Robert Crisci
Robert Crisci is the grandfather of Alex Mecker. He was a young boy during the Second World War but has an interesting perspective on the home front. Robert’s brothers went off to fight the war for the U.S. Navy, forcing Robert to get a job at the age of 11 to help his parents make a living to make it through the war. Robert was a hard working and motivated boy who experienced many faces of war throughout his youth.
This interview was conducted April 28th 2006, from 6:15 until 7:00.
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about your basic involvement?
A: The Second World War for the United States started on December 17, 1941. I was 11
years old and the news came on that Sunday, I don’t remember when but the
church bells rang to let us know there was something going on, then we found out
the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor…We went into mass production of all
kinds of military trucks and tires and everything. We rationed everything,
Gasoline was rationed, Flour was rationed meat was rationed there was no butter
at all, there was no nylon stockings at all, sugar was rationed, shoes were rationed,
there were no automobiles made after the Japanese declared war in December 17,
‘41 and there were no automobiles made until 1946. We had blackouts, you
couldn’t keep your lights on and we planted what we called Victory Gardens,
everybody planted a garden, and the war started and in our case, your great-uncles
Michael and George, Michael got out of high school and joined the Navy right
our of high school and so did George, and Michael has a lot of Metals, he’s got
silver stars and bronze stars, he took his basic training and they fought the
Japanese in the pacific he was in all the great naval battles in the pacific under
Admiral Halsey...Michael was a radar man on a destroyer in all those battles. His
ship got hit by a kamakazi on okanowa. Of course everything was rationed, I
ended up working at a gas station, I worked at a gas station when I was eleven
years old. I had the station open after school, and on Saturdays and Sundays I
collected the stamps and all that kind of stuff we reused oil, we tiped the bottles
and dripped it and so forth, there weren’t tires available…
Q: With all of the Rationing things how did that effect day to day living?
A: You were allowed so much flour, so much beef, so much bread, so much gas each
week so there was no traveling particularly, we didn’t have airports, but there was
very limited traveling unless you had a special pass with enough coupons that you
could go back and forth to work, and that was it. You just had enough go back
and forth to work and we just lived as best we could. We grew our own gardens
and vegetables and canned stuff, and just did without, when you have do live
without sometimes you just can, you just do what you have to do, it’s that simple.
It effected everybody, but effected the poor and regular Americans probably more
than the rich because they usually had some other means to aquire something if
they really needed it. But the general nation as a whole probably 90% of the
people did what they had to do. We lived very modestly, instead of meat we did
without meat and instead of shoes, why, we repaired our shoes and tried to make
them last as long as they could, there was no travel, a lot of people didn’t have
cars so they rode busses and sometimes a train back and forth, but it effected
everybody, the entire nation. A lot of women went to work at that time, they went
to work at the navy building Victory Ships they took over jobs that the men used
to do, like they used to rivet sheet metal onto the side of the boats the slogan
Rosie the Riviter came out of that, and so a lot of women did work that men did in
those days because there weren’t men to do it, they were all in the service. It
affected every aspect of life that you could think of.
Q: What was it like having two brothers in the military, how did that effect your day to
day life?
A: We didn’t get mail, you only got mail for them every once and a while you’d get a
letter and you could try to sent them stuff but it took forever to get there and it
would take a while for it to get back. Your great uncle George, his ship was the
last ship out of China after the Second World War, before the communists took
over. The navy actually got a hold of him and wanted to know what china looked
like before they left, because that was the last information they had from China. I
lost friends, my best friend lost his brother in France after D-day, a lot of people
that I knew got killed, and it was sad, but the nation was together…In our war day
our nation was all together, people helped each other out they were all together in
the war they did all the things they could to help the war effort: they bought
savings bonds they grew gardens, they worked hard, they worked in defense
plants and did all that was asked of them to keep our service men supplied with
whatever they needed. There was no dissention in that time in politics…
Q: How was the Morale on the Home front?
A: The Morale was good, the nation worked hard and we were determined to do what
ever it took and we did.