WWII INTERVIEW

By,

Garrett McKay

I interviewed my Great Grandma Anne Cozart. She was very open about things. I didn’t realize how bad things really were until I interviewed her.
         The first question I asked her was what did you do during the war years? The first thing she did was get married at age sixteen. After that she moved to Coeur d’Alene Idaho. Housing was scarce, no electricity, running water, or a bathroom. Her husband worked at Farragut Naval base. There were twelve people living in the two bedroom shack with them. One family in the attic the other two downstairs. They took baths in a tin tub. After this they moved to Oak Ridge Tennessee into a two bedroom farm house. Her husband worked on the atom bomb. Had to get water out of a stream, which usually had snakes and other gross things like that in it. She had three kids by now (one of them my Grandma). Then they moved to Hanford WA. Where once again my great grandpa worked on an atom bomb. The atom bomb was a very big secret so the people who worked on it didn’t even know what it was. Then moved to Idaho while her husband worked on an airbase. She said she can just remember how bad the cold was and says they got sick frequently. Gas was rationed so they would only drive 35 mph. Where ever they went. Sugar and shoes were also rationed.
          The next question I asked was what was your reaction to Pearl Harbor? She replied “Oh dear, great shock”. But the weird thing is that she didn’t find out until she went to church the next week. She didn’t know because there was no way of communication for her, no TV or radio.
The third question I asked was how did the was affect your social life, school, and relationships. She said there was no time for social life. She said when she wasn’t working she was praying that the men would come home safe. Everybody worked, didn’t matter how old you were. If you didn’t worked that pretty much meant you had joined the service.
         The next question I asked was what was your opinion on the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were her exact words “ it was necessary, needs to happen to Iran today”.
Then I asked her do you think we could ever get into this situation again? She said no, back in those days things were much different. Kids had more freedom. She went to two years of high school then took a test to prove she was smart enough get her G.E.D. and go to college without all four years of high school.
         The last question I asked was what was your most lasting memory of the war years? Horrible living conditions, the boys that died. Her brother stepped on a mine and was badly injured. Other brother survived bridge attack, but four of her Canadian cousins died in the war.