Pittsburgh Remembers World War II

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Pittsburgh Remembers World War II Page 3

by Dr. Joseph Rishel


  After the war ended, DeDe eventually went to work at U.S. Steel as a secretary. Even into the early 1950s, the effects of the war were still being felt. She recalls a room in the basement of a downtown building, possibly the Union Trust Building, where an enormous map was located. The purpose of this map and room was to plot overhead aircraft—any aircraft. When a “suspicious” plane was spotted, DeDe recalls that all of the civilian personnel had to leave the room immediately. Clearly, though the war was over, the world had changed.

  Recalling what it was like to live in Pittsburgh during the war, DeDe says, “We didn’t become immune or apathetic because we weren’t bombarded hourly by the horrors really existing. We on the homefront played the waiting game and, at the war’s end, experienced the wonderful anticipation of recovery from the loneliness created by the war years, and joyous reunions with those who witnessed much that we could not be part of ever. That would always remain a road untraveled.”

  Today, DeDe Anderson is a woman who has lived a life no less rich and full than the one she lived during the war years. The “hats” she has worn are varied: wife, mother, writer, model, secretary, animal rescue worker—you name it, DeDe has tried it. The legacy of service to others, passed down by her parents and perfected during the war years, is one she has passed on to her own child and grandchildren, as well as her nieces. When asked about the spirit of those on the homefront during the war, DeDe says that each man and woman gave of himself or herself “anywhere, anytime—however they could serve.” Her life has been a model of this motto, and in her recollections of the war years, its foundation can clearly be seen.

  IT WAS A TERRIBLE BUT ROMANTIC THING

  Richard Charles Martin,

  As told to Jo Ellen Aleshire

  Richard Charles Martin was a young man who did not consider himself anything but ordinary. Countless others of his generation felt the same way. But most of them, in an extraordinary way, gave what was needed at the time and then, almost casually, went on to raise a family and lead a life of merit, with faith, values and hopes intact.

  Richard Charles “Dick” Martin was born on December 4, 1927, and much to his chagrin, was almost too young to actively participate in World War II. As a young man still in high school during most of the war, he “wanted to fly but I lived too late. You had the urgency that ‘I have to go.’ We really didn’t know what we were getting into. But that urgency was out there. It was very all encompassing, this war atmosphere. Then when you started to see so many men in uniform, it was almost overwhelming. You knew we were at war.” The war changed “boring, lazy summer days” into days where he says everything seemed to “become accelerated” and “the fighting and the war effort overtook everyone’s lives.” Although he vividly remembers the heaviness, the dark days and tragedies of the war, he was also enamored by the total war effort, both at home and abroad, and was young enough to entertain the romance of it.

  Dick, along with his younger sister, Nancy, lived with their banker father, Charles Martin, and homemaker mother, Pauline Zeigler Martin, in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, about five miles down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh. In Ambridge, the majority of families were staunch Democrats and ethnic blue-collar steelworkers. Dick’s parents, however, were part of an old dyed-in-the-wool Republican family who, with a German ancestry, were now third-generation Americans. Ancestors on his mother’s side had fought in the Civil War. The Depression had not changed their way of life significantly because the bank where his father was an officer continued to thrive and “we were not a big family. We were fairly privileged in a lot of ways.” As supporters of Wendell Willkie and Thomas Dewey, they were initially alarmed when President Roosevelt chose to run for unprecedented third and fourth terms. They were, however, very patriotic and had an interventionist stance concerning the war. To this day, Dick, as his parents had done, has always proudly flown the American flag outside his home in South Park, Pennsylvania, making sure to treat it with the proper respect he learned from them, with the respect he derived from growing up during the Depression era that produced hardworking, principled people and with the respect for his country that was created by his coming of age during World War II.

