Oral History Program Earl Blodgett Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 30 June 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Earl Blodgett Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 30 June 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Blodgett, Earl, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 30 June 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Earl Blodgett circa 1940s Earl and Addie Blodgett circa 1940s Addie and Earl Blodgett circa 1950s Addie and Earl Blodgett circa 2000s 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Earl Blodgett, conducted on June 30, 2017 in his home in Ogden, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Blodgett discusses his life and his memories involving World War II. Sara Kamppi, the audio technician, is also present during this interview. LR: It is June 30, 2017 and we are in the home of Earl Blodgett in Ogden, Utah talking to him about his life and memories of World War II. (Lost Audio) Let me just quickly recap so I can get it on paper. You were born in North Ogden on November 13, 1922. You went to North Ogden Elementary and you went to Weber High. You graduated in May of 1942, and your junior year in High School you worked at Second Street where you hauled stuff down to the railroad. At that time they were beginning to build two new warehouses, because they only had two warehouses and an office. Then your senior year the POWs started to come in from Rome. A follow up question here, how many brothers and sisters did you have? EB: One brother LR: You had one brother, and as you left high school, they gave you your draft card, and in December of 1942, you went to Ford Hood. You were twenty years old and they said, “Don’t come without bringing your brother,” so you did that. At Ford Hood, you were driving the ten wheel truck delivering supplies so they could build the north side of the army base there. That’s where you did your basic training, then you went to Waco, Texas wanting 2 to become a pilot in the Air Force. Then you went to Amarillo for radio school. EB: Then I was shipped to Creighton University. LR: To Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska. EB: To become an officer and a gentleman, and for pilot training. LR: To become an officer. EB: I washed out of pilot school because I was not coordinated enough. LR: Then was shipped to Santa Ana, California? EB: To complete my training, but couldn’t make my match. Then you were sent to gunnery school in Colorado, but they didn’t need any more gunners. So they sent me back to Salt Lake City for reassignment. They shipped everyone out of Salt lake Airport nr. 2. People walking thru the Airport heard a noise and found me under a mattress. I had drug it on top of myself because I was cold, we were in tents. They took me to the hospital, because I had contracted pneumonia and was in the hospital until I was better. Then I was sent to Woodward AFB, OK to pick up parts from Oklahoma City Air Base when Woodward AFB closed I was sent to New Mexico Air Base. LR: Then you were sent to Santa Monica, California, where you were the CO.’s Chauffeur. EB: I went home to my grandmother's funeral. When I returned I was shipped to Selfridge Field, Michigan. I wrote to my fiancé, “It looks like I’m going to 3 be here quite a while, the boys are trying to find out what flying in cold weather is like.” A month and a half later, my mother, soon to be mother-in- law, and fiancé showed up. I went to the commanding officer, and said. “I can’t get married; I have no license or ring.” Commanding officer said, “Son you’re getting married tomorrow whether you want to or not.” It was Sunday, everything was closed. They opened the whole town, and we got judges out and we got a license and everything. Did our blood tests and had lunch with the GI’s. She rode in a Jeep to the chapel. We got married at two o'clock on Sunday afternoon. The base Chaplin married us. We have two marriage licenses, one from the military and one from the state of Michigan. Monday I took her down and got her a little ring, because she borrowed my mom's wedding ring for the marriage. Got the ring, went home and then the next morning they shipped me out. LR: That was an interesting courtship. EB: Very. LR: It was your mother who brought her to Michigan? EB: Well my mother and her mother. LR: But no fathers. EB: No father, just both mothers. LR: She was sixteen at the time? EB: No, she was eighteen and a half. Another year had gone by in the meantime. 