A Very OK Podcast
Episode 10: “Oklahoma During World War II”
December 15, 2021
Episode Transcript
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And as always, I’m here with Bob Blackburn, who is the former executive director. And Bob, it’s great to be with you again. We’ve got a great show today to talk about the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and we’re going to talk about World War II and what’s happening in Oklahoma during that war, and such a fascinating time in Oklahoma’s history. So I’m excited to dive into it with you.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Well, me too, Trait, because, you know, of all the books and exhibits I’ve done, I’ve been a specialist in 20th-century history. Although I like the 19th century and have done some books on that subject, I really think understanding the 20th century that sets up what we’re dealing with now in the 21st century, and of all of the the compacted action or events of the 20th century, nothing surpasses the impact of World War II, on not just the country and the world, but in Oklahoma. And so as we’re talking today, I’d like to find a few of those places where we can connect the dots for our younger listeners to say this was a relevant time in our history that still affects us today in Oklahoma.
Thompson: Absolutely, absolutely. I think that, you know, World War II, it changed all the chess pieces on the board for not only Oklahoma and the United States, but all of international relations and affected, you know, I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and you’re talking about the end of the Cold War and how what’s going on in Europe at that time, and then we get into the Middle East, and Desert Shield, and Desert Storm, and all of those conflicts. But World War II shapes all of that. So all of my formative growing up years, even though it’s 40 years after the end of the war, is still shaped by World War II.
Blackburn: Yeah, and too, we can also say that for so many of us, World War II is very personal. You know, we’ve experienced the popular culture of movies and television shows about World War II and then family members. So, it is part of who we are.
Thompson: Absolutely, and speaking of family members, do you have family members that fought in the war?
Blackburn: Oh, yes. All four of my Turley uncles. The Turleys were from southern Oklahoma, Chickasha/Ninnekah area, and all four uncles served during the war. And my father served, on my side, on the Blackburn side of the family, along with my uncle Gene, who was in the 45th Division and fought in North Africa, Italy, into France. But my dad, I’ll never forget, when I finally figured out World War II had been fighting. I said, dad, you were in World War II? I was just a child, maybe six or seven. And I realized he had. And I said, what? He says Army Air Corps. And I said, where were you stationed? He says, Texas. He says, I was, he was an all-star football player and played at Wyoming University for a year and Northeastern A&M for two. And he said he got onto a base football team, and he was training pilots most of the time. But part of the time, he was playing football, and they beat Texas A&M twice during the war years.
Thompson: Well, as an Aggie, I take umbrage to that, but good for them.
(laughter)
Blackburn: I’ve got photographs of him on the field doing that. So yeah, I grew up listening to those stories of my uncles, and the uncle I would spend time with in deer camp in Arkansas every November. My uncle Tabb, he was in the South Pacific and assigned to New Guinea, and I heard all the stories of New Guinea, and traveling around the country, and his training, and just, you know, to me, it’s part of who I am, because those stories I listen to that were very personal in these uncles who were all very close to me.
Thompson: Were they hesitant to share their stories, or would they, if they were asked, would they volunteer?
Blackburn: Well, probably the one who is most engaged in activity was my uncle Zane Turley, and I helped take care of him in his latter years. He had no children, and so I was helping take care of him, and I’d fly to Atlanta every two weeks to be with him. We had home care, and to pass the time during his declining years, I would get him to talking about that. And so I did an oral history with my uncle Zane. He drove an ambulance. He actually was ready for D-Day, and they didn’t bring the ambulances in on D-Day, but they came in the next day, once the beaches were secure. He came in, was with a company of ambulance drivers, and they followed Patton’s army all the way into Germany. And he saw some awful things because they were the ones that have to go into combat area to get the wounded soldiers and to take them to triage. And he spent the last two years, and then spent another year in Germany as an administrator. As a 22-year-old kid, he was an administrator of a German hospital. So I was able to get all of those stories. And of course, he came back a very successful business person. But GI Bill helped him get his degree at Oklahoma A&M at the time, now OSU. Became a chemist, rose to be a regional director for the United States Gypsum Company. But he always knew that the World War II experience really defined his life thereafter.
Thompson: My grandfather served in the war, grandfather on my mother’s side. He joined when he was 17, and he was stationed on the USS New Jersey. He was on a gun crew. When I was young, my brother had a report to do on World War II, and my mother had said he hadn’t really been volunteering very much to share his stories, but they did convince him to share a story. And so they recorded it on a cassette tape player, and he talked about facing down the kamikaze when they were out in the Pacific, and he talked about how harrowing that was, and talked about there’s nowhere you can go. There’s nothing you can do. You just have to face it. And of course, when you’re dealing with an enemy that’s willing to do something so extreme as to fly an airplane into a ship, you’re dealing with a completely different kind of war, there. And so, I believe it affected him quite a bit.
We came across that cassette tape not too long ago, and I took it from my mother, and I actually brought it up here to Chad Williams, our research director here at the Historical Society, and Chad digitized that for me. So I’ve been listening to it again and reliving, recounting that story that he told. But it’s so important to keep these stories alive because this was such an important event in our country’s history.
Blackburn: In a little bit, we’re going to be interviewing Joe Todd, who did well over 1,500 interviews with servicemen, World War II included. But he interviewed my father-in-law. My wife Debbie, her father is Gene Stevens, born on a little farm near Sharon, Oklahoma, not far from Woodward, joined the navy in 1939, partly because he had very few options. You know, farming was just doing nothing at the time, and he saw little hope. Well, he joined the navy and was assigned to the USS Houston. And when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the Houston was the flagship in the Asiatic Fleet in the Far Pacific. And they were one of the few heavy battleships, actually a heavy cruiser, in that theater, and they were there as the Japanese were moving south. And so with the British, with the Dutch, with the Australian forces, they put together a small flotilla and faced down the Japanese fleet. And USS Houston was sunk in February of 1942. He was then a Japanese POW for almost four years, was in the death camps. Bridge Over the River Kwai, most people know about that. I could talk about that in a minute. But he survived all of that. And of course, me as a historian, I could ask him specific questions. Where were you? Which tour? He was a rangefinder. So he had very good vision, and he would be in the turret, and he would help say, well, that’s two and a half miles, we need to shoot. But the firefight went all night long. They were trading artillery fire, and then finally the ship went down. Only a few hundred survivors. And William Holden played the role of the American in The Bridge Over the River Kwai.
