Interview with Sonja Gullbrand and Marge Dahlquist
Interviewed by Inez Russo
The Gullbrand Home in Quinsigamond Village, Worcester, MA
December 4, 2002

Inez Russo (IR): The first thing I wanted to ask the both of you is what’s the first thing you think of when you think of World War II?

Sonja Gullbrand (SG): Rationing.Pearl Harbor is probably the first thing, because I remember the Sunday afternoon we were attacked, and of course, my parents were all upset about that. But, and I was ten years old and I didn’t really realize the effect of what war would mean. But I do remember there was a lot of rationing. We had blackouts. The siren down the mill would go on, and when it went on we would have to pull down all our shades and put all our lights out.

IR: How often did they have the blackouts, do you remember?

SG: I don’t remember. I don’t know if it was once a week or if it was-

Marge Dahlquist (MD): No it wasn’t that often.

SG: It wasn’t that office maybe.

MD: No and we never knew if it was real or not.

IR: Until afterwards?

SG: It was like a fire drill would be at school, only it was a air raid drill.

IR: I see.

MD: We were supposed to go down to the cellar.

SG: I don’t know if we did that.

IR: So you were ten years old when the war broke out?

SG: Yeah.

IR: So you were still in school.

SG: Yeah.

IR: Did they do anything in the schools to help you cope with the war?

SG: Well that’s what I was trying to think about but- I think maybe they just shielded the kids. We didn’t talk about the war very much. At least I don’t remember that we did.

IR: Did you talk about it at home? Was that the dinner conversation?

MD: Well you did when you had somebody in the service, like we had my brother in the service you know. And I can remember he used to come home, and we never knew when he was coming, and then we was going to go back, of course, we all had to go up to the a-

SG: Train station?

MD: Train station.

SG: Oh yeah.

MD: And see him off you know. And my mother of course, she would never know if he was going to come back again you know, over to Ireland. And so we would never hear again until he came back again.

IR: Did you keep in touch with letters?

MD: We did have some.

SG: He must have written you.

MD: But not too much-

SG: No?

MD: - because you see he was on ship, and that mail would never get to us until he got over into Ireland, and by the time he got back again- maybe the mail came back on the same boat- I don’t know, but anyway. But we were very happy when he got into New York.

SG: Oh I remember- when you say mail. I wrote to Stanley Peterson when he was in the service. Now this was a fellow that was married to my cousin, and he was in the Air Force, and he flew the planes, so I used to write to him. And I also used to write to Harriet and Herbie, cause they were in the service. She was in the WAVES, and he was in- I don’t know what branch of service he was in, but I used to write letters to them, you know. So when you say mail I remember that. And of course as I said, the rationing, we used to have to stand in line to get butter and we got little stamps for sugar, coffee. You’ve probably heard that from the other people, you know?

IR: Marge showed me the actual stamps she had-an old ration book.

MD: Did she have some left?

IR: Yeah.

MD: I think have some too. Red Stamps. Different kinds. I think I saved some too.

SG: Did ya?

IR: And how they changed every week, you know, what you could get for certain stamps.

SG: I know my father, he was from Sweden, and when he drank his coffee he would put a sugar lump and then drink it like this, and he couldn’t get sugar lumps during the war. So my mother would have to take her rationings and make sugar lumps for him.

MD: Her mother was a diabetic, so she-

SG: She didn’t need the sugar, see so she could use hers and make the sugar lumps. She’d put ‘em in a square pan like this and I guess put water with them, and then they’d harden, then you had sugar lumps. And of course sometimes, if they had extra sugar, they’d swap it with somebody else for a coffee ration ‘cause they like coffee you know.

IR: Was there a lot of the swapping, if there was something you didn’t need you would switch it with someone else and they would give you what they didn’t need?

MD: I don’t know.

SG: My dad used to do that I know for the men-

MD: Down the mill.

SG: Down the mill you know.

IR: Where did your dad work?

SG: Down the American Steel and Wire.

IR: Ok, and what did he do?

SG: He worked on a furnace.

IR: Had he been working there prior to the war?

SG: Oh yes, yeah, he came over from Sweden when he was nineteen years old, and he worked down there well, until he died, well, until he retired.

IR: Do you remember were a lot of people hired once the war broke out to increase production?

SG: Oh, so many men went in the service that the women had to work. Did anybody mention to you Rosie the Riveter?!

IR: Yes!

SG: Because the women went to work in their place, you know.

IR: Now you (to Marge) were working during that time, right?

MD: I was working in City Hall. I worked in City Hall.

IR: Ok, and what were you doing there?

MD: I was a clerk in the Treasurer’s Office, so we took in taxes.

IR: Oh, I see. And then you went to work for Norton, right?

