Oral History Interview with Howard L. Hill

[Interview Begins]

RIEWESTAHL: Today is August 9th and this interview is taking place at the Spooner Memorial Library. My name's Emily Riewestahl, and I'm here interviewing-interviewing Howard Hill about his military service.

HILL: My name is Howard Hill, United States veteran of World War Two.

RIEWESTAHL: Howard, can you start by explaining your connection to Washburn County?

HILL: My connection is through our family. We -- I married a woman whose father and four brothers were Lutheran pastors. And as people may know, the pastors, at least at that time in the forties and forward, they did not have their own home. They lived in a parsonage that belonged to the church. And whether it fit their family or not, that's where they lived. So as a result, in 19-- we were married in 1957. It's 65 years this year anyway. We came up to Spooner 00:01:00in 1959 because one of our brother-in-laws had come up here on vacation and liked the place. And so, we signed up the following year and the entire family rented a cabin on Spooner Lake in 1959. From -- and then we rented that place until 1984, when we as a family had the opportunity to buy the resort. There were eight cabins, so each one of us bought one and we started a family condominium. And we each own one eighth of everything. So, we've been coming up with them and owning our own place on Spooner Lake since 1984.

RIEWESTAHL: Thank you. And Howard, just briefly, I'm going to move this just because it seems to be in the way of your foot. Let's see, there we go. So, you don't have to worry about that.

Thanks. Thank you. There you go. And, Howard, what led you to serve in the military?

HILL: Uh. Well, at 19-- in the 1940s when the war was going on. As I said, everybody in the United States was patriotic. Literally everybody we-we even as teenagers, they-they lifted the age limit to work in factories. People our age, high school age, could work in factories. And the factory I worked in, Jefferson Electric Company, made transformers for fluorescent lights and Lionel trains. So, we did that. So, when I graduated high school, if anyone at that time during the war when you turned 18 your subject to be drafted into service and they would put you wherever they needed you or wanted you. And I did not want to go in the Army. And probably because my dad had served

in the Navy in World War One, I elected to go in the Navy. So that's how I just -- so I did. I joined at age 17 and my parents had to sign for me because I was underage. So that's how I got started. And I just got -- I just got lucky. I joined the Navy. I went to basic training at Great Lakes, Illinois, which is close to home and had some schooling there. And then they sent me to San Francisco to pick up my ship. And when I got to the ship, they looked at my record and they said, oh, we see you've-you've worked at Jefferson, the Electric Company, and the electric was the magic word. They said we need electricians. You are now an electrician even after training in another field. So that's how I got started.

RIEWESTAHL: And you said that you didn't want to join the Army. Can you explain a little bit about -- more about that?

HILL: I don't know.

I was a teenager. In fact, I was a teenager when I got discharged. I wasn't 20 yet. I don't know. I guess I just at a young age, must have assumed that an army was something not desirable, unsafe or I don't know what. I knew I had to go somewhere. So why not choose something that I thought I was familiar with?

RIEWESTAHL: And what were your training experiences like?

HILL: Well on board ship, I was an electrician. And those are two types of electricians on an aircraft carrier. One of them is a power electrician, and they work with-with voltage 120/240 volts to fix and repair motors and lights and engines, things like that. I was in the communications part of it, which fixed sound-powered telephones and the gyroscope and the compass that guided the ship. So, I got training in how to do

that. All on board training.

RIEWESTAHL: Did you enjoy that job?

HILL: Oh, I did very much. I think it was the best job in the Navy. Pretty safe, too. Now, I think a lot of the-the communications around where we were and the gyroscope that tells you what direction you're going is in dead center of a ship, [forward and after??] and both side to side, exact center. There was no windows. We couldn't see what was going on outside. So, we were probably in the safest place on the ship that anybody could be.

RIEWESTAHL: Can you explain kind of what like the day-to-day life was in that role?

HILL: Well, day to day we -- you had to serve on duty four hours every day. And it was all four-hour shifts. You know, from four to eight, eight to midnight, and midnight to four. My-my good friend from Minneapolis, who was in the same electrical group, he and I both didn't smoke

and didn't like cigarette smoke. And when you live in a compartment with one hundred sailors and they get up at four o'clock in the morning and light their cigarettes, it bothered us and woke us up. So, we asked for separate quarters and fortunately there was a place on the ship, a way forward. It's called the Degaussing Room, which is demagnetizing because our ship was steel, and the Japanese had put magnetic mines in the ocean. So, ship would hit that that could be sunk. So anyway, we slept in this room, the two of us, with these loud motors going all the time.

RIEWESTAHL: And I know you joined at a young age; do you remember if you had any expectations about joining the military before you started?

HILL: No, I didn't. I didn't. And after I got out, I had had enough. When you're -- during wartime, you just wear dungarees like I have out now. Blue

shirts and white caps. And in the service, it goes by seasons. You wear different clothing and different color. And the Navy was white, and the summertime was blues in the wintertime. But when you're working, it's just regular dungarees and blue shirts. And when I got out of the Navy, I knew I didn't want to be subject to uniform changes and regulation. And so, I decided to get out. Then I went to college and joined the Naval Reserve for five years. So, I've got five more years of credit with Navy service.

RIEWESTAHL: And what were the years that you served?