Thompson: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Blackburn: He was from the USS Houston. And so Gene was one of those few Americans, with mainly the British forces who had been captured by the Japanese, and it defined the rest of his life. And he eventually passed away at an early age because of beriberi and the tropical diseases they had with the torture and the hard work. So that was a very moving story. And, but fortunately, Joe was able to interview him, and we’ve captured that on tape.
Thompson: That’s great. Well, there’s been hundreds of movies made about World War II. Do you have any favorites?
Blackburn: Well, of course, because it’s personal, Bridge over the River Kwai is one of them. And survival and the human impact of war on people. But then I think most people would say probably the greatest movie ever in World War II has to be Private Ryan and, one, Steven Spielberg is an incredible artist.
Thompson: Yeah, it’s a great, great film. Those first eight minutes where they’re assaulting the Normandy beaches, it brought a realism to the war that I think had been missing in a lot of previous movies.
Blackburn: And then Tom Hanks and his character, probably the greatest actor of our generation. Really characterized the spirit of service. You know, here’s a teacher from back home who is thrust into this position of having to be a leader on the field and to do the right things. And I think his relationship with his comrades, with others, epitomized what the war was all about. And it was a very personal thing to them. It wasn’t about geopolitical maneuvering and the politics that Churchill and Roosevelt were having to deal with, but it was that, those moments were captured in that movie so fabulously.
Thompson: Yeah. And then Tom Hanks went on to make the, produce the series Band of Brothers, which in my estimation, is once again one of the finest productions on World War II, because it takes a unit of paratroopers from the invasion of Normandy, all the way through till they capture Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest in Germany. And it just, it talks about all of the daily struggles that all of these soldiers go through and seeing their friends die and the triumphs. And then, of course, they’re at Bastogne, and they’re held down by by the German army and German artillery during the Battle of the Bulge, and all of the things they went through.
In fact, I just recently listened to a podcast about—it’s the 20th anniversary of the Band of Brothers series— and they were interviewing some of the actors, and the actors were talking about their counterparts, the people they were actually playing, and they talked about just how humble they were, and just how much that they didn’t want the spotlight to be on them. They wanted it to be on their unit, they wanted it to be on their buddies, but they never wanted it to be on them and their accomplishments. And I think that really goes to the heart of that generation of folks.
Blackburn: It does. Of course, I’m a little older than you, born 1951. When I was a kid, television was rediscovering World War II, and it had a popular following. Well, two TV shows I remember very vividly. Twelve O’clock High was about the Air Force, and then Combat! was about the infantry. And every time my buddies and I, like ten years old, we would watch an episode of Combat!, then we’d go try to reenact the combat scenes that we’d just seen on television. And that was just part of my childhood. And everyone had the little toy plastic soldiers. And so you’d set up your battlefield action with the tanks, and the artillery support, and the soldiers. So that was part of who I was as a child growing up. World War II was very much a part of my life.
Thompson: Yeah. Well, I would say another movie that I discovered that came out years before I was born is Guns of Navarone, and that’s one of my favorites with Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn. And it’s a fictionalized account of the war. It’s not a battle that actually happened or a conflict, but it’s about them having to clear out these guns on this massive island so that these ships can pass through and rescue soldiers that are stranded. And it’s very entertaining, and it’s very exciting, and I think it also does a pretty good job of portraying the war. And so I would encourage anybody out there to go give that one a look.
And then, you know, of course, lots of books. But Stephen Ambrose has written such great books about World War II, Citizen Soldiers. He wrote a book on D-Day. He wrote the Band of Brothers book. So those are always great books to check out too, about the war, so.
Blackburn: Well, it was Stephen Ambrose, my memory there. You’re triggering memories. But he gave a speech in Oklahoma for a humanities lecture one year, and the Humanities Council asked me to introduce him, and it was such a joy to do that. And I’ll never forget, because when I was introducing him, I said, and Dr. Ambrose foremost is a storyteller, and he came up to me after and says, I like that, because that’s what I do. I collect stories. I put them in writing, and we publish these stories. And he understood that it was really about these individuals, and his books reflect that. And Stephen Ambrose is still one of my favorite historians in my own personal library at home.
Thompson: I agree, I agree. I’ve read several of his books, and I enjoy him quite a bit. Well, let’s get into talking about the war. December 7, 1941, that we’re coming up, as we record this, we’re coming up on the 80th anniversary. As we release this, it’ll be a few days past, but it’s an event that we never can quite forget. You know, when Franklin Roosevelt said that this was going to be a day that would live in infamy. He was absolutely correct about this. We’ve never been able to escape Pearl Harbor Day as something that we continue to look back on and to remember the importance of this day. Why do you think that is?
Blackburn: Well, one, history is complicated to understand all the ramifications and pull all the pieces together, and typically is easier for us to remember events that happened at one moment in one place. If you look at Civil War: Gettysburg. You know, what’s the turning point of the Civil War? Well, Gettysburg, even though it was much more complicated than that. That was only a small piece. But looking at what happened in those three days on hallowed ground where people were sacrificing for whatever they believed in, it stands out as this dramatic moment in history that’s easier to comprehend. And the bombing of Pearl Harbor does not take a leap of deep understanding to understand what happened. We were attacked; a sneak attack. The treachery of it was used in propaganda for years, of course. You know, we’ve got to get back at these treacherous people.
But it all happened at one moment, and it’s easy to visualize. And it’s been recaptured in so many movies over the years. But I think that it stands out as one of those parts of this complicated history that’s easier to understand, and it is a very significant turning point. At one moment in time, we’re going one direction, the next day we’re going another direction, and rarely does history happen that way.
Thompson: Yeah, FDR had had dug his heels in, and was really determined to keep us out of the European war, and did not want to entangle the United States. And there were a lot, of course, we’re coming just off the heels, just a few years after World War I, and Americans remembered what that conflict was like. And many of them said, never again. We’re not going to get involved in any European conflicts. And of course, everything going on with the Nazis and the rise of fascism in Europe, Churchill was begging FDR to find a way to get into the war and to save, I guess, Western civilization over there in Europe. And FDR was holding back. There was not the political will to do that. And all of a sudden, that December 7 day, that changes everything. And we get into the war, and all of a sudden we’re into this conflict, and everything changes all overnight, like you said.
