>> in his book, john keegan writes, a second world war is the largest single event in human history, fought across six continents and all its oceans. it left hundreds of millions wounded, killed 100 18 million human beings, and materially devastated much of the heartland of human civilization. this affected life here in abilene as well as in communities around the world where our panelists were during the war. i will begin our introductions with march olson. marge spent the war, part of the war in texas and oklahoma. she followed her husband from post to post. they spent time in our relic, texas, that i know we will talk about. next on our panel we have doris snyder. doris is the mother of our museum curator, william snyder. that has made the panel a real family affair as you will see in a moment. skipping down to the end of the table, bob was a boy in western oklahoma. went on to oklahoma a&m, now of course oklahoma state university, where he studied journalism. he met his wife and they married in 1955. the blessed event, also known as my birth, occurred four years later. [laughter] please welcome our panelists. [applause] i would like to start just by asking about a key date in history, december 7, 1941. grab starting with you, doris, and then proceeding down the panel. where were you, what were you doing, what was your reaction to the news? what was the first noticeable change in your life? >> i was working at the firestone tire and rubber company that day. that day changed my life a lot. because my husband had enlisted in the marine corps that very day. he felt it was the thing to do. without asking me. [laughter] but i guess it was the thing to do. no disrespect to eisenhower, he did not want to be in the army. he thought he could get what he wanted if he enlisted ahead of time. he enlisted in the marine corps. believe it or not, he and listed in cleveland, ohio, and they never even let him return home. they sent him directly to san diego that very minute. he did not have a toothbrush, get to say goodbye to his parents or nothing. or to me. of course, we were not married at the time. we were engaged. yes. but that is what happened to me on pearl harbor day. i was working at firestone. i was not exactly rosie the riveter. i was -- at firestone, in order to accommodate us, they built quonset huts right on the factory grounds. i was not in the main plant. i was in this quonset hut. in the bottom of the quonset hut, they were building wings, just wings, for the curtiss planes in the war. i was working on the second floor. no air-conditioning. believe me, it was warm. but we knew we had a job to do, so we did it. a man was sent down from new york to train me to operate this huge -- it was like a typewriter keyboard. it was about four feet long. believe it or not, it paid the bills and ordered the materials we needed to build the planes on this machine. it may be checks and kept the accounts right on this machine. i guess it was the nearest thing we had to a computer back in those days. and that was my pearl harbor day in a nutshell. i guess. >> thank you. marge, how about you? if we could move the microphone to marge. >> ok, i was a new bride. we had been married for three months. right here in abilene. supposedly happily ever after. the radio was on. i remember definitely hearing president roosevelt tell us about pearl harbor, and i knew then it was going to change my life. actually, within just a few short months, my husband did leave for the service, and i became not only a war bride, but eventually i did become rosie the riveter for a short time in amarillo, texas. it definitely changed our lives. >> your experience was a little different as children when the war broke out. what are your memories of december 7 and your parents' reactions? >> for me, since my birthday was the next day, my sixth birthday, i probably did not appreciate all that attention to pearl harbor. but it impacted it, because i had three older brothers. it was something -- my family was very aware of the significance. it was a big deal. >> i was planting a flower bed in the front yard, digging. mother came out and told me the japanese had attacked. it sort of registered as a big thing, but it got even bigger because dad was preparing a christmas lighting decoration for our house. he at that moment ordered it to become a v for victory. he asked me whether the morse code signal for victory was three dots and a dash or three dashes and a dot. we won an award. and i became a war profiteer. [laughter] >> that reminds me something really interesting i did not learn until really recently. during the war, the bbc used the opening refrain of beethoven's fifth hash subversively using the german composer to signify victory in europe. between 1940 and 1945, women in the workforce increased by more than 50%. in fact nearly half of all american women took some kind of job up during world war ii. it was not just defense work. women moved into all sorts of new fields because of the male labor shortage. women were now driving taxis, checking and stocking groceries, selling men's clothes, working as soda jerks, managing department stores and fixing flat tires. it was really a revolution in the type of work women did. marge, we will start back with you if you want to