University of California, Irvine
How People Deal With The
Trauma of War or Genocide?
Transcript
Gabriela Rodriguez
POL SCI 145A TERROR & GENOCIDE
MONROE, K.
March 12, 2015
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Me: Do you want to introduce yourself first?
Deanne: I am Deanne Peace, a friend of Steven’s grandmother. And we are going to have a
nice talk about World War II.
Me: How old are you?
Deanne: I am 90 years old
Me: How old were you when WWII happened?
Deanne: I was 17, maybe even 16 when the war in Europe started, which our country was
not involved at that time. I was married at age 18, to my boyfriend who was 20 and in the
service. And we were married three weeks when he was shifted overseas and went from
Oakland to Australia to New Guinea for the most part, and then went on each island as the
Marines would beat the Japanese. His company would move to the next island until his
company ended up in Tokyo in Japan with the Occupation Forces. That was after they had
bombed, let two atomic bombs go in Japan in order to end the war.
Me: What were your first thoughts of the war? When you first heard about it when you
were 16, what was your assumption of what was going on?
Deanne: It was a very unusual time compared to wars since then because everybody pulled
together. Nobody complained about anything, there was rationing: gas rationing, food
rationing. We had coupons, and everybody had to give up something but nobody ever
complained. Everybody was really just gung ho and supporting our troops, not like the wars
since then. It was very unusual, butyou know the call us the greatest generation. When I
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think back it was a memorable time and a good time to think about how our country came all
together. It was very strange
Me: What did they tell you guys about the Jewish people? Were…
Deanne: Oh this was the European war, where they had Auschwitz. I don’t know as much
about that as I know about the Pacific, which is where my husband was. But they persecuted
all the Jews. In fact, I took a writing class a few years back where I wrote my life story, and
one of the ladies in the class had been in Germany with her family at that time and they were
getting all the Jews, killing them or putting on trains saying they were going to go to another
camp or something and they would go to a place like Auschwitz where they would murder
them.
Me: When you were 16 did you ever find out that they were killing them when they were
sending them to the concentration camps?
Deanne: Oh yeah…yeah.
Me: So many people were taught that they were just doing it because Jews were bad. Here
in the United States how were the Jews perceived?
Deanne: Everybody was very supportive and appalled at what was happening to them. I
don’t recall anyone saying anything negative at all, ever.
Me: When you met your husband was he already in the war?
Deanne: No I met him before the war. It was before the war. We met at a dance.
Me: Was he already a solder or did he …
Deanne: No, it was in high school when I met him.
Me: When did he decide to go into the militia?
Deanne: He went into the service in 1942.
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Me: What caused him to go in?
Deanne: Everybody else was going. He was working part time for a railroad and he doing
the statistician kind of work. And so he had a deferment, he didn’t have to go, but everybody
else went. He felt that he really needed to go and help save his country. He enlisted and he
didn’t have to.
Me: So he wasn’t drafted?
Deanne: No, he enlisted. He would have been drafted but because of his job, they gave him a
deferment, because his job supposedly was necessary.
Me: Ok, so he was deferred from the war and he still chose to...
Deanne: He chose to enlist and go into the service.
Me: What did you think about him enlisting? Because he got a deferment, he could have
stayed at home?
Deanne: I don’t recall feeling anything negative about it. Everybody else was going and it
was. You just can’t understand now the…the feeling that people had at that particular time.
Everybody was willing to do anything they could because of what was going on in Europe
with the Jews and then Germany going from one country to another and the terrible things
that they were doing.
Me: When he enlisted, did you just wait at home?
Deanne: I was living at home. Well I came back here after we were married for three weeks
and his company shipped out and went overseas, so I took a bus home. We were living in
Florida and Ohio at that time. I came home and got my same job back. I worked for a
company called the (electric gone-a-light) and they made spark plugs, and everything was
geared towards the war effort. It wasn’t even like a spark plug for a car. You couldn’t even
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buy a car, everything was geared for the war effort and I worked in the personnel department.
We hired people called day workers, they were people that were like bums on the street and
we had to pay them at the end of that day but we got them to come in and work in the
factory, because all the young guys were drafted. So all these companies had to find people
to do the work and that was sort the start of the women’s movement because more women
went out to work then, because they were needed. It was unusual in my mother’s age group
for anyone to be out, to work. The women were in the home and during the war, a lot of the
women went out to work and that caused a problem when a lot of the men came home from
the war. The women were so used to being in charge, being the boss, and some of them had a
hard giving up that role, and giving it back to their husbands. So there were quite a few
divorces.
