My Remarkable Journey

by Katherine Johnson

  I loved having Mamà in Morgantown with me that summer. We had such a merry time. It felt like the old days, when I returned home from school in Institute, and she was there, often at the stove preparing a hot meal or at the sewing machine, making something lovely. She and I had never before spent this kind of time together, just the two of us, and I grew to appreciate her even more. Even though there was no trouble on campus, it was such a comfort to return home every evening to my mother.

  Still, I missed my Jimmie. By the end of summer, I had grown weary of hiding our marriage and spending time together only occasionally. Both of us were ready to live together as husband and wife. Also, Jimmie and I realized that soon we would no longer be able to hide our other beautiful secret: we were going to be parents. Jimmie and I were beyond excited. So was Mamà, in whom I’d confided when I first began missing my monthly cycle.

  I knew instinctively that it would be too much to try to juggle becoming a first-time mother with the pressures of being the first Negro graduate student at West Virginia University, so I would not return to the university in the fall. It wasn’t a difficult choice for me. The toughest part would be facing the disappointment in the eyes of those who had such high hopes for a different outcome—Daddy, Mr. Evans, Dr. Davis. But all I felt was overwhelming love. Love for Jimmie. Love for our growing baby. Love for the life that we were choosing together.

  My heart had told me already what time it was.

  Chapter 4

  The Blessing of Help

  Life changed dramatically for me in late summer 1940. I moved back to Marion and finally was able to live with my husband. We moved in with Jimmie’s parents for a while and then rented a couple of rooms in the home of another family. We were excited about becoming first-time parents, and everyone seemed happy for us, even Daddy. Whatever concerns he had about my marrying Jimmie seemed like the distant past. We were all family now, eager to welcome a new little one.

  As my small body began to show the pregnancy, family members said I was carrying the baby high, which meant we would have a girl. Sure enough, at 11:40 p.m. on December 27, 1940, I gave birth to a beautiful, seven-pound girl. She was bald, pinkish, and perfect in every way. As planned, I delivered her at Jimmie’s parents’ house with the assistance of a midwife. Though about half of all women had begun delivering babies in hospitals by then, the use of midwives was still common in rural areas and small towns. Jimmie and I had decided already that if we had a girl, we would name her Joylette, after Mamà. It was the perfect way to honor my mother, who always worked quietly in the background to make sure all of her children’s lives flowed smoothly. If one of us needed her, she dropped everything to help, like she’d done when she moved with me to Morgantown to make sure I had the support I needed at home while making history at West Virginia University.

  I delved into being a full-time mother and spent my days cooking, cleaning, sewing, and doting on my husband and daughter. Joylette was the embodiment of her name, joy. She rarely cried or wanted to be carried, and she sprang up on her little legs as soon as they were strong enough for her to walk and explore. But while I was enjoying the tranquility of domestic life in the weeks before Christmas in 1941, the Second World War was blasting onto American shores.

  Just before 8:00 a.m. on December 7, 1941, the Japanese military stunned the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii with a surprise attack. Torpedo bombers and other military planes swooped down from the skies, dropping massive explosives, spraying the battleships docked there with bullets, instantly turning a peaceful morning into a two-hour nightmare. Our huge battleships toppled like toys, sinking into the harbor with thousands of trapped sailors. Before the skies were quiet again, 2,403 Americans were dead, and over 1,000 more were injured. All nine battleships and hundreds of planes and naval vessels there were destroyed or significantly damaged. The largest and once most fearsome battleship, USS Arizona, still rests on the shallow floor of Pearl Harbor with the entombed remains of about 900 soldiers.

  My family, like most others in the country, heard about the attack the next day on the radio, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s address to a joint session of Congress was broadcast nationally. He called the day of the attack “a date which will live in infamy.” His administration had been in peace talks with Japan, President Roosevelt said. But he offered this assurance: “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”

  President Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war against Japan, and within minutes it was done. Germany and Italy, Japan’s allies, then declared war on the United States. Our country was officially at war against these so-called Axis nations. We had joined the Allied forces—primarily Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—in this new global conflict.

  While the Pearl Harbor attack shocked us all, many Americans had been feeling impending doom since September 1939, when German dictator Adolf Hitler invaded Poland as part of his diabolical plan for domination of Europe. He also planned to exterminate the Jews, whom he believed to be inferior. As a matter of fact, Hitler had long been preaching that people of northern European descent were part of a superior Aryan race, and his ultimate goal was to wipe out all others. So this imminent war would be a war against Hitler’s brand of white supremacy. After the invasion of Poland, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany, igniting World War II.

