Ralph E. Long
Nicole Sharp
Mr. Thomas
U.S. History, Period 5
21 April 2006
WWII Interview with Ralph E. Long
-What was the change in music during WWII?
-If I remember correctly, there was a trend towards patriotism. This country was back-doored. Japanese emissaries were in Washington D.C. and they were supposed to deliver a message to the United States government that we [the U.S.] were going to be attacked on the following day. We had no way to defend ourselves; they were too late.
-What more can you tell me about the music?
-Like I said, it was a move towards patriotism; we needed that. A couple of ships had been missed at Pearl Harbor and that was the only reason we had any naval power at all. They’d somehow not been hit in the sneak attack. And December 7th will go down in infamy. It was a horrible, horrible attack on our country; I’ve never forgiven them, myself.
-What songs, if any in particular, do you remember?
-Most of them were inspirational. We needed to get ourselves together in a hurry. Everyone was so sad and heartbroken, as many couples were separated and weren’t
ready to face it. We didn’t expect it. But we had to defend ourselves or else we’d be speaking Japanese. All our boys had to go. The ladies really came in and filled in when and where all the men had gone. But patriotism and inspiration, that’s exactly what the songs were. We needed that more than anything at all.
-Did you know anyone in the war?
-I knew about the need for men, but I didn’t understand the draft. In 1941, Taylor [Taylor Long, oldest brother] was drafted. I went to the back porch, showing how sentimental/heartbroken I was. I took my knife and carved into the wooden support, “take care of my older brother.” I know I could still go back there and find it. I knew he was going off to war, but I didn’t know why. But I do know it’s still there; Taylor came home safe.
-Is there anything else you can think of?
-Rationing was another important thing I can remember. Everything was rationed after Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. It didn’t happen over night. We knew if we were gonna win this war, we’d have to ration some things and come together. And we really did come together, too. We didn’t have any complaints; everyone was 100 percent together, 100 percent dedicated to winning the war. Bread, butter, rubber, gasoline- they were all rationed. The government told us what we had to do. And nobody complained, it’s so strange.
-Another big thing was the conversion of our plants. I don’t care what they made, we shut them down in support of our forces. For example there was a Maytag plant we converted into support for the troops. It was converted into an aircraft plant almost over night because some of our heavy bombers needed help. From there, instead of washers and dryers, they had an assembly line go through that made fighter planes to escort out
heavy bombers over seas. It’s how desperately we tried to show the Japanese that we were down but we weren’t staying down.