HILL: 1945-1946. And then 19-- when I go? Five-five more years. In 1947

to 1952. While I was in college.

RIEWESTAHL: And what did you go to college for after?

HILL: Electrical engineering. I-I was 18 years old when I went to coll-- 19 years old when I went to college. Yeah, 19. And I couldn't drive a car. So, I had to be taught how to drive a car and started off to drive 500 miles to Omaha, Nebraska, to go to college from Maywood, Illinois.

RIEWESTAHL: Why did you choose to go to school in Nebraska?

HILL: Honestly because a girlfriend was going to school 24 miles away and I wanted to be close to her. There weren't too many colleges open in 1946. People are getting out of service. They filled up the schools rapidly, so there wasn't a lot of choice.

RIEWESTAHL: Do you have any, like certain memorable events that you recall from when you were serving?

HILL: Well, yes. In 1945, after the atomic bomb was detonated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, General MacArthur selected our ship to go into Nagasaki and bring from there -- bring allied prisoners of war from other countries that had been in Japanese prison camps -- bring them out and send them off to their home country. So, we were selected to go in there and bring out 3000 prisoners of war. So, that was that was a highlight of my time and unique. And again, I don't know what to come up with another question, but the devastation I saw there was very similar to what's

going on now and, in the Ukraine, the-the damage and heartaches. A lot of dead bodies floating in the water. I was 17 years old -- I was just 18 years old -- my eyes are just wide open every day with an all-new experience. And having worked at Jefferson Electric Company, they had a department called a Secret Department. And none of my high school friends or I knew what was being made there. Well, it turns out that what was being made was the detonation devices for the atomic bombs that were detonated in Japan. So, I was at the end where they were manufactured and, on the end, where they were used.

RIEWESTAHL: Do remember how you felt when you were over there?

HILL: No, I don't. I don't have any real -- I didn't -- I didn't feel threatened. I should have. The Japanese had-had

airplane pilots -- they had young boys -- 13, 14-years-old, and they taught me how to fly an airplane. And their purpose was to fly an airplane with a 1000-pound bomb in a plane that was designed for a 500-pound bomb to dive on principally aircraft carriers and destroy them or put them out of service. And so that was for us, that was a real danger because we were primary target of the war. But I didn't feel that danger. I don't know. I was just too young.

RIEWESTAHL: Can explain a bit about why aircraft carriers were a target?

HILL: Well, because they could send out, you know, in our case, thirty-five airplanes to bomb their country, which we did. We would bomb airports and make them unserviceable. Cities.

RIEWESTAHL: Was there anything about your time

when you started that you learned after your service?

HILL: No, not really. I can't think of it. I was pretty young, pretty naive about a lot of things.

RIEWESTAHL: Reflecting back on that time, how do you feel about your service now?

HILL: Well, I feel proud that I was able to help the war effort and do what I did. And I am fortunate to have gotten the breaks by getting on board an aircraft carrier and getting into a job that was easily learned and enjoyed -- and enjoyable.

RIEWESTAHL: Can you explain a bit more about your experiences that you had when you were in Japan?

HILL: Well, I didn't -- I wasn't on -- well, I wasn't on land too long. I went to Nagasaki; we went on to two tours to walk around -- not walk around. They took us

on trucks, so we weren't walking around -- walk around sightseeing. And the only other time was in Tokyo. After the war was over, we could walk around there and I bought stamps at the post office and collected money and got the-the Nippon Times, which is a Tokyo daily newspaper that cost us two thirds of one cent for our newspaper. One of the funny, comical things about the schoolkids when I gave a talk to them, this friend of mine, Dean and I were walking around. We were looking for a place to use the washroom and people over there then, they didn't use washrooms, they used to ditch by the side of the road to relieve themselves. Well, we saw a building that looked like a washroom. So, we walked in there, and when I walked in there, there were there were no English signs. This was a couple of days after the armistice was signed. We walked in there. Here's

a hundred naked Japanese women standing around a pool of water. It was it was a bathhouse for women. The next day they had English signs there telling what it was.

RIEWESTAHL: When-when you were in Japan, I mean, that must have been a big difference from-from back here. Was there anything that stood out to you about the culture?

HILL: No, not really. It was different. No, nothing different. Just that it was so unclean and unsanitary. A lot of destruction, of course.

RIEWESTAHL: So how long did you spend there?

HILL: We weren't there very long. Maybe a week? I'm not sure. That might be in my scrapbook.

RIEWESTAHL: I'm excited to look at that later. Do you recall the day that your service ended?

HILL: It was June 6th. 6/6/46

[laughs].

RIEWESTAHL: It's an easy one to remember.

HILL: Yes.

RIEWESTAHL: What was that day like?

HILL: I don't know. I wasn't -- well, I was -- we went through -- well, coming back from the war, we went through the Panama Canal. And the canal -- the locks were too narrow for our ship, so we had to cut off the-the aircraft emplacements on the side of the ship with welding torches, and they lifted those off and put them on the flight deck. And then we went through the locks and then we got through, and they welded them back on. And then we went to Boston to be sent home to Great Lakes to be discharged. And in Panama, we got a couple of days in Panama, and I don't remember much. I've got some pictures from there. But again, I was a young, naive person walking down the street. There were entrances to -- I'm not sure what

you call --apartment buildings, and there were women standing in each doorway. And they were prostitutes, and they were all trying to beckoning us into coming into their place. Just dozens of them.

