Rebecca Naman | Interview 1 | March 31, 2012

DUNHAM: Today is March 31, 2012. This is David Dunham with the Rosie the Riveter/World War II American Home Front Oral History Project. I'm here in the lovely home of Rebecca (Becky) Naman in Sacramento, California. We're here to interview her about her life experiences. We usually start at the beginning. So, Becky, can you tell me your full name and your date of birth?

NAMAN: I'm Rebecca. My maiden name is my middle name, Hachigian. Naman is my married name, and born on November 22, 1919 in Fresno, California.

DUNHAM: Can you tell me a little bit about your family history? Did you know your grandparents, where they came from, lived?

NAMAN: My father's parents, my grandparents, were murdered in the genocide by 00:01:00the Turks. My father was left an orphan at age eighteen. I don't know how he escaped. The rest of his family was murdered. It was in the 1890s, when the Turks started to come into their village in Armenia, according to what my father told us. My father did not like to talk about it. It was something he wanted to forget about. So we got very little as far as information from him because he wanted to forget about it, and he didn't talk about it hardly at all. But once in a while something would come up with guests in our home and all. He would release some information. Whether he knew it, how he escaped, how the rest of his family got taken care of the way they were, and how he got away, I don't 00:02:00know. But I do know that he told us that he was left an orphan at eighteen in the village of Moosh in Armenia, and he traveled in Russia for a year after he escaped. He worked as a dry goods salesman in Russia and earned enough money and ended up in Marseilles, France to gain passage to the United States. That seemed to be where many of them that were fleeing from the possibility of a genocide were fleeing and going to Marseilles, France and booking passage to the United States. Now, how long that took and what help he had, obviously he must have had 00:03:00some help. But I just was too young then to even appreciate asking questions, really.

Now I realize that if only he were here so that I could ask him about these things, because I'm sure it was a very interesting--but my mother always said that he didn't like to talk about it. I can understand why because he was the only one left, excepting he did have a nephew, his brother's son, who survived also. I think the brother's son was thirteen years old, and my father was responsible for him and brought him to the United States with him. They did end up in Marseilles, France, and they booked passage to the United States. I have been back to Ellis Island, and he's on Panel Number Such-and-Such there, and 00:04:00there are four other John Hachigians listed, people in the United States here, They're also on those panels. I'm not sure whether you're familiar with how you end up on these panels back there. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. Families--I think it was $100 that we paid to have my father shown on these panels, which showed the date that he entered the United States and what ship he came in on and so forth. So I was very proud when I went back to Ellis Island for the first time. I've been back there two or three times. Every time we've gone to New York we've always gone to Ellis Island. I just somehow or another feel very proud to see what he had to go through to get here. And many others; he was not the only one, but many others like him.

DUNHAM: Do you know if he and his nephew were in Russia together?

NAMAN: Yes. They were. In fact, his nephew used to call my mother "Mom" because my mother actually mothered him, you might say. He lived with us, as I remember--because I was a lot younger than he was--he lived with us until he was about eighteen or nineteen, and then he was on his own. He was always at our house and always part of the family. He died a young man, in his thirties when he passed away. I remember him.

DUNHAM: What year did they come through Ellis Island?

NAMAN: It was 1894 or '95, somewhere in through there. I think I've got it someplace. When we went back to Ellis Island. But that was the date--the ship 00:06:00that he came in on too, I got that information.

DUNHAM: And from their arrival on Ellis Island, do you know what their journey was from there?

NAMAN: Came to Fresno, California. My father, I don't know how he had enough money to start a card room in Fresno. So all of the people who were coming from Armenia to escape what was in store for them, shall we say, they would all end up at my father's card room in Fresno. What the name of the card room was and all, I don't know. But he did have a card room because people used to talk about this when I was just a little kid. How he ended up with money, how he ended up 00:07:00as what I consider to be fairly responsible, I don't know. But he ended up having a card room, and all the Armenians that came from the old country used to congregate at his place as an area of socialization.

Another side of the story--I don't want to get ahead of us here--in 1902 or '03 my grandfather, my mother's father, came to this country on his own and left his family there in the old country, came here to the United States to earn money to bring the family over here. They made these plans, and I think he ended up at my father's card room. He didn't know my father from the old country or anything, but he ended there and they got to be friends. And when the time came--it was about 1904, I believe, or, yes, 1904--he was short a few thousand dollars to 00:08:00bring his family of ten over. My mother came from a family of five children, and there were three boys and two girls in the family. A couple of them were married over in the old country so it ended up that he was responsible for a family of ten. He was short a few thousand dollars, so he asked my father for a loan. My father had seen a picture of my mother with the family picture that my grandfather had. So he said, "If you give me that girl's hand, I'll give you the money; you don't have to borrow it." So my grandfather made a pact--this is a true story; they used to talk about it all the time--and said "If you give me that girl's hand, I'll give you the money; you don't have to borrow it." So my grandfather made a deal with him. When the family got here, my grandfather told 00:09:00my grandmother and my mother--my mother was only fifteen years old--what he had done. My mother said she cried for three days; she didn't want to get married. She wanted to go to school here. My grandfather said that he would rather die than go back on his word, that he had made a pact with my father and he was going to have to honor it. So my mother then decided, as a dutiful daughter, that she'd go ahead with it. Now, my father was twenty years older than my mother. They got married. They came in November of 1905, my grandmother with her family and all. They came in 1905 in November, and my mother and father were married in January of 1906. So it was just a couple of months there, and they were married. I have their wedding picture. I can show it to you. It's kind of 00:10:00interesting to see it. I'll show it to you. Remind me. It's hanging in our bedroom. They were married forty-five years, I think it was, when my father died. My dad died in 1945.

DUNHAM: Did you have siblings, or when did they start their family?

NAMAN: My sister was the oldest; she was twelve years older than I was. She was born in 1907. They were married in '06, and she was born a year later, in 1907. My brother was nine years older than I was, and he was born in--as I say, nine years older. And then I was the youngest. However, my mother did have a boy between my brother and me, but he died during the flu epidemic in 1918 or 00:11:00somewhere. I think my mother told me that he was nine months old when he died.

DUNHAM: What was life like for your mother? She wanted to go to school initially.

NAMAN: She never was able to go to school. That was her one regret. She always used to talk about that. She used to kid my husband. When my husband and I were married, he would tease my mother, and he would say, "Ma, how would you like it if I did this and if I did that?" and she would say, "Oh, if only I got to go to school here in this country I would show you." She would kid him back.

DUNHAM: They got along well?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. My mother adored my husband. Really and truly, she did. And he was very fond of my mother, too, very fond of her.

DUNHAM: That's very fortunate. You mention, understandably, that your father did not want to speak much about--

NAMAN: He didn't.

DUNHAM: --the Turkish genocide and all of that. Is it something that, later in life, you researched and looked into?

NAMAN: You know, it's one of the unfortunate things that we never really, none of us, somehow or another were ever able to get my dad to talk about these things; he just did not want to talk about it. Now, it must have been pretty horrible. And I can understand; maybe they were slaughtered right in front of his eyes, you know? I recall Victor McLaglen , the actor, was a very good friend of my father-in-law's. My father-in-law was in the dried fruit business, and he used to buy Victor's raisins because he had a ranch in Fresno, and that's how they became friends. He was in the British army during World War I--when all 00:13:00this took place. He said he saw them taking the children and throwing them--this is the Turkish soldiers--throwing them up in the air and taking their swords--. Just horrible things. He said he saw all that. In later years after we were married and we got to talking about it, and I told the story of my father and how he hated to talk about it. He said he could understand why because, he said, "We saw it happen, and it was horrible. They weren't people that we knew, but just," you know. I recall from his telling about what he had seen as a British soldier That's the only example that I knew of, of people that had seen these things happening. And he was very explicit about it.

DUNHAM: Can you tell me about growing up in Fresno? Did you live in--was it called "Little Armenia"? Was it a neighborhood?

NAMAN: No. We did at first when I was--the house that we lived in, where Bruce [Janigian]'s mother and family lived around the corner from us, that was kind of what they used to call "Little Armenia." But of course all that area was torn down for the freeway. So we moved from that area after about the second or third grade because then changes were taking place, and we moved to the house that I really remember growing up in. It wasn't Little Armenia; it was very--let's call it a mixed neighborhood.

DUNHAM: Do you remember what the makeup of the neighborhood was?