4 LR: You were married in Michigan on March 18, 1945, and then after Michigan? EB: One day after the marriage we went to Wilmington North Carolina. My wife was still in Michigan. My wife and some other war brides drove to Wilmington to be with us. We were there for about four days then the wives were sent home. They put me on a train again, did not know where we were going. They were cattle cars. They took us off occasionally to walk or march us to warm us up. We ended up in Portland. LR: And from there you? EB: We were put on a ship for overseas, with 5000 soldiers on board could not move, there was no room. LR: That’s when you went to Iwo Jima and you were working in the mail room? EB: Yes and laid Iron Mats for Fighters to land on; we were there to support the bombers. It just so happened, they took me out of our mail office and transferred me and three other guys to the old squadron that was coming in from Guadalcanal and New Guinea. From then on, we were with the old squadron. Those boys had a brand new P-51. So from then on, well I can’t go ahead and tell you all that happened and so forth because it was a secret. You didn’t tell anybody anything. I was there until the war ended, and then they shipped us back. Going home they did it in batches on a regular ship. They put what they could on regular ships coming home. 5 LR: When you came back home in 1946, what did you decide to do? Did you go to school? EG: I went back to work, right back to Second Street and went to school at night at Stevens Henager College. That trained me for a job for the railroad, but I would have had to move to Nevada near Elko. I was earning the same money at Second Street so I turned down the job. LR: Were you driving trucks still? EB: Yeah, they wouldn’t give me my old job back, because they had hired somebody else for the four years I was gone. They had me doing everything; hauling the kids to school in the school bus, going to Salt Lake to pick up parts, just odd and ends. LR: So we were talking about how you met your wife. EB: So anyway, I had this car I’d bought, and I wanted to fix up the horn. This guy I didn’t know said, “I’m a farmer and I have to do everything on that farm, but I can wire your horns for you. Bring it out one Sunday.” So I said, “Well, no problem.” So a couple of Sundays later, I didn’t know anything to do so I took it out to North Ogden, and he was in a tent out there with his wife and three little boys. Low and behold, she was with her brother and she was fourteen years old. She came down to visit her brother in the summer and help her sister in law with her kids. I said, “For what you did to my car, I’ll take your sister to Lagoon.” I took her brother and his wife also. I was eighteen years old and she was fourteen. 6 Through the summer she ended up picking cherries while helping her brother and family. It just so happened that Korea was ending, and they were shipping all their stuff from Korea back to our place for remodel. So they put us down there at a standing desk to remake chairs. Then we did that for, I guess about a year. Then they started painting all this stuff, so they put us in painting, both me and my buddy. It was lead paint, and we’d walk out at night just dripping with that. Course we had special coveralls on, and I had a wrap around my head and a hat, and it went right through it. So I washed my head every night in lacquer site, so I lost most of my hair. I still had a head of hair that could break a comb to pull it through. So, that’s where I went, and when I got in paint, we stayed there for quite a few years. In the meantime, my brother got out of the service, and went to college. He graduated from college and guess what? He’s got a job in the office at Second Street. He went there for a couple of years, and I was still painting, and then he transferred to Hill. He’s one of those guys that starts talking with upper management. Anyway, I got canned, couldn’t go any higher in painting, I was high a grade as I could go. So I called him up, asked if he had a job out there. He said “Lord yes, we got all kinds of jobs. I got electrician, I got radio, I got scrap metal.” I said, “I’d like an electrical job because I’m a small guy, and I can get around in the plane.” He said fine, and my buddy who was in trouble said, “Oh don’t leave me here.” So 7 I called him again and asked, “Couldn’t you get a job for Bill?” He said, “If I can get one for one, I can get one for two.” So I transferred out of there in 1955. LR: How long were you at Hill? EB: Let’s see, I don’t know how many years. Quite a few, to make it over thirty-five years of service. Anyway, I was working in the plane, and I was so little they had me crawling around, making sure all the clips were solid and all while the plane vibrated. I was back in the plane, on a midnight shift, and I put my foot between an ejection seat and the pilot canopy seat and locked my foot in it. It was locked solid, the other was up on the edge of the canopy railing. It was midnight, screaming bloody hell, “Somebody help me,” and they had all gone home. Moment that bell rings, they are like a flight of quail, gone. So I said, “Well, I gotta get out of here. The only place there is is the wing, I hope I can land on it if I jump for it.” So I just threw myself like that onto the wing, rolled a couple of