MD: I worked in Norton Company first. Right after I graduated from high school I went to Norton Company. I worked there for a year. Then I was laid off, because, hard times, and then I got into City Hall and worked there for ten years.

IR: So you worked throughout the span of the war at City Hall.

MD: Yeah.

IR: Now one of the things I wanted to find out was what were your impressions of the President during the war?

SG: Oh, we liked Roosevelt.

MD: I mean, Social Security?!

SG: Yeah, yeah, ‘course he was President for four terms.

MD: It was on account of him that they cut it to two terms.

SG: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, they did.

IR: But generally people supported the President?

MD: Oh yeah.

SG: Oh yes, definitely.

IR: And what was your impression of the enemy? Of the Japanese and the Germans?

MD: Oh, we didn’t like ‘em. The Japanese, we thought they were terrible to do a thing like that.

SG: Oh you know, they’re the ones that attacked us at Pearl Harbor.

MD: Yeah, that’s what I mean.

SG: Well of course, I think what happened to the Japanese people that were innocent, you know they put them in camps or whatever it was, I don’t think that was right, but what could they do? They were our-well they were our enemy, but yet the weren’t- some of them were citizens. It wasn’t fair.

IR: Do you remember any propaganda the government put out sort of rallying the people against the enemy?

MD: No.

SG: Not so much.

MD: I can’t say that there was any, ah, like they have now, they get up and protest.

SG: No I don’t remember that like during the Vietnam War or anything like that there was protest. I think the country was pretty united you know, behind the President and the cause of the war.

IR: From a lot of the people that I’ve talked to, it seems that, um, you had a more, not a hatred, but a dislike for the Japanese than for the Germans. Did you find that? Was that true for you? Or did you have equal disdain for both?

SG: Germany didn’t come into the war- We didn’t go to war with Germany right away did we?

MD: Well that was before Japan.

SG: No, Japan was first. They attacked us in ’41.

MD: Pearl Harbor.

SG: But I don’t remember if we declared war on Germany or not right away.

IR: Soon after.

SG: Soon after I guess, huh?

MD: Was it?

SG: Germany and Italy, yeah.

IR: Um, do you remember finding out what was going on in the concentration camps in Germany? Or did you not find out until after the war was over?

MD: Well we’d hear all kinds of rumors. You’d hear all kinds of rumors.

SG: But we didn’t know about the Holocaust, I don’t think.

MD: No we didn’t.

SG: No we didn’t hear that until after.

IR: So what kinds of things, this is kind of shifting gear, what kinds of things did you do for fun during the war?

MD: I don’t think I changed my ways at all, did you (to Sonja)?

SG: No I mean, as I say-

MD: Of course you couldn’t drive because you couldn’t get gas, so you couldn’t really go anywhere.

SG: Oh that’s true.

MD: You were lucky if you had gas enough to get to work.

SG: Yeah, that’s true. You kinda stayed around.

IR: Did you feel like you were making a sacrifice by not being able to get around?

MD: No, I didn’t.

SG: No, of course I wasn’t driving, but I mean, the only sacrifice was you know, the rationing for our parents, for like meat and things like that, and butter and all that. But really, I didn’t feel we made much of a sacrifice.

IR: Do you remember seeing many patriotic posters and flyers during that time? In store shops, where you worked, flags? You know how now there are flags everywhere.

SG: Yeah, yeah, people flew the flag I think a lot more. And maybe there were posters for drafting, you know oh there was a draft then anyway.

MD: Oh they were drafting, yeah.

SG: It was not volunteer like it is now. They were all going in the service.

MD: They drafted.

SG: They all had to go in even if they were married and had a family.

MD: Marion was on the draft board, remember?

SG: Oh Marion Wise, yeah.

IR: Your brother said though he immediately wanted to go, and went into Boston. So he enlisted he wasn’t drafted, and he would come home and check the mail and wait for his card to come in.

MD: He enlisted. He figured it was better to enlist than to be drafted.

SG: Well if he’d been drafted he would have gone in the Army maybe.

MD: Well I don’t understand why he went into the Coast Guard, he’d get so sea sick. He still gets so seasick. He vomited from the time he left New York until he’d get over to Ireland.

IR: That’s what he said.

MD: That’s why his teeth aren’t too good.

SG: Oh really?

MD: Because he vomited so much.

SG: Oh, no kidding! How awful that he got so sea sick. Wow.

MD: Then he went over, when he got done in the Atlantic he moved over to the Pacific. And when he was over there he bought me a, it’s not a kimono, it’s a jacket, woolen, I’ve still got it in my cedar chest.

SG: Was it something like, well it wasn’t Japanese, because he wouldn’t have bought that.

MD: No, it’s like from the islands.

SG: Was he in Hawaii?

IR: Yeah, he was.

MD: Yes, that’s where he met Bobby. Remember?

SG: Which Bobby?

MD: Bobby Holm.