RIEWESTAHL: Do you still -- like did after -- did you keep in contact with anyone from your ship?

HILL: I did. I kept in touch with Dean from Minneapolis and another fellow from Wisconsin. Good friend of mine. Story about -- about him in Wisconsin. I'm a bow hunter, I've hunted with a bow for 50 years. Don't use a gun, don't own a gun. But I was deer hunting in Necedah, Wisconsin and walking around the 65,000-acre national preserve hunting deer. And I met another bow hunter, and it was my friend from the ship. To meet somebody like that and when they're out in 65,000 acres is remarkable.

RIEWESTAHL: That's amazing.

Just happenstance?

HILL: Then we visited each other a few times after that.

RIEWESTAHL: Do you have any stories of Dean from the ship that you remember?

HILL: No, I don't. I don't-I don't think I saw him. My-my mentor on the ship was another man. And I was 18, and he was 28 or 30, and he was from Saint Charles, Illinois. And he was the one who taught me everything I knew about the electrical business. So, I saw him a number of times by-by driving 20 miles away and visiting him and his wife. After the war was over.

RIEWESTAHL: Is there anyone else that you keep in contact with?

HILL: No. I don't think anybody else is living.

RIEWESTAHL: Have you got to see your ship after you left the military?

HILL: Well, our ship was

-- it was decommissioned in Boston, and I think they scrapped it. We revisit Charleston in North Carolina. And we went on an aircraft carrier, a bigger-bigger one -- larger one than ours. Our ship was a -- it was a converted tanker, and we carried 3 million gallons of aviation fuel. So and -- other fuel, we could refuel other ships. So anyway, my wife and I visited a ship in South Carolina, and I can show her at places where I worked and where I slept and those kinds of things. That was a neat experience for me.

RIEWESTAHL: That is really neat. Were the quarters really close on the ship?

HILL: Yes. Or they -- they issued -- when you went in the Navy, they gave everybody a hammock. We never use it. Never. But [clears throat] on the ship they had

-- I don't know what they fold up hammock beds that folded up against the wall. Three or four high and there'd be 100 until a room. And as I said, we-we just didn't care for that kind of thing, so Dean and I decided to find another location, which we did.

RIEWESTAHL: And what did you do on the ship to keep yourself entertained?

HILL: Oh, we did a lot of things. I was a movie projectionist. We had movies every night. When we'd refueled other ships, they would give us our mail -- our mail from home, and they would also give us movies. And so, every night on the hangar deck, we had a movie, and they were current movie just from the United States. And we had two elevators on the ship for bringing airplanes from the hangar deck up to the flight deck and the elevators. I don't know - they were big, but we could play volleyball on there. They could play basketball on the on the elevators.

We had skeet shooting on the back of the ship -- of a ship where one of our planes were tow windsock and we would shoot at it with guns. What else? We had track meets. They were kind of difficult, especially when you're on the ocean and you're pitching up and down to be running a hundred-yard dash, going uphill, then downhill. What else do we have? Movies. Well, we had -- we had a lot of activities and there was always an officer in charge of doing that. And so, we were kept occupied.

RIEWESTAHL: Did you have any activity that was your favorite?

HILL: No, not really.

RIEWESTAHL: And can you explain kind of what you did after your service ended?

HILL: Well, after a service ended, I got out like I said in June, there were three colleges I could have gone to

and I elected to go to the one in Nebraska. And so, I bought a car. My dad drove it home for me and I drove out to Nebraska. I went to college for -- well, I was out there for six years. Uh, went to college. Well, couple of years I didn't -- I didn't go full time. So, I went there. And then after-after my college life, I wanted to come back home to Illinois. And I-I call the electric utility company in town. And I was -- I was interviewed by telephone, and they told me that I was the only electrician -- electrical engineer hired by telephone -- they never had. So, I came home and worked for Commonwealth Edison for 36 years.

RIEWESTAHL: And why do you think they decided to hire you by phone?

HILL: I had a good friend there. Probably

I had a good recommendation. That's probably the reason.

RIEWESTAHL: And do you feel like your military service helped you in that career?

HILL: No, not really. No, I don't.

RIEWESTAHL: Did you enjoy it?

HILL: I did, I guess. I sure did. Yeah. It was just the right time to retire after 36 years. And the time was right, and the pension offered. I deleted it 11 days because they were reviewing the pension benefits, so I delayed 11 days so I could probably get more benefits.

RIEWESTAHL: Now I want to circle back to-to something that you talked to me about, which is, you know, how everyone is patriotic during the war and kind of what life is like for families back at home.

HILL: Well, everybody -- like I said, everybody was patriotic. Everybody-everybody did everything to help the war effort. So, we collected rubber bands and made balls

of them to save rubber. We collected tires, gasoline, the national speed limit. It's hard to believe the national speed limit for automobiles was 35 miles per hour. We saved cooking grease for the war effort. Oh, for making explosive tin. We saved -- we saved gum and cigarette wrappers for the aluminum foil. We could peel that off and we could sell it and use it. Everybody-everybody did what they could to help the war effort. It was just -- it was just amazing. We knew it was serious.

RIEWESTAHL: What advice would you give to anyone that's thinking about joining the military now?

