. We had some friends that lived in a little town south of Indianapolis, called Carthage, and they gave their vegetables away. They planted a whole lot so they could share it. And this helped with the rationing because everybody could have their own food. Elderly people were well taken care for. Especially somebody whose sons went off to war. But the people who lived there took care of them. I’m sure in the bigger cities it was quite different. But you know, life in a small town is different than in a big city. We rode the bus; of course we didn’t have an automobile when we were first married. So we rode the bus. The people who worked in the factories in Anderson carpooled. Somebody bought a bus that held about 30 people and they would all come into town and ride it to the factory. It saved on gasoline. Everybody tried to do everything they could to support the country and take care of the troops. We learned to eat some food that we never thought of eating before. Like, Okra. Things like that, green thing that you could raise in your garden that was different. I don’t think anybody really was hurting for food. People really buckled down and did what they had to do. We did lose some young men, which were really felt, because it was a small town and everybody was in a close relationship.
Melody: What was it like when you first heard the war had ended?
Elizabeth: Oh, we had a big parade. My husband had finally bought a car, a ’36 Chevy I think, and somebody printed red white and blue. So we led the parade. Horns honking and people shouting, and you just couldn’t explain the feeling that you had. They were finally coming home. We mourned for the ones who were not coming home. But we had a big parade, and a bonfire, and everybody just could hardly wait. The men did come home. We had more celebrations. It was a time that I hope we never have to go through again. It is so sad when we lose one on the battlefield today, but then it was hundreds, hundreds at a time. Ships go down, and it would be like, with the U.S.S. Indianapolis. No bodies to return. One of my husband’s friends was killed in Okinawa; of course his body wasn’t returned either. But we had a memorial service. Then his friend named his son after him. It formed ties that are still fresh in our mind today, because of the things everybody went through, and the losses. But, on the other hand, good things did come out of it. I remember when my husband went to go work for Delco Remy in Anderson, and that was in January of ’42. 92 cents an hour. It was only 10 cents for a loaf of bread. And sometimes gasoline was 6 gallons for a dollar. When they had a sale though, ordinarily. I remember that doughnuts were a dime a dozen at the Kroger Store. Eggs were about 10 to 15 cents a dozen. The Farmers always brought their milk and eggs to town on Saturday night. But there were a lot of things you could not get. I remember when my son was born in September of ’43, and you made your own diapers out of white flannel, it was a different way of life. It’s just like when the people settled our country; it was like the hardships they went through... But that’s the reason why America is strong. Because people are willing to sacrifice and they care about other people. I think it really has been witnessed in some of the tragedies that have happened recently, there will always be someone who doesn’t care. There were some people who protested the war. They defected to places like Canada. There were millions who didn’t, they cared about the country and were willing to sacrifice.