Ree's WWII Memories Pt2 - Amanuensis Monday

     More of the interview my mom and aunt did with my Great-Aunt Ree, regarding her memories of World War II.

Audio:

Transcript:

"June: Were y'all scared - when you heard it [Pearl Harbor]? Was it scary? You didn't understand what was going - 

Ree: No, I didn't - you know, I, I knew what he was saying, but I wasn't old enough to, you know...

Ruby:  To understand. 

Ree: try to make any, you know...

Ruby: The impact.

Ree: Yeah. You, you know, you heard it and you knew it, but it's just like death. When children - people die. Children, they know it. It's happenin', but they don't understand it. Or they don't - 

June: They don't understand what it means.

Ree: What it means or - you know. I remember, clearly, what happened then, that's never left me. I guess 'cause it was just such a devastating thing for the whole country. But um.... Yeah, we had our little Victory Garden across the street in the field. They give everybody a little piece of land to grow vegetables. [laughter] 

June: [jokingly] So then you wouldn't starve? 

Ree: Oh, yeah, well... It helped too, when they sent all the things to the, to the boys fightin'. And, you know, and we were on rations. We had ration cards for each person in the family got so much. So, you know. And you had to use your stamps out of your book to get certain things. And if you run out of stamps, you couldn't get no more until you got your next book, you know. 

Ruby: So, how often would y'all get a new book? Is it...

Ree: Every month. 

Ruby: Every month?

Ree: Mm hm. 

Ruby: At the beginning of the month? Yeah, that's one of the things she had down here [referring to interview questions]. 

Ree: Mm hm. Yeah, there was um.... I don't know where it is now. I don't know why - it was with Daddy's things, with his billfold things. It wasn't in the billfold, but it was with - with 'em in the box. But it was one of the ration books. It still had a few stamps in it. 

Ruby: Did it?

Ree: Yeah, and I've had it all these years...

Ruby: Did you have any, like, metal drives or rubber drives or anything like that?

Ree: Uh... Well, everything was, uh, rationed. And, people saved their grease. They used the grease for somethin'... for the war. But, everybody, uh, when they fried meat or bacon or anything like that, they had these cans that - well, they took vegetable cans and things and filled 'em up with grease and then turned 'em in. Yeah, they uh... you know everything was rationed. Then, uh... they did say that grease... I'm tryin' to think what it was - what they used it for. It was somethin' durin' the war.

Ruby: I think they used it with the bombs - to make bombs with. 

Ree: Well, everybody saved...

Ruby: To make glycerin or somethin'.

Ree: Yeah, everybody saved their grease, they did.

June: What'd they do, turn it in somewhere?

Ree: Yeah, I don't remember where we turned it in, 'cause see, still I was a little girl and I didn't pay much attention to Mamma and Daddy. Yeah, and I didn't know what they did with it, I just knew they saved it and turned it in somewhere. Everybody did that. And uh... 'cause.... we bought, uh, stamps. The children in school bought war bond stamps. And uh, they called um...

Ruby: Saving stamps? I think they called 'em saving stamps?

Ree: When we got enough stamps in you got a...

June: Savings bond.

Ree: Yeah, after we got - we got, uh, enough stamps, you could get a that size [gesturing] bond. Then you could trade your stamps in bond. Everybody was investing in the country. You know, even the kids were buying the stamps."

Going to the Atlanta Family History Expo?

     Right now, the California Family History Expo is under way. I'm sure everyone over on the West Coast is having tons of fun. Over here in the East, we have only a little more than a month until the Atlanta Family History Expo (Duluth, GA) on November 12-13th. As I previously wrote, I will be attending this expo. In fact, I have been invited to attend as a Blogger of Honor, which is very exciting. I've never attended a genealogy event before, which makes this event even more exciting for me. 


     Also, thanks to the folks at Family History Expos, I have two free tickets to give away for the Atlanta Expo! I would like to encourage everyone who is interested in genealogy, from the thinking-about-getting-started to the professional to attend.  Because of this, I'm going to make this very simple.


     Details: To enter to win these tickets, simply post a comment to this blog post by October 18th at 11:59 PM EST.  Please submit only one entry per person. Please make sure that your comment consists of coherent, complete sentences so that I know you're not a spam-bot. I will draw a winner at random, using a random number generator. I plan to announce the winner on October 19th, so please check back to see if you won and for more information on claiming your tickets. 

You're a 2nd cousin... no, it's 1st but removed.... no, ....

     Today, Ancestry.com announced a simple, but useful, addition to their Public Member Trees: a relationship calculator. Most genealogy software programs offer this, and now so does ancestry's online program. It's pretty simple to use. On each page, there is a link that reads "View relationship to me." Click the link and a box pops up, detailing the people and relationships that connect the you and the other person. The relationship information will also appear under the relative's name on the profile page.  (This is assuming that you've identified yourself in your tree already. If you haven't you can do so under the "Tree Settings" screen.)


     I think this is a great new feature, but it could be improved in two ways: 1) make this an automatic feature that can be turned on or off. As it is now, you have to click this button on every page to turn it on, and then hit another button to turn it off (though I don't know why you'd want to). This can only be done one page at a time - which just seems to be time consuming and redundant.  2) Allow for relationship calculation between two people of my choice, not automatically between myself and another person.