HILL: I think a lot of young people, in fact, my-my granddaughter is one of them -- when they finished high school, they've

had enough school. They say they've had enough school, and they want a gap year. Well, that's kind of what I did. By being forced into. I would suggest that they try the military for one-one period, whatever period you can sign up for. You might enjoy it. In fact, one of my -- one of my-my nieces right now, she's a nuclear engineer. And that's what she -- she went in the Navy for the same reason.

RIEWESTAHL: Do you have other family members that have joined the military?

HILL: My brother did. My brother was a year and a half younger than me, and he went in after the war. Went in the army and served in Japan. And he is now deceased. He's been gone 20 years now, I think. So nobody else.

RIEWESTAHL: And

is there anything else that you'd like to add that we haven't covered in the interview already?

HILL: No. Unless you want me to talk about the [V-mail??]?

RIEWESTAHL: Yeah, that'd be great. I'd like that, yeah.

HILL: As I said, we-we used to refuel a lot of the ships. And when you refuel the ship, they-they-they sail side by side at a set speed. And they run a cable back and forth between the two. And then they put a big hose across so they can transfer fuel, but they also went send across bags of mail. And we would send back ice cream we had -- on our ship we had powdered ice -- powdered milk, which we didn't like. But when you made ice cream, everybody ate it. So, we would give the ice cream to destroyers and other ships, and they would send our mail to us and our movies. And the mail -- all of our letters were censored.

The officers on the ship would take our handwritten letters and they would cut out words saying what battles we had been in or been exposed to. [Cough] I should have brought a cough drop. [Coughs] They would cut out words and they would microfilm those and send those back and mail coming from the United States to also us was microfilmed. [Cough] And one bag -- one bag of V-mail -- Victory mail --would replace 39 bags of paper mail. So, it was quite a savings in space and bags of mail. And my mother wrote me every day. But I couldn't. For sixteen months, she didn't know where I was. Which, you know, as a parent, what would you think of not knowing where your child was, knowing that he was in a battle zone somewhere? And didn't know where.

RIEWESTAHL: Were you able to write

her often, too?

HILL: Oh, yes. I could write. Yes, I could. I wrote often. And another experience that you may -- people may not be aware of when-when you're cross the international dateline or the equator. There was a -- in the Navy, there was an initiation performed supposedly by Davy Jones and Davy Jones locker. And anybody who hasn't crossed either of those would be called a pollywog. And you had to go through an initiation. And on every ship, it was different. They got all kinds of paddling and-and touching with electrical wires and having to crawl through bags of garbage and-and things like that. Then after-after you completed all that, then instead of being a pollywog, you are called a Shellback

and you got a card. And I have that in my scrapbook. And the card, if you -- any time in the future, if you're on a ship and they wanted to subject you to that, all you had to do was show you a card. That you went through that experience. So that was -- that was a neat thing. We had this distinction of crossing the dateline and the equator at the same point, which is kind of unique.

RIEWESTAHL: That's amazing. I think -- I think that's about it for my questions. Do you have anything else in your mind that you'd like to share?

HILL: No, I think I got the high points on. Yeah. Yeah, I would. I did go after I graduated college. Well, while I was in college, I went to the Navy Reserve for four reserve officers training. And in the beginning, there was no -- there was nothing

attached to it. We did not have to join the Navy. Well, then, subsequently, two weeks before we were to graduate, they said something to the effect of April Fool, if you sign up and take your commission, you have to serve five years of service, seven years total, two years on reserve and five years. And I just ignored it and did not take them. I didn't take a commission because I did not want to go back in the Navy. So, they were a little upset with me. But that's the way -- that's the way it went at that time.

RIEWESTAHL: Yeah. And you mentioned a little bit that -- like kind of about your decision to leave the military and to go to school. Can you explain a bit more about that decision?

HILL: I don't know what else. It's just -- it's just what everybody did. And of course, it was free. It didn't cost us anything to go to college. At that time, 1946 or so.

It only cost us $700 a year. But that was a lot of money.

RIEWESTAHL: Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. And thank you for your service.

HILL: Oh, you're welcome. [Break in recording]

RIEWESTAHL: Yeah, just you can just tell me as much or as little as you like about each page. Anything that comes your mind.

HILL: You tell me what you'd like to hear. Yeah.

RIEWESTAHL: Yeah. What about your -- I know you have your dog tags in here, and you also have a family member's dog tags.

HILL: Yeah, my dad, it sits in the back. Yeah. These are my dog tags. These are just the ones I got on the honor flight. They're not nothing official, but the honor flight gave every one of these for -- oh it does -- no it doesn't -- yes, it does say honor flight. Doesn't give the number of the honor flight.

RIEWESTAHL: Yeah. Great. And then this picture is in the in the front, is that your boat?

HILL: Ship [laughs].

RIEWESTAHL: Ship, sorry. Not boat. What's the difference?

HILL: Well, a boat

can be put on a ship.

RIEWESTAHL: Okay.

HILL: I don't -- I don't think we have any boats. Well, we must have somewhere. Nothing visible. So, this was one of one four sister ships that were previously tankers. So as a result of that, when we were in the Pacific Ocean, we couldn't refuel other ships because we had a lot of -- we had 3 million gallons of aviation fuel and ship's fuel on there so we could refuel other ships.

