Peggy Terry & E.B. (Sledgehammer) Sledge, Marine

Peggy Terry:

During the war, Peggy worked at a shell-loading plant after the depression. She was not very sure how her work impacted the war. She wasn't even positive what she was making. It never occurred to her that she was making things that would kill other people. In the factories, the sanitation was horrible. Tetryl, a chemical in the shells made the worker's bodies turn orange and made people have hard time breathing. Peggy never questioned if it was dangerous because it never crossed her mind. This example shows how bad the working conditions are and how people can become very sick from all of the chemicals that are used. Men were involved in workers unions and human rights protests, but women were just happy to have a job that it didn't apply to them yet. Peggy wrote, "The war just widened my world." This was because she travelled to Michigan because they paid women more money for her job. In Michigan, she started learning more about workers unions. She had little idea about how the war was going and she didn't even know about the concentration camps. However, she did know about the Nazis and knew that they were evil. She also knew the Japanese were bad. "They were yellow little creatures that smiled when they bombed our boys." When she watched movies, the Japanese would look evil and the Nazis would look short and stout. Now, she looks back at the war with sadness because her husband returned from the war as a different person. He was always drunk and had nightmares that would keep him up for hours. Peggy stated, "Wars brutalize people. It brutalized him." This is a very common affect when soldiers come back from the war, but Peggy did not like it and was very upset.

E.B. (Sledgehammer) Sledge, Marine

Sledge made a point that the Japanese fight with not surrender because they think it is cowardly to surrender. They fight to their death and they are brainwashed to expect to die. He said, "To be captured was a disgrace." The Japanese would strap bombs onto themselves and jump into a building and blow it up with them. Sledge doesn't like violence, but he thinks there are times when he can't help it. At the beginning of the war, he said he was really scared, but after a while he was tired of being scared. At that point, he had so much anger built up in him and he aimed it all towards the Japanese. He witnessed some rare incidents when the Japanese have surrendered. He said, "When they surrendered, they were guys just like us." The soldiers think to themselves that the Japanese aren't human so it is easier to kill them. If they had the mindset that they are humans just like themselves, it would have been a lot harder to kill the Japanese because then they could relate. Sledge had seen many people brutally abuse the Japanese even when they are dead. Many knock the gold teeth out of the dead Japanese, but Sledge never did it because he held onto his morals throughout the war. He stated, "We were out there, human beings, the most highly developed form of life on earth, fighting each other like wild animals." He feels that war can be necessary at certain points, but people have to be respectful for others who are dead.

Intro & Bob Rasmus

Intro:

In World War II, many people perceived the Germans as inhumane and different from Americans, but when the soldiers were close enough to see them, they were shocked that they looked just like each other. "They were no longer the Germans of the British faces and the helmets we saw in the newsreels. They were exactly our age. These were boys like us." This shows how the government has portrayed the Germans and the American citizens actually believed it because they did not know any other way. This situation is similar to ones where people have never seen a Jewish person. To them, many times, they think Jews have horns because they were raised that way and they didn't know any better. Many of the American soldiers went to war because they did not want to fail their peers, not because they wanted to kill the enemies. Many people respected one another for making that decision. During war, people meet many people from around the country and these people are interested by everyone's accents. All everyone talked about was food in war because that was something that they took for granted before. They would always be hungry and food was scarce and barely edible. Photographers took pictures of the war and published them in magazines. Many of these pictures were traumatizing and stick in one’s mind forever. One of the veterans said, "I went there a skinny, gaunt mama's boy, full of wonderment. I came back much more circumspect in my judgment of people. And of government." This quote explains that once people go into war, they will never come back as the same person. Many people become traumatized or have post traumatic stress disorder. Many people have even said war has disrupted their family.

Bob Rasmus:

Bob Rasmus was a World War II veteran who always wanted to join the army when he was old enough. At 13, his dream was to join the army because he thought it would be fun, not knowing about the horrors of it all. He had a wonderful sense of adventure. He went across oceans which always excited him. During the war, he was sick and contracted the flu right before they were to go to the battle of the Bulge. This battle was towards the end of the war in Belgium and was the bloodiest battle during World War II. After the battle, the Allies kept pushing ahead. He couldn't go because of the flu, but all of his friends went to fight. All of his friends died or were captured in this battle. Others were captured on the prisoner-of-war train in Germany. Rasmus was struck by the sheer beauty and the small villages in France, but he felt disturbed when he saw all of the dead Germans. After a battle, the Americans never let their soldiers die on the ground; they would move them to a safer place because they have respect for them. Rasmus said, "I know it’s made me less ready to fall into a trap of judging people by their style or appearance." He is talking about how the war made him realize that people can look very cowardly, but on the inside they are ready to fight and do whatever it takes to win the war. He was very greatly having witnessed and be part in a historical and monumental event.

