Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor?
"When it was announced, when President Roosevelt...I was down the street with a friend of mine. We were in the kitchen and they had the radio on in the living room. When we heard this, we all panicked. And to me, war meant just them knocking on the door and dragging all the males out and taking them to war. Of course, that was not the way it was. I was upset, and when I got home, I thought for sure that they'd take my dad and my brother. They had a hard time convincing me, "No, this is not gonna happen."Did you have any family in Pearl Harbor?
"After I met Harold [her late husband], I'd discovered that he had two brothers that were in Pearl Harbor. For some reason, they were not allowed, when they docked at Pearl Harbor, they were not allowed to leave their ship. For some reason, I can't remember the reason. So they were all manned, and when this attack came, their ship was one, I can't remember the name of the ship...I think it was the St. Louis, but anyhow, they were able to get out! That was the only reason why they were able because the men were on their ship."Can you tell us about rationing?
"Rationing... Of course, being 13, my thoughts were, "Gee, I can't get shoes until the next stamp is due." You know, you were only allowed so many pairs of shoes a year. That was a big thing for me. Of course, there were other things, like you'd go grocery shopping and you wouldn't say, "How much per pound is this?", you'd say, "How many points?" for the meat, and for the butter, sugar, let's see, meat, butter, sugar...coffee. Dad always said that none of us drank coffee until it was rationed, then we all started drinking it. But being 6 in our family, we had a pretty good quota of points. Not being huge meat eaters-Dorothy, Margaret, Mom and myself, we had plenty of points for meat; and for the butter, because you could get margarine, and none of use were big on eating margarine. But, you learn to accept what you have to."Did you cook any differently during the war?
"No. No, because we always liked chicken, we always had chicken, and of course that wasn't rationed, and fruits, such as canned pineapple. It was almost impossible to get, because they said it was sent over to the boys overseas on ships and things. When Harold came home, he said that was a bunch of malarchy and that he never saw any pineapple all the time he was in the Navy."Where were you on D-Day?
"D-Day...I was in high school, and at lunch time we decided, myself and 3 others, that during exams we would just chuck it all and go out for lunch. When we got down to our favorite Hot dog spot, we decided maybe we should get back in school. We snuck back in school...that was on June 6th."Tell us about V-J Day.
"Mother and I were on vacation, we were in Cleveland. Like I said, some people were sad when the war was over. There happened to be in Aunt Annie's apartment building that she lived in, right directly across from hers, there was just a railing separating the two front porches. We were all so happy the war was over and everything, and this family was so upset because there were two of 'em-a man and his wife, no children. They both were going to lose their jobs, they wasn't going to make the big money that they had been making, and they couldn't understand why we were all so happy. Well, we weren't home to celebrate V-J, like everybody else were. I think my dad had started from the minute he had heard it, and he was still celebrating when we got home."