Blackburn: You know, really a little preview to Pearl Harbor. Even before Pearl Harbor, I think Franklin Roosevelt saw what was coming, and he was trying to help Great Britain especially, and Churchill was reaching out to him and seeking aid. But Congress was a vast majority of isolationists. No, no, we cannot do this. But Roosevelt in 1940, you know, the war started in Europe in ’39. By 1940, with the Battle of Britain and Great Britain barely hanging on, and if Britain had fallen, Hitler would would probably have walked through Russia.
Thompson: Right.
Blackburn: And who knows what the future might have held. But Roosevelt understood, and he put together he could not do it through the armed services at the time. But this was an Oklahoma connection, is that he put together the War Production Office, which was led by civilians, because he couldn’t do it in the military. But the War Production Office was started to find out, how can we prepare for war if we are pulled into this? So Roosevelt, looking ahead, knew that we needed to be prepared and we were not. Our military had been gutted by that time, and there was the former director of building Chevrolet Motors into the largest automobile company in the country, was tasked to put together this effort to find out where are the resources that will help us fight a war. Well, Mr. Knudsen of Chevrolet knew an Oklahoma car dealer named Fred Jones.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: And Fred Jones had been very successful with his Ford, Lincoln, Mercury dealerships, both in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. A great organizer, was recognized around the country. He had the number two dealership, Ford dealership, in the entire country. So this is a very successful businessman who had gotten into aviation, helped fund the start of Braniff Airlines, had other entrepreneurialism efforts. And Knudsen says, Fred, I want you to be the representative from the southwest to determine how can we prepare for war. And so, Fred left his business to his chief executives and moved to Washington, DC, in 1940, ’41. And a “dollar a year man,” that’s what they called them, all these business people. And he was leading surveys of where are the machine shops? Where are the metalworking places? How can we prepare? And he later, in fact, as we were preparing, the Army Air Corps was trying to determine how can we be prepared? We need depots around the country, before Pearl Harbor. And Fred Jones was in a position to work with our congressional delegation, with the industrialists and in chambers of commerces of Oklahoma. And they are the ones who says we can support bomber plants in Tulsa and Oklahoma City and an air depot for the country. And so the Army Air Corps will have these depots with a lot of blue sky, with open spaces, with communities that will support that effort. And that’s the beginning of Tinker Air Force Base. And all of this is before Pearl Harbor, and then Pearl Harbor hits, and it still would take us two to three years to really prepare for war. We did not make much of an impact. And that’s the reason Roosevelt and Eisenhower kept us out of Europe until D-Day, ’44, because we weren’t prepared. But those early starts made a difference, both in Oklahoma and for the World War II itself.
Thompson: Major Oklahoma connection at Pearl Harbor was the USS Oklahoma, and that was a battleship that was stationed there on Battleship Row. Of course, when the sneak attack comes, the Oklahoma takes, let me see. I have it here in my notes. It took eight torpedoes during the attack, and it took a ninth as it was sinking into the mud there. It capsizes, and we’ll hear a little bit more about that with Joe. We’ll talk about some Oklahomans who were affected by that; 429 deaths on the USS Oklahoma, during that battle. Later, they went through salvage operations on the ship, and then they sold it to a private company who was, in 1946, was towing it across the Pacific Ocean to bring it back to California, and ended up sinking there in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. But I want to point that out, because we have the silver set from the USS Oklahoma, here at the Oklahoma History Center, and that is going to be out on display for the whole month of December for people to come and see that. So we want people to come and come to the History Center and see a piece of Oklahoma history there in the History Center.
Blackburn: You know, Trait, a lot of people think that, you know, salvaged off of the ship, but actually they took the silver service off of the ship before it went into the Asiatic Fleet, and so it was stored in San Francisco. And after the war, with the help of some people like John Kirkpatrick, who would become a rear admiral, and others, we were able to get that on long-term loan. It still belongs to the Navy, but it’s on long-term loan to the Oklahoma Historical Society, and that punchbowl that has David Payne on one side and Sequoyah on the other is a magnificent piece of art. And it’s one of the real treasures of the Oklahoma Historical Society’s collection.
Thompson: Yeah, we actually made a replica of it because it’s so popular for functions over at the governor’s mansion and at the Capitol, so we didn’t want to damage the original. So there’s actually a mold that was made, and so we use those replicas on some of those major special occasions like inaugurations and things like that.
Blackburn: And I’ll never forget the meeting where that was discussed. And the board finally says, no, we’re not going to let governors use this anymore. Well, governors, as you know, don’t like to hear the word no.
Thompson: Right.
Blackburn: And typically, with senators, especially in governors, you don’t say no. You say, well that’s against the law. So why don’t we try this? Well, in this case they finally said it. But one of our board members, Mrs. Edna Bowman from Kingfisher, Oklahoma, one of my heroes, the great people I’ve worked with over the years. Mrs. Bowman says I will pay for that reproduction. So one woman making a difference says, I’ll pay for the reproduction. Gorham Silver was still active. They had done the original, Gorham did. And they brought someone out of retirement who knew how to do that sort of thing. And you cannot tell the difference between the replica and the original. So when people see that at an inaugural ceremony or Supreme Court justices like to use it for their receptions, too. And we have a staff member, Jeff Briley, who takes care of it, but it’s not the original that people see. So we don’t want people to think that we’re really using artifacts, as we once did.
Thompson: But you can come see the original here at the History Center. I do want to talk about the immediate aftermath of the war of the attack in Oklahoma. And I went through, and I pulled a few articles from the Oklahoma City Times just at some different times in December of 1941 to see how was Oklahoma reacting to this, and it’s pretty fascinating. Governor Leon Phillips was actually on vacation at his cabin in Weleetka when the attack happened. So he comes back, has a series of middle-of-the-night meetings. You have to remember, at that time, the United States did not know if the mainland was going to be under attack, too. And so there was a lot of people that were afraid that, especially on the coast, that there would be more attacks coming. And so the governor came back, and he started meeting with his staff and his cabinet. He canceled leave and vacation for the Highway Patrol officers and had them on duty and on vigilance. And he set up guards at some of the different military sites around the state, some of the ammunition plants, and areas like that. He made a formal statement. He said, “Oklahoma has been preparing since first rumors of world emergency important enough to affect Oklahoma in the nation of a whole reached us. With that in view, the Oklahoma patrol has been increased in its personnel, together with a satisfactory reserve list of capable men suitably trained to care for existing conditions, has been gradually but efficiently prepared to protect our citizenry against any reasonable problems.” And then said, “Oklahoma has always done its part in the past and will continue to carry out its responsibility.” So this is the immediate, this was in the Oklahoma City Times, December 8, 1941.