NAMAN: As far as people? I would say there were probably as many non-Armenians as there were Armenians. Percentagewise, I don't know, but we had neighbors that were non-Armenians. However, there was a certain amount of prejudice during that period which I don't remember the specifics of. But when I left Fresno, after I got out of school to come up here to go to work, there was still prejudice as far as getting jobs was concerned. So I came up here. My mother was from Sacramento because my grandfather, her family, settled in Sacramento when they came from the old country. They first came to Fresno but didn't stay there long. They came up here because there were more job opportunities here in Sacramento. 00:16:00So my mother was from Sacramento. More or less just before she got married, why, they lived here in Sacramento.

DUNHAM: More job opportunities in Sacramento because it was a bigger area, but also specifically in Fresno that it was harder for an Armenian to find opportunities.

NAMAN: That's right. That's right.

DUNHAM: I've read that there was also a German Town, a Little Italy, a Chinatown that--

NAMAN: There was a Germantown, I remember. It was in the area they called West Fresno. A lot of the Germans had settled there, and they had department stores that were owned by the Germans and all. In the Armenian town there were some; there were bakeries and grocery stores owned by the Armenians, and they were patronized by the Armenians, many of them, because they had the kinds of things 00:17:00that they wanted to buy.

DUNHAM: Do you remember if there was much of a Chinese or Japanese population?

NAMAN: Not much. Really not much. In fact, I think in my graduating class in high school there were about 150 people in my graduating class that year, if I'm correct, somewhere in that neighborhood. I would say maybe there were one or two Japanese or Asians--I'm not sure whether they were Chinese or Japanese.

DUNHAM: What was it like growing up there? What was school like?

NAMAN: Oh, fun! Fun. However, they weren't always welcoming us with open arms in some of the classes--not classes, but clubs that they had at the school there. You know how you have various clubs and all. We weren't welcomed with open arms 00:18:00at the time. I recall that very, very well. But we had our own group of kids that we grew up with. I'm still--well, Bruce's mother and I, we started kindergarten, and we're still friends and we're still living--she's just a year older than I am.

DUNHAM: When had Bruce's mother's family come to Fresno?

NAMAN: I think it was about the same time when all this was taking place. Exactly, I'm not sure, but it was about the time because many of them came even later. My folks came early because they came before the actual official genocide took place. Things were happening; my mother had slits in her ears because when 00:19:00she would walk to school in her country the Turkish soldiers would take her earrings and pull them off her ears just for harassment, just to harass them. So that's when her family--this is according to my mother--that's when her family decided it was time; they had to leave their country because this was going to happen. It was predicted; you see, they came in 1906, 1905; that was before the official genocide took place, 1915.

DUNHAM: So it was all through the teens and twenties that there were a lot more migrating--

NAMAN: That's right. The official ones.

DUNHAM: And then immigration halted; what was it?

NAMAN: Eighteen--twenties, I think it was. Something, 1920 or something like that.

DUNHAM: How many Armenian-American classmates did you have in your class of 150?

NAMAN: Oh, gosh, there were a good number. Not half, but I would say at least a 00:20:00third of them.

DUNHAM: Even with that sizable population there was still a lot of open discrimination?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. I can get out my high school Owl and count them and tell you exactly.

DUNHAM: That'd be great. What types of clubs were not open to you?

NAMAN: Mostly the social clubs. If you insisted, you could join. But you weren't welcome, and you knew that. Some of the Asians and some of the blacks are faced with--before we had laws to protect them. We didn't have the laws then. Actually--I'd like to forget about this, but--when I graduated from junior 00:21:00college we were supposed to be sent out for jobs according to our class ranking. And people that were behind me in class ranking were being sent out, and I wasn't sent out for any of the job interviews. So I went to our dean of girls, and I said to her "I'm here because of this. People that have lower class ranking than I do are being referred out, and I'm not. How come?" This was before laws were passed; this was way back when, '38, '39. She said, "Well, all of the job interviews are coming in with they want no Armenians or no blacks." They called them Negroes at the time. So I went home, and I told my mother that 00:22:00I was not going to stay there to look for a job because I was going to go on to state college. I had already been accepted and all that; that's what my plans were. That weekend, my cousin and my aunt came down for a visit with us from Sacramento. I told them of the incident, and my cousin said, "Well, you pack your bags; you're going to go home with us, and I'll bet you'll have a job before you know it." So my mother said "Okay, she can go." She didn't think I was going to get a job; she knew I was going to come back.

So I came up here, and the very next day--it happened that my cousin's next door neighbor was the woman that was the personnel manager for the Pacific Telephone Company. I got dressed up, hat, gloves, the whole works, and went down to see her at her office. That's what she asked me to do. When I got down for the 00:23:00interview, she says, "You know, I don't have anything that I would want to refer you out on, that would fit for your background." She said, "I'm going to send you over to my husband, who is the Assistant State Treasurer. And his secretary is pregnant, and she's going to be leaving very soon, and she'll be coming back in September after she has her baby. She'll be coming back in September, and that should work out just fine because you're going to be going back to school. You see, I was going back to Fresno State. So she said, "I think that's going to work out fine. But," she said, "I'll call him and refer you over there." So she called him and set up a time, and I hightailed it over to the State Capitol from where I was; it was 14th and J. I walked over to the Capitol for my interview 00:24:00with him. So he interviewed me and after about an hour or so he said," How soon can you go to work?" I said, "I can go to work right away," which you don't do that now; you don't act real anxious. You learn these things after a while, but that was then. So I took off my hat and my gloves and started working. This is the day after I came up here. September comes along, and she had her baby, and she didn't want to come back.

So they offered me a permanent job. I'd taken the exam already, and they offered me a permanent job and gave me a promotion. That was just too good for me to turn down because schoolteachers at that time were making about $75 a month. I was offered $110 a month. So I thought, "Well, heck, I can always go back to 00:25:00school. I'll take this job and earn some additional money and so forth." And I thought, "I can always go back to school." So that's what I did.

DUNHAM: You had been planning to study to become a schoolteacher at Fresno State.

NAMAN: No, I wanted to do office work. I wasn't planning on teaching. That's what my plans were, mostly in office work.

DUNHAM: Your mom had not expected you to find work.

NAMAN: They wanted me to go back to school. They were very upset with me that I--and I never did go back. Every time I got ready to leave they'd give me a promotion. That's just the way my career went, really and truly.

DUNHAM: Well, it worked out.

NAMAN: The man that I worked for, who was then the Assistant State Treasurer, a man by the name of Gene Irving--I have a picture of him among some of the junk 00:26:00that I have, a picture of him when he was given some kind of an honor, and his picture was in the paper. So I cut it out and had it. He's from a well-known Sacramento family. His name was Eugene Irving. I-R-V-I-N-G. It was an old-time family here. He was my boss, and was a reserve colonel. He knew that his outfit was going to mobilized and stationed out at McClellan Air Force Base. After I went to work for him on a permanent basis, why, a year goes by, and his outfit is getting closer and closer to being mobilized and being in uniform. So he was after me to take the federal test so that when he was mobilized and in uniform 00:27:00he could hire me. I kept putting him off because I'd have to go and buy a car to drive out to McClellan when I'd only take the streetcar and go downtown. So I just kept putting him off.

One day he challenged me; he said, "You know, I know why you won't go and take that test. You're afraid you won't pass." He challenged me, see? And I thought, "Well, I'll show you whether I can pass or not." I didn't know whether I was going to pass or not, so the next time the test came up I took the test. I passed it. Time went by, and the outfit was mobilized; he's in uniform. He said, "As soon as I get into uniform, I'm going to call for you to come out for an interview." He says, "Don't you disappoint me. You come out."

Well, that happened. Time went by, of course. Several months went by and I get this notice to go out for an interview out at McClellan. I didn't have a car then, so my cousin, who I was with then at the time, took me out. Naturally, I knew I was going to be hired. He interviewed me, and he said, "You go out and give them your two-week notice," and he said, "Come to work on a certain date." That's what happened. I went to work there on February 7, 1941. This was almost a year before World War II started.

DUNHAM: I wanted to back up a minute to when you came to Sacramento. It was just after you'd graduated from high school.

NAMAN: No. Junior college.

DUNHAM: Oh, excuse me. Junior college. This was in what year, then? '39?

NAMAN: It was in '39.

DUNHAM: So the summer of '39.

