Marge Matson
Laura Berlage
Mr. Thomas
U.S. History
8 May 2006
Personal Interview with Marge Matson
I interviewed Marge (Margaret) Matson, my neighbor, about her role during World War II. Matson worked on the home front during the war, while her fiancée fought in Europe. She took care of her mother and dealt with some of the hardships found at home, from rationing to the deaths of those close to her. Unfortunately the interview was cut short by another one of my neighbors coming to visit (Mrs. Matson is rather ill), so it was only approximately 15 minutes long.
Q: What was your main role during WWII?
A: I was one of the lucky ladies who got to stay at home. Since I was only 18 when the war started, I put off college until afterwards and stayed home to take care of things. My father was too old, really, to enlist, and besides my mother needed him, so he continued working at his office job and provided for us. Later, my husband got a job too, so the only time I actually had to join the workforce myself was for a couple months during 1943 when my father broke his arm – he slipped while walking on ice – and I worked at the local drugstore to help keep our income up. Otherwise, during the day when I didn't have to take care of our house, I watched the kids of a few mothers in the neighborhood who did have to work, and that gave me some spending money and covered surprise expenses. It wasn't much, but that was because I wasn't going to take advantage of those poor women out there supporting their family! The kids were darling anyway… I really didn't mind.
Q: Did your husband enlist in the war?
A: Yes, Richard was my boyfriend when Pearl Harbor happened, and he enlisted right away. We decided to wait on marrying until he returned… I remember him telling me that he didn’t want to take a chance of making his war bride a war widow. It was a good idea; two of my good friends married right before their boys left. One was divorced within three years after the war ended, and poor Katherine did become a war widow.
It was difficult, having Richard over in Europe. Of course he wrote to me, but you were always, constantly, worried that this letter might be the last. There were plenty of other things here to occupy my time, though; I had to help my mother since my father was away at work so much working in the plant, and my brother had enlisted too. My mother got sick pretty often, so I had to run the household. It was certainly good practice for running my own home! (laughs) It also brought the realities of the war home even more. Whenever I might think about everything I had to put up with, I thought about all the boys over fighting, and it made my small issues seem insignificant.
Q: You mentioned your friend whose husband died during the war. Was this a common occurrence, a part of everyday life?
A: It happened several times over the course of those few years; I wouldn't say it was often. Sure, every so often you'd hear of another acquaintance whose husband or boyfriend or cousin or nephew was lost, but it wasn't something that hit home too hard. Since I'd just graduated from high school when we got into the war, too, not many husbands were killed… more often you heard of your friends' cousins or brothers. Kat, of course, was widowed… Vera lost her brother… but out of my close friends or family friends, that was really all the loss we suffered.
Q: You also said you had to run your household in the event of your mother’s illness. What was that like?
A: Well, we had to deal with all the rationing going on. Everybody who wanted one could have a job, but we still didn't have enough to go around because we were sending all our resources overseas. We had rations on gas, butter, sugar, coffee (that hit my dad hard)… lots of things. I remember my dad took the greatest pride in keeping his car clean, but with the rationing he wasn't supposed to wash it as much as he would have liked, and he complained all the time about how dirty the car was. It wasn't as if we drove it much anyway, thanks to the gasoline rations. It seemed like there were rations on everything! But it didn't really hurt us that much… a little less meat or sugar wasn't going to hurt anyone, and as my mother said when we were little, "it builds character." I just biked most of the places I wanted to go. It was good exercise; I could use some exercise like that now! Carrying the grocery home while riding a bicycle was a rather interesting experience (laughs)… not one of my fondest memories of my housekeeping duties.
Q: Did you have friends who had to take on male jobs after all the men left? I'm assuming not all of your friends kept house for their parents.
A: Only one of my high school friends actually worked in a manufacturing plant. She wasn't really a close friend of mine, but we had had some classes together in high school, and of course we just ate up all the stories she had. It was a different world from ours, and to be honest, a lot of us didn't feel the need to enter it, seeing how dirty it could be, but it was still really interesting to hear her tell about putting those gears together. We also acted as a kind of support group for her; when the plant managers would heckle her (and she got more than her share; they didn't think she could possibly do this correctly) we kept her going. She needed to keep that job. But no, a couple more of my classmates got into nursing. They saw a flier for it and became almost obsessed; the three of them joined the Red Cross and took care of the soldiers who came back. I imagine they were probably disillusioned after seeing the mess some people came back in, but they were good nurses and stuck with it. Those girls had their nursing, Jen had her manufacturing, but mostly everyone worked little part-time jobs locally or not at all. Some even got to go off to college. We were young and reaped the benefits of it.