SG: Ohhh.

MD: Yeah the two of them. I guess he was layin’ on the beach or something, and Bobby happened to walk by or something- did he tell you that?

IR: No.

MD: And he happened to walk by and he says, “Bobby!” Imagine that. His cousin. ‘Cause Bobby was over there too, he was in the army.

IR: No, you know, I’ve read a lot that during World War II there was an economic upsurge, that families ended up doing better because after the Depression, the economy really got in gear again. Did you experience that in your families? Did you feel like during the war your family had a little more spending money, or a little more comfortable than previously in the Depression? Did you notice that change?

MD: No.

SG: No, I don’t think so, I mean-

MD: I don’t think that you could say that because when I started work I started at 35 cents an hour. And so, I don’t see that.

SG: Well of course I suppose during the Depression it really was hard times. That was what, in the thirties, but in the forties, I suppose-

MD: The Depression was like, ’31,

SG: ’31 or ’32 or something like that? ’34. I don’t remember, but maybe because of the war effort there was more production-

MD: Production, yeah.

SG: There was more production, but then of course after the war it was much better, you know.

IR: Were you able to buy anything after the war that you hadn’t been able to buy earlier? A new car or anything like that?

SG: I would think so.

IR: A television.

SG: I don’t know if the television came in yet.

IR: I was trying to think if that was around.

SG: I don’t think so.

IR: No not yet!

MD: I went to the New York World’s Fair and saw the first television.

[Talking about driving to the World’s Fair]

MD: No I can’t say that I know too much going on, anything different, except like I say, rationing.

SG: Yeah.

IR: Wes said that your father used to be called, he worked for Wyman-Gordon, and how during the war he would get called in the middle of the night and how it was driving him to the point where you know-

MD: My mother thought he was going to go nuts. Yeah. She called and told then you’ve got to leave him alone.

SG: Why did they call him in the middle of the night?

MD: Oh he was the boss there. He was a superintendent there and anything that would go wrong-‘cause they were making aircraft for the airplanes-

SG: Yeah.

MD: And ah, and anything that would go wrong-there was a man down there by the name of Herbert Peirce and he used to call my father all the time. And he retired-

IR: When did he retire?

SG: Don’t ask me, I don’t know Marge!

MD: I don’t remember.

IR: But he stuck through it, through the war.

MD: Yeah, yeah he did, and he retired, and he lived for quite a- I don’t know when he retired, but he died at 79. So if he retired at 65 he had a few years of retirement, but he worked at Wyman-Gordon for a long time. He was superintendent down there in the heat treating department for a long time.

IR: I read that a lot of people would work on the weekends, you know, and sometimes without pay to make sure that production was sufficient.

SG: Oh yeah. My father worked like round the clock. He would have one week at 7-3, the next week at 3-11, and the next week was 11-7 because the furnace you know had to you know, keep going twenty-four hours a day.

IR: That must have been very hard on him.

SG: It was hard on my mother. She didn’t like the 3-11 shift. She didn’t mind the 11-7 too much, or the 7-3.

IR: Did you have brothers or sisters?

SG: No.

IR: It was just you. Was your mother a housewife?

SG: She stayed home and did the work.

[Marge has to go, talking about leaving and their choir practice that night]

IR: Well thank you so much for coming today.

MD: Well I can’t help you much.

IR: No! It’s just interesting to hear what your life was like you know, I don’t need necessarily a certain fact or figure, you know just to get a sense of what it was like back then, you know?

MD: Yeah. Interesting days.

SG: Have you read Tom Brokaw’s book?

IR: I haven’t.

SG: the Last-

IR: The Greatest Generation? No, have you?

SG: Yes. That has a lot of information, about the war, you know?

IR: Did you feel like it reflected your experience at all? When you were reading it?

SG: Well it was more-He was interviewing the veterans that had gone through the war, you know, and the families that they had left behind.

IR: I see.

SG: So it didn’t relate to me, but you know, you thought about what they went through.

IR: Exactly.

SG: Oh it’s an interesting book. And you know, like some of the men when they came home, they wouldn’t even talk about their experiences.

MD: That’s right.

IR: Did Wes when he first came home?

MD: He told about picking up bodies-did he tell you? Picking up bodies of ships that had been bombed. Sometimes they’d go up near Iceland and sometimes they’d go around the southern part –(inaudible)- and they were always the first ship-he told you that-and they would have a convoy like that and the ship with all the boys would be in the big ship-

SG: Oh and surround them or something?

MD: And they would always be that first ship.

SG: What kind of a ship was it?

MD: It was an escort.

SG: Ohh.

MD: Yeah.

SG: Well if he was in the Coast Guard yeah that’s true they’d be out on the coast more than out in the middle.

MD: Yeah.

