Interviewed by Mika Gudmundson
I interviewed my grandmother, Nellie Gudmundson, to obtain a clearer picture of what life was like during World War II. During the war years she was living with her parents and going to school, still living an average life. Her reaction to Pearl Harbor was thinking how sad it was, and scary to realize that the U.S. was now more officially involved in the War. She also recalled how angry U.S citizens were at the Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor. When I asked her about her feeling on the bombing of Hiroshima, she had mixed emotions about it, but believed it to be a mistake. She remembered that her husband Mathew, who was in the Navy during the war, telling her that the bombing was necessary to end the war. I asked her what direct impacts the War had on her life. She replied that she is an Italian American, and when entering the country, her family had to report what their beliefs were. Her family were not fascists, but they had Italian American friends who were. They were shipped off to concentration camps. She recalls how lucky she remembered feeling that her family didn’t share that particular belief, and was terrified for her friends that were being taken away. She was also frightened about how far the U.S. will go with the camps, and feared that her family might be taken away. When I asked her if she thought the Japanese concentration camps were a necessity, she thought that it was an extreme action, and was unnecessary. Her neighbor was a Japanese man who had a family, and owned a bakery, and was just as American as anyone else she knew, and was shipped off to a concentration camp. Her most lasting memory of the war was witnessing many Japanese Americans attempting to cross the border into Canada, because she lived close to the border.