And then there’s an article in that same newspaper edition talking about the rush of people to recruiting stations to join the military. And there’s a story here about a man named John Ledbetter from Missouri. “I was down in Oklahoma City looking for a job, but I decided to join the Army when Japan declared war on a Sunday.” He was 18 years old, and he joined up just immediately, like that. And of course, there were hundreds and hundreds of people all over the state who did the same thing.
Blackburn: Well, on that day, too, the Douglas bomber plant in Tulsa was already under construction. And so people were leaving their rural communities, farmers who had been distressed for a decade during the Great Depression were leaving little towns. And that really began this dislocation, relocation of a lot of our population centers. Rural Oklahoma began losing population, people moving to Tulsa to work in that bomber plant. And then the same bomber plant plans were used to build the Douglas bomber plant in Oklahoma City. So the next year, while Tinker, or Midwest Air Depot was under construction, later renamed Tinker after Clarence Tinker, an Osage general in the air force who went down in action. But people realized it was already going on.
When you talked about invasion, what came to my memory is that it would not be the invasion that the governor was talking about, but eventually we would have many prisoners of war coming to Oklahoma with the with the POW camps, and Oklahoma was one of the centers of POW camps in the middle of the country, and we had all this open space, facilities, and there have been many articles written about the POW camps in Oklahoma, including one the Nazilager in Alva, Oklahoma. And you can still see remnants of the Nazilager. And they would bring the hardcore Nazis from the SS and the political advisers with the Gestapo, and bring them to Oklahoma. And it was some of the highest security, some of the art has survived that those Germans would draw and paint. And my mother, who grew up in Chickasha during World War II, remembers some of...There was a subcamp in Chickasha at the fairgrounds. And she remembered those German boys going out and working for the farmers during the day.
Thompson: Yeah, there were 32 POW camps all around the state of Oklahoma, and about 20,000 German POWs around the state. And like you said, they would earn wages on farms and other jobs, replacing many of our men were off fighting in the war, and so they would do some of those jobs and to help keep the economy going in some of those areas. And in fact, I read that sometimes those German POWs would come back to Oklahoma and have reunions because they fondly remembered their time in Oklahoma. So I guess some of them had a good experience in their POW camp.
Blackburn: Well, some other Europeans who would come back were British pilots, because when the war began, several bases were opened in Oklahoma to help train and support the war effort. What we now call Altus Air Force Base was established. Vance established in Enid. But at Altus, the American, or the Army Air Corps—the Air Force was not created until after the war— but the Army Air Corps was training British pilots because they needed pilots desperately in the Battle of Britain. And of course, until the very end, the Germans were bombing London and England. And so a lot of these British pilots were coming to Altus, Oklahoma. And as a young employee at the Oklahoma Historical Society, I got to meet one of those British. They came back for a tour. They wanted to see, and they came by the historical society. But a lot of fond memories of them. George Gobel is another foreigner, you know, from the East Coast who was assigned to Altus Air Force Base in the war, and he was on Johnny Carson at one time with a famous line about his war experience. And he says, yeah, we made sure that those Germans never cross the Mississippi River.
(laughter)
Thompson: Well, you know, going back to Douglas Aircraft and over at Tinker Air Force Base, which is, you know, Tinker Field and the air depot before that. But that plant produced 3,000 A-24 Dauntless dive bombers during his time. They produced B-24 Liberators, A-26 invader, A-26 invader attack aircrafts. And then at its height, there were 23,000 people working at that aircraft plant. Now, here’s an interesting fact about that. Half of those were women. Half of those were women working on those bomber assembly lines and helping in the war effort, those “Rosie the Riveters.” In fact, my grandmother was a Rosie the Riveter at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth. And so we’re also very proud of that as well.
Blackburn: Well, of course, there were so many ways that the war affected. There’s a company, in fact, my most recent book that will be out soon on the history of Manhattan Construction Company. In 1941, the army wanted a place— actually ’42—wanted to train soldiers to eventually fight in Europe. So what would make D-Day possible was how do you have landing craft? How do you take trenches? How do you fight across the hedgerows? And so they wanted a place to train in the American West, and they chose a place 15 miles east of Muskogee called Camp Gruber. And they reached out. They needed entire facilities overnight, and so they were fast-tracking contracts.
Well, Manhattan Construction stepped up, and they constructed 1,731 buildings, relocated a major state highway, and recreated the landscape of northern Europe with roads, fields, fences, hedgerows. And they completed all of that effort—over 1,700 buildings—in four months. And for that, Manhattan Construction received an “E” flag, and we had that on display here in the History Center for several years in an exhibit. But they’re still very proud of that effort. And that was going on around the country and in Oklahoma, creating jobs, changing the infrastructure where people could live, where they could make a living, raise their families. And when the war would end, as they came back, they came back to a very changed landscape in opportunities, and the war still has its impact on Oklahoma today.
Thompson: Well, I don’t want to get out of our episode without talking about a group of folks who are very, very important to the war effort, and that was the code talkers. And the army had recruited 17 Comanches to become code talkers in 1940, and they were assigned to the 4th Infantry Division’s 4th Signal Company at Fort Benning, Georgia. And they received phone, radio, Morse code, and semaphore training, and in August 1941, they were placed under the command of Lieutenant Hugh Foster, who asked them to develop an unbreakable Comanche code, and so Foster would give them 250 specialized military terms, and then they would make those into Comanche words and use that. Thirteen Comanche code talkers landed at Utah Beach, and their code was never broken. So, such an important contribution by our American Indian friends and brothers who aided the war effort, and many and many of them also served in all of the other branches in the infantry, in the army, in the navy, and so on and so forth. But these code talkers have a very special contribution to the war that I always want to make sure that we can recognize.