    Here's a screenshot of the new feature:

Ree's WWII Memories Pt1 - Amanuensis Monday

This past Saturday my mom, Ruby, and her sister, June, went to visit their Aunt Ree. I had to work, but I sent along my audio recorder and some questions about World War II that I wanted to ask my Great Aunt. Here's part one of her response, first in a video and then transcribed below.

Ruby: Well, she [Valerie] was wanting me to ask you about - 'cause you has said somethin' - we had, you know, she had asked you about Daddy [Roy Albea] and not bein' able to get into the, the war. And you had said somethin' about all - all the young boys had… once - once Pearl Harbor, uh, the the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, all the boys were wantin' to go enlist. So she was just wonderin', um, what it was like when you first heard about Pearl Harbor and how you found out.

Ree: Oh well, uh, for a while the, uh, President Roosevelt, came on the radio and, and announced it.

Ruby: So you heard it when he made his announcement?

Ree: Yes. On the radio, 'cause that's all we had back then.

Ruby: Yeah.

Ree: And Daddy [Vernon Albea] didn't go in the service because he had four children. They weren't takin' the men that had, you know, that many children. Daddy's health was fine. He - he, as far as a physical, he passed the physical. But he had a different rating because he had four children.

Ruby: So did he go to volunteer or was he, like part of the ---

Ree: Everybody had to sign up.

Ruby: Everybody had to sign up?

Ree: Mmm hmm. They had to sign up and take a physical. And they had to be graded or, given uh, you know, uh…

June: Classification?

Ree: Yeah.

June: That was your Daddy?

Ree: Yeah. I think it - I think that card's in those things you had. He was healthy enough and everything, it was just the number of children he had. [Pointing to a photo] That's Linda right there. [intelligible] lets see… [looking at Vernon Albea's WWII Draft Card] Local board… I need to go get my glasses.

Ruby: So anybody - an - ev - everybody over a certain age had to al - over a certain age had to go sign up?

Ree: Yeah, they drafted… they drafted people and uh, they said when they got to be 18 they had to sign up. Daddy was already older than 18 and why… but I think everybody had to register under a certain age. And uh, this was in… He was 3AH was his classification. 3AH. And he - that, that told him that he was 3A, but he had children children or somethin'. This, this is it [indicating draft card]. If I go get some glasses I can see.

Ruby: I think that the date it was mailed out. July 8th 1943.

Ree: This is Director of Register. This might be part of that. I think this' prob'ly part part of that. Ella Mallard she was our, uh, school principle. That's uh, I think that and that's was folded over.

Ruby: The registration certificate.

Ree: Mm um. And that part of it… registration

Ruby: Yeah, he was s'posed to keep this with him at all - yeah it's his registration certificate.

Ree: This is where he registered to vote [indicating voter ID card]. That's what that is. Well, lets see. Oh, he's 40 years of age. He was registered to vote at Brandon [Mill].

Ruby: And Brandon was the name of the mill.

Ree: Yes. Brandon Mill.

Ruby: And then - and then she asked, um… She was wonderin' if you remember who you were with whenever you heard.

Ree: I was, uh, in the, uh, bedroom at home. And I don't know how many of 'em were in there with me. Uh, me… I don't know. Well, it was… during the daytime when we heard it.

June: You first heard about it on the radio?

Ree: Yeah.

June: Y'all had the radio on all - uh, a lot?

Ree: Yeah, that's all we had. You know, back then we didn't have no TV, no nothin'. We we didn't have no telephone. You know, we just lived in a little four room house with a little fireplace that you burned coal in to keep warm. And uh, it was - it was just - everything was different. This [Vernon Albea's unemployment card]- well, that when he was outta work, he applied for… for uh, you know

June: Unemployment.

Ree: Unemployment. [laughter] Don't mind me!

Ruby: He wasn't unemployed for long, 'cause he's only got one report date on here.

Ree: Yeah. That - they probably somebody gave him a job to keep him from drawin' it. [laughter]

Ruby: And then she's got um… Now, now when he, when he made that radio broadcast did he, he declare war at the same time? I know I've heard that, that broadcast so many times, but I don't remember… or did they come back later and just whatever-

Ree: I don't know, you know I was 11 years old.

Ruby: You were 11? Yeah, that's young. 

Ree: I say I was 11 then in uh, July. That happened in December. So, um… That um, the speech he made about… somethin'… infamy. That one word stuck with me and - and uh, I know that there was words before that and I couldn't used to remember but I can't remember 'em now but that word's never left me. But uh, yeah he said that, um, the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. But I don't remember exactly what he said either, 'cause I was so young. But I remember I was in the front bedroom and the radio - it was one you set on the floor, you know, it was a cabinet radio. We just had a little radio - little speakers. But it, it all was settin' against that wall. [gesturing] well, really it would have been that wall because there was [gesturing left to right] a back bedroom, bedroom, living room and kitchen. But um, yeah, I remember it. I was there in that room when that happened.