tell us more about some of the war work you did in amarillo where this article was written. >> it was the first place we moved after basic training in wichita falls, and the first thing i had to do, of course, was get a job. i worked in a warehouse for a short time. then i learned that they were hiring war brides -- especially war brides, because they figured they would be better workers for the defense plants in amarillo, texas. something i never dreamed i would ever do, and i can't believe i did it, but i climbed an eight-foot ladder with a blowtorch in one hand and a rule slider in the other hand and welded a group of small pipes together to make one large pipe for helium. that was part of my experience. i had other experiences there. that was one thing -- it shocks me today to think that i did it. [laughter] >> and i know you've followed mr. olson around during the war. some of the other jobs you took on, not even defense work -- maybe jobs men would've had during peacetime? >> in amarillo, the first job i had in amarillo, it was in a warehouse. and i had to push -- almost like a grocery cart around and fill orders. and you had to learn in a short time where everything was on the shelves. it was so many miscellaneous things, and i had to devise some way of knowing where they were. so, i did that. then in oklahoma city -- i do not know that men were doing it, but i did work for western union running branches through the city. a special one that comes to the mind that might have been on the dangerous side -- i worked at the stockyards. and i had to take a commuter train to the stockyards. i handled quite a bit of money. and here i was, 21, 22, getting on that commuter about 5:00 in the evening with my bag of money -- a lot of money. riding a commuter train into the main office. never dreamed they could have been dangerous. i'm not sure it was all that dangerous back there, but i sure would not try it now. [laughter] >> doris, you told us about your early work with that interesting early computer. what about your other jobs? >> that was about it. >> that was about it? >> until my husband came back. then we were stationed at camp lejeune, north carolina, because he got to come home early from the south pacific because he had been in two of the worst battles. he had been at aquatic and now. they were the first to deploy into the water in japan. so, they needed r&r. >> absolutely. your parents' experience with indifferent because both fathers were not of military age. how did the war change -- >> no, because i had to have two younger sisters. she was a stay at home mom. my dad was a builder. because -- we had moved from west virginia when i was little to florida, to orlando. that was before there was any speaking mice or princesses. there was nothing there but orange groves and sand. my dad built a house for us there. and because he enjoyed holding the house -- he had work when we moved to ohio. we had experiences in florida. from there -- because dad had heard there was so much work in ohio because we had four plants there at the time, akron was known as the rubber capital of the world at that time, because we had goodyear, goodwrench, general, and firestone rubber plants there. and there was a lot of building there. he built up the whole city of firestone park. he built all of the homes there. it became his life work. and we did right well. we had three regular meals a day, although we were raised through the depression. i don't remember ever being hungry. yes. and everybody was kind of in the same boat. so, we did not know we weren't privileged and had a lot of things. we thought we were so fortunate when we got an orange for christmas. not all of this technology they have today. yes. >> well, mr. and mrs. reeves, in terms of your homes in oklahoma and your father's work and work your mother may have taken on during the war? >> my dad works for the electric company. because of the war, they were very shorthanded, which meant they worked very long hours, which meant no vacations. we also ran a farm. at that time, we also worked a farm, and addition to that, if small air force ace was built near our hometown, so we converted our double garage to an apartment at we rented to a pilot. which meant a great deal to me because i hung up around him as much as possible to soak up all of the knowledge. we also have a large garden, as almost everyone did. my mom spent a lot of time working on that. she did not work outside of the home. my brother and i've managed to keep her fully occupied more than she wanted, i'm sure. >> there were five of us. i am the baby. which i like to tell them all the time, of course. my youngest brother did going to the service and my sister's husband and dad tried to. they told him he was war valuable on the homefront. he was also in the electric is this. we had the victory gardens. we collected scrap iron. i remember going without bubblegum. that was a biggie when you are very little. but my mother worked fearlessly, and she was a volunteer in many aspects of the homefront, and she started a uso center in the little town where we lived. so, about 3000 population. it was an army camp -- oh, 40 miles south of us in texas. mother decided the boys, the soldiers, mostly boys, were coming up on the train and looking