  It seemed inevitable that the United States would be drawn into war to assist Great Britain in June 1940, when the Germans overtook France. Those suspicions grew stronger the following September, when the United States implemented another mandatory draft, requiring all men ages twenty-one to forty-five to register for possible military service. It was the country’s first ever peacetime draft, and young men began leaving their lives and families behind in droves as their numbers were drawn in a national lottery. All of Jimmie’s brothers answered the call. My two brothers, Horace and Charlie, did, too. Horace was deployed overseas. When military officers discovered Charlie’s intelligence and writing abilities, he was stationed at Fort Eustis in Newport News, Virginia, as a secretary to one of the military commanders. Jimmie fell into the age group for the draft, but he didn’t pass the mandatory physical. He had begun suffering from persistent headaches, but none of us thought the condition was too serious at the time. I was just grateful that my husband didn’t have to leave me for the military just months before Joylette was born.

  The United States initially remained neutral, a position that most Americans supported, until Pearl Harbor.

  After the bombing, I was surprised when my hometown, White Sulphur Springs, became part of a national controversy. More than a thousand diplomats and family members from Germany, Italy, and Japan were living in and around the nation’s capital when the United States entered the war. To cut off communications between these emissaries and their home countries, President Roosevelt had them all rounded up and detained at the Greenbrier and other isolated mountain resorts. The Germans and Italians were sent to the Greenbrier, while the Japanese were dispatched to the Homestead, in Hot Springs, Virginia. They had full use of the luxurious facilities, and the Greenbrier’s general manager instructed his staff, which included Daddy, to treat these detainees with the same courtesy and respect as any other guests and to provide the same high level of service. That meant these well-heeled detainees would get to swim, shop, play tennis, dine on the finest foods, and have servants at their beck and call. The Roosevelt administration reasoned that by treating the enemy countries’ representatives well, American diplomats who were trapped overseas would be treated with the same dignity. But when word got out that diplomats from the Axis nations were being held in such luxury, many Americans were outraged. One railroad executive from New York expressed what many fellow citizens were feeling when he asked in a letter to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, “Why coddle German and Jap prisoners who are all bitter enemies of our country, and
who would ruin us if they had half a chance?”

  White Sulphur Springs mayor William Perry, who also worked as purchasing agent at the Greenbrier, tried to appeal to residents’ patriotism when pushed to address their concerns at a town meeting: “We, and I speak for every person in our town, are happy to have this privilege of doing our part during the war crisis. Our whole tradition here in White Sulphur Springs is one of patriotism and support of our government.”

  But the people could not be persuaded. Newspapers across the county, including the Charleston Gazette, opined against the arrangement. When the Japanese diplomats were later added to the Greenbrier detainees the following spring, the town council passed a resolution announcing that it “doth hereby protest most vigorously to the Japanese Enemy Aliens being interned in or near said Town.” Negotiations for the exchange of the diplomats lasted until the summer of 1942, when the detainees finally were returned to their home countries. Time ultimately revealed that President Roosevelt’s hope for reciprocity on the treatment of American detainees oversees was not realized. News accounts revealed that many of them were treated more like prisoners of war than royal guests.

  As the war dragged on, Jimmie and I prayed that God would keep our brothers safe, and we did our best to maintain our lives as normal as possible. Jimmie had bought a car, which was a big deal because only a couple of other colored families in town owned a car. Thanks to my brothers, I knew how to drive it, too, which also was a novelty and the subject of much fascination. Jimmie and I drove to White Sulphur Springs as often as possible to visit Daddy and Mamà. During one of those visits, we met a nice couple who had moved into a rented house across the street from my parents in the summer of 1942. As it turned out, it was Dorothy Vaughan and her husband, Howard, who worked at the Greenbrier as a bellman with Daddy. Dorothy, who was about eight years older than I, had grown up in West Virginia and often walked across the street to swap stories with Mamà. The couple’s young daughter also enjoyed sitting on Mamà’s lap on the porch, while Mamà read to her. But the family moved away after a short while. A decade later, I would meet Dorothy again, and our lives would become intertwined forever.

  For the moment, though, I loved being a full-time mother. On April 27, 1943, Jimmie and I welcomed our second baby girl to the family. She was born at my parents’ house in White Sulphur Springs, with a midwife and Mamà taking care of me. We named her Constance in honor of my best friend, Dit. Our little Connie just expanded our capacity to love. At three years old, Joylette took her role as big sister to heart. She would go outside and invite anyone who passed the house to come inside and see her baby. Then, to our surprise, before Connie was even one year old, my husband and I learned that our family would be growing again. Jimmie, who grew up in a large family, couldn’t have been happier. Daughter number three was born at my parents’ home, too, on April 17, 1944, ten days before Connie’s first birthday. We decided to name her Katherine, after me, but we called her Kathy. With three growing girls, my life was full. More than ever before, I appreciated the help from both of our families, especially when I had to return to work sooner than expected.

  Jimmie had been teaching chemistry at the Carnegie school and was planning to return in the fall of 1944, but he became seriously ill during the preceding summer. He was diagnosed with a condition called undulant fever, an infectious disease believed to have been caused by drinking unpasteurized milk. There had been an outbreak of the disease in Smyth County that summer, with as many as eight cases. For weeks, Jimmie suffered mightily. He couldn’t eat much, his fever spiked, and he experienced serious sweats and body pain. When it became obvious that Jimmie would not be well enough to return to school, the principal asked me to fill in for my husband. Jimmie’s salary had provided for our family, so I took the job. I became a working mother, juggling the demanding responsibilities of motherhood with those of work—an exhausting balance I would have to figure out for many years to come.