Blackburn: Well, the Historical Society sponsored an exhibit about the code talkers almost 20 years ago now, and it’s traveled around the state. But we interviewed, in fact, in the video we did with it, we have one of those Comanches speaking in the Comanche language, talking about it, and then he goes and talks in English. So it was a very moving. One last point I’d like to make, Trait, the impact. Well, when, you know, the defense industry changed, the Douglas bomber plant in Oklahoma City became part of Tinker Air Force Base, and it’s still employing over 20-some-thousand people even today— largest employer in the state— and how that’s changed the economic development of Oklahoma. And then in Tulsa, though, the bomber plant there was not going to be part of a long-range agency.
But at the time, there was an Oklahoma kid named Red Mosier, who was executive vice president of American Airlines. And he knew that American Airlines was going to get all the surplus aircraft they could buy, and they would expand their routes, but they needed a maintenance center to take care of them. Well, that Douglas bomber plant in Tulsa was perfect for him, and he knew about the industrial infrastructure of the metal shops, the machine shops, the people who had been working on airplanes. And so he went to the people of Tulsa and says, if Tulsa will pass a bond issue to buy the Douglas bomber plant, and then American Airlines would lease it, will that started the American Airlines Maintenance Center, that in Tulsa, that is the largest employer in the Tulsa area, high-paying jobs of engineers, of generations of people who have worked there. And so the legacy of World War II would continue in places like Tulsa in Oklahoma City and Altus today, and still the Vance Air Force Base. We see the impact on our culture, our economic development. The social changes, like women going into the workplace. Technology. Aero Commander came to Oklahoma, later designed by a designer who had worked during the advances in aviation during World War II. And the war had so many impacts on us that were both personal and community that it’s something that we continue to need to study, collect, preserve, and share this story. We want to bring in our guest now, Joe Todd, to really bring these stories home. And he’s got some really personal stories from his interviews that he’s done with World War II veterans. And so I’m excited to talk to him.
Blackburn: Me, too. And Joe, a good friend, a long-time employee of the Historical Society and has dedicated much of his career to making sure the stories of individual valor, and sacrifice, and service will not be forgotten.
Thompson: Joe is a Bartlesville native. He served in the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam and with the 1st Infantry Division in Kuwait and Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He also served in Haiti with the 486th Civil Affairs Battalion. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Bronze Star Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters, Purple Heart, and the Vietnam Service and Presidential Unit Citation. Todd worked for the Oklahoma Historical Society for more than 20 years, first as an oral historian and later as a manuscripts archivist. Since 2001, he has volunteered with the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library, interviewing World War II veterans. Todd has conducted more than 1,500 interviews to date. He is the author of USS Oklahoma: Remembrance of a Great Lady, Robert Houston: Oklahoma Rough Rider, and numerous other articles. So, Joe, welcome in to our podcast. We are very glad to have you today.
Joe Todd: Oh, well, thank you.
Blackburn: Joe, you know, I’ve known you now since the mid-’70s when I was researching at the Oklahoma Historical Society for my early graduate work. And I’ve always admired not only the work that you do, but the passion you bring to that. And you and I have talked many times about the veterans; you made that a specialty in your career, beyond just the general oral history program that supported everything else we were doing. But you really recognized that you needed to collect those stories of those World War II veterans before we lost, we lost them, and now we’re at a point now where no one can do those interviews any longer. But in terms of these Oklahoma veterans, you stepped up. And I’ve always admired your ability. Kind of start with just kind of the broad overview of some of the veterans you have interviewed over the years.
Todd: Some of the veterans I’ve interviewed, they’re just phenomenal. I’ve actually interviewed about 80 World War I veterans when I worked for the Historical Society, and the World War II veterans, I find most of them are very humble. They said, well, I didn’t do anything. And I’ve interviewed veterans on the first wave at Omaha Beach on D-Day. And they said I was just doing my job, and they all did something special. And I was trying to preserve these stories for future generations because I made a comment the other day that when we lose a veteran, we lose a library; that when he dies, his story dies with him. So we’re trying to preserve these stories.
Thompson: Well, we really appreciate all the work that you’ve done on that. And that’s one of the reasons we started doing this podcast is because we wanted to preserve these stories as well and get them out to the broader public. So we appreciate you sharing some stories. And so are there any stories that stick out right away about some folks you want to share?
Todd: Well, there’s the one, of course, we’ve all known about Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. And there’s a Mr. Joe Harding who lived in Midwest City, and he was a photographer with the army, with the Army Air Corps, and he joined the Army Air Corps and requested Hawaii to get away from the war in Europe. He joined in 1938, and when the war in Europe started, he wanted to get away from Europe, so he requested Hawaii. And during the attack, he is the one that actually filmed the attack on Wheeler Field. The movie film that we see in on today, he’s one that actually filmed the attack on Wheeler Field, December 7. And he said, everything was going on. He said, I realized I was out in the open filming this, and I was exposed. And he said, by the grace of God, you know, I wasn’t shot.
Thompson: Well, that’s incredible. And then, of course, he’s had such an important contribution to history of having that video footage that we’re all familiar with.
Todd: Yes, yes.
Blackburn: Joe, we’ll probably end this segment with talking about some more of our survivors of the USS Oklahoma from that infamous day. But let’s start first with some of the other theaters of service during World War II. I know you’ve interviewed many of the people from the 45th Division. Of course, they were activated early in 1940. They were some of the first American troops to hit the shores of North Africa, and then all the way through Sicily and Italy and into Germany and France. So, of all of those 45th Division veterans that you interviewed, and my uncle was one that served in that division throughout the war and came back for Korea, but what are some of the more heart-rendering stories that you’ve found and maybe kind of symbolize this dedication to service that they were all part of saving the world and the sacrifices they made.