  Dick and his family were in their car driving to visit his aunt in Steubenville, Ohio, when they heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on the car radio. “There are certain events in your life you remember. It was a black day.” Not knowing specifically where Pearl Harbor was, throughout the rest of the war Dick relied on his globe and “learned a lot of geography of places you never heard of…Yugoslavia with Tito and all…Anzio beach…[Monte] Casino where the big monastery was being bombed…the rescue operation at Dunkirk. On D-Day I can remember my mother coming up and waking me up and saying they had invaded Europe.” The radio provided Dick with daily contact about the war: FDR’s “Day of Infamy” speech and other fireside chats conjured up for Dick the image of FDR as “such a big man, even though he was crippled. He was just such a presence.” Other memories include heroic Winston Churchill’s “rallying cry” to the steadfast, besieged British people and the smoky voice of Edward R. Murrow broadcasting from London with “bombing going on all around” and reporting about blitzkriegs, blackouts, gas masks and subway tunnels.

  Newspapers were both “propaganda and patriotic” in their coverage. They presented daily accounts of the action in Europe and the Pacific and of atrocities committed by the enemy. Movietone newsreels were another source of news for Dick. Vivid footage of actual battles and events was shown prior to viewing patriotic war movies. Dick reminisces about some favorites, such as Greer Garson’s Mrs. Miniver, Robert Taylor’s Back to Bataan, Randolph Scott’s Gung Ho and the John Wayne movies that flooded the screens. Dick also enjoyed the big musicals that provided a respite from the war. Three actors that Dick recalls who added to the patriotic fervor were Jimmy Stewart, who enlisted, flew countless missions and eventually became a colonel; Clark Gable, who enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps; and Tyrone Power. Dick was told by a college roommate, who had served as a USMC pilot with Power, that off-screen he was not well liked and was “quite egotistical.” Dick particularly remembers one of the first patriotic songs written about the war, “Remember Pearl Harbor,” and remarked that the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, a Hearst newspaper, published the words on the front page for years on the anniversary of the attack.

  In 1942, the U.S. Steel Homestead Works entrance was enhanced with flags flying like the halyard of a ship. Note the Navy E Award flag. The Homestead Works produced eighty-two million tons of 160-inch steel plate for the navy. William J. Gaughan Collection, University of Pittsburgh.

  Dick’s mother thought that he, like all members of the younger generation, was being rebellious in listening to “big band” music. It was a far cry from her fondness for the old Victrola recordings of opera tenor Enrico Caruso. Glenn Miller’s band, Dick’s favorite, could be heard on the radio every Saturday night, and he felt a great loss and sadness when Miller’s plane was shot down during the war while he was traveling to entertain the troops.

  Dick’s father was an air raid warden in the “800 block, Maplewood Street.” When the local fire station alarm sounded a warning, he would don his white hat and police the area, checking that blinds had been pulled and that all lights were out. Each air raid warden was given an identification poster with enemy planes and battleships silhouetted in black. As a young man, Dick took great pride in learning all about Messerschmidts, Heinkels, Junkers, P-40s and P-51s from those silhouettes. He bought war bonds, one $0.25 stamp at a time, until completing an $18.75 savings “book,” convertible to a war bond that would then reach $25.00 upon maturity.

  He and his father were active in the Boy Scouts, and his troop collected wire hangers, tin, paper, anything to help the war effort. Awful-tasting oleomargarine that was mixed with a yellow coloring instead of real butter and using red and blue tokens to buy rationed meat and sugar are distinct memories also. There were no new rubber tires for civilians, and gas was
rationed, so Dick’s family would travel by train instead of car on Saturdays from Ambridge to Pittsburgh. On those trips into the city Dick saw “uniforms everywhere.” There was “so much prosperity during the war” because of all the war production factories and manufacturing jobs, including those popularized by Rosie the Riveter. The streets were “swarming with people on Saturday nights going to Murphy’s [five and ten cent store] and all different places,” but no one could forget the reality of the war. “Everywhere there were signs of a call to patriotism and the need to fight the enemy.” The ethos of the homefront was one of unity for the war effort, sacrifice and doing the right thing, juxtaposed against a sense of an awakening and exhilaration after years of the Depression.