NAMAN: Yes, and then I worked for him, '39, '40, and it was in February 7, 1941 when I went to work out at McClellan, but I worked for him, with the State of California, for two years. It was a little over two years, something like that.

DUNHAM: How did Sacramento compare with Fresno? You'd lived in Fresno all your life, till then?

NAMAN: I loved it here. See, we used to spend a lot of our vacations here because my grandmother lived here, and all my mother's family, her brothers, her sisters. They were married and had families. And my cousins. We spent a lot of our holidays up here. And I always liked Sacramento. My cousins and all. Right away all the people I worked with were so good and helpful. So I just fit right in as far as I was concerned.

DUNHAM: And where did you live?

NAMAN: At that time I lived with my grandmother. Then my parents came up a little over a year later when my dad retired. He was a rancher, and he sold the ranch. They were moving into town, and my mother suggested that they move up to Sacramento because I was the only one at home then. My brother and sister were both married.

DUNHAM: Had your brother and sister stayed in Fresno?

NAMAN: Yes.

DUNHAM: What had they done?

NAMAN: My sister was married. She was a milliner. She took a special course in hat making for women, so she was a milliner. Then she got married. Then my brother went to work as a sheet metal apprentice. Ultimately, he owned his own business; my brother owned Fresno Sheet Metal Works and retired from that. That 00:31:00was what my brother did.

It's an interesting sidelight. My brother went to work for this man that owned a sheet metal company that was a friend of my father's. This was in the early Depression, on the edge of the Depression. The man that owned the sheet metal company told my dad that "the only way I can hire him" was as an apprentice because it was pretty tough. "I have to give him the sixteen dollars a week as the apprentice rate, but you will have to reimburse me because I can only actually afford to give him twelve dollars a week. But my books have to show that I'm hiring him at sixteen dollars a week. And you have to reimburse me four 00:32:00dollars." That's how my father had arranged with his friend who had this sheet metal shop to hire him.

DUNHAM: Was that because it was a union position?

NAMAN: Union position. And he had to do that in order to protect his roll. But he couldn't afford it. Whether it was the truth or not, I don't know. But the family used to talk about that all the time till my brother had his own sheet metal firm, and he hired his own men too. He used to say, "When I went to work in this business, that was, of course, during the Depression years, and that was a tough racket." That's something that they did. My folks had to reimburse this fellow four dollars a week during the four-year apprenticeship that my brother had with this firm. Went to work for him, worked for him for a number of years, and right after World War II he had an opportunity to start his own business, 00:33:00own sheet metal shop, and that's when he went and started his own business, Fresno Sheet Metal Works.

DUNHAM: How else was your family impacted by the Depression? You mentioned your dad had had the card room initially.

NAMAN: Oh, you know my dad went into ranching some time in there.

DUNHAM: After you were born?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. Some time, you know. Then he went into ranching because this nephew of his that he had brought over was still living with us at the time.

DUNHAM: What kind of ranching?

NAMAN: Well, it was mostly raisins. Grapes, raisins. That's what they started with. Mostly raisins.

DUNHAM: And what was your family that had come up to Sacramento? What kind of--

NAMAN: They worked here. My grandfather had a restaurant, someplace they used to 00:34:00say was down in the lower end of town. I didn't remember it or anything like that because it was kind of beyond me there a little bit. My grandfather had a restaurant, and I think my grandmother and my aunts all worked in the cannery. But my grandfather had a little restaurant.

DUNHAM: You mentioned less discrimination in general here in the Sacramento area. What were the--?

NAMAN: There wasn't any as far as I knew. There wasn't any.

DUNHAM: Was your ethnicity as Armenian American, was that obvious to people?

NAMAN: No. No, it wasn't. I don't know. I don't even know whether they knew what they were, to be honest with you. Honestly. I don't think so.

DUNHAM: There was a sizable Armenian-American community in Sacramento.

NAMAN: Not as much as Fresno, though. Not as much as Fresno. I really don't know 00:35:00where the prejudice started in Fresno. But's only, I think, because of the fact that there are so many of them, and they would congregate with their old-world ways that you now see around here sometimes with the Asians, the Vietnamese, and all. When I go to the farmers market on Sundays, which I haven't for a long time, but when you see some of the Asians and the way they go and grab things and so forth, it's easy to take a dislike to that kind of behavior. And it's very possible that he Armenians could have displayed that kind of behavior.

DUNHAM: Perhaps, or maybe in the context of the Depression and limited opportunities too--

NAMAN: Who knows? But when you think about how they used to congregate on the street corner and things like that, and it's easy I think to take a dislike to 00:36:00them when they don't conduct themselves the way they should. I can understand that.

DUNHAM: Speaking of the Armenian community in Fresno.

NAMAN: Yeah. How it started, I don't know. It was there. It was there.

DUNHAM: Was it something your mother or father or other relatives spoke of?

NAMAN: They didn't, really, because they were so grateful to be in this country. They were the best citizens in the world, really and truly. My father had become a citizen, I think, before I was born. But my mother became a citizen when I was in junior high school because the most exciting thing that ever happened in our family was when my mother became a citizen. I was in junior high school, and I remember I went to her immigration, her naturalization services. They were the 00:37:00best citizens anybody could ever have. They thought this was the most wonderful country there was. Really, considering what they'd gone through.

DUNHAM: I know your mother came with a big group of her family. On her side was there family remaining?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. There were five children--

DUNHAM: Did they all come from Armenia?

NAMAN: Yes, they all came together. My grandfather had come by himself, left my grandmother there in charge. She had two children that were married in that country. The oldest daughter and the oldest son were married in the old country. So they came over. Then my mother and her younger brother and the middle brother 00:38:00were not married there.

DUNHAM: And were there any still remaining in the old country that they corresponded--?

NAMAN: No. They all came, in the number of ten of them that came. And my grandfather I think was responsible for a nephew who was married and his wife, and they had a son, I believe, that came with them. So where did the ten come from? That pretty well [covers it], you know.

DUNHAM: You mentioned about your home in second grade, that's sort of the home you remember growing up. Can you describe it for us?

NAMAN: I'm trying to remember.

DUNHAM: What was a typical day like for your mom, do you think, when you were growing up?

NAMAN: My mother was always in the kitchen. That's what our neighbors always used to say. "We never see you without an apron; you've always got an apron on, 00:39:00and you're always in the kitchen." My mother loved to cook, and she was a very good cook.

DUNHAM: What types of things did she cook?

NAMAN: All the Armenian dishes. You name them; she knew how to do it. She was very active in the church. She cooked for all the church bazaars. She had her little bunch of ladies that all cooked together, and they were very particular who they let into the kitchen when they were cooking because they were very fussy about who did things for them. They wanted it a certain way. She was very active, as I say, in the church and in certain other little organizations related to the church.

DUNHAM: And what was the church?

NAMAN: It was the Armenian Apostolic Church. It's the one that I was reared in, which was down in Fresno; it's a historical landmark. It's Holy Trinity Armenian 00:40:00Apostolic Church. That's where I was baptized. All of us were baptized there, and my parents were buried from there.

DUNHAM: Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about growing up in Fresno before we come back to Sacramento?

NAMAN: Well, only that even though it is my home town, I really feel closer to Sacramento because I've lived here longer, and I think I was happier here. Not that there was anything that I was unhappy about, really.

DUNHAM: But certainly under the circumstances--

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: --that you left, with that experience, I can understand. And then you flourished here, of course.

NAMAN: When I was negotiating with the Urban League and places of that nature--the black community would put the pressure to us to hire more blacks and to do this and do that--I would sit there most of the time when I was negotiating with them and think to myself, "This is me back then." And yet we never thought about making these kinds of demands, at that time for us. I was happy; they did me a favor when I left, to be honest with you. Because I would probably would have still stuck around and maybe worked at Kress's or a dime store or something like that.

DUNHAM: Is that what many of your fellow--?

NAMAN: Well, a lot of them did. My sister did very well. She went to--it was a 00:42:00vocational school that she'd gone to and she was a milliner.

DUNHAM: So that experience did inform your experience later in life--

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: --in thinking about race?

NAMAN: Yeah. And I like Sacramento because my cousins were here, and we always used to have such a good time. My grandmother's place was over there on 27th and Q Street. The home still stands that my grandmother had, and whoever bought it has done some very nice things to it, whoever it is. They've done a lot of interesting things to it, I can see from the outside. My grandmother bought that house in 1924 or something like that. But we spent a lot of good times there; the family would get together and all.

