Oral History Program Janet Oberg Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 5 July 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Janet Oberg Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 5 July 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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: Oberg, Janet, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 5 July 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Janet Oberg 5 July 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Janet Oberg. This interview was conducted on July 5, 2017 in her home in Riverdale, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Janet discusses her life and her memories involving World War II. Sara Kamppi, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: It is July 5, 2017. We are in the home of Janet Oberg in Riverdale, Utah talking with her about her life and her memories of World War II for the World War II and Northern Utah Project at Weber State University. I am Lorrie Rands, conducting the interview, and Sara Kamppi is with me as well. Thank you again for your willingness to sit and talk with us. To jump right in, when and where were you born? JO: I was born in Ogden. June 1, 1928. LR: Were you born at home? JO: I was born at Dee Hospital by accident. My folks were both from here, but they were living in Los Angeles. My dad had gone down there to go to school. My mother got very homesick so she came home on the train thinking there was plenty of time. The doctor up here said, “You hadn’t better go back.” So, she stayed, and then I was really late. I could have been born in Beverly Hills. LR: Both of your parents were from here. What were their names? JO: My father was Robert Story from North Ogden and my mother was Thelma Taylor from Plain City. LR: How many siblings did you have? JO: One, a brother. 2 LR: Where did you grow up? JO: My folks lived in Los Angeles. It was during the depression and my dad had been working for a company, Paddock Pools. People weren’t building pools anymore, so they came back to Ogden. When I just turned five, the brewery in Evanston, Wyoming, Becker’s Brewery, was opened and my mother’s uncle was sent up there to manage. In the meantime, my dad had a job as the night watchman at sugar factory, but with the brewery opening, he offered my dad a job in Evanston. So we moved to Evanston when I was five and I grew up there until the eighth grade. That’s the reason the war at that time had an effect on me. I asked my folks why we left Evanston and my mother said that when the war came they thought that the brewery could close. Mother had a cousin down here that worked for American Packing who got my dad a job. So we moved from Evanston December 7, 1941, not knowing until we got to Ogden what had happened. Then I grew up in North Ogden. LR: So, you lived in Evanston from the age of five until when? JO: Eighth grade. I would have been thirteen. LR: What are some of your memories of growing up in Evanston? JO: It’s a little town. You knew everybody. There wasn’t a lot to do but we didn’t know that. One thing I remember about Evanston, they had two mailmen and these mailmen delivered mail in the summer on their bicycles. If your folks were looking for you, they’d just say, “If you see Janet send her home.” It was a fun place to grow up, and I don’t think our folks worried about us. The only thing I can ever 3 remember being told to not do was go to the dumps to ride your bicycle because that was where the hobos were, and stay away from the river. LR: What was it like going to school? What are some of your memories? JO: I remember that I really liked to read. Several times, I won in the third or fourth grade, the reading award. I remember in the second grade they we were doing the minuet and there wasn’t a boy tall enough to dance with me. On Saturdays, we could go to the movie, and we had a dime, a nickel to get in and a nickel for a candy bar. My little brother was four years younger than me. It was just a fun place to grow up. I don’t remember restrictions. Having a bicycle, going anyplace, hopscotch, jump the rope, you know just what kids do. LR: I realize I’m asking you something when you were rather young, but do you have any memories of the depression and what it was like? JO: The one memory I have - it was getting ready for Christmas and they were having a program at church. I think I was to be an angel. I was probably seven or eight. They had a dime store downtown that I could go buy what I needed for my costume, and my mother gave me a dollar and my little brother wanted to go with me. I pulled him on a sleigh and he wanted to hold the dollar. Mother said, “Don’t let him hold that.” I said, “He’ll be OK.” Well he lost the dollar. So when I came home to tell my mother, she said, “I don’t have another dollar. You can’t be in the program.” So that dollar must have been important. LR: You said your father worked at the brewery. Did you guys have a little garden or anything during that time that? 4 JO: No. Where we lived there wasn’t any place for a garden. LR: So, you didn’t really live on a farm JO: No. We lived in town. LR: The reason I’m asking this question is