SG: Well I remember Stanley when I wrote to Stanley-

MD: Didn’t Stanley look awful when he came home from the war?

SG: Oh he was so thin when he came home from the war.

MD: He was in the Air Force.

SG: He was in the Air Force on a fighter plane you know?

[Tape turned off. Marge leaves. Sonja and I continue to talk for a few minutes afterwards]

SG: The women had to go to work and take the men’s place.

IR: Did you have any friends that went to work- oh no- you didn’t, but your families’ –your mom’s friends?

SG: I don’t remember my mom’s friends going to work. And then we mentioned the blackouts that we had to pull all the shades down and put the lights out. But I don’t remember how often we did that. Oh! I remember when the war was over. We went down to City Hall. It was in the summer, let’s see- August I think. And everybody was celebrating at City Hall you know. I had a summer cottage at Ramshorn Pond and some of us, younger ones, we all went down to City Hall, and it was so exciting!

IR: I think we have a picture of that. Someone had a scrapbook, one of the people that we interviewed had a scrapbook, and she had pictures of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette of people outside of City Hall celebrating the end of the war.

SG: Really? Yeah. Horns were blowing and everybody was shouting, and it you know, it was exciting. Of course, when you’re a teenager you know, that’s really exciting.

IR: Exactly. How did you find out that the war had ended? Do you remember?

SG: Oh it was announced over the radio. There was no television, but it was in the news.

IR: Do you remember hearing about how, about the bomb being dropped in Japan?

SG: Oh, yes. Yeah, that was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That was so sad, but I mean, that’s what ended the war.

IR: So people were very happy about that?

SG: Well, I suppose because it was the end of the war, but it was a terrible, terrible thing that happened to those people. That was sad.

IR: But sort of a consequence of the war.

SG: Right. War is sad, it’s not a happy time for anybody.

IR: Exactly.

SG: So.

IR: So, I guess just going back to- when you were ten years old when the war broke out-did your life change at all? Or did you feel as though there was more tension, you know?

SG: I don’t think so, because I think your parents kind of shield you from the horrors of war, so to speak. And, um, you know, I don’t remember that we- at that age maybe I didn’t realize how bad it was. But as I say, I had relatives that were in the service. My cousin Harriet was in the WAVES and I used to write to her.

IR: Where was she stationed?

SG: Oh, I don’t know where she was stationed.

IR: Did she join-that was voluntary, right.

SG: That was voluntary, yeah. She joined the WAVES, yeah, and her husband was also in the service.

IR: Do you know what she did in the WAVES?

SG: No, I don’t. But that would be the naval branch, wouldn’t it?

IR: Yeah.

SG: I remember seeing her picture you know, with her uniform on and how nice she looked, you now with her little hat and all that. And like I say my cousin’s husband was in the Air Force, and he flew in the Pacific, and ah, he was, oh when he came back from the war, he was so thin, you know, you hardly recognized him he had been through so much. But I don’t know any prisoners, I don’t anybody that was a prisoner in the war.

IR: Do you know when we were in the war, what was your impression of why we were there? Did you have an idea of why we were fighting this war?

SG: Well because we had been attacked by Japan, and then of course with Germany. Like we knew Germany had gone into all these European countries you know, and we didn’t want that to happen to us. You know, we were protecting ourselves. Of course,we had never been attacked in our own country, you know, but we were protecting it so that we wouldn’t be.

IR: What did- was there-did you think anything differently of German-Americans and Italian-Americans? Did the fact that they were the enemies in Europe did that carry over to the German Americans and Italian Americans here?

SG: Well, I suppose in a way, the adults. I never realized you know, I mean we knew they were the enemy-we didn’t think that after the war-we went to Japan-we built them up- we built up Germany, so we really helped our enemies, you know?

IR: But there wasn’t any sort of tension with the Italian Americans and German Americans here?

SG: Well, I suppose there was-yeah, I suppose there was at the time.

IR: Do you remember your parents talking about it?

SG: No, not really. No, well I guess I remember them talking about the Japanese, you know, because they were the ones that really got us into the war.

IR: Exactly.

SG: But I don’t remember too much about it.

IR: I think that’s one of the most interesting things for me from these interviews-what we learned about World War II, me in school, is so focused on Europe and Germany, but during WWII the focus was much stronger on the Pacific and against the Japanese, and it’s interesting how the focus shifted. Looking in retrospect, we think that it was the Germans that we were fighting against, but really, Americans were fighting against the Japanese.

SG: Yeah, well I think because, you know-

IR: We’d been attacked by them.

SG: That’s what I think was the start of it. And of course, Germany had been at war. You know, they had gone into so many other European countries, you know, that um, they became our enemy just because of what they had done. And like I say, we were not aware of the Holocaust, well probably our government was aware of it, but I don’t think as citizens we realized what was going on.

IR: I’ll turn it off!