DUNHAM: Before we get to your McClellan days, what else about Sacramento when you got here--I know you had a lot of family and all, but you're also a twenty-year-old young woman. What was the social scene like?

NAMAN: Of course I was fortunate in that I was not here by myself. I had all my cousins and grandmother and aunts and uncles. And so actually I had more relatives here in Sacramento than I did in Fresno. I had a lot of friends in Fresno, naturally. But actually the only relative that we had was my mother's middle brother, who was married and lived in Hanford. That family had nine children in it. My mother's middle brother had nine kids, and in fact his oldest daughter just passed away here about two weeks ago. She was ninety-eight years old, just passed away, lived in San Luis Obispo. My mother was very close to her middle brother because they lived there in the valley. As I say, he had nine children, and they grew up next to a golf course. In that family there were six 00:44:00boys and three girls, and all six of those boys were good golfers, very good golfers.

DUNHAM: Did you have many cousins around your same age?

NAMAN: Yes.

DUNHAM: What did you do when you weren't working? What did you do for fun?

NAMAN: Well, let's see. In those days, I recall that on a Sunday for a dollar and a quarter you could ride the train to go to San Francisco and back. It was all on one day. Sunday morning you'd take the train and come back at about eight o'clock at night, a dollar and a quarter on the train. We had a lot of friends in San Francisco. One cousin that was the closest one to me--she was seven days older than I was. So we were very close. We lived together at the time, so we 00:45:00were always together. She worked for Penney's and I worked with the government.

DUNHAM: What would you do when you went to San Francisco?

NAMAN: Oh, bum around. Bum around with our friends, just hang around. I am trying to remember some of the places that we visited. They always had some kind of a show on Sunday afternoons, and sometimes we would go to the show.

DUNHAM: Music show?

NAMAN: A musical. And hang around. Shopping. Loved to shop in San Francisco. It's not like it used to be, but in those days shopping in San Francisco was real fun, and we'd do that sometimes.

DUNHAM: You had gotten this good job, and with frequent promotions, recognition, 00:46:00were you able to keep all of the money you were making?

NAMAN: I was saving it. When the time came for me to buy a car my cousin was going to go in the service, and he had a three-year-old Buick coupe that he had bought. He was going to be drafted, so he wanted to sell me that Buick coupe for $600, and my dad didn't want me to buy a used car. He said a three-year-old that's just about when they're going to need to work on it. He wanted me to buy a brand new Ford, which at the time you could buy a brand new Ford, stripped down, for about $600. That's what he wanted me to do. And I said, "Papa, I'm not going to go into debt." I had $300 in the bank that I'd saved, and I was 00:47:00offering my cousin $300 for this Buick that he had, and I wasn't going to go into debt. So we went round and around, and he says, "I'll give you the money, and then you can pay me back," and all of that kind of stuff. Well, I wasn't going to do it. I knew how tough it was to save the money too. To make a long story short, my cousin finally gave in; he couldn't sell it for $600, so he gave it to me for $300. I bought my cousin's Buick for three hundred bucks, three-year-old Buick. I thought I was really a high roller. I mean, you know, come on. A three-year-old Buick coupe. Hey.

DUNHAM: Did it serve you well?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah, until I got married, and then when I got married my husband had a brand new Chevy coupe. I kept my Buick until my husband felt I should trade it in, and then I bought a newer car.

DUNHAM: Did you get the Buick, was this before you went to work at McClellan?

NAMAN: It was a little after I had gone to work out there. I was able to get a ride from somebody that lived close by until--but then my hours were getting so that I needed to have my own independence so that I could go and come as I needed.

DUNHAM: You went to McClellan; you were working for your old boss, who you'd worked for at the State before?

NAMAN: Then he was shipped overseas when the war came along. The outfit that he was with was shipped overseas. He was a full colonel, and his outfit was sent overseas.

DUNHAM: So you started there February 7, 19--

NAMAN: Forty-one.

DUNHAM: Do you remember your first day there?

NAMAN: Well, I was in the hiring office. We were doing the hiring, and we were working our tails off, to be perfectly honest with you. All the work that we 00:49:00had, we could have used ten more people on top of what we already had. It was mostly just plain work, hiring the people. When I went to work out there, there were 500 people on the payroll, somewhere in that neighborhood. By July of that year, 1941, we hired our five thousandth person. From 500 employees in February, in five months we hired the five thousandth person. We made a big thing of that. We had the newspapers there and the publicity. It was somebody from Modesto, as I remember, because we were hiring people from all over the state, advertising for the people. It was somebody from Modesto.

DUNHAM: Who was the actual five thousandth official--?

NAMAN: He was a mechanic helper, a man. It was not a woman; it was a man.

DUNHAM: At this time were you hiring men and women?

NAMAN: Oh, yes. We were. I think the first women we hired were in about January or February of '42, right after the war.

DUNHAM: Shortly after, yeah. I think you had mentioned before, that there had been a plan developed--

NAMAN: But nothing had been done with the plan.

DUNHAM: Although you'd already been going through this incredible hiring phase, after Pearl Harbor it started again--

NAMAN: All kinds of newspaper articles and all--

DUNHAM: So when you were hiring in '41 what were all the ways in which you were recruiting? Newspaper articles--

NAMAN: Newspaper, radio, and of course that was enough to bring the people in. 00:51:00Inquiries and all.

DUNHAM: Did people send their applications by mail, or did they--

NAMAN: Sometimes by mail, sometimes they came in themselves for interviews.

DUNHAM: And what all jobs were you hiring for?

NAMAN: You name it. We had all the way from janitors to engineers to mechanics to firemen to policemen. Every occupation you can think of, just like a little city. We were just like a little city.

DUNHAM: With this tremendous growth, how did that impact McLellan and the Sacramento area, with all these people coming from across the state and eventually the country?

NAMAN: Chaos. Chaos. This is my own opinion, and I think it's been indicated, 00:52:00nobody was prepared for it, although when you look back there were signs that somebody knew because a lot of things were happening that no one expected. I mean, how come the government was investing in buying land for airbases up and down California, all the way down to Riverside, to San Diego, all the way up north to Eureka? And therefore I think there was something like twenty or twenty-two airbases that we recruited for and were training for. We did all these things without any mechanization, as I say. Key punch operators. That was about the most mechanized thing that we had. Everything was done by hand, manually.

DUNHAM: So how did you literally do that, review all the applications and all--

NAMAN: Worked around the clock. We worked around the clock, hired people to do those things for us, manually rate applications. Whereas today it's so different.

DUNHAM: Did you have some type of rubric, or how did you rate the applications, or how many did you receive regarding those 5,000--

NAMAN: I think at one time we had around 60,000 applications, in the beginning. Somewhere around 60,000 applications, all manually done. Nothing was done mechanized at all.

DUNHAM: What was the application like? What things were you vetting?

NAMAN: Just a regular application for employment, asking for what they had done, mostly for the person that was applying, what their background was. Some of them 00:54:00were very well set out for these jobs; some of them didn't have any experience. It was just a combination of things. Some were very good. And it kind of was a little bothersome because people were quitting good jobs to come to work for the war effort, and we didn't know what was coming as far as the war effort was concerned. It was bothersome in some of these cases, people quitting jobs even in other states to come to California for the jobs that we had. We couldn't give them any assurance on how long these jobs were going to last.

DUNHAM: Were you able to offer them jobs remotely, at least a starting job--

NAMAN: Some of them.

DUNHAM: --without them coming in person?

NAMAN: Yeah. Oh, yes. Some of it was sight unseen. Some of it was sight unseen.

DUNHAM: Now, I'm not sure if this was before your time, but I had read that one of the issues was--and maybe this was in '39 or '40--but that McClellan was losing jobs to higher-paid naval facilities in the SF-Bay Area.

NAMAN: That was somewhere in '42. Yeah, that was right after--

DUNHAM: And did you work with the National Youth Administration, though, to train folks? I know they had a residence center across from Grant Union High School here in Sacramento.

NAMAN: Well, that was sort of on the tail end of where--that was coming to an end because the war effort was--

DUNHAM: That had started in the late thirties--

NAMAN: That's right.

DUNHAM: --that was winding down by the time you got there?

NAMAN: Winding down, that's right.

DUNHAM: So you weren't very involved with the National Youth Administration.