for someplace when they had free time to get away from camp. so she decided they had to have a good place. she talked to a lady you owned a lot of property and was a recluse in our little town, and she talked her into letting them use a building downtown. and she managed to talk, i guess everybody -- into furnishing doughnuts and coffee and furniture and a piano, and girls probably, to help and mothers in magazines and books and whatever it took to give the boy a place to go. that became our performance area. i got to play the pnr. i could play "home on the range" with two fingers. i knew i must be glamorous and important to the war effort. >> the victory gardens and the uso you bring up are synonymous with the home front during the war effort. solid strives, blood drives, civil defense drills, of course the victory gardens. what memories do those activities raise of the wartime shortages -- i know children had trouble getting tires for their bicycles. >> one of my most frightening moments came as a result of that. when i was in the fourth grade, if we brought a pound of copper, glass, or bronze to school, we got a free movie ticket. the movie involved a mummy that rose out of the swamp at midnight and dragged his foot on his way to consume various victims. i walked home in the fog and i was pursued by the mommy every inch of the way and it was all because of that stupid war. [laughter] >> that is going to be hard to top. [laughter] >> what are our d-day memories? how did you hear the news? where were you? what was the reaction to the news? was at one of hope? anything come to mind? >> of course i was working at firestone and we all heard that d-day was happening and all of the churches were open. so what i planned to do on my way home from work, i stopped at church, prayed for my husband. >> marge. >> i remember that i at the time had taken my baby daughter and my husband was overseas and i was living on the farm with his folks and my sister lived about 25 miles away and she had three children and her husband was serving in the navy. i was so excited that day that i had my baby daughter with some clothes and pay playpen which was her bed. i picked up my sister and we started out in the wee hours of the morning, we were going to celebrate some place. we thought it would be in chase county in the flint hills. the first thing we had was a flat tire and here we are and had to unpack kids and everything and it was still dark and we happened to be near a small town and so we went to the filling station and behind the filling station was the house. we knocked on the door and woke him up. the man was so happy when we told him it was d-day and told him up. him about it that he came out and took care of our tire. otherwise i don't know how long we would have been stranded. >> how about meanwhile in oklahoma? >> it took a while for the word to get there. [laughter] >> the key dates i really remember were jimmy doolittle's raid and the atomic bomb and the day president roosevelt died. i was 12 when he died and he was the only president we had had during my lifetime. that was really one of the big moments of the war and i remember d-day and being fascinated by it but it wasn't one of those do you remember what you were doing when kinds of days in my life. >> and sort of the same for me and the day that roosevelt died was, i do remember, april 12, 1945 because we also had a tornado that about took most of the little town that i lived in away. so that probably took a little more significance to us and, also, i had -- well, i don't think i want to tell that. [laughter] >> we'll talk later. another question, since you two are both still in school, in grade school, did the war, was there a daily effect of the war? was it constantly on people's minds? i'm sure they had siblings and parents involved in the war. how big of a presence was the war in your daily life at school? >> it was huge. the teachers always posted war happenings, we learned a lot of geography because of the war and learned about other countries. they sold stamps for buying victory bonds each monday morning at school. you could buy one either for a dime or a quarter. we had scrap drives through the school. one of the popular past-times was for kids to bring war trophies that their brothers or fathers sent to them, german helmets, japanese helmets and thinking of today's life, rifles, pistols, and all kinds of weapons showed up on a regular basis in grade school, but these were great moments and we passed them around for show and tell. [laughter] >> well, i had letters, of course, i wrote to the brother and i wrote to -- and they wrote to me and still have some of those so that was something that was very appreciated and rereading them now, it just takes you back. i mean you're transported back when you read those letters and they loved everything that we would send. i must say, we were good about it, everybody wrote and everybody was a part. that war touched everybody, everybody you knew. >> we were together for lunch as a panel together to get our thoughts together as best we could. you shared one item i thought was really interesting. it was from an organization of a red cross chapter in a very small town in oklahoma raising money for the war effort and collecting items