Jean Martin
Kathleen Staley
Mr. Thomas
US History, Period 2
17 April 2006
Personal Interview of Norma Jean Martin
I interviewed my grandma, Jean Martin, on April 17, 2006. During World War II, she resided in the small town of Brunswick, Georgia. Brunswick is located between two rivers and is very close to the Atlantic Ocean. My grandma was especially affected by the construction of shipyards and the threats of German U-boats and air attacks.
Q: How old were you at the beginning of WWII?
A: I was 10, and in the fifth grade.
Q: How did the bombing of Pearl Harbor affect your day on December 7, 1941, or the day after?
A: On that day I was with my dad at an auto supply store. While he was working on keeping the books, I was playing with toys. He had the radio on, and there was a news bulletin that we had been attacked I didn’t exactly know where Pearl Harbor was, I just knew it was awful. My mom and dad were upset because they each had brothers that could go to war. It was all the neighbors talked about. At school, the principal came on the intercom system and let us know we could listen to president’s speech. I will never forget the president saying that it was “a date which will live in infamy.”
Q: Please describe where you lived.
A: I lived in Brunswick, Georgia. We walked everywhere; it was a small town before
the war. In less than a year, the population changed from 14,000 to 50,000 people. A shipyard opened and started constructing Liberty ships. People came for work and had no place to live. Rooming houses and hotels rented their beds in shifts. People that worked in the day would sleep in the beds at night, and people that worked at night would sleep in those same beds during the day. Also, there were two movie theatres in the town that were open all the time, and people slept there as well.
Q: How did the war affect your town?
A: My mother worked as a driver for the shipyards, transporting inspectors and so on. She wore a guards uniform. My dad was a clerk for a shipyard. He worked at night, and my mother worked during the day. A distant relative watched me sometimes, because my parents were not around much. We lived in public housing; apartments. They were segregated in the South at the time. No African-Americans lived in our building.
We moved to a brand new house by the end of sixth grade, because my mom and dad made more money with their new jobs at the shipyard.
There was a major commercial ship lane off the coast that tankers and merchant- supply ships traveled. German submarines were very active and sank a lot of ships. The Glynco Naval Air Station built a blimp base near Brunswick. The blimps would spot submarines in the water. They let off powerful depth charges to sink the submarines. They would be about twenty miles off the shore from Brunswick, and we could hear a rumbling noise that would rattle the windows and dishes.
In the newspaper one time there was a story that a German submarine had surfaced near St. Simons Island and the sailors stood on the deck of the submarine and waved to the people on the beach. By the time the coast guard got there, the submarine had gone back into the water and could not be found. It was kind of eerie, and there was a lot of talk about sabotage, and you had to be careful about what you said because the enemy might hear. One time I saw a merchant ship that had been torpedoed; half of one side had been blown away. It showed how dangerous and real the war was.
Q: How did the war affect your daily life, such as going to school, traveling, eating?
A: Food was rationed. You could go and eat at some restaurants, although we did not eat at restaurants very often. We had ration coupons on meat, canned food, sugar, gasoline, and tires. We occasionally could go up to my grandparents who lived about fifty miles away. They could not can jams and jelly anymore because sugar was rationed. We always had enough food, though.
Because we lived on the coast, all the headlights on the cars had black paint on the top half so they weren’t visible from the air or shore; And we didn’t have street lights either. And then we had air raid drills to practice for an attack. We had to have windows covered and no lights on. Every few blocks we had air raid wardens that were the only people allowed to be outside, and they made sure all the lights were out.
One thing I remember is that people had flags in their windows with blue stars, or gold stars. The blue stars stood for the number of people in that family that were in the military. The gold stars stood for the people in that family that had died in the war. Some houses had flags with both blue and gold stars.
Q: Did you have any relatives in the war?
A: Oh yes, I had three uncles on my dad’s side and one uncle on my mother’s side. My
mom’s brother was a paratrooper. On D-Day, I was on my grandparents’ farm in Waycross, Georgia. He was their son. We turned on the radio and heard the allied forces had begun attack and we knew that he had been dropped behind enemy lines. We had prayer in the morning, and everyone went on with their daily chores, but they were worried and listened to the radio every chance they could get. He did make it through the attack, but later was injured in a building explosion and sent home. On my father’s side, one of my uncles was in the invasion of Germany and was injured
when his jeep drove over a landmine. Another was in the invasion in Italy in the tank division and didn’t have any injuries. The war touched us greatly, and all my relatives came back from the war.
Q: Did D-Day, June 6, 1944, affect you in any way?
A: It did; as I just said, I was at my grandparents’. You can only imagine, I was just observing my grandparents that day. I can imagine what they felt, worrying about their son, knowing that he could be killed at any moment.
Q: How did the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, on April 12, 1945, affect you?
A: I was in the 8th grade, and we received word that the president had died, and it was very sad. He was the only president I had ever known and it was like losing a father. He was a father figure to the country. We got out of school early that day, but we weren’t happy to be getting out early. It was a very solemn day.
Q: How did the end of the war effect you and your town? What happened to the population, shipyards, and blimp base?
A: The day that the war ended in Europe, there was a great celebration on the main street of Brunswick. Everyone was happy and shouting. Then when the Japanese surrendered it was the same thing At the time we were so relieved that the war was over, we didn’t really think about how many Japanese were killed. It was a great joy.
The shipyard closed. My dad was not working and had gone to work as a county policeman doing mostly clerical work and my mother was laid off from the shipyard and never did go back to work. She stayed home after that, and we didn’t have as much money as we did after the shipyards closed.
The base became a naval air station and they had airplanes there.
Q: That is all; Thank you very much.
A: It was my pleasure. I enjoy talking about it, and I remember it well.