Me: I think that was the start of a lot of the divorces wasn’t it?
Deanne: But that was sort of the start of the women’s movement, when women left…were
out of the home.
Me: Did your husband ever tell you about the stories that happened during the war? Did
he send you letters? Or...
Deanne: He wrote… it was called v-mail. It was a little piece of paper that had to go
through the censors. And there would be big black slashes. He wasn’t allowed to tell me
where he was or what he was doing. It was sort of a real, not real kind of a letter but he wrote
to me every day and I wrote to him every day.
Me: How did those letters get transferred back and forth daily?
Deanne: Probably by plane.
Me: They were actual letters?
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Deanne: No, they were little tiny pieces…I wouldn’t call them a letter.
Me: Can you describe them?
Deanne: I wish that I would have saved them now. They would be more like a note, more
like the size of a note that you would use. And it was like I said they were censored.
Me: Did he censor it?
Deanne: Oh no… it was something else... censors. You know, there was a saying, “loose
lips sink ships” so they weren’t allowed to tell what they were doing, where they were, so I
had no idea where he was.
Me: After the war did he tell you any of his stories?
Deanne: Yeah he told me about when they went to New Guinea. It was just pure jungle and
they had to build everything from scratch. They built…they had to put wooden floors in, they
chopped down trees, hey build latrines, the bathrooms; they even had a basketball court.
Then, in each island it was very primitive. They just pitched tents and had to make do. One
of the stories I remember him telling me he was in Japan and they had no bathrooms, no
latrines so they had to dig a hole and they would do their business in the hole and cover it up.
And he said that the Japanese would stand far away and look at them and laugh. He said it
was quite an experience to go to the bathroom. (chuckles)
Me: They were close to society in Japan then, they weren’t in areas that they were
isolated?
Deanne: Oh! Oh no no no.
Me: Did he ever feel like giving up in the middle of it?
Deanne: Oh no no.
Me: What did you do? I know that you went back to work?
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Deanne: I worked for this factory in the personnel department and I was in charge of the
insurance. And I was still living at home. When he came home, we tried to find an apartment
and of course everyone else was coming home and so they were really hard to find. And so
some good friends of ours lived in a four space and they heard of one of the apartments being
opened and they called us. We didn’t even have a car. My dad drove us over and it was 35
dollars a month. For two bedrooms, a bath, a kitchen, and living room and a little sun deck.
$35 dollars a month (chuckles). And you could buy a refrigerator, a washer, you couldn’t buy
a car. You had to go on the list. You had to get on a list because everything has been geared
to the war effort and they weren’t making things... you know most of us had what we had
when we came home. So it was different, very different.
Me: What were your sentiments to what they were doing to the Japanese in the United
States?
Deanne: We didn’t know about that until afterwards.
Me: So you didn’t hear anything about them being shifted to concentration camps or any
of that?
Deanne: No, we didn’t know anything about that. At least where I was, we didn’t hear
anything about that, until long after the war. I just heard yesterday while I was going to the
pool. The man down the street was telling me stories about his dad being in WWII in the
service. And he said that his brother enlisted and was in charge of the camp where they held
Germans. And I didn’t know that that happened here in California but apparently there was a
place where they incarcerated Germans, just like the Japanese. Stuff that I just learned the
other day.
Me: Did you get a lot of the news..?
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Deanne: I don’t know, we didn’t have TV then you know.
Me: But you guys had radios?
Deanne: We had radios yeah… but we didn’t get to hear or see the news like you do now.
Everything you heard was very positive. We were so behind the troops and never heard
anything negative or people whining about stuff. It was very different from the wars we have
had since, very different.
Me: What else can you tell me about the wars that we have had since?
Deanne: Well, the way that the veterans were treated when they came home for one thing.
My husband was able to get his college education because of that. We were able to buy our
first house because of that. We got a loan from the Veterans Administration. Also, he got a
Bachelor’s ... took classes towards his Master’s. And we got like $50 a month from the
Veterans Administration as long as he was taking the classes. They treated the vets pretty
well when they came home, as well as they should.
Me: What would you have done at that time if you knew they there sending the Japanese
to camps?
Deanne: I don’t know if there was anything we could have done where I was living.
Me: If you had, let’s just say, a neighbor who was Japanese, what would you have done in
that situation?
Deanne: That would have been very strange, but I don’t remember anything was said about
the Jews or the Germans. And nothing was ever said negative about other people, other
ethnic people.
Me: There were no comments no negativity towards them?
Deanne: Not that I know.
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Me: Can you tell me what you were doing during Pearl Harbor?