NAMAN: No. We hired them when they were doing away with the effort; they were 00:56:00closing them down. We hired those people for some of our jobs, when they applied for it. We did hire some of them for that.

DUNHAM: So of those first 5,000, were those all permanent--?

NAMAN: Yeah, they ended up being, yeah.

DUNHAM: At McClellan? Or you mentioned that you trained for other sites as well.

NAMAN: Some of them stayed at McClellan, and some of them wanted to go to other places that we were training for. In other words, Modesto, Merced. There are airbases in through there, and we were--if they wanted to go back to the community that they came from, why, they were given that opportunity to do that because we were anxious for that. We wanted people that we were training to go back to that airbase when they were ready for them. Because they were at different times; they didn't all come ready at the same times. There were 00:57:00different times when the base was ready. Because they were building the bases right from scratch.

DUNHAM: How long was the training period?

NAMAN: It depended. Some were a year; some were a year and a half. Some were less. It just depended--they were different times when the land had been bought by the government, and they were under contract to build. When they would be ready to bring on the core of people that were being trained, there were certain dates that were set for those, when they were ready for them. And when the aircraft were ready to go there the place was ready to be taken over by the Air Force.

DUNHAM: But the actual training period at McClellan to train people how to do a specific job?

NAMAN: Usually about three months. Usually, not always. Some were longer, but 00:58:00most of the time they were three months, what we called helpers, mechanic helpers.

DUNHAM: So most of the roles were mechanic helpers working on repairs of--

NAMAN: Of aircraft, yeah. But we also had supply people, and most of those supply people were not necessarily skilled. They were trained for the Air Force system. So it was mostly trained--they were trained by the Air Force for the Air Force way of doing things. The Air Force had a certain system, and they were trained on that system.

DUNHAM: By--

NAMAN: Air Force people. By Air Force people.

DUNHAM: We are near the end of this tape. So let's maybe take a break.

DUNHAM: This is Tape 2, with Rebecca (Becky) Naman on March 31, 2012. We were just talking about early in your career, 1941 at McClellan Air Force Base; I guess it wasn't yet McClellan Air Force Base, but--

NAMAN: It was called Sacramento Air Depot as I recall. There've been different names. The government is great for changing things all the time, anyway, the military particularly. Every time you get a new commander, you'd have things changing around.

DUNHAM: And you did have a lot of new commanders.

NAMAN: Oh, yes

DUNHAM: Shortly after you got there, I guess in June of '41, Lieutenant John Clark succeeded Major Nelson. When a commander changed like that, did it have much impact on you?

NAMAN: Oh, not an awful lot, but naturally they would change their policies. 01:00:00That would have an impact, of course, because you had to conform to whatever the commander wanted.

DUNHAM: What kind of policies might have changed?

NAMAN: None that I can recall right at the present time, but it could be the hours of work and changes in what takes place as far as weekend work and this sort of thing. All kinds of things that would affect the operation, but not an awful lot was that disturbing really. After all, they had to keep the workforce happy too. So most of the time--to me, when a person takes over in a top job that way, the smartest thing they can do is to just take over and not make anybody realize that there's a change there. The ones that stir things up, why, 01:01:00they're the ones that are making a mistake. The smartest thing they can do is take over and just keep things going as it was going.

DUNHAM: In early '41, before the US officially joined the war, although obviously, as we've talked about, there was this tremendous build-up, and something was known to be brewing there, you were hiring predominantly men in the traditional male mechanic roles, is that fair to say?

NAMAN: In the regular jobs.

DUNHAM: But a fair amount of women in more administrative, or office, more "traditional" female roles?

NAMAN: Yeah, they were beginning to because the men weren't available. Many men were, of course, volunteering to go in.

DUNHAM: After Pearl Harbor. But I wanted to back up for just a minute again and talk about pre-Pearl Harbor because I know there is a significant story around Pearl Harbor too, once that happened, and I want to capture that. So people are, 01:02:00in early '41, coming from all over the country, or is it mostly California?

NAMAN: Mostly California, but it was beginning to affect the other parts of the country because this is where most of the new positions were taking place, because this is where the concentration was for bases being occupied. Later on, as time went on, they were going even further into the Midwest and all, where they have quite a few air bases, in the Midwest and in the South. But right in the beginning there--I don't have exact figures--a lot of it was on the West Coast. They thought they were coming into the West Coast, the Japanese.

DUNHAM: You mentioned being concerned about how long the jobs would be, and many people leaving other jobs to come. Of course, a number of people may not have had jobs, though--

NAMAN: That's right.

DUNHAM: --coming out of the Depression But for those who were leaving jobs, was it mostly because the pay was higher, the opportunity was better in that regard?

NAMAN: I suppose it was a combination of things. In some cases it was better jobs. In some cases it was wanting to come to California. A variety of reasons, but the emphasis seemed to be mostly because the jobs were available here. That's where the interest was; that's where the concentration was.

DUNHAM: And were there union positions, the mechanic helper positions?

NAMAN: At that time we didn't have unions. That was a very small, a very responsible union. But later on, the unions would make various attempts to come 01:04:00in. They never really took hold until--just in later years before I left work. The unions started to get more active. But they never really were a very big threat, to be honest with you.

DUNHAM: There was a small union, you were saying, during the war years?

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Was that just for--?

NAMAN: No. I'm trying to remember the name of it. I can't remember. It was so insignificant at the time that it wasn't much of a headache. It got to be a headache in the later years. To be honest with you, I always found that the union, when it gradually was taking hold, they were always representing the 01:05:00person who didn't deserve to be represented, to be honest with you. I sound like I'm anti-union, but I'm not. It's just that it was always somebody that didn't deserve to get the recognition from a union that would get all the recognition and representation. Somehow or another--there were various incidents that we would have where they would be--. We had some cases where we were directed--politically, we were directed to hire people back because of union involvement.

DUNHAM: That was a frustration. And of course you had a challenging ebb and flow of hiring and layoffs--

NAMAN: --oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: I guess in July of 1941, I read, one of the training programs, and it 01:06:00was a new training program, was for radio mechanics, was created at the Sac Air Depot--

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: --and that that eventually led to a number of other schools that emulated the training program you had there? Do you know anything in particular about that?

NAMAN: No, I don't. That was at Sac--. There were a lot of different kinds of programs that cropped up. We had a lot of those.

DUNHAM: Do you have much sense of the racial makeup of that initial group, of the first 5000 or so employees?

NAMAN: I can't honestly say that there was anything significant in that other than just the natural flow of what we had, men, women. Most of them, if they were of ethnic groups, why--. We did have quite a few Asians because in this 01:07:00area because--naturally the Japanese were taken. I know one of the first things that I had to do was to identify, out of our staff on the base, the number of Japanese that we had. And I remember it was a very small number that we had. It was something like less than twenty people of Japanese descent that had to be laid off--

DUNHAM: --at the time of the Executive Order 9066 when Japanese were incarcerated.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Did you know any of them personally?

NAMAN: Yes, there were some. Sure there were. And there were more here, but really and truly, I don't disagree with what the President did at the time. I 01:08:00don't think he had much choice, to be honest with you, because having lived through that period, and knowing what they had to put up with, and how they were living, the Japanese. It was known that they were sending money back to Japan, earning money here and then sending back. That was a known fact. And people don't talk about those things when they are talking about how wrong it was for our government to do what they did. Well, I can understand why the President did what he did. I don't think he had much choice, to be honest with you, when they come and attack us that way. So I don't think he was wrong at all. I've been in conversation with people, today, on things like this, and having been through it, I think, "Hey, you weren't there. You don't know what it was like. How can 01:09:00you say we did the wrong thing? Looking back on it, I can see why they would think that. But--

DUNHAM: Do you know if there were many German-American or Italian-American employees?

NAMAN: I don't remember a lot of them at that time, but I can remember the prisoners of war that we had, Germans. We had them on the base later on, not in the early part. Later on, though.

DUNHAM: Indefinitely, or for shorter periods of time?

NAMAN: Just for short periods of time. I don't know about the Italians, but mostly Germans, yes.