that I’ve talked with people who grew up on a farm and felt like the depression didn’t hit them as hard because they had a food source, the land they worked. Was it difficult having the money to buy your food? JO: No. I was too young. The only thing I remember about the food was the milkman came in the alley with the horse pulling his cart and delivered it to your back door. When we moved back to Ogden in 1941, we lived with my grandma and grandpa in North Ogden. They had an orchard. My grandma and grandpa Taylor in Plain City, they had a farm. I can remember mother saying that one time my little brother hurt his fingers really bad. The window frame came down on them. The doctor came out to see, and my dad was cutting up a pig or something. When they asked him what did they owe him, he said well if you’d just give me a roast from your animal here. So I guess doctors had a hard time too. I don’t remember ever having problems, you know, going without. LR: On December seventh, do you have any memories of that day that stand out? JO: No. LR: When did you hear about Pearl Harbor? JO: I think probably when we got to Ogden because everything would have been packed. I do remember we were just sitting around the house and our neighbor 5 behind us came through the alley, through the fence, and opened our back door and said, “Have you got your radio on?” He was, very frightened. I can just remember how frightened he was. LR: You’re thirteen. You moved back to Ogden. So that means you were just starting eighth grade or ninth grade? JO: Eighth. LR: Comparing Evanston to Ogden, were the schools different? JO: There were lots of new boys in Ogden. No, I don’t think that the schools were. I missed Wyoming history because they hadn’t taught it yet, and I missed Utah cause they’d already taught it, but other than that, no. LR: Where did you go to junior high? JO: North Ogden. At that time, it was from first to the tenth grade at North Ogden and then into Weber High. LR: So you started Weber High in 1942 or 1943? JO: It would have been 1944 because I graduated in 1946. I was just there two years. LR: Going to high school during this time, were you guys taught certain things because the war’s happening, like first aid? JO: Well, I can remember at North Ogden we had air raid drills. The students would just go out in the hall. That was enclosed. There was no windows or anything so they just had us go out in the hall. Looking back, I think they were worried because we had so many defense plants here. LR: What do you remember about rationing? 6 JO: I remember it because my mother kept a rationing book. I remember that you had gas stickers. The boys whose folks were farmers, they had gas for farming, so the boys in the county never had any problems. Also, one thing they had you save was grease, I guess bacon. You’d save the grease, and it seemed my mother put it in an old Crisco can at our house. When it was full, you’d take it to the butcher shop. I think you maybe got a coupon card or something. I don’t know what they did with it. LR: While you were in high school, you said that you were working at the Second Street Depot Ogden? JO: Yes. It seemed like this is where the soldiers came before they went overseas. I can remember one time at the PX getting a certain brand of razors in and all the soldiers were coming in to get those to take with them. LR: The PX being their little shop, like a department store? JO: Yes. It also had a soda fountain in it. LR: What were some of the things you did there? JO: I just ran a cash register. That was before I went over to the office. LR: Why did they move you over to the office? JO: They wanted someone to do the coupons, for the Italians POW’S. LR: Can you describe what the coupons were? JO: They were just little pieces of paper, almost like a ticket, and I had to glue them in numerical order on a big piece of paper. LR: What was the purpose of doing that? 7 JO: Making sure they hadn’t been duplicated and counterfeited. LR: Those coupons, what were their purpose? JO: That was what they were paid with. They could probably buy things at the PX with them. LR: When you say they were paid with them, could they use that in town or anything? JO: No, I don’t think so. They weren’t really money. LR: Did you interact with any of the prisoners? JO: John, who was a German prisoner, was the janitor at the PX office. We always thought he was an old man, probably in his thirties. Across the street from us was a big peach orchard and they didn’t have anyone to help pick peaches, so they had German prisoners picking the peaches. They had soldiers with guns with them. Didn’t interact with them, a couple of the soldiers, I remember, would come in the PX all the time. We called one Boston because he wanted Boston coffee. There was the White City ballroom, which we had dances. He and his friend, when the orchestra would play Song of India, they would Jitterbug, the two of them together, and we’d all stand around and watch them. LR: This is two Italian prisoners? JO: No, these were two United States soldiers. I always wished I was really older so he could ask me to dance. LR: So you would go to the dances at the White City? JO: Oh