Todd: L. G. Beard lived in Dewey, just north of Bartlesville. He was 45th Division. He said he joined the National Guard because he couldn’t find the job. And he joined 1939, I believe. And he said that that’s the only money he could make in the Depression because, as I said, there were no jobs around. And he went to his tours, and then they were mobilized 1940 for one year. And he went down to Fort Sill and trained and everything. And then he was down at Fort Sill when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Well, he knew he was going to be longer than a year. And he said he got on the ship, went to North Africa, and he said he was with the 45th Division all through North Africa, and then he was invasion of Sicily and the invasion of Italy. And he was a messenger. He had a Jeep with a driver, and he took messages around to different commanders, and he said so he was able to see and know what was going on. And he said he knew of all the 45th Division guys that were being wounded and killed. And he said this just tore him apart to know what was going on. But he said, we knew we had to do this to preserve freedom, to serve the United States of what was going on by Germany. And he wound up in France and into Germany. And he said, I’d like to think I served my country. And he said, Joe, I would do it again.
Thompson: I think that’s a pretty, a pretty common sentiment. How about other Oklahomans in the 45th who made important contributions?
Todd: Colonel Embry, he was in the artillery. He was the commander, I think the 160th Artillery. And his story is really, really unique because of course, he went through North Africa into Sicily and Italy, but they were at Anzio when the Germans had the US forces surrounded at Anzio, bombing them every day for 122 days. We were stuck at Anzio, and we couldn’t figure a way to get out. And he was sitting there, and there was little creek washing down, and he looked, and he saw these papers in the creek, and he took up the papers and looked at him, and he said, well, these are papers from German rations. Looked up in the mountains and said, the Germans are up there eating rations out in the open. So we asked a guy, how long would it take for these rations to wash down in this creek? And they said, oh, 45 minutes to an hour. He got all the artillery people together. And in two days, at the appointed time, the artillery opened up and caught the Germans out in the open. And he said, that’s one reason we’re able to get out of Anzio, the breakout, because the Germans were throwing their papers in the creek, washing down.
Thompson: Now, that is a fascinating story.
Blackburn: Well, those are stories that you don’t see in the history books, because that’s the life of the everyday soldier, and those little incidents that might tip the scale in a battle or a campaign. And, Joe, some of the people you’ve talked to over the years, I know, for a lot of them, it’s emotional because they lost friends and comrades. Kind of share some of that sentiment in a general way, especially from those 45th Division, because those were all young men from Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado who had never seen the world. And here they were thrust into this campaign that’s worldwide. Kind of the emotion. Can you remember a time that, you know, someone would have to stop and kind of compose themselves of trying to remember and bring back some of those memories that probably they had suppressed for many years.
Todd: One thing about the National Guard units, these guys had served together for years. They knew each other. They lived together in their communities. So they were called to active duty. They went to war together. Now the draftee units, they just threw these people in together, they never knew each other. So the National Guard units, they were personal friends. And they said when they saw their friends killed, well, these are friends they that they had grew up with. And it said it was just, they had to stop and realize, you know, my friend is dead. I’ll never see him again. And so they had to just stop and take in what was going on. But the National Guard units were the best units in World War II because they had served together and knew each other for years.
Blackburn: And you know, Joe, one of my observations as a historian, and this really came to me when I was at Gettysburg years ago on a staff ride with the National Guard, is that what motivated those soldiers on the field in the middle of battle, to walk into fire and to stand there, you know, and have the courage to do it. And I’ve come to the conclusion they were fighting for their buddies next to them. They were not going to really abandon their friends. And as you said, with those National Guard units, sometimes their relatives, their cousins, their brothers, maybe their fathers even, they were not going to run and leave their friends and family exposed. They were going to stick in there. And that’s a little extra motivation that I think people needed on those battlefields, whether it was the Civil War or World War II. How about any stories of family members that you’ve talked to where, yeah, my dad was already in it, and I followed him in. But anything like that?
Todd: Let me see. Well, I talked to Mr. Henson in Barnsdall. There were five brothers, and all five brothers joined the navy, and they all came back. But they, because of the five Sullivans, they were split. They were not able to serve together. And the eldest brother joined first. And each brother said, you know, my brother is in the military, so I’m going to join, too. And they all joined to protect their brothers already in the service.
Thompson: That’s incredible. That’s incredible. How about stories about sacrifice for their friends or their buddies? Do you have anything along those lines where somebody decided to put their own lives on the line to protect their trench mate or their friend?
Todd: Yes. There’s one story. It was in Italy. I cannot remember the name, but he said a German grenade came in, and his buddy jumped on it and saved everybody. Of course it killed him, but he saved his buddies. And he said, this was a friend of mine that I grew up with, and he jumped on the grenade and saved us.
Blackburn: Wow. Joe, you mentioned the navy we talked about, of course, 45th was army. But in terms of the South Pacific, let’s get back to Pearl Harbor here in about four of five minutes. But in terms of the navy and the Marines in the South Pacific, what stories stand out in terms of those Marines who are island hopping, probably taking greater casualties than any other units in all of our services, what stands out? And of course, we’ve done an exhibit here on governors. And Henry Bellmon was at Iwo Jima and a tank commander, and he said that that really influenced his life of public service, that he always felt like we did not want to get the war. We do not want to divide our communities where we were willing to make a war on each other and to see this sacrifice. He says we’ve got to come together. And that kind of define Henry Bellmon’s life. What other stories of those Marines or the navy in the South Pacific stand out in your mind?
Todd: Oh, there’s so many stories, but the Marines and the navy. I have several phenomenal stories from Iwo Jima because the navy, the battleships and the cruisers, destroyers, and the carriers bombed for two weeks solid. And they told the Marines, it’s going to be a cakewalk because nothing can survive that bombing. And Mr. Radebaugh said, when we got on shore, he said, it’s going to be a cakewalk. Well, they didn’t know about all the tunnels on Iwo Jima, the Japanese came out, and he said it was a slaughter, and he was a machine gunner, had a .30-caliber machine gun. And they said you couldn’t dig a foxhole because the more you dug, that sand just fell in the hole. You just found a hole, a small depression to hide in. And he said, just the determination of the Marines is what won the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Thompson: And that was one of the most crucial battles of the Pacific War.
Todd: Yes. The reason we took Iwo Jima is because of the B-29s took off from Saipan to bomb Japan, and the B-29 had just enough fuel to get there and get back. If they had a headwind or were damaged, they could not get back to Saipan. They had to ditch. So they took Iwo Jima so the B-29s could bomb Japan from Iwo Jima to Japan and back. That’s why we took Iwo Jima.