DUNHAM: I ask because although in general German Americans Italian Americans were not incarcerated, there were some who were incarcerated in certain circumstances. It wasn't, obviously, the same concern of a West Coast threat 01:10:00that there was around the Japanese. That's why I ask. And whether there was any discrimination against folks who were known to be Italian or German American. fdff

NAMAN: Well, this is an incident that took place that I was involved with early--oh, it was not during the war years; it was after the war. I was chairing a performance evaluation hearing. The young man that was appealing was of Greek extraction. He was a young man in his twenties, somewhere in his late twenties. He was of Greek extraction, and his boss was of Italian extraction. They were both young men in their thirties and forties, somewhere in through there. And 01:11:00the committee that I was chairing couldn't quite see where the appellant was justified in seeking redress to get a better evaluation. They didn't think that the evaluation was a poor evaluation. They thought it was pretty good and he should be happy with what he had. So I said to the appellant, "Sir, We're kind of at a loss to understand what your complaint is about because your markings on your performance are not bad here at all. What's your beef?" And he said, "Ma'am, I'm a Greek, and my boss is a Dago." He said, "Do I have to tell you any more?"

They were still fighting an old war way back when. Apparently in his family it 01:12:00would be a situation that probably had been harbored with a lot of hate in their growing up years. He hadn't been confronted with it, really, but his family had been, and they're just carrying that on. And here this was carrying over in his work. I thought to myself, "My father was left an orphan because of a genocide that took place, and he didn't rear us with any kind of hatred that way. But here is a young man that is affecting his whole career." I've never forgotten that.

DUNHAM: Was this during the war?

NAMAN: This was after the war.

DUNHAM: What was the outcome of that?

NAMAN: The outcome was we didn't change anything. But he felt that his boss was Italian, and he was Greek, and can't possibly like him. He was prejudiced 01:13:00against him, and the markings weren't what he thought it should be. I have really never forgotten that; I always thought my dad was right. He didn't want to talk about it.

DUNHAM: So you didn't grow up with any--

NAMAN: No, I didn't grow up with any hatred.

DUNHAM: Did you know any Turks in Fresno?

NAMAN: I'll tell you another incident which maybe I shouldn't.

DUNHAM: I should mention, too, that when you review the transcript there is always the option of sealing materials if you choose to, so I want to make that clear.

NAMAN: Okay. This all after World War II, I'd say maybe within the last thirty-five or maybe forty years, because after all I've been retired for quite a while. We had a group of Turkish officers coming over to be trained on a 01:14:00certain aircraft that our government was selling Turkey. And Turkey was an ally of the United States, you know. Our Air Force colonel that was in charge of this group--they always had somebody that kind of made sure that they had the right help and all this sort of thing and were given the proper courtesies and so forth--called me one day and said, "Do we have anybody on our rolls that can speak Turkish because we have these Turkish officers that are coming." He said, "The one that's in charge of the team is the son of the man that's in charge of the Turkish Air Force. So he said, "They're a pretty high bunch of guys, and we 01:15:00want to make sure that we give them the right courtesies and so forth."

I said, "Yes, we've got a man, and so forth. His name is Such-and-Such, and he's a deacon in the Armenian church. I know that he speaks seven different languages, and all this stuff, because I hired him. I remember that he's married to a girl that I knew way back when we were in Fresno. She called me, and I was responsible for his coming to work in our supply operation." And I said, "I know he speaks these languages, and I'm sure he'd be happy to do it." So I gave him his name, his phone number, and this sort of thing. The next thing I know, maybe a week or so later, I get a call from this man that's the deacon in the Armenian church. He's talking to me in Armenian now. He said, "Girl, why did you give my 01:16:00name to be an interpreter for the Turkish boys that are coming over here?" He said, "I hate the Turks." These were his exact words. I let him go on for a while, and I said, "Sir, you're a man of the cloth. Where does your forgiveness come in? I never thought you had this hatred in you." He said, "They killed my whole family, my mother, my father"; he went through all of them that had been hurt. He said, "I hate them. I will not do it. The only thing I ask of you is, will I lose my job if I turn this down?" I said, "No. this is strictly a volunteer thing. You don't want to do it; that's just fine."

So I knew another man that we had on our payroll that was a painter, an aircraft painter. I said, "I'm pretty sure I can get him to do it." I didn't tell him 01:17:00this, but in my mind I'm thinking, "We've got to find somebody because they were going to be here for six months, and it had to be somebody that we could detail to do this work because we didn't have the funds to hire an interpreter for that length of time. So then the colonel gets to me and says," What are we going to do now? This fellow won't do it." I said, "He doesn't have to do it. He's, it's a volunteer." So then I said, "Well, we have this other man." I gave him his name and phone number, and I said, "I'm pretty sure that he will do it." So, I gave him his name and all. This man used to go to work in an aircraft painter's outfit, like coveralls. And all of a sudden he starts to go to work in a suit and a tie. He's telling his wife that he's got a temporary assignment. He doesn't tell her what it is that he's going to do. He agrees to do it, they 01:18:00contact him, and he agrees to do it and all this sort of thing. And he doesn't tell his wife what he's doing.

And the six months go by, and the Turkish boys are ready to go back after their training on the aircraft that they were here for. So he tells his wife that he wants to have them out to their home for dinner because he liked them and he was with them. Then he told his wife what he was doing; he didn't tell her this before. Well, it happens that his wife's parents were also victims of genocide activities. She had been left an orphan and was reared in an orphanage in France because her parents were killed in the genocide. And she had a terrific hatred towards the Turks, so he didn't dare to tell her what he was doing. [Turns for an aside to Susan Janigian] This was Gloria Kasparian's father.

S. JANIGIAN: Really!

NAMAN: So she says, "Well, if you got to know them, and you want to have them for dinner, we'll take them out to dinner. But he's not crossing my threshold to come into my home with this group. They're not coming into my house, but we'll take them out to dinner, if you want to do that?" And that's what they ended up doing. They took this whole group--I've forgotten how many there were, twelve, fourteen of them--out to dinner before they left to go back to Turkey, after their assignment. But she would not have them come into her home. She wasn't going to give them that honor. Now these are the young men from three generations back, practically.

DUNHAM: That's very interesting. That made me think; I neglected to ask, you grew up, you learned Armenian?

NAMAN: I went to Armenian school too on Saturdays. I used to go to Armenian school. I went to Armenian school for seven years. I used to be able to read and 01:20:00write it. I haven't touched it since I was in junior high school. I'll pick up--there's one newspaper that we get that's both English and Armenian. I read it, and read the English part, but I can't make out, I can't interpret the other.

DUNHAM: Did you speak it growing up in the home? Did your parents, and how was their English?

NAMAN: Broken. Broken. My mother, she could write her name and little things, her address and that sort of thing. But my dad, he just used to make his cross. [makes a cross motion] That was his cross.

DUNHAM: I'm not sure I understand.

NAMAN: Have you ever seen how a person who can't write in English? They make their cross.

DUNHAM: Did you speak always Armenian with your parents?

NAMAN: Yes. But my mother always used to say, "Speak in English so I can learn." That was her things. And my dad was pretty much the same way. But he wasn't as aggressive as my mother was about speaking English so he could learn it. My mother was very aggressive about that.

DUNHAM: Of course she came over at fifteen, so--

NAMAN: Yeah, and my dad was a little older.

DUNHAM: I'm sorry. I forgot to ask that before.

NAMAN: That's all right. I'll get you the pictures when you get to the point. I don't want to break in. There are wedding pictures.

DUNHAM: At the end of this tape we can do that. You mentioned about evaluations. During this first year, again in '41, when you're hiring this first big wave of people, were you participating in the evaluations then too? Or how were they 01:22:00evaluated during their training period?

NAMAN: Well, I was part of one of the interviewers; let's put it that way. It was only just one person interviewing somebody. And to be perfectly honest with you, as long as they could walk and they were able, we hired them. Because we were so anxious to hire people. It wasn't that we were being fussy. Later on, of course, it was different, but in the early build-up period we were hiring anybody who could--

DUNHAM: Yeah. And was this all Monday through Friday at this point, in early '41?

NAMAN: Saturdays too at that time.

DUNHAM: So it was a six-day shift with the same people working, but it was all day shift at that point?

NAMAN: No. There was swing shift and graveyard shift too.

DUNHAM: Okay. In early '41 you already had round-the-clock shifts?

NAMAN: Some, yeah. In some cases.

DUNHAM: For certain departments. What departments would have first had--?

NAMAN: Mostly the supply organization and the maintenance organization, and naturally our police and fire, and many of our motor pool operations.