Deanne: Yes, I was at a movie with one of my girlfriends in downtown Toledo. And we
came out of the movie and they told us what had happened and we got in the car. People
were just hundreds packed in the streets. There wasn’t a car moving, it was very different.
Wild Wild. My girlfriend and I were really scared because it was like a mob.
Me: in Ohio?
Deanne: Yeah, we were in a movie in the Paramount Theater, on a Sunday.
Me: When did you find out what had happened?
Deanne: I think that day, you know on the radio.
Me: News did travel through the radio?
Deanne: Mhm.
Me: Do you remember what FDR was talking about?
Deanne: No, but he would have his private side show…He was very popular and I can’t
remember but he was on Sunday night we would listen to him. And he was always very
encouraging about everything and…
*long pause*
Me: Do you know any of the women that went to war?
Deanne: I had two friends that joined the waves. I don’t know what ever happened with
them because I completely lost touch with them. I have gone to the pool with a friend who
lives down the street was a nurse in WWII. So I have heard some of her stories.
Me: Did you ever think of you yourself joining?
Deanne: No!
Me: Why not?
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Deanne: I don’t think that it occurred to me. Not many women that I knew did. You see I
was married, so that was different. I was just waiting for him to get home, to get on with our
lives.
Me: Married women had a different view of the war? Because you said “I was married”,
what was expected of a married women?
Deanne:* silence*
I think just to do what you normally ever did. We weren’t encouraged to get out and do
anything really. I used to get a ride with a fellow that worked in one of the offices, he was in
management at the factory where I worked. I would give him a few dollars every week and
he got a sticker that he was eligible to get gas. Because you had to get coupons. And I would
take the bus home and I would stop downtown and I would go to the book store and buy a
book every weekend. So that I had something to do on the weekend … buy a couple of
books.
*silence*
Me: Okay that is basically all I have, thank you! Any other comments or anything you
want to add about the war?
Deanne: I had several friends in the office where I worked. One’s[one of the coworkers]
husband was a pilot and was shot down and he ended up being in incarcerated in France and
he was liberated… he went to the same high school that I did only that he was a little bit
older. He was liberated by another labiate that he didn’t know that had gone to the same high
school the same year.
Me: Wow really...
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Deanne: Another friend of mine at the office, her husband in the Guadalcanal it was
terrible, terrible, terrible. A bloody, bloody war, but he came back in one piece. Another one,
her husband was a prisoner of war and he finally got released. I can’t remember the story on
that. So it wasn’t like you were along going through it alone without your husband, this is the
way it was with everybody. Hardly anybody was not touched by the war in some way or
another.
Me: Do you think having gone through it waiting for your husband changed your life in a
way? Had the war never happened you would have been married…
Deanne: Well we wouldn’t have gotten married. We would have a wonderful time just
dating and we had no thought of getting married when we got engaged. But because of the
war in those days we didn’t think we could be together unless we got married. It’s different
now (chuckle). Things were different then, and I would not have married him but he was on
a trip train. He had been in school in Illinois for 6 weeks, some school, and he was on a trip
train going to Florida to Tent City and the train stopped in either in North Carolina or South
Carolina, some place he got off and went to a phone booth, and called me up. And we were
all at the dinner table, my family and I. He called me to come down and marry him. And I
kind of stuttered and stammered this was so…this was not in our game plan. And I thought
that I said “well, okay,” and so his mother went down first. We didn’t hear from him for a
few days, she found him through the Red Cross. He was at a hospital being treated in Tent
City because he had arthritis in his knees. So she called us and said all was well, she found
him and he was going to get released and we should come down. So his dad and I got on a
train and the only seat we could find on the train was a little bench outside the restroom.
And the two of us sat on that for two and a half days and nights going to Florida from Ohio.
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And we didn’t dare both leave at the same time because we would lose our seats. Everything
was packed because there was no transportation. Like there weren’t any planes, all the planes
were in the military. So there weren’t any fun places that you could go on a plane. Or a train
for that matter, because everything was just... just jam packed. And the only food we had was
at one of the stops there was someone from the outside who opened one of the doors and he
was selling sandwiches and so my father in law bought each of us a sandwich and it was
stale. It was horrible but it was all the food we had (chuckle). But we made it.
Me: Did having a food shortage affect your way of saving food?
Deanne: There were shortages, and one of the funny things is we couldn’t get fruit
cocktails. You had to have so many stamps in order to get it. So people would save up to get
it... I mean I didn’t even like fruit cocktails anyhow and the funny thing about it is when my
husband came home we had saved enough stamps to get a can of fruit cocktail and he said,
“God that’s all they had.” (laughs loudly) That’s what they sent overseas (laughing).