RIEWESTAHL: And where were you most of the time on the ship?

HILL: Well, I was in the exact center I was -- I work for the electric department and -- which was part of the communications. And we were in charge of the gyroscope, which tells you what direction you're going. And also, the pedometer, which is the speed -- like the speedometer in a car told you how fast you were going.

So, we were on the dead center of the ship so that if we pitched forward and after and side to side wouldn't affect us as much as that. We had no windows; we couldn't see our doors at all. And those pictures that was in the book. So, we were just the exact center. So, when we were in battle, we had no idea what was going on. So-so as I mentioned before, I was 17 years old when I joined the Navy. And during wartime, you could be drafted and be put in any branch of the service that they wanted or needed you. So, if you did not want to be drafted and be put in the Army or Marines or somewhere else, you could select your own branch of service. And I selected

the Navy probably because my dad had done it in World War One. So, you're saying if you join prior to your 18th birthday, one of the parents have assigned for you. So, my mother did sign for us and I've never asked her, but I have often wondered how she must feel to send off her older son off to a war, a dangerous place. And to me, it was just an adventure. I was just out of high school a month before. So, it was just something new every day. We got paid $50 a month, and later on when we got on the ship, they only gave us $15 each month because there was a lot of gambling. And the only ones that really made out in the gambling were the sail maker, the one who repaired sales and repaired shoes and the barber.

He wasn't supposed to take money, but they all took money. So, they-they had a lot of money. So they can afford to gamble and they can afford to lose it, but everybody else couldn't. So, they only paid us $15 so that we wouldn't be losing a lot of our pay. At the end, when we got off the ship, ten years later. Dean, my buddy from Minneapolis, he and I had the most money on the ship because we didn't, we didn't drink or smoke cigarettes. So, we had accumulated the most money out of everybody on the ship.

RIEWESTAHL: And there was a lot of people on the ship.

HILL: About 1500 plus a flight crew, which was a separate -- flight crews out of their own entity. They could go on any ship anywhere in the world. So I went to Great Lakes Naval Training Station, which is only 30 or 40 miles from home, and went through basic training and

[clears throat] while I was there -- after basic training, they put me in a special school for diesel mechanics, and I went to that school for about three months and then they sent me off to pick up my ship in San Francisco.

RIEWESTAHL: It's amazing to see, like, really how young you were then. To think of myself as like, if I was 17, getting something like this is crazy. Yeah.

HILL: Yeah. I just think my, my, my, my oldest grandson is going to Asia-Pacific University right now in Japan, and it's just coincidental that he's 18 years old and he's in Japan. And I was 18 years old, and I was in Japan. And on our way, we stopped in Hawaii for our fuel and supplies. Nothing-nothing new. After

Hawaii, we went to Guadalcanal. And on the way -- any Navy ship that crosses the equator or the dateline, the international dateline. There was a there was initiation like-like college hazing. Where they-they -- Davy Jones supposedly sends you a summons of something that you've done wrong that you could be charged for and have to go to court. So, we got this summons from Davy Jones. And at the time when you cross the line, you're called a pollywog and crossing the dateline and the equator at the same time is something unusual. Everybody doesn't do that. They cross one or the other. So, I was a pollywog and the charge for me was working the censors overtime. Which-which they're referring to is my mother wrote to me every day,

every day of the week, and I got so much more mail than anybody else. So, they were -- they were charging me with that. So, we had to go through that initiation. And when you go through that initiation -- that hazing, you get a card and it's called a Shellback card. And if you keep that at any time in the future, you cross the dateline and there was initiation. You show that card and you don't have to go through that again. And then in my scrapbook, I've kept track because I was in the Internet Interior Communications Department. We can see the pit-pit log, the mileage every day. And so, I could write down the mileage where we were -- when we were a certain mile. So, every time it turned over 10,000 miles, I wrote it in my book. So,

we went to -- we went to Guadalcanal -- on Guadalcanal -- the war was over -- [inaudible] the United States had secured Guadalcanal. And we owned it now. So that was a pretty safe place to be. So as a result, we could -- we could go swimming, we would swim off the ship. And we had -- we had people on the flight deck who had rifles because there were sharks there. And if they saw a shark, they were near us or where I was running, they would shoot the sharks. So later on, up, up, up the coast, we went up to the Philippine Islands and that had just been repatriated by the United States. And so, we were in there to get fuel and supplies and other things. And in the scrapbook, I've got some

propaganda leaflets that our ship -- ships' planes used to drop on the Japanese people. And then when we're -- when we're in the Philippines -- the Philippines -- I've got one in here that's -- it's printed on the back saying it's victory mail and its United States money for the Philippines. Oops. Oh. For the Philippines. And it says, "Victory" on the back of it. And its United States mail, but it's deposited in the Treasury of the United States of America, and its legal tender in the United States. So, I have a couple of samples of that. And then there's a number of Japanese occupational

money too that was used before we-we took it over again.

RIEWESTAHL: Do you know why there was like different currency during that time?

HILL: Well, whoever-whoever-whoever was in charge of the country -- you know, the Philippines had the United States money like this without the word victory. And then later on, when the Japanese took them over, they issued their own money. So then when we took it over, then we reissued our money and marked it victory. And it was -- it should be dated. I don't see it.

RIEWESTAHL: It should be, but I don't see it.