Blackburn: And they had to take it at all costs, and for many young Americans, they made that sacrifice of all costs.
Todd: Yes, yes. Interviewed Mr. Piepke, who lived in Pauls Valley. He was a Marine on the USS Tennessee, and he was at Okinawa, and he was a gunner. They had these gun tubs on the side of the ship, and a kamikaze came in, and they hit it, and the kamikaze exploded. And he said, we just saw this ball of fire coming toward us. He said, you can’t dig a foxhole on that deck. But I was trying to. And the kamikaze actually hit the Tennessee, and he said it was sheer terror. He said, but you had your buddies with you, and said, we’re in this together.
Thompson: Joe, what have you learned? You’ve done all these interviews, and you’ve talked to all these veterans. What have you learned personally that’s affected your life, as you’ve heard all these stories?
Todd: Oh, this is a great nation. Uh, there’s no—when you’re in the foxhole, there’s no race. There’s nothing in the foxhole. All you have is this American next to you. They said we’re all Americans in that foxhole. Doesn’t matter what race, religion, creed, whatever. You’re an American in that foxhole.
Blackburn: You know Joe, too; you’ve studied this, too. And I know a lot of your interviews follow these people’s lives after they come back to civilian life. But we talk about the Greatest Generation. And I think what really defines that Greatest Generation is that we had this sense of purpose and unified determination during World War II, both on the home front and in the military, and that survives into the 1950s, where we feel like we were in this together. Let’s act together. That was the golden age of our fraternal organizations and service organizations around the country, people working together. You see it in Congress of people working across the aisles trying to get things done. And especially today, in a world that is so divided and polarized in so many ways, I think World War II had a huge impact on that generation when they came back.
I’ve talked to George Nigh about that many times. George, a veteran, was in the navy near the end of the war before he was mustered out. But I think that that really affected them in terms of post-service life, coming back into civilian life. Any story stands out in your mind of them integrating back into the civilian life and using what they learned in the war to really carry them forward in terms of either service or accomplishment?
Todd: Yes, every veteran I’ve interviewed, you come back a changed person. I can relate to that personally. You know, I was in Vietnam 19 months, and I came back a changed person. I respect this country more. I took this country for granted, and all the people I interviewed said they took this country for granted until they got overseas and saw the rest of the world. They came back a changed person, that they respect this country more. They respect the freedoms we have. And they said, we will fight to die for our freedoms because this country is unique in the whole world. And we said, we will preserve this, and we will fight to preserve it.
Thompson: Joe, I’d like to hear a little bit more about your story before we get into some of the Pearl Harbor stuff. But you’ve served in the military, as you mentioned, in Vietnam, and you served in Desert Storm. Can you talk a little bit about your service and some of the people that you served with and, and how it’s impacted you?
Todd: Well, I was in the 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam. I was a helicopter crew chief and mechanic on Hueys and met just some fantastic people. And the one thing I’d like to bring out, someone asked me, what about all the drugs in Vietnam? I said, we didn’t have drugs where we were because we’re an aviation unit. If we did have a person on drugs, we got rid of them because you sure as hell don’t want a pilot on drugs flying a helicopter.
Thompson: I would agree with that.
Todd: Yes, yes. And the infantry people I talked to said the same thing. If we found someone using drugs, we got rid of them. And the people I met there, we went there as a unit. We trained together with the helicopters using together. We knew what we had to do. And we went to Vietnam, and we served together, made some lifelong friends over there. And as I said, I came back a changed person because I saw how the people in Vietnam lived. And I thought, you know, I’m going to respect my country more since what I learned in Vietnam. You come back, and the problem is when you see this stuff in Vietnam, you cannot unsee it. It’s with you the rest of your life. You just have to live with it. And this is the PTSD and all that, and you just have to live with it.
Thompson: Well, we do thank you for your service. And how about your role in Desert Storm?
Todd: Well, Desert Storm, I was the civil affairs officer, and we worked with civilians.
Thompson: Okay.
Todd: And I thought, you know, we’re going to be in the rear, you know, behind the front lines, but we’re up in the front lines to get the civilians out of the combat area. So, and during Desert Storm, it was so fast. We worked with the civilians in Kuwait, and being an oral historian, our commander got me a video camera and tapes, and so I interviewed people in Kuwait City, what the Iraqis did to them. We actually filmed in the Iraqi torture chamber. We interviewed survivors of the torture chamber. We went to northern Iraq with the Kurds, and I spent a year with the Kurds up there, and we were helping the Kurds rebuild their villages. And I did interviews up of there of what they did. They had been drafted in the Iran-Iraq War, drafted when they invaded Kuwait, and what they went through. Up in the villages in northern Iraq there, the best example I can use their sewer system is an open ditch down the middle of the street. I think that, you know, thank God we live in the United States.
Blackburn: Well, Joe, as I recall too, I remember talking to you when you returned from that service because, you know, the Oklahoma Historical Society, you know, encouraged you to go and serve the country. But when you got back, you also had a hand in saving some antiquities, as I recall.
Todd: Oh, yes. Yes. Well, I was the arts and monuments officer, and our job was we identified targets we cannot bomb. We cannot bomb a church, a mosque, a museum, a school, a hospital. And so we identified every target of exclusion in Iraq that we can not bomb. And we also talked to the American soldiers and said, do not try to take antiquities out of the country, because if you are caught, you will be under US law, international law, and military law. And so we tried to make sure that we were to preserve the culture of Iraq.
Thompson: Well, turning our attention back to World War II, this year is the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. And do you have any stories of Oklahomans who were a part of that battle? I know you’ve already shared one. And stories of, or just in general, stories of people who were a part of that scene on December 7, 1941.