times, then went on down on the floor. Got out, got in my car and come home. That was on Friday night. My leg swole up big and I went about Monday, and I said I got hurt and told them what happened. They put me in a cast, I broke my ankle, and I couldn’t get off job, I had to keep working. I couldn’t lose a job. So she helped me to work for a couple of weeks. Then they took it off, and it went pfft. Then they said, “Maybe we better x-ray it.” So they x-rayed it and I had shattered all the pieces. They 8 wanted me to have it operated on, but it was in Salt Lake, and I said I couldn’t do it in Salt Lake. So I called the headquarters in California. Everybody had gone home but the commander and he answered the phone, and “I said I got this here darn emergency here.” He said, “I don’t know anything about it, but I’ll look into it and see what I can find out.” I said, “Can I get someone in Ogden who can do the job?” “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” Eleven o’clock at night, I got a telephone, said to go to this doctor in Ogden, and he operated on my knee, and from then on I had a bum knee till I got a new one. Forty years without a vacation, and I stubbed my toe and went down. Came home and had a new knee put in, that new knee threw my hip out, so I had a new hip two years ago. It’s been a hell of a life, really. LR: Sounds like that. One thing I forgot to ask you. What is your memory of Pearl Harbor Day? EB: Pearl Harbor, we had the radio on, that’s one thing my mother did. My Dad had to be to work at four in the morning, he drove a semi on the highway. First thing she did when she got up was turn that on then get dad up. It just so happened, me and my brother had just gotten up from sitting at the table eating breakfast, and this guy is talking from Pearl Harbor where, “Everything’s fine, its Sunday morning, the guys are sleeping in today, and everything is fine.” All of a sudden he said, “What’s going on here?” We hear a plink, plink, plink, plink. “Its some of our guys are coming in, looks 9 like their playing games.” Then all of a sudden, brrrrrr, then he said Japanese. That’s the way I heard it. We were listening to it when it all of a sudden started. Funny, and weird. We was still in school, cause it was almost Christmas, and from then on, we were all talking in High School. It was bad, very bad. We’ve been to Hawaii three times, went out and looked at the Arizona a couple of times. They said there’s only 180 of them still down there, but they’ll be down there the rest of their lives. SC: Did your school do anything special for the war effort? EB: Not that I know of, we just went through our regular routine, but for my senior year I only had one class, and that was sociology or something like that, where you learn to meet with people and mesh with the rest of life. Only a one hour class supposedly. So anyway, I had this, and it was at eight o’clock in the morning, then I took it and I was gone the rest of the day. I’d get in my car and go up to Ogden High School. My uncle, my mom’s youngest brother, was going to Ogden High, because he was living on Harrisville Road. The house is still there, but the great-granddaughter got it and remodeled it. It’s on a dead end street, with only four other houses on that street. It’s been there eighty years or longer, I know, because we used to run in the front door then out the back into the corn fields. Anyway, one year, one class, that’s all I went my senior year. Never had any girlfriends, never had any boyfriends, I was a loner all my life. LR: But you had a girlfriend, you have a wife. 10 EB: Yeah but that was many years later. I’m talking while I was a kid, eleven years old. LR: Okay. So let me just ask you, and this is another question I’ve been asking everyone, how do you think your World War II experiences affected and shaped the rest of your life? EB: Anybody that’s been there, never talks about it. These guys that do all the talking, you know they’ve never been there, just what they’re being told. Those that been there, you can’t get a word out. Like that old fellow in Salt Lake that was on Iwo Jima with me, he called me and I said, “I really want to know what Division you were in,” they were taking these Divisions out piece by piece, and I wanted to know what Division. He said he was in the Third. I said, “That’s all I wanted to know.” So I didn’t ask for anything else, because he wouldn’t have said. He was ninety-two. LR: Talking about Division, what Division were you in? EB: I think the 515th. What did my discharge papers say? AB: Lord I haven’t looked at those in a million years. EB: Yeah, but did they say what squadron was I in? EB: First I was in 42-something, and they transferred us to the 363 Air Service group on discharge. EB: I could dig it out of the safe, but it’s too far. That was seventy-five years ago, dear. LR: I know. Well, I appreciate your time and your willingness to talk.