'We'd go to the movie theater to watch the news reels of the war'

Amy Zierman

I was a mother of three children during World War II. I stayed at home and took care of our children while my husband and father worked in the shipyards.

Many women worked there too - some double shifts. My sister drove a truck at Fort Lewis.

We raised all the vegetables we needed in our Victory gardens. Everyone had one then. Even small ones. We raised radishes, lettuce, carrots, well, just about everything. I don't remember why we called them Victory Gardens, but we did.

We recycled and reused all that we could. We didn't call it "recycling for the environment." It was just the way of life. You couldn't just replace things like you can now. Food was rationed. We bought the staples we needed using our War Ration Stamps.

I think red stamps were for butter, blue stamps...well I just don't remember exactly. We were rationed for sugar, butter, meat, clothes, shoes, gas. It was hard to make it all stretch for a family.

You were issued stamps depending on the number of children you had, or how large your family was. But it was still difficult.

My husband, Ernie, was a Block Warden. Lots of men were. They wore hard hats and carried around flash-lights at night when we had "blackouts" to make sure that everything was dark.

We turned out the lights and covered all windows with black blankets during the blackouts. We sat around the radio and listened to President Roosevelt talk about the war effort.

We didn't have television back then of course. We kept the radio on almost all the time to hear any news.

The "Rosie the Riveter" song was popular. Women were doing so many of the jobs the men used to do. We didn't complain a lot. You take the bitter with the sweet.

We tried to do activities that kept life normal, especially for the children. They went to Sunday School. The children bought war stamps in school for five to ten cents. We went to town on the bus.

There weren't nylon stockings anymore, so I took my silk stockings in to have them re-woven, sort of patched. I bought my son a little soldier suit to wear.

While we were in town, we'd go to the movie theater to watch the news reels of the war -- all about the Japanese. My brother was fighting in the war. Once, when we were at the movies, watching the news reels of our prisoners of war, I saw my brother, Leonard, walking in the line with all the skinny, emaciated men.

He was part of the terrible Bataan Death March. The enemy marched thousands of our starving soldiers from one camp to another. We lost many of our boys and men in that march, but my brother survived.

It's hard to imagine seeing your own brother on a news reel like that. We later learned that while Leonard was in his first concentration camp, he drew pictures and caricatures on any scraps of paper he could find.

The backs of tin can wrappers, the insides of old cigarette packs. The sketches depicted life and hardships in the camps. When the Japanese soldiers came to send my brother and the other prisoners on the march, my brother buried them.

These sketches and caricatures have since been on displays and showings.

Everyone worked hard during the war years. We all really sacrificed for the war effort. You had to. You wanted to. America was very patriotic then. I think it is again now. That's good.

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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