HILL: Yeah, usually it's on there. So anyway, its United States -- it's legal US money. So, it's just a sample.

I guess something that's not -- I see a piece of gum in here, it just reminded me of something. When I -- when I'd given talks at schools-schools and county fairs, things like that. I mentioned what life was like in the 1940s during the war. And as young people we saved, we saved string and made balls of string for the war effort. We saved tinfoil from gum wrappers and cigarette wrappers. We saved cooking oil; we saved our rubber tires, and we saved tin and gasoline was rationed during the war. You can only get so much gasoline and [clears throat] there's something I wanted to say about that. Well anyway we saved all those kinds of things. Oh, what I wanted to mention.

Most people don't realize that in order to save rubber tires and gasoline, the United States had a speed limit on the highways for automobiles. And most people can't believe or realize that that occurred. But the speed limit was 35 miles an hour. No matter where you were, that was a highest speed that you were entitled to drive. There's nothing special there.

RIEWESTAHL: What did you think about the food on the ship? Was it good?

HILL: I thought the ship -- I thought the food was good. Something that sounds comical, but the only time we had baked beans was for a breakfast on Saturdays. [Both laugh] Don't expect to see that for breakfast meal. And on the ship, we had -- we had a daily newspaper, and it would tell us the news of what's happening in the United States and what's happening

in the world. And the United States -- I know the Japanese had their own -- had their own news that they would put out. They had a -- I think there was a picture of her on there, but -- a lady called -- they called her Tokyo Rose. She would broadcast propaganda over the radio, trying to convince United States citizens that we were the bad guys. And-and that we were attacking them, causing trouble for them. So then on the way after we left the Leyte Gulf and the Philippines, and we went up to Okinawa and we cruised alongside of Okinawa and sent our airplanes out every day to Okinawa to bomb their airfields and their airplanes and their important buildings. And then they would come back to our ship. And of course, being on the ship,

we had no idea what they were doing or what damage they had created. And a picture in here showing our -- the bridge on our ship, the Shenango. It shows a Japanese pilot. Even today, any ship that enters a harbor, there's a harbor pilot that takes over the ship and guides them in case there's any submerged rocks or sandbars or things like that. So, in my book, there is a picture of a Japanese pilot as we were cruising in Nagasaki. This is three weeks after the atomic bomb killed 70,000 people instantly. We could see floating Japanese bodies in the water as we cruised in. And then in the book, I have about ten pictures of the damage that that one bomb created in Nagasaki. This was after

the Hiroshima bomb. The National World War Two Museum in New Orleans has -- had five years ago -- they had only one picture of the damage at Nagasaki. And I took my -- this scrapbook -- took that there, and they put this in their file, made copies of it. And they only had -- they only had one picture and I got ten. So, they were glad to see all these pictures.

RIEWESTAHL: And what kind of camera did you have? Do you remember that you got all these photos with?

HILL: I just had a regular box camera, Kodak. Well, I don't -- I didn't take these somebody else did. I took these small ones. And the big reason that we-we were in there was to repatriate Japanese prisoners of war, allied prisoners of war. There were people from Holland and Great Britain and Australia, other

countries. And so, they were in these Japanese prison camps. So, we brought back 1500 at a time. We had about 1500 cots in our hangar deck so we could bring our 1500 from Nagasaki to Okinawa and send them back to their own home country. A lot of these thing have Japanese writing. I have no idea what they-they say. I just picked up -- just picked up everything I-I found and saved it all. We had -- we had to ride out a typhoon at one time. I went into a safe harbor, Sasebo, Japan. And we were there with a lot of allied ships and to measure the speed of the wind. I was selected to go up on the flight deck and hold an anemometer. You've seen them, it's on a pole and has three little cups that go

around in the wind. So, I was selected. They put a rope around my waist and then some other fellows held the rope so I wouldn't be blown away. And it was 140 miles an hour. And while I was there, I got a newspaper from Sasebo. And you can see it was only six and two thirds' cents for a daily newspaper. And I think it was all written in Japanese. Yes, you. I have one from Tokyo, and it was two thirds of a cent from the Tokyo newspaper. And these are just some pictures I picked up as I was rummaging around on these-these islands that they would let us off at, one picture of an automobile that was charcoal burning automobile, not gasoline.

RIEWESTAHL: That's so interesting.

HILL: I never saw one. Never saw one since These are all newspaper articles.

Someone of them were funny and some of are-are comical. Some of them we could share with our parents. All our mail was -- oh, I guess I'll show it later -- all our mail was censored. We couldn't -- we couldn't tell where we were or what battles we had been in. And when you got -- when the war was -- treaty was signed then we were -- we were allowed to go in Tokyo, Japan. And so, we were -- two days we were -- we were --- we were on land. And I picked up postage stamps -- I picked up photographs. Anything I could find.

RIEWESTAHL: I saw some books on how to speak Japanese. Did you learn a little while you were there?

HILL: No, I didn't. The only word we learned was "ohayou" which is, "Good morning." It's like Ohio. The people -- the people in Nagasaki, especially when we met them, very cordial. They bowed to us. They saluted us. They were very, very humble.

So, I bought stamps at the Japanese post office. And here's the Tokyo Times that cost two thirds of a cent and this was Japanese money for Japan that they issued. And I just saved samples of it.