yes. LR: Can you talk about what that was like? 8 JO: It was wonderful because it was a wonderful dance floor. In the summer, there was an open air part. My cousin’s husband played in the band. You always had a date. You never ever went stag. It probably was after the war, but Gene Krupa played. We had Jan Garber. Those are the two I remember. It was a wonderful dance hall. LR: During the war there were a lot of soldiers that would come and interact? JO: Probably, but, I wasn’t old enough to meet anybody. LR: When you were working at the PX then, you really weren’t that old. JO: No, I was seventeen. LR: I know you said you didn’t really interact with any of the prisoners, but did you have a chance to interact with any of the soldiers? JO: Boston was the only one. They teased us. I remember him because of his dancing, the Jitterbug. I just thought that was wonderful. It was always the two soldiers. They didn’t ever dance with the girls that way. LR: What other things were you able to do for fun during this time? JO: We had dances in high school. We had the ball games. The summer was always fun to sleep out on your front lawn. Ride your bikes. LR: Did you ever do any work with the bond drives or scrap drives? JO: Oh yes. When I was in the tenth grade at North Ogden, I was a tenth grade secretary. We didn’t do bonds, but they had saving stamps. We had the afternoon dances, sometimes there were night dances. Sometimes they would 9 make corsages and put these stamps on them. We sold saving stamps. I can’t remember much else, but I remember that that was my job being secretary. LR: You’re talking about saving stamps. Were those the little stamps that you put in the book? JO: Yes. Then you could turn them in for a bond. LR: Do you remember how much those were? JO: No. I don’t remember. There may have been different denominations. LR: Do you remember any scrap drives? JO: Yes. In the fall, of course, there was nobody to work in the fields, so they would let the older kids out early, and the boys in the west part of the county where the farms were, I’m sure would work on the harvest. In North Ogden, we didn’t have farms, but our job was to go around and find scrap metal when we had these early afternoons out. There wasn’t much to find, but we’d ride our bikes around. LR: What do you remember about the ending of the war? JO: The cars were going around and honking. I don’t remember a lot about that. LR: Your brother was obviously younger, but do you remember any of your older friends or older boys going? JO: Well my cousin down the street went. Some of the kids didn’t graduate from high school because they joined. Some of them that had gone, a year older than us, they come back in their uniforms to high school to see us. North Ogden had three young men killed. It was interesting, all their last names started with B. Brown, Barrett and Barker. I didn’t know the Brown, but I met his brother years later and 10 was friends with him. He was the first one killed in Weber County. I was friends with the younger brothers of Carl and Bill, Bailey and Barker. LR: In 1945 when you started the school year, the war was almost finished. By the time you graduated, do you remember a different feel in the high school? How had things changed? JO: No, I don’t remember any difference, other than some of the boys leaving. LR: You graduated from high school. What did you do after that? JO: I went to Weber Junior College for two years. LR: What did you study? JO: I did general education just to get your Associate Degree. Then I went down to University of Utah and graduated in elementary education. LR: At the time, was that unusual for a woman to go through school? JO: No. LR: Elementary education, does that mean that you became a school teacher? JO: Yes. LR: Where did you teach? JO: I taught two years in Salt Lake City. One year in Boise, Idaho and one year in Eugene, Oregon. I got married. When my we got married, my husband got transferred from Salt Lake to Boise. When we were in Boise, we had an opportunity to go in business for ourselves in Eugene, Oregon. LR: Where did you meet your husband? 11 JO: His mother and my mother were good friends. He was home from the service. He’d been a P38 pilot in the Pacific. LR: What was his name? JO: Haynes Oberg. LR: You met in Ogden? JO: Yes. LR: What year did you get married? JO: 1951. LR: Did he ever talk about his time in the service? JO: Just a little bit. He was fortunate. He went to Utah State, and he was drafted. his friends weren’t going to join. He was drafted in the artillery. He was in Texas doing basic, and they were on a march and their sergeant said, “Hit the deck.” Well, there’s a big mud puddle there and he and his friend didn’t hit the deck, but the sergeant put him down. So, he came back and there was a notice and they were looking for people for the Air Force. It was part of the Army then, the Army Air Force. So, he and his friend took the test and went into the Air Force. By the time he got through with all of his training, he really only had one combat mission. He was in Japan for a year with the occupying force. LR: Do you know what his one combat mission was? JO: I don’t. LR: Did he ever talk about his time in the service? 