Jane Yoder & Peggy Terry

Jane Yoder:
Jane lived her childhood during the depression where her family was struggling to be warm in the winter. She thought it was a luxury to own a pair of boots. When I read this passage, I felt so grateful for everything that I have. At this time, we can relate to Jane and her family because of the economic crisis happening right now. Obviously the conditions right now are not as bad as the ones Jane had to live through, but now people have to cut back on the items that are not essential for living. Jane was shocked when people who were rich had 30 shirts and she only owned 3. She did not understand how there was such a difference between the upper class and the lower class. During her childhood, she stayed hungry some nights because she knew that her dad was not able to afford to bring home food for the night. Her father worked, but he did not have a respectable job because he was poor and poor people were not looked up to in the society at that time. Jane felt like she was living in one world and the rich were completely separate from them. That idea can relate to today because many people today think that the majority of the people who have a decent income and then there are the people who are billionaires. This is the same idea having the two worlds. Tom Yoder, Jane’s son was not able to comprehend how horrible the depression was and how his mother had to live through that time. He stated, “I’ve never gone to bed hungry—I wish I had.” This quote explains that he respects his mother for living through a tough period of time. It also explains that he is very fortunate to live in a home and have food and he will never have the horrible experience to be poor, but he wished that he had the experience to understand how others felt at that time. He is very grateful for everything that he has.

Peggy Terry:
The second story is about Peggy Terry who lived in Oklahoma City where there were thousands of people who were unemployed. There were as many white people who were unemployed as blacks. She even knew someone who lived in a whole in the ground with seven kids because they did not have money to own a house or build a shack. Peggy remembered many times when sand storms hit her town and everyone went into their house until after the storm. Then, they would have to clean up their entire house because sand would come through the cracks. She lived in a close neighborhood where if one family had food for the night, they would share it with people who did not have food.  She mentioned that she was very confused why she could only see poverty and starving people while the government seemed to be wealthy and did not try to distribute that money to the people who were starving. When she was a kid, the poor did not blame themselves for being poor, they blamed the government, but Peggy thought, “Our system doesn’t run by just one man and it doesn’t fall by just one man either.” She is explaining that the people who are poor should not just blame the government because they cannot be the only ones to blame for a hug problem. Today, Peggy thinks that people feel ashamed if they do not have everything because there much higher standards than when she was a kid. I can relate to that because today living in the north shore, people are very fortunate and have money to get expensive clothes and designer products. When people do not have all of those expensive things, they feel like an outcast.

Ed Paulson & Arthur A Robertson

Ed Paulson, Freight-train Rider
Paulson did not have much money and demanded work, shelter and groceries which were necessities for him and his family. He talked about a parade where people were protesting for different rights and the police came in and became very violent and killed many people. This reminded me of the times during the civil rights movements where people would come together and protest for their beliefs. Multiple times the police would get involved and started beating people because they did not like the reason behind their protests. Paulson said, "It’s a tough world and you had to be born into it." He thought that the world was very hard and people had to work to be respected and live a good life. He ran into Upton Sinclair in 1934 and learned about his idea to relate unemployed to the resources not being used. This idea appealed to Paulson because he thought that there were many places that the unemployed could be working at, but it just was not happening at that time. He also talked about transient camps which were made by the federal government to look after everyone who was a charged criminal.

Arthur A Robertson:
This man talked about how the depression caused disasters because people did not have money. He explained that banks were losing a lot of people’s money and were unable to pay the customers back. This event made the customers furious because all of the money that they saved in the bank was all gone and they couldn’t do anything to get it back. From the lack of money, many people committed suicide. This event affected almost everyone except brokers who did not lose their money. “They made fortunes on commissions while their customers went broke.” Today, this would never happen because there is bank insurance so customers are insured that their money is safe with the bank.