RIEWESTAHL: And you said, was this used for a gift wrapping, is that what you said?

HILL: Yes. Yes. Gift wrapping paper. And we were able to send telegrams to our parents. I guess I was too young even to say much. I just hope to see you soon. That's all I said on there. We could send it, it cost us 60 cents.

RIEWESTAHL: Only one day.

HILL: That's one day.

RIEWESTAHL: How long was there kind of between -- I know you send letters with your mom -- ow long did it take

to get a letter?

HILL: Oh, I don't know. Not too long, because a lot of ships, destroyers in particular, need to be refueled. And they would -- we could refuel them so they would pull up alongside our ship and they would send a -- they would send a rope across to the destroyer, and then they would pull a hose across from ship to ship so they could pass fuel oil from one ship to the other. And then they had another cable across there. And they would send us our-our mail in a mail bag, and they would also send. I'm trying to think of that. Oh, movie film. We saw movies every night. I was the movie projectionist on the ship. We saw United States up-to-date movies every night. So, they would send

us ships, reels -- big, big metal reels of movies across. And we would -- we would send them ice cream. We could make ice cream on our ship because we have powdered milk that we didn't like to drink. When you made ice cream, it was wonderful. So that was kind of -- a kind of a -- kind of a perk for-for the people on the carrier -- on the destroyers.

RIEWESTAHL: Had a good trade.

HILL: And then I referred to the mail that we had. Now all of our mail all of our mail was censored by our officers. They would read our mail and they would cut words out that told -- that inferred where we were, what battles we had been in and where we were. And that was so the enemy would not know where particular allied ships were. So, they would -- they would photo -- photocopy

those, put em on microfilm. And it reduced the amount of paper that it took to send those. It would take, I think it was 32 bags of regular mail, the mail victory mail could be replaced -- replace that kind of mail as well.

RIEWESTAHL: And that's Dean. You've talked about him, right? From Minneapolis.

HILL: Yeah, Dean was from Minneapolis. And Jack [Fetzer??], I don't remember where he was from. Three of my buddies, and then none of us smoke or drink. When they put us off on an island somewhere in the Pacific in between battles, they'd give us two beers and five cigarettes, and we would sell those to the other fellows. And you know, we were only 18 years old. We had no interest in that. Yeah, we were -- we were young and naive. And we came back in the United States at one point in time,

and we got to go to Universal Studios. A friend of my grandmother's daughter worked there, so Connie took us around on a tour. And while we were there, we met Bob Hope. So, he signed a picture of him with me. And on his bike, he had a sign on his -- Bob Hope had a sign on his. He said, "Drop it, brother. It's Bob Hope's." And they drive their bike around from sight to sight.

RIEWESTAHL: You got big smiles on your faces.

HILL: Yeah. And this is the picture of us in front of our high school in Maywood. We played basketball on the ship. The two-two elevators that we used to bring airplanes from the hangar deck to the flight deck, we would set up basketball hoops. We could play volleyball, we had track

meets, we had skeet shooting, which was shooting of clay pigeons off the back end of the ship. We had an airplane that would drag a cloth windsock and we would shoot at that. So, we had a lot of activities. And Christmas time, we had a special meal. A real meal with real food. With cigarettes and cigars.

RIEWESTAHL: I like that that's on the menu. I missed that when I first looked at this book.

HILL: Looked at what?

RIEWESTAHL: I missed that when I first looked. The cigars on there, that it's like officially on the menu.

HILL: And we had I don't know -- I don't think -- I don't think they showed it. We had boxing matches between ships, too. You know, we had people who were boxers and other ships of sailors who were boxers. So, every once in a while, they get together and ever have a boxing contest

between the two ships.

RIEWESTAHL: I think you have a pamphlet from one of those later on. I remember it. I don't know which page. Yeah.

HILL: And this was we brought back some-some army prisoners of war. United States prisoners of war. And they did a show for us. They dressed up like funny costumes and that and entertainment for us. This is a picture of our IC [room??], Interior communications, and it shows the big gyroscope that we had to maintain. And then it also shows the parameter of the speed that we were going. So, I could write down mileage every time we stopped somewhere or every time it turn to 10,000 miles. So, this is where we're in. This room,

every time they have battle stations. That's more pictures. I was pretty young [laughs].

RIEWESTAHL: You have a lot of the copies of the paper on the ship, were there any certain columns or anything that you enjoyed reading?

HILL: There was this daily news of what happened in the United States. Nothing about nothing -- about the war. It just gave the world news or the United States news.

RIEWESTAHL: Funny comics, too.

HILL: Mm-hmm. Tell the people back home, I still can't -- I still marvel at my mother, what she must have gone through, having her oldest son off to war, not knowing where he was or what was happening or how dangerous it was. In fact, we-we didn't know in our job. We didn't know how dangerous it was.

And we went to some shows wandering around California. You know, personally an interesting thing for me when we were in California -- I liked to roller skate -- when I was in high school, we roller skating every day of the week. Used to dance and foxtrot and waltz and things like that. Anyway, then when we went to a roller-skating rink in California, dancing with the -- skating with the young girls from California, they always marveled at us. They said, "You're from Chicago, aren't you?" They could tell by our dancing style where we were from.

RIEWESTAHL: What was the popular dancing styles of Chicago then?