Todd: Arles Cole lived in Tulsa, and he joined the navy, and he requested the Oklahoma, but didn’t get it. He was assigned to West Virginia, and he said Hawaii was great. It was paradise. But he said, on the morning of December 7, he was, you know, taking a shower or getting ready to go on pass, go downtown, go on Liberty. And at first, he thought it was another drill on Sunday morning. And he said, oh, good Lord, another drill. But then when the torpedoes started hitting, he realized and his battle station was in the third deck down on the West Virginia. And he got down to his battle station. And the West Virginia took, I think, four torpedoes. All the hatches were, everything was locked down, and he was trapped. Water was coming in, and he said, I’m going to drown. I can’t get out. But he heard this noise, and he said this Japanese bomb came down three decks to where he was but didn’t explode. It was a dud. If it had exploded, it’d been like the Arizona. He was able to climb out of that hole, out of the West Virginia, up on the main deck. And he said the Arizona was blowing, was burning, had blown up, and everything. And he noticed that they hadn’t put up the flag on the West Virginia because the attack started before 8 o’clock in the morning, and he went and got the biggest flag he could find and tied it onto the flagpole of West Virginia. And there’s a famous photograph of the flag on the West Virginia, and all this smoke behind the flag. And he said, I put that flag up.
Thompson: Incredible, incredible. Just, you know, it’s so interesting. You have a dud bomb that lands, that would have killed you otherwise, and killed many other people. And it allows, that’s what saved his life. A bomb saved his life. The war is such an, it’s a terrible, terrible thing. But it can be fascinating too.
Blackburn: Joe, one thing that most people don’t realize this, but the USS Oklahoma Survivors Association had their annual reunion in Oklahoma City for many years. That gave you so many opportunities to interview some of the veterans, not just from Oklahoma, but from other states. And I gave several speeches over the years. They would ask me to come speak about different things. And I gave the speech their last meeting, and I’ll never forget it, because every year they would go through the roster of the USS Oklahoma survivors who had passed away, and they had a three-bell ceremony, and they would ring the three bells after mentioning the name. And one of those emotional moments that I have is that they handed me the three bells. They says, where so many of us are gone. We’re also old. We’re not going to be able to meet again. We want these three bells to be in the collections of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And they handed it to me, and everyone had tears in their eyes. I still almost get to that point when I think about it.
But then we were able to work with them when we did the memorial to the USS Oklahoma that opened in 2007. Don Beck, who designed the History Center, was the designer of that memorial. We were able to get many of those survivors who had been coming to the reunions in Oklahoma City to go, and they were honored by the country. And today, people can go to that USS Oklahoma memorial. How about any of the stories that you got from some of those veterans, maybe not from Oklahoma, but who were on the USS Oklahoma on that fateful day?
Todd: I have two from Oklahoma. Ed Vezey lived in Moore, and he said, I was in the lookout, and my battle station was in the crow’s nest on top of the Oklahoma as you go. And he said when they sent a general quarters, I was in my pajamas. So I got up to the crow’s nest, and he said, I just got up there when the torpedo started hitting, and the ship started capsizing, and they said, I’ve got to get the hell out of here. And he started climbing down. And when he got on deck, the ship was sideways, and he said, I just walked on the hull of the ship as she turned over down to the water, got in the water and swam to the Maryland through all this fuel oil, and got on the Maryland, and I got on the Maryland, he said. I was there butt-naked. I had nothing on and said they got on the Maryland, and some guy took his pants off and gave me his skivvies. I put his skivvies on, and then he helped carry ammunition to the guns on the Maryland to fight the Japanese. And he said, that’s what I did.
And the other one is Garlen Eslick. He joined the navy from Bristow, then from Oklahoma, he requested the Oklahoma and got it. And he said, I joined the navy November 1941. I was on the Oklahoma one month. And he said Sunday morning, I was up on deck, got enough vegetables. He said I was on KP, but my battle station was the powder handling room of turret number four, which is in the very bottom of the ship. And he said, I saw the planes coming over. I saw the torpedoes coming in, and they sounded general quarters. And I started down and got almost to my battle station, and I stopped because I didn’t know which way is up and which way is down, because the ship was sideways. I didn’t know which way was up, and everything just stopped. There was complete blackness, and a man with a battle lantern showed up and says, what’s going on? He says, hell, we’ve capsized. And he said, we got into this room called the Lucky Bag and sat there. And he said, well, we’re either going to suffocate or drown. We’re dead. We can’t get out of here. Said we sat there and he said, I bet a man a dollar we’d suffocate. He bet a dollar we would drown. That’s how we kept our sanity.
And as we sat there, we could feel the water slowly come up on us. Then they heard tapping and he thought, is it Japanese tapping or American tapping? Because they had no idea what happened. But they finally cut into him, and he is one of the 32 cut through the bottom. And he said, I got out, and I asked what time it is. He said it was 10:30. He’s always been in there, what, two hours? He said, this is December 8. They were in there for like 26, 27 hours in the capsized battleship.
Thompson: And lost such track of time that he didn’t even know what day it was.
Todd: Yeah, well, and I’d like to say he celebrates two birthdays, his birthday and December 8. Because he said I was reborn that day.
Thompson: Yeah. Well, you know, we have only a handful of World War II veterans left, and so it’s so important that these stories are preserved. And many of these stories are preserved at the Historical Society and through the work of folks like you, Joe, who have done such a good job of capturing these oral histories. And we just appreciate you taking the time to come on today and to share with us these stories on this important anniversary of the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. So thank you so much, Joe.
Blackburn: And Joe, thank you for your service, not just to storing all these memories for us, but your service to the country, to the Oklahoma Historical Society. And I figured out earlier, Trait, that Joe started here in 1971. Rocky Jones would be the only living person who has served a little longer. That’s only a couple of months before Joe, and then Melvena comes along in the mid-’70s. Kathy Dickson and I in the late ’70s. But Joe is now one of our elders among the Historical Society. Passionate, you know, servants that, you know, we all felt like we were on a mission. And Joe shared that work in the museum, later in the archives division. And Joe, it was a real privilege to work with you side by side for many years. Thanks for your all your service, and thanks for joining us today.
Todd: Well, thank you.
Thompson: Well, Bob, it was so great to talk to Joe, and it was so great to have this conversation to remember World War II, how it impacted Oklahoma, to remember the 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. And so thanks once again for helping us connect those dots of history.
Blackburn: Well, World War II is one of those defining moments that would affect an entire nation and world. And we can see it right here in Oklahoma.
Thompson: Well, that wraps up the podcast for today, and we’ll talk to you on our next episode. You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by Ryan Green. I encourage you to go out and like us and subscribe to us on whatever podcast app that you use, and please rate us. And if you liked what you heard today, please go recommend us to a friend, and we’ll see you next month for our next episode.
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