to help the allies. what really struck me is that it's dated march 1941 rand so these small communities in southeastern oklahoma were already involved on the side of the allies to some extent well before pearl harbor which really came as kind of a surprise to me. well, in the time we have left to kind of go full circle, we keep mentioning these key dates, there is victory in europe day, if there is any memory associated to that or more perhaps victory over japan day, more meaningful depending upon which theater your family member was in and any particular memories of those two key dates. >> well, both v.e. day and v.j. day prompted impromptu parades down main street. everybody who had a pickup or car was driving and honking, so it was a celebration clear in the middle of the country and obviously extremely well received. >> as the folk singer woody guthrie, the peace hit st. louis a lot harder than the war ever did. well, we have sometime for questions and answers of our panelists, but also just for you to be able to share your memories of the war as well and linda here will pass the microphone, please wait until you get the microphone so that the cameras will be able to pick up the audio. >> being young during that time, in my studies at school when i was getting my p.h.d., we talked to a lot of wives who lost their husbands in the current wars. what did the homefront, what did the men and women do when a friend of theirs or a neighbor got news that they actually lost a husband? >> are you speaking to me? >> anybody on the panel. >> i lost three friends in the war. one, his ship was bombed and split in half and he was asleep on the bottom deck at that point and the other one, jerry's plane was bombed and, of course, they were all killed on the plane. and then ben worked at firestone with me and i always felt so bad that he enlisted because he was all that his mother had. he had no reason to enlist. he wouldn't have had to, but he did anyway. and he was all she had and he didn't come home. i guess i was one of the lucky ones. my fiance came home and we got to be married and had three children. i guess that's one. >> another question for the panel? yes. >> this question is for mrs. olson and mrs. snyder. i heard the toughest job in the army is an army wife. how do you feel about that? >> it was what? >> the toughest job in the army is an army wife. do you feel that is true? >> a marine wife. >> or a marine wife. [laughter] >> right, marine. >> let's see, when he got home, we were married in three weeks after he got home. the war was still going on, but he got to come home because of what he had been through, so that's why we were sent to camp lejeune. we lived there on base for, let's see, almost a year and almost two years i think we lived on base and it was one of the most fun times of my life. i could walk down to the ocean. i could walk to the grocery store. even though we lived in what today they call a little travel trailer and that's what all the married marines lived in and i had to learn to cook on a little camp stove. i had to pump up a little keg on the front of it and we had some wonderful times. i made a lot of marine friends and families because the whole base was family mostly. we had some lifelong friends that we made there. so actually it was a nice experience. i enjoyed -- now today, i think north carolina is my favorite state. >> this, my experience, the worst time of all that for years after my husband died in 1989, i had a recurrent dream that he was walking down a country lane to a mailbox and i would get there and there would be no letters. and this dream continued throughout the years until obviously maybe in the last 10 years and actually that's kind of what has happened. there were days, to me the lifeline was the communication and communication when our husbands were in the army were by letter. no telephones, no ipads, no cell phones, no pictures, nothing and then these letters at least coming from okinawa would come, maybe you would come down to the mailbox for two, three days in a row or maybe five days and then there would be no letters. the and then the next day there would be one. when he was sent overseas, he didn't know where he was headed. i didn't know where he was headed because they zigzagged across the pacific because of the japanese subs and it took about six weeks, he left the first part of june and didn't get into okinawa until the last of july and then it was another six weeks before i heard from him, so to me, communication was the hardest part and those were long, long months. of course, i had a baby girl and i was busy, but still it was hard, very hard. i know that's why i continue to have a dream that referred to that time in my life. >> were your letters all cut up? mine were so censored, it was usually just dear doris and a salutation, so chopped up. i can't understand why the censors had to be so rough because my husband wasn't crazy enough to tell where he was to the enemy, why did they chop them all up like that? i think they enjoyed it. [laughter] >> no, in answer to your question, mine weren't cut up. >> they weren't? >> but my husband never wrote very much about what was going on except the discomfort of the rain and the mud that he was living in on okinawa. but after he