DUNHAM: Speaking of police and fire, we've looked at this tremendous growth and booms and people coming from all over the country and sometimes a variety of backgrounds, sometimes there are challenges even in a normal workplace that happen. What type of issues came up around that, of maybe the occasional fight or accident?

NAMAN: Nothing. I don't remember anything. It may come to me later on, but I don't think of anything in relation to that. Naturally, we would have, but I can't think of anything that would--

DUNHAM: Or did you ever have a personnel issue where people had gotten in a 01:24:00fight or something, and somebody had to be laid off relative to that, or that kind of thing?

NAMAN: Oh, I'm sure, yeah. I'm sure that we had situations like that, but I can't think of any right now that would strike me.

DUNHAM: Well, if anything comes on that regard, just let me know.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: What is the nature of the mix of the enlisted and the civilians? You have this tremendous growth in the civilian workforce? How did that play out?

NAMAN: There were some incidents, things where certain rank and the non-commissioned ranks and the higher non-commissioned ranks, where they would 01:25:00try to pull rank on some of the civilians. There were little incidents. But they learned that it's not going to get them anyplace to try to argue with each other. It's mostly they have to get along to get the job done. So there were a few, but nothing major. Nothing that was very basic. To me, it was just the usual.

DUNHAM: Like hazing-type--

NAMAN: No. I mean you're going to have that sort of thing, particularly when women started to come into the shops where you've had nothing but men. Now you've got the women there, and you've got some men that are going to--

DUNHAM: Yeah, and I've heard lots of challenges around that, and I want to hear about that. But let's go to just leading up to Pearl Harbor, then. I'd read 01:26:00something around that General Arnold had come to the Sac Air Depot on the sixth of December and had informed some--I don't know how public this was--of the strong possibility of imminent war with Japan and that aircraft were then dispersed to landing fields across California, B-17s sent to Hawaii. Were you aware of that prior to Pearl Harbor?

NAMAN: No, I wasn't. No.

DUNHAM: Where were you when you heard of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and describe what happened?

NAMAN: All right. That was on a Sunday, and we had a lot of work just piled up. I went out to work on that Sunday because I wanted to catch up. It was pretty serious as far as the amount of work that we had, and we were hiring as fast--but people had to be trained and so forth. So I went to work on the Sunday, and I was in the office by myself. The office was right across the 01:27:00street from the commander's residence. The deputy commander's daughter, Jean Lucy, worked for me. She saw the lights on in the office. It was about eleven o'clock, eleven thirty in the morning, and she came running across the street, and she said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I'm working overtime; I wanted to get all this stuff done." She said, "The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor. My dad saw the lights on here in the office. He wants to have everybody notified to come out and go to work because they're going to hire as many carpenters and painters as they possibly can because we're going to black out the windows and so forth and so on, because they think the Japanese are going to 01:28:00come to the West Coast. They want to black out.

So that's where I was, and that's how I found out. She came running across the street, and I got on the phone and called my boss. They were hearing about it on the news at the time. Before four or five o'clock that Sunday afternoon, why, we had most of the staff out. We were calling people on the phone, and we were getting ready to hire as many carpenters and as many painters as we possibly could. I don't know how many. It was scores of them, as many as we could get our hands on. Specifically, I don't' remember but it was several hundred as I recall.

DUNHAM: There's a tremendous traffic jam?

NAMAN: Well, they were coming in; they were getting there. I don't know how much of a jam it was. But there were a lot of people coming in.

DUNHAM: Was that an issue? I have that read over the years--

NAMAN: It got to be an issue, of course.

DUNHAM: You were already there. You were working--

NAMAN: [laughs] We were already there. I didn't take my clothes off for three days.

DUNHAM: Wow. And that whole time you're calling and hiring? How far did you have to go to get more carpenters and all?

NAMAN: They were coming from all over. It was on the news, on the radio. Word of mouth, on the radio: word of mouth, on the radio. And we got the people; we got what we needed.

DUNHAM: Did you have time to be frightened. Here you are at McClellan Air Force Base.

NAMAN: We didn't have time to think about it. We didn't have time to think about it, to be honest with you. All we wanted to do is get the people on the payroll. And we were all doing this manually too. Remember, now. We didn't have--when I left work the time card went to the payroll office. There was nothing in 01:30:00between. They punched the time card, it went to the payroll office, and that's the way the pay was figured for them. Everything was done manually.

DUNHAM: Was that through your office?

NAMAN: No. We were the hiring part. The payroll office was under the personnel office at the time. It later went under the comptroller's shop. The payroll office went over to the comptroller's shop.

DUNHAM: Had your office expended? You said there were four or five of you when you got there.

NAMAN: Oh, expanded overnight.

DUNHAM: Over the course of 1941 how many of you--

NAMAN: More than doubled, to be honest with you. More than doubled, and then we had to set up a training program right away to go along with it.

DUNHAM: What was your role in that?

NAMAN: My role was primarily still in the hiring, the interviewing and putting to work.

DUNHAM: What was your title?

NAMAN: I think it was--among some of those cruddy papers that you'll see--at that time it was Appointments Supervisor or something like that.

DUNHAM: Were there multiple people in that same role?

NAMAN: Not too many. Not too many; there were two, three, four of them, I think, all with different assignments, for different organizations on the base.

DUNHAM: Which organizations were you--?

NAMAN: I was mostly with the supply and maintenance, I believe it was. Yeah, supply and maintenance organizations.

DUNHAM: What were the other main departments?

NAMAN: Maintenance. And all the others that they had, the engineers, and fire department. All the other departments on the base.

DUNHAM: So you were there; you didn't take your clothes off for three days. Did you not sleep for three days?

NAMAN: No. [laughs] I'm just saying that by the time I'd get home it was time to get ready to come back.

DUNHAM: So you did get home for a little bit, but you were working long, hard days.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Then it kind of goes into the next phase of hiring, where you realize men are volunteering. Were many men leaving directly from jobs they had at McClellan, and so that's when you sort of enact the Rosie the Riveter and start that campaign of really more aggressively hiring--

NAMAN: --that's right.

DUNHAM: How did that unfold, and what was your role in it?

NAMAN: My role was mostly just finding the people and assigning them to the 01:33:00various training programs that were being set up. Most of them, the training people--the fellow that painted that picture there [indicates picture] was our training chief. That's my daughter when she was twelve years old. This man that painted it, that was his hobby, portrait painting. He was our training chief, Bill Frazier. Anyway, he was working with the--testing people, setting up of the classrooms for the classes that they had set up for various skills. Mechanic 01:34:00helpers were being hired, but they were mostly in general mechanics. This kind of mechanic--some of them in hydraulics and different specialties in the mechanical field. They had to set those up. I was one of them that was responsible for hiring in different categories and assigning them to these various skills. They were being trained, and it was a three-month training program. They were hired as mechanic helpers. Especially when it came to the women, why, the women were given certain tests, and if they passed the test, why, then they were hired. And whatever they showed the best skill in, they were put into those training programs.

DUNHAM: Were those hands-on physical tests?

NAMAN: Some.

DUNHAM: Or were they written tests?

NAMAN: Some of it was written. Some of it was written, and some of it was hands-on.

DUNHAM: Were you administering the tests?

NAMAN: No. The training program was.

DUNHAM: So they had to first get through you in the interview.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And were you still directing them somewhat to different possibilities?

NAMAN: Yes.

DUNHAM: So how were you assessing given that they had little--

NAMAN: By the tests. By the tests. They were given by the tests and whether they were strong, where they were strongest in the tests. They went to that program, and then sometimes after they got into the training program they would find certain weaknesses, and then they would move them from one training program to another, after they got into the program. So it wasn't all just cut and dry. It was kind of experimental in a way. Most of them were pretty specialized. But 01:36:00they would move them around, too. And then sometimes the people wouldn't like it; sometimes the people would ask, "This is not for me. I don't want this." Not too many of those. Not too many of those. But we had a lot of changes that took place.

DUNHAM: Were you involved in the marketing and recruitment, or were you strictly in the interviewing once they got there?

NAMAN: Mostly in the interviewing. Mostly when they got there, then we did the interviewing, and then decided by consulting with each other as to what the person would best fit into. And we had some guidance, of course. We had guidance.

DUNHAM: Were most of your colleagues in the personnel department men and women?

NAMAN: Yes. But a lot of it was getting to be women because the men were leaving. But there were men; there were men. There were some that didn't want to 01:37:00go into the military, and they were looking for places where they could be assigned to military assignments so that they would not be going in the service. But there were people that were.