Me: So fruit cocktails were sent overseas?
Deanne: He thought it was blah and we thought it was such a treat. I will never forget that
Me: So all the fruit cocktails were over there?
Deanne: Yes, yes they sent them overseas to the military (chuckle).
Me: What else did they sent over there that you found were short here?
Deanne: We had to have coupons to get meat. We didn’t have a whole lot of meat or choice.
We couldn’t get cigarettes. And I can remember I was smoking at that time and I remember
going to a drug store and they had this turkey thing and ugh it was awful… it was awful. And
that was the only time I tried that. There was a saying… I don’t know if you are familiar with
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the brand named the Lucky Strikes cigarettes, but they say, “Lucky Strikes went to war.”
That was a saying.
Me: What were the food stamps? Do you want to explain a little bit how they worked?
Deanne: Well, you had to apply for that depending on the number of people in your family,
and what your job was. You know if you were in a key position you got more. Like the
fellow who drove me to work every morning, because he was working for a factory that was
doing things for the war, he got so much ration for a week. Other than that, you rode busses,
just not that many cars on the road. It was really strange compared to what we have now.
Me: How were families different from how they are now?
Deanne: Well they were torn apart, because all the men that were physically able that
passed the test were gone.
Me: Do you know what the test was?
Deanne: No. They just had to make sure that they were ….like I heard that if you had flat
feet they didn’t take you. But now a fellow down at the pool told me that it wasn’t true, that
they took him, when he had very flat feet, so it must have depended on where you live. There
must have been a quota or something. My husband and his (friend), who ended up being his
business partner, both went to Detroit and applied for the naval air-something, they were
going to be navy pilots. And neither one of them could pass the vision test. His peripheral
vision wasn’t good enough. So that was that.
Me: Have you seen any war movies like “Pearl Harbor”, do you think they portray the war
accurately?
Deanne: Pearl Harbor is a wonderful movie.
Me: How realistic are those movies?
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Deanne: I think they pretty much told it the way it was.
Me: So they really do hit on all the elements of the war and what you went through war?
What kind of propaganda did you have in Ohio?
Deanne: I don’t recall much of anything you would call propaganda or negative. It was a
very different time then what you kids know. And even your parents. The wars we have had
since. Very different.
Me: What would you recommend to the generations now going into war? Or against war?
Deanne: I don’t know because each day I am becoming more of an isolationist, because I
feel we shouldn’t be over in the Far East. And I think just let them shoot each other and get
out of there. I hate it when I hear any of our military has been killed, I hate it when I hear
they are going to send more over. I don’t think we belong over there. I think we can’t impose
our way of life on other people, they have to figure that out for themselves. All we are doing
is killing people, I don’t agree with what we are doing at all.
Me: What is the difference with that, and what happened in WW2?
Deanne: We were bombed, our country was bombed. Pearl Harbor was part of the United
States. We were bombed so they attacked us. We didn’t start it. We didn’t start the one in
Europe either. The Germans started it. And then because we were good friends of England,
we started sending troops over there to help that part of the war. Gosh, I am very upset with
our president. Very upset. I think get out of there and let them kill each other if that is what
they want to do. They don’t want, they don’t want democracy (pause). It’s just bad. I’m sorry
I get in my soap box about that, and we have more fun down at the pool talking about this
because I am not alone in my thinking (chuckle).
Me: No, you are never alone.
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Deanne: more people in my generation are feeling the same way, that it’s such a waste what
we are doing. We are not getting anywhere. I am more willing to support in helping people
find jobs, get an education, but I don’t support these idiots who are killing people, like
beheading them, how awful (pause). And you know, the thing about it is that you feel
helpless because there is nothing that I can do except not elect him again. And hope the next
one (president) does a better job. I don’t know.
Me: Then what do you say about the twin towers?
Deanne: I just feel that we should have retaliated some way.
Me: So you feel like we didn’t retaliate?
Deanne: No we didn’t, we let them get away with it (pause). You know we are sending
millions of dollars to these countries for various things. We are fools (pause). And yet, you
know they come and bomb us (long pause).
Me: Thank you – end of the official interview.
I terminated the conversation at that point since including the not recorded part we had
been talking for over 2 hours. The official recording lasted 30 minutes.
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University of California, Irvine
How People Deal With The
Trauma of War or Genocide?
Analysis
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Gabriela Rodriguez
POL SCI 145A TERROR & GENOCIDE
MONROE, K.