  Promotional displays for the sale of war bonds sometimes included attention-getting devices such as these inflatables shown here in Pittsburgh’s Strip District. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

  Industrial districts frequently featured billboards exhorting the workers not to miss a day on the job. This one at the U.S. Steel Homestead Works, April 1943, was locally produced by Pittsburgh’s Cy Hungerford. William J. Gaughan Collection, University of Pittsburgh.

  Dick’s high school gym class was reconstructed to resemble a military training obstacle course with vigorous calisthenics. Returning students would come back in their uniforms and show off their physical prowess. Dick was especially in awe of a paratrooper who did one-arm pushups. For his high school senior prom, Dick bartered to obtain a B gas rationing card instead of his father’s lower-ranking A card, which allowed him only three to four gallons, so that he would have enough gas to take his date to the prom. The B card entitled the holder up to eight gallons per week. There were other categories: C for those deemed essential to the war effort, H for agricultural use, T for truckers and X providing an unlimited supply of gasoline for essential personnel such as civil defense workers and the clergy. His girlfriends (but not his mother) painted lines up the back of their legs to simulate the seams on the silk stockings they could no longer buy.

  The steel mills near Dick’s home—Jones & Laughlin, Wyckoff Steel and A.M. Byers—provided another form of entertainment for young people who watched the lights emanating from their Bessemer converters. “Well, we loved to go up there at night and it was just throwing this big glow all over the neighborhood up there.” Steel, iron and glass production in Pittsburgh had always been a booming business. But the lend-lease policy of “trips over the ocean up to Murmansk up in Russia…we were feeding Russia and giving supplies” and the United States entry into the war caused Pittsburgh’s war production to grow dramatically. Steel mills and manufacturing companies were revamped to meet the high demand of war supplies and machinery. On one occasion, Dick recalled that the famous boxer Barney Ross, while conducting “PR for the marines” in Pittsburgh, presented Spang Chalfant Pipe Mill with a government “E” award and flag to display for its outstanding war production of cannon shells.

  Playing in the high school band provided Dick with some of his most engaging and vivid memories. His band often played for the christening and launching of new landing ship tanks (LSTs), which were amphibious ships that carried vehicles, tanks and troops to beachhead landings, including the D-Day invasion. In his own town of Ambridge, the American Bridge Company transformed a whole section of its former bridge and barge-building area down near the Ohio River and built a shipyard “by hauling dirt out of the hillside of the little town of Fair Oaks.” His band played for celebratory launchings on Neville Island where the Dravo Corporation manufactured LSTs and “a little patrol boat that was called a DE [destroyer escort] and looked like a junior destroyer.”

  Pittsburgh companies worked hard to achieve the coveted Army-Navy E Award given by the military for meeting production quotas. The pennants, bestowed with great fanfare, were flown with the American flag and encouraged wartime enthusiasm to produce still more. Senator John Heinz History Center.

  Immediately upon graduation from Ambridge High School at the age of seventeen, Dick’s determination finally persuaded his parents to “sign” for him, granting their permission for his enlistment, since he was under the legal age of eighteen. He knew that the war was winding down, and if he were to participate, he could not wait until his eighteenth birthday in December 1945 to enlist. Early in the war Dick dreamed of being a pilot, but now he realized “you couldn’t get into the air force to become a pilot; they didn’t need you anymore.” His attempt to enlist in the coast guard was thwarted by a temporary liver disorder, and he was physically disqualified. With excitement and genuine patriotism, Dick enlisted in the navy in July 1945. V-E Day had already occurred, and Dick remembers the “whooping it up” on the streets and everyone hugging everyone else in celebration of victory in Europe. However, there was still the Pacific Theater to be won and the possibility of an invasion of Japan, so enlistment continued. The old Pittsburgh Post Office on Smithfield Street was where all draftees and enlistees stripped down for their physicals. Dick passed this time, although he laughs recalling how the doctor never could get his knees to react to his continued tapping.