  With so much going on in my life, it would have been easy to forget that war was raging on other sides of the world. But our brothers were there, and the absence of so many men from communities across the country left many Americans feeling unsettled. More women than ever had given up domestic life to fill jobs that had been left vacant by their husbands, sons, and brothers who were off at war. Pearl Harbor had snatched the security we’d once felt, knowing that our country had never been attacked by a foreign government on our own soil. We wondered: Could it happen again? Where? How many of our loved ones would have to die before it all ended? And Negro newspapers began raising another question: How could the United States justify fighting Hitler’s racism abroad while denying equal citizenship to Negroes at home?

  For the longest time, it seemed that the end of the war was nowhere in sight. Despite the devastation at Pearl Harbor, the United States had managed to bounce back. And then came D-Day. On June 6, 1944, about 156,000 British, Canadian, and American soldiers, under the command of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, stormed onto the beaches of Normandy in France in the largest amphibious assault in history. It marked the beginning of the end for our enemies in Europe. By late August, all of northern France had been liberated from the Germans. By the following spring, Germany itself was overtaken. The Allied forces had fought their way through Europe, unraveling Hitler’s evil scheme. But the depth of the horror came into focus as the Allied forces discovered mass graves, crematoriums, and piles of dead bodies and ashes of people imprisoned in concentration camps. More than six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. At least a half-million other non-Jews also were executed (some accounts say as many as five million), including gay men, people with mental and physical disabilities, Roma gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholic priests, Christian pastors, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and members of political opposition groups. The Allied forces liberated thousands of Jewish and other prisoners from the camps, where they had been left to die. As if he could hear the giant footsteps of the Allied forces coming for him, Hitler hunkered down in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, swallowed a cyanide pill, and killed himself with a bullet to the head. Eight days later, Germany officially surrendered.

  The fighting between the United States and Japan persisted in the Pacific for a few more months. By then, Harry S. Truman had become the next US president, and his administration ultimately would force the surrender of Japan by using a powerful new weapon in its arsenal: the atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Five square miles of the city were leveled instantly, and an estimated eighty thousand people were killed. When Japan still did not surrender, the United States meted out more punishment three days later, dropping a second atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Another forty thousand people were killed on impact. Tens of thousands more people would die later from radiation exposure, including some of our own troops. My family would experience this firsthand in the years to come.

  Japan finally announced its surrender on August 15, 1945, ending the deadliest war in history. Since then, that date has been recognized as V-J (Victory over Japan) Day. Even today, the estimated number of people who died worldwide during World War II varies widely, but the National World War II Museum puts that figure at sixty million military personnel and civilians.

  The end of the war brought our brothers home, and life seemed a bit safer. Jimmie recovered from the fever, and after that final school year in Marion, he and I moved with the girls back to White Sulphur Springs. Jimmie got a new job teaching high school sciences and coaching football and basketball at the Tazewell County School in Bluefield, Virginia, about eighty miles south of White Sulphur Springs. Because our daughters were so young, he and I decided it would be best for the girls and me to stay close to my parents in a familiar community. That meant Jimmie would have to commute to work, but he was young, vibrant, and willing to do what was best for our family. We rented a house on Church Street, just a few doors down from my parents, and I en
joyed being back in the community where I grew up. Mamà often gave me a break from cooking, and the girls and I joined her and Daddy for breakfast—grits, eggs, fatback (like a thick piece of bacon), and the best biscuits in the world. Sometimes we had dinner and snacks there, too especially when Mamà cooked her delicious applesauce, the girls’ favorite. As they grew older, the girls played outside in the yard, and I never had to worry about their safety. Our neighbors on Church Street were like extended family, and somebody’s eyes were always watching. At church they’d go from lap to lap, with all of the ladies making such a fuss over my pretty girls. Of course, Mamà and I made all of their clothes.

  By 1949 Jimmie was tired of driving so much back and forth, and I worried about him traveling through the mountains on those dangerous, two-lane roads, full of hairpin curves and no shoulders. The sides of the roadways dropped off into deep drainage ditches. Conditions along US Route 60, between Virginia and West Virginia, were especially treacherous during the winter, when drivers had to contend with snow and ice. Once, when the girls and I were riding with Jimmie through the mountains during a snowstorm, the bus in front of us suddenly slid off the highway and dropped into a side ditch. The next thing I knew, our car was sliding off the icy road, too. The girls and I screamed, and seconds later our car landed in the ditch, behind the bus. None of us was injured, thank God. We calmed ourselves, climbed out of the car, and walked over to the bus. The bus driver and passengers all were fine, too. Jimmie and I even left the girls on the bus with a kind passenger as the two of us climbed up the side of the highway and walked a short distance back to a mom-and-pop service station to get some help.