was dead probably about at least 10 years, i was going through his things and the first part of the diary showed nothing, so i was ready to toss it. and flipping back through, i came to the middle of the diary, he had started it when he left, not in front of the diary. and in this diary, i learned about the snipers, the booby trap that he barely escaped, the strafing of his tenants, his homesickness, of the 170-mile typhoon and all of those things that he didn't write because he didn't want me to be upset. >> a treasure. >> mrs. rives, you mentioned that the war was something that everyone felt, was involved in and being a spouse from the war today where it's 1% or 2% that feels the cost of the last war, do you have any suggestions on how we can help civilians understand that there is still that cost? >> actually a group of ladies at our church who this kind of thing keeps it foremost in your mind, we have made greeting cards to send to the military so that they would have cards to send home to people. it is something that when you work on it and you talk about it, you become very aware that these things are still going on, there are lonely people out there and it gets, it also encourages them beyond, i know the email and all of that stuff, but you know, those letters that you have in your hand that i still have from my brothers in the 1940's mean a lot. i think generally you know talking about it and encouraging that kind of involvement because it does, it means a tremendous amount and it did, it was mentioned early, you know, when you live in a little town, you do lose people that you know very well. i think everybody kind of huddles together. you try to support each other and you're aware of everything that is going on in the lives. you have to put yourself there. >> another question? >> i want to say that i was in the army and when it was mail time, it was a big deal. i think that the email and all that stuff is detrimental to the military because just think of all the times that you could write a letter and those soldiers would get that letter and be really thrilled. i think that there needs to be a campaign of writing letters instead of all of these emails because they can keep those letters. they can't keep the emails, they're in space. letters are tangible. >> and reread them. >> years and years from now, those soldiers can read them and think back, it is very necessary for people to write letters. >> at 5:00, a booth will open by the statue where you can make a card to send a current soldier. >> we have time for one more question. one more. >> what effect or what memories do you have from the rationing that went on during world war ii? i know my mother has talked about it briefly, but she doesn't talk very much about those memories. >> as kids, we didn't notice it so much except for a shortage of bubble gum. [laughter] word would pass very quickly if some store got it, but because we it is a farm and access to other farms, we were able to get things that probably were limited to others, but such things as butter and meat and gasoline among other things were all rationed. in fact, i have with me some little coins that were used as a part of the rationing process to control how much you got and you were also asked to turn in things like lard because the glycerin in it was used in explosives. it affected every aspect of life and probably as noticeable to -- as noticeable as anything is inability to travel. we're accustomed to hopping in the car to driving to wichita or kansas city if you like. with five gallons of gasoline, that didn't happen. >> we stopped putting sugar in our tea so mother could bake sweet things. you made adjustments and would rather eat it, i guess, than drink it. [laughter] >> it affected bootlegging too, by the way. moonshine. >> that's another panel. [laughter] >> yes, when we were living at midwest city across from the field, there was a commissary. so really, the military men, at least the air force, they were pretty well set because that we couldn't get probably some of -- i don't remember that we couldn't get probably some of the best food there. the only drawback i ran into is when i was pregnant with my daughter and i craved cherries, just the cans of pie cherries of all of the things. my sister back home, they ran a grocery store, she sent me a whole case of cherries. [laughter] >> i don't remember having any trouble of getting gas. my dad had got me a little ford coupe, of course, a used one, when i started working at firestone. all i can remember is i think we had a little booklet of green stamps and i had to use the stamps. but i never had any trouble getting gas. i certainly didn't have to pay almost $4 a gallon for it. [laughter] >> well, that's about all of our time for our homefront panel this afternoon. i would like to thank you for attending. we're going to take a 15-minute break and we will be back with our panel on life on the battlefield. thank you very much. [applause] >> you are watching "american history tv." 48 hours of programming on american history every weekend on c-span3. follow us on twitter at c-span history for information and to keep up with the latest history news. all weekend long, american history tv is joining our comcast cable partners to showcase the history