  A large crowd assembled for the launching of the USS Jenks, the first of twenty-eight destroyer escorts built by the Dravo Corporation on Neville Island, September 11, l943. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

  The old post office on Smithfield Street, dating to 1891, was pressed into service as the principal recruiting, induction and physical examination center for tens of thousands of Pittsburgh inductees. Senator John Heinz History Center.

  While waiting for the call up to serve, he applied to Penn State in case he was not called, and he worked part time at the Ambridge Auto Parts Shop. Finally in October the call came. It was after the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and following V-J Day. The war was essentially over. Dick had agreed with Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb. “We were told that over a million soldiers and civilians would have died if we had invaded, so I had no qualms in what he [Truman] did. It didn’t sound nice and you couldn’t help but feel that it was a terrible thing. But you still had that presence of that generation that it was necessary. Everybody hated the Japanese. That’s war and the mindset of that time. That was the enemy.” If the bombs had not been dropped, Dick, doubtless, would have been part of the invasion of Japan. Meanwhile, soldiers were still needed for the restructuring and occupation of Germany and Japan and for all types of service units. Dick strongly acknowledges that the “fellows on the front lines were serviced by so many people.” Even though his time in the navy was postwar service, he knew it was necessary to the total war effort.

  Just as it had served as a point of debarkation for Pittsburgh’s World War I military, the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station on the Monongahela was a point of departure in World War II. Senator John Heinz History Center.

  Leaving for boot camp from the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station along the downtown bank of the Monongahela River, Dick was sent to Camp Peary near Williamsburg, Virginia, in October 1945.

  He was assigned to Company 748, B-1, and became a navy amphibious seaman. The base and barracks were the condemned remnants of a former Seabees training camp. Dick calls the barracks “tar paper shacks” because of the half-destroyed potbellied stoves, inadequate doors and whistling wind through the huge cracks in the walls that could only be muffled by placing mattresses all around. The rickety bunks were of concern to 130-pound Dick, as his top bunkmate weighed over 200 pounds. The unit underwent the navy’s complete ten weeks of training, including riflery, rowing exercises on the shallow James River (which to Dick seemed somewhat superfluous) and marching, marching, marching. He was thrilled to be in the navy but at times could not help thinking that the training was “sort of a postwar afterthought.” German POWs were secretly kept at Camp Peary, and although Dick did not converse with them due to language barriers, they acted as pastry chefs. “No matter how bad the main meal was, once we got the cake, everything was wonderful.” His Christmas Day 19
45 was spent scrubbing and then “kayaking” wood on wood to create a shine on the library floor.

  After basic training, half of his unit was dispatched from the OGU (outgoing unit) to Japan, while Dick, now seaman first class, was sent to Astoria, Oregon, which was a little fishing village on the Columbia River about 150 miles north of the Portland shipyards. He was commissioned to a LSM 116 (landing ship, medium), which had returned from the invasion of Okinawa. The LSM was designed as a more compact and maneuverable ship than the larger LST.

  Dick’s primary job in the navy during his ten months of service (October 1945 through August 1946) was to participate in one of those invaluable service units. While not receiving any of the glory of being involved in heroic action, his service was a necessary part of implementing the “deconstruction” of the war. His unit was responsible for mothballing the landing craft fleet. Mothballing involved cleaning the bilges and dehumidifying the compartments. Guns were wrapped in waterproof paper. The entire ship was cleaned and then it was towed down to Portland’s shipyards, where the hulls were sprayed with red clay for a protective covering. The work “was kind of interesting, but you wondered what you were doing when you found out that eventually they all disappeared.” After being on the deck crew for a while, Dick was named a temporary yeoman and wrote up discharge papers for returning LSM sailors from the Pacific who shared their tales of the fighting. Dick speaks fondly of a gentleman who befriended some of the men in their unit and fed them good home-cooked meals. They whiled away their free time playing basketball, using a basket positioned on the side of the tank storage area of his LSM. “Someone had to get the rowboat out and row down the river to recover the basketball when it went overboard.”

 

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