March 12, 2015
The interview with Mrs. Peace taught me that there can be more than one way a person
can deal with the trauma of War. Analyzing my interview with Mrs. Peace I was able to divide
the means of dealing with a trauma into four segments. Each of the segments ties together with
the other segments allowing a person to maintain their humanity even after the tragic event is
over. In Mrs. Peace’s interview the segments that I found were as followed; propaganda,
separation of the action with oneself, the way one views the event, and the after affects and how
the mind processes after time passes.
Before I start my analysis I would like to introduce Mrs. Deane Peace. Deanne Peace is a
mother of three boys who married her high school sweetheart at the age of 18. Deanne was 16
years old when WWII started in Europe. Her husband, Gene Peace joined the Navy during
WWII, and died in 1998 at the age of 75. During the process of the war Deanne was able to keep
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a level head even though her husband was in the pacific dealing with the war with Japan and the
bombing of Pearl Harbor. By the time Pearl Harbor had happened Mrs. Peace was already
married to Mr. Peace.
The First way I learned is used to maintain your humanity in a tragic event is by
distancing yourself from the events taking place. Mrs. Peace does this when she talks about
WWII. The only time she labels the war, WWII is in the introduction, other than that she
distinguishes it by calling it the European war and the Pacific war. The effect of not having the
war close to you makes it easier to separate herself from the horror of the events taking place.
For Mrs. Peace it was actually the Pacific war that she felt was closer to home for the fact the
Japanese attacked the United States. This made Mrs. Peace believe that us sending troops and
bombing Japan were ok things to do. But Propaganda also played a role in helping Mrs. Peace
keep her humanity.
Another way that Mrs. Peace was able to deal with what happened in WWII was by
listening to the propaganda set by the United States. During the course of the interview it was a
repeating positive optimistic view of WWII that caught my attention. Whenever I asked for
remarks about something wrong Mrs. Peace instantly answered with everyone was for the war,
or we all joined together. At two points she even quoted slogans used to promote the war. It also
has to do that Mrs. Peace was in Ohio at the time of the war. This helped her not feel the effect of
the war as much as those who were soldiers or were in areas where the killings were actually
happening. There was even a point where she made a statement that she was unaware of the
Japanese being sent to camps in the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack. Mrs. Peace was
very certain that we were meant to go to the war that it was our duty because we were attacked
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first. This form of Brain wash for lack of better words made Mrs. Peace see the war in a positive
light unlike the wars that were to come in the future.
In present times, as Mrs. Peace got older I have learned that another thing needed to
maintain humanity. That is having others that have also gone through the events you lived
through, and being able to talk with someone who is willing to listen and have apathy with the
stories you tell. Mrs. Peace demonstrates this by continuously bringing up stories she and her
fellow WWII survivor friends talk about at the community pool in her housing area. Mrs. Peace
has shown that keeping your humanity is not something that happens only during the time of a
traumatic event but that it is something that will always be with you. That life may continue but
those events do not get buried inside your head. That traumatic events will resurface and haunt
you more as people are able to relate to you lessen and die over time.
Finally, while listening to Mrs. Peace interview there were a couple of points that I
noticed. First one is Mrs. Peace’s statement about getting married. At one point in the interview I
questioned her about joining the war even though she was a woman. For Mrs. Peace her response
was very simple. No. But yet after that question she goes into an explanation about it. Mrs. Peace
states, “See I was married so that was different I was just waiting for him to get home… To get
on with our lives.” When I asked her to elaborate on how a married woman differed from a
single woman, Mrs. Peace starts to give me examples of fellow coworkers and their stories to
conclude with “So it wasn’t like you were along going through you know being alone without
your husband being away this is the way it was with everybody. Hardly anybody was not
touched by the war in some way or another” This statement is the core of my interview. It sums
up how Mrs. Peace was able to maintain her humanity even though the war. By knowing that
there were others like her and knowing that she was not alone Mrs. Peace was able to refrain
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from isolating herself from society and I believe that this was how others were also able to make
it through, knowing that they were not the only ones touched by the effects of the war.
This statement also connects all the other segments I believe have to do with keeping
your humanity during a tragic event. I have learned from Mrs. Peace that keeping your humanity
is not a short term fast solution. There is a long process that takes place in keeping your
humanity. It is not something that you can do alone and that keeping your feelings inside is not
the best way to deal with a situation. Mrs. Peace has not only lived through WWII and then has
been safe from all of the other tragedies that have affected our country. No she has continuously
seen current events become history. The only thing she can do is continue living because that is
how you keep your humanity taking it one day at a time.