HILL: Well-well, it was -- it was foxtrot, and waltzes, and trios, and ladies' choice was a couples, and couples' trios.

And we had one that was called roller gate. It was strictly for our skating rink. It was organ music, live organ music. When we got through the Panama -- to the Panama Canal, our ship was so wide we couldn't fit through the locks. So, they had to cut off our-our antiaircraft gun platforms on the side and then they lifted off and put them up on the flight deck. And then we went through the Panama Canal and then we got on the other side. Then they welded these back in place. I don't know why they did that, because they were going to decommission the ship. But in Hawaii, we-we took pictures of a lot of things we weren't supposed to. Well, I guess there we were all right. But, anyway, there were a lot of prostitutes. Tremendous quantity of every -- you'd go down the street, and there'd be dozens of-of doorways

into a room. And there was a woman standing in each one telling us to come in, come in. And of course, we didn't know what it was all about. The one thing we were in -- or at least I was interested in was -- nylon was-was in short supply during the war. And so, we were able to buy nylon stockings there. And I bought some for my mother. These are - these are pictures of transiting the Panama Canal. And then I did make my own map of my travels while I was on the ship. We traveled 107,000 miles on the Pacific Ocean across the ocean four times, which coincidentally,

our total mileage is around the earth four times. I don't know. We got a Boston we could -- we had liberty, which is we could get off -- they let half the ship or each day. So, the-the port side, or left side, would go one day and then the starboard side, the right side, would go another day. So, we got to visit the Constitution and all the sites in Boston. And my mother and my grandmother came to visit me. And a funny thing, I -- we -- we met -- they stayed in a hotel and I -- one visit to them at the hotel -- I brought a-a canister that held a parachute, silk parachute, and silk was rationed. It was in short supply. So, my grandmother 01:01:00said she'd make a shirt for me out of the parachute. So, it's in this canister that's about four inches in diameter and maybe two feet long in a hotel room. I said, "Grandma, don't take it out. You'll never get it back in." Well, she did take it out. She wanted to see what the material was. Liberty is what they call when they will let us off on the ship. And our ship, all of the four ships, ours was one that was undamaged. And as a result, they called us the Lucky Lady. And this was our-our what's it called? Symbol of our ship. 1946. I got out June 6th, 1946, and I went to college in Nebraska. I was from a native of Illinois, 01:02:00but at that time so many people were getting out of service that the schools were all filled up. So, one of the few schools I could get in was in Nebraska. And the big reason I went out there, I had a girlfriend, and she went to school that was 24 miles away. So, I went to Midland College and stayed there for four years. The government paid for our tuition $700 a year tuition.

RIEWESTAHL: It's not like that anymore.

HILL: And while I was there -- while I was in college, I worked there. I worked as an electrician for a while too. So, I was actually there five years, and I was in the Naval Reserve. So, I actually have two discharge certificates. And we got a letter here -- congratulation letter here from the secretary of the Navy -- personal letter. And I -- in the scrapbook, I've got one of my dad's dog tags from World War One showing his thumbprint 01:03:00and imprinted on the backside of it, they must have used acid to etch the metal. Then Harry-Harry Truman signed a letter to every one of us that served in the military. And while I was in college, I was eligible to go to Reserve Officer Candidate School and to become an officer. And when we signed up, there was no commitment. And anyway, a couple of weeks before we were to graduate from the officer school and become officers, they told us something like, April Fool, you have to sign up for seven years, I think four years of active duty and three years inactive duty. And as a result of that, I didn't want to do that. So, 01:04:00I didn't sign up. And I got a nasty letter back saying that they were sorry to hear I decided that. In all of the places that we serve -- that anybody serve in the service -- there's -- there's a -- there's a ribbon for it. And frequently there's a medal that goes with that ribbon. All ribbons did not have medals. And the one from the Philippines where we liberated the Philippines. They issued a ribbon that we were entitled to it because we helped liberate their country, but they did not offer a medal with it. Oh, I know something I should have mentioned too. This is an article of a newspaper in Maywood, Illinois. Maywood, Maywood, Illinois is famous for the Baton March. They had a tank 01:05:00corps in Maywood that was in the town when they were captured by the Japanese. And they ran this death march where they marched them till, they died and so most of them died. A few survived. But anyway, there's this local newspaper wrote about that, but they also wrote to Jefferson Electric -- I worked at -- while I was in high school, I worked at Jefferson Electric Company, which made transformers for Lionel trains and transformers for fluorescent lights. And they relate -- they relax the age group for working in factories during the war. So, anyone, male or female or any age can work in a factory, and they had a secret department. And that secret department made something. They didn't know what they were making. None of us in the factory knew what they were making, but it turns out what they were 01:06:00manufacturing was the detonation devices for the two atomic bombs. And of course, later on -- a year later, I was there where one of the detonation devices was actually used as a coincidence. So probably no one else [inaudible]. Then that's just a second certificate, my grandmother. That's about it.

RIEWESTAHL: Thank you so much. I didn't even notice that your middle name is from your dad, too. Isn't it?

HILL: Yeah. Archibald -- Llewellyn Archibald Hill. When I tell people my middle name has four L's, nobody can guess what it is.

RIEWESTAHL: Yeah, that's a good one [both laugh]. [Interview Ends]