12 JO: Yes. The head hunters was the name of their squadron. They had a reunion and he was able to go to that. It was nice because it was held it in Jackson Hole. He was ill then but he was still able to go. I met a lot of his friends. One of them stayed in the service and was stationed at Hickam Field. I had a friend in Hawaii and I went over, after Haynes passed away, and I stayed with those people too. LR: So you mentioned that you taught only for a year in Eugene. JO: Yes. I had my son. We had our business, so I just kept books. LR: How long did you stay in Eugene? JO: About 1969, we found out Haynes had cancer and he wanted to come home. His folks were passed away, but he had two brothers here and a real good friend and my mother. He just wanted to come home. We’d sold most of the business. He was kind of semi-retired. LR: So you’ve been here in Ogden ever since? JO: Yes. LR: How has North Ogden changed? JO: Oh my gosh. When I grew up, there was one street light. Just a lot of people. LR: During the war, there was a large influx of people. What do you remember about that? JO: I think what I remember about it is they had built Washington Terrace and so people moved there. When I worked on the alumni reunion and was finding addresses, if I didn’t know where somebody from Plain City had gone, I’d just call somebody in Plain City. There was no one in Washington Terrace. Most of them 13 had no families. So here we had a hard time finding those kids. That’s the only way I can see that it really affected me. That was later years. I was friends with the ones from Washington Terrace and they were fun kids. LR: This might not be a fair question, but do you remember if there was a lot of different diversity with the different groups coming in because they were from all over the country? JO: We already had a lot of Japanese kids because they were the farmers in the west part. Ogden had been more affected than we were. LR: The Weber High you went to was the one on Twelfth Street? JO: Yes. Twelfth and Washington. It was really about Eleventh and Washington. LR: How many children did you have? JO: Three. A son and two daughters. I’ve written down a little bit about my uncles that were in the service. Mother’s one brother was drafted immediately and he was stationed in California. The Ogden railroad depot was really busy and Dick was being sent to the East Coast. You weren’t supposed to let anybody know, but somehow he called his wife. He was just newly married before he left. He told his wife that he would be passing through Ogden at a certain time and so, of course, everybody that knew him was down to the Depot to see him. He was able to get off the train and see us. But then he told us after that happened, he was restricted to the train the rest of the trip. He didn’t care by then. He was with Patton in Africa and in Sicily and then they were sent to England. While he was in England, he was able to go to Scotland. My grandma, his mother, was born in 14 Scotland, so he was able to find some of the family up in Scotland. I don’t think he went in on D-day, but he was in the Battle of the Bulge and a family hid him in their potato cellar. When Dick came home, eventually he and his wife went back to visit my family. Mother’s other brother was in the Navy, and he was in the Pacific. I think he was on a Destroyer and he was a gunner. He says once you’re in there. You were locked in. All three of them came back. She had another younger brother. LR: Your two uncles, what were their names? JO: Clark Taylor and Russell Taylor. I remember my dad had to register for the draft because he wasn’t quite thirty-six. I think that was the cut-off date. LR: Who was Dick? JO: Dick was Russell. Grandpa had a hired man and his name was Dick. All the kids really wanted them to name him Dick, but they named him Russell, but they called him Dick. LR: Are there any other stories you’d like to share before I ask my final question? JO: I can remember that my folks finally got a new car when the war was over. They’d been driving an old one. LR: Do you remember what kind of car they got? JO: Nash. A black Nash. I remember that because by then I was learning to drive. LR: Let me just close with this final question. How do you think that World War II and living through that affected the rest of your life? 15 JO: I don’t think it really had a lot of effect. I had a nice life. I think the only effect it had is I probably would have grown up in Evanston. So then maybe I would have had a different life. I asked mother why we left, because they thought dad would be without a job. LR: You said he came to do American Packing? JO: Yes, which was meat packing, which Swift eventually bought and then my dad worked for Swift. LR: How many years did he work for Swift? JO: I don’t know when it changed over from American Pack to Swift. Then when he was with Swift, he went with Albertson’s grocery stores, their meat supervisor. He died in 1959. LR: I’m so grateful for your willingness to sit down and talk with us. JO: Well I hope I’ve given you something. LR: It’s huge what you’ve given us. I’m so grateful for your willingness to sit with us. JO: Oh I’m glad.