DUNHAM: Was there any judgment upon those men who didn't want to--

NAMAN: No. No, not really. You know, you needed them. Some of them were very skilled. No. We needed them.

DUNHAM: Is this now when the campaign to recruitment broadens from California to national?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. Right there in the early part. Right there in January, February, March, '42. That's when it was--

DUNHAM: So are people actually going from McClellan out to the different areas?

NAMAN: Not yet.

DUNHAM: So it's just now newspaper--what other mechanisms would you utilize?

NAMAN: Mostly newspaper and the radio. And word of mouth. Newspaper, radio and word of mouth. You'd be surprised how unprepared the country was for this purpose, really. How fast they were able to mobilize, to be honest with you. This country was so unprepared, and yet things were happening--.

DUNHAM: Well, you were on the forefront. I mean you were clearly--

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: I mean the military was getting prepared, but still not ready for that.

NAMAN: That's right. But there was some indication that things were beginning to happen, but nobody realized exactly what it was. We were given instructions to do this and do that, and we'd go ahead and do them, not realizing exactly why it was happening. Somebody someplace knew.

DUNHAM: What would be an example of that?

NAMAN: Well, I would say it would be in the example of hiring more people in areas that we had not considered hiring in. We'd get word down that we should be concentrating in these particular areas. We never thought that we should be, but somebody from headquarters was saying that we should be concentrating on these areas. Maybe they knew something that we didn't know, and they would be instructing us to go ahead with them.

DUNHAM: Would that be to work on a particular type of aircraft?

NAMAN: Yeah. Skills. Certain skills, because maybe they knew that there was going to be a shortage there. And maybe they knew that a certain kind of aircraft was being authorized that we didn't know about but we should be training for that purpose.

DUNHAM: So as the personnel folks were being a little perplexed about it, maybe, was there--

NAMAN: They'd be given a push. They were pushed to do it.

DUNHAM: Did you ever, in your mind at least, sort of challenge that?

NAMAN: Question it? No. We just went ahead and did it because they knew what they were telling us to do, "Go ahead with it." Although sometimes we'd be a little puzzled. "Why are they doing this?" But we'd still go ahead with it because we darn well better.

DUNHAM: What were the primary planes that were being worked on in "41, '42?

NAMAN: I don't know.

DUNHAM: I have a list somewhere, so that's okay. Not your department.

NAMAN: Little fighter aircrafts, you know.

DUNHAM: You have an illustrious history of a lot of different planes throughout McClellan's history. So again, as you're getting an even more diverse group coming in, and certainly the women now coming into the workforce, and again the stress on the infrastructure as you're hiring so many people, what type of special challenges did that present?

NAMAN: Mostly, in my opinion--and this is only what I knew about--mostly the men actually challenging the women to, not being nasty, but "This is taking our territory, and here you are here." A lot of little things like that cropped up, 01:42:00making the women feel a little bit uncomfortable. I don't say that the men welcomed the women there with open arms or anything like that, no. That didn't always happen; it didn't in all cases. We had situations where the men would be very uninviting to the women. There were situations that had to be worked on in order to make the men realize that they were going to have to get along. They hadn't left yet, and some of them didn't want to leave. There was a little infrastructure that--those were the initial problems, some of the initial 01:43:00problems, not all of them. But those were some of the basic things that had to be taken care of. The relationship, working together. These men were not used to working with these women. Of course, maybe they weren't as skillful as the men were, even after their training.

There were little incidents, but eventually--it took time. With proper training it took time to overcome them. Whether we ever totally overcame them or not, I don't really know. We used to have problems; we probably still have problems at the bases

DUNHAM: Sure. We didn't have the terminology at the time, but "sexual harassment" is how we would describe many of the stories DUNHAM:

NAMAN: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: What type of incidents did occur, and how did personnel get involved, or 01:44:00how were those issues dealt with as they began? Obviously, this was new territory.

NAMAN: They were given enough opportunity to correct whatever it was that was causing the problem. They were told in no uncertain terms. Sometimes you would have to move the people from one organization to another, or you'd have to reassign. Sometimes there was disciplinary action that had to be taken when they didn't conform.

DUNHAM: Was this always against the man, or could it be that a woman DUNHAM:

NAMAN: Either. It could be in both cases. Could be either way; it just depends. It was not something that took place that easily; let's put it that way. There were situations that had to be worked on, and we had special people, counselors, 01:45:00for that sort of thing. They would have to go into it and find out who's causing it and sometimes move people out of there. Not easy, you know.

DUNHAM: Again, you all were still hiring lots of people, so you're pretty much exclusively on the front end of the hiring process?

NAMAN: Yes.

DUNHAM: Did you get involved in this type of--

NAMAN: No. I didn't get into that. We had separate people that--well, we had to know about it because sometimes in the interview process you can detect certain shortcomings, so you're aware of it. You think, "This person's not going to work out just right."

DUNHAM: How would that manifest in the interview?

NAMAN: Well, by teasing them. For example, a truck driver whose a heavyset gal, a great big gal. Men can be treacherous when it comes to teasing women about their weight, their looks, their legs. You name it. You know men better than I do. [they laugh]

DUNHAM: For better or worse.

NAMAN: We've had some situations where I would think that men would know better. But no. And the women would complain so that sometimes they would have to be disciplined. But it depends on--

DUNHAM: So you're saying in the interview process you might actually tease a woman as a man might to see if she was very sensitive? Is that what you mean?

NAMAN: You would attempt to find out. You couldn't always, but you can sort of tell, the kind of a personality that a man has, whether he's going to be a problem with a bunch of women.

DUNHAM: So more you're talking about testing the men in the interview process--

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: --to see if you thought that they would be

NAMAN: If they would work out, yeah.

DUNHAM: Okay. Not so much that you were testing the women.

NAMAN: No, no. That could be too.

DUNHAM: I thought maybe you were saying that if a woman seemed very sensitive, like she couldn't handle--that might affect your placement.

NAMAN: That would come later, I would think. I would think that would come later. But sometimes you can tell if a woman has been mostly-- hasn't done very much jobwise.

DUNHAM: And you had a lot of young women coming in?

NAMAN: Oh, hey. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: And a lot of attractive women?

NAMAN: That's right. That's right. That can be a real problem if they don't know how to adjust in a situation like that. It takes a lot, you know. It's hard to describe exactly what would cause some women to complain, but we used to have complaints that they were being harassed about things.

DUNHAM: Well, I've heard stories ranging from--

NAMAN: Oh, okay.

DUNHAM: --something as simple as putting a sign on someone's back to something more extreme like when they're working with a serious tool, coming up and grabbing them from behind, to which one of my narrators replied--she turned around and whirled and brought this man within an inch of his life. In her case, I don't think that she found very good counseling. And in many cases I'm sure it couldn't be consistently dealt with, especially early on, and she left that job, 01:49:00and left the state because of the difficulty of not getting--

NAMAN: Oh, there's no question that there were situations like that, but they were dealt with. There was no standard system that goes with every one; each one is a little bit different, that kind of has to be tailor made, you might say. Eventually, you worked through them all.

DUNHAM: And at the same time, bringing the genders together in this new way, there can also be not necessarily harassment, but maybe getting together more consensual. Were there challenges within that realm as well, particularly having a twenty-four hour swing and graveyard shift? I've heard that the swing and graveyard shifts were a little dicier, shall we say?

NAMAN: Oh, Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, there's no--.

DUNHAM: Now, at the same time you're hiring more women, you're also expanding your reach across the country. Were there a lot more people coming from the South and other regions, and did that affect both increased diversity race-wise but also just a variety of types of people coming together, much different cultures?

NAMAN: No, a lot of that took place when the bases closed, during the period when--I guess it was in the late sixties, early seventies--two or three of those southern bases closed, and we inherited the workload from these other places at McClellan. They were coming in here, and that was a different situation. They were coming in here, I can remember, many of the southern whites, when they came 01:51:00in, they'd already heard about going to Roseville because the school system in Roseville didn't have too many blacks in it. These are southern whites that are coming from the South, diehards. They don't want anything to do with the black people. We're here and just talking. So many, many of them [who] came in here were told by people that they knew, supposedly, "Go to Roseville. The school system is better there; they don't have too many blacks." We had that situation when the bases closed, but it wasn't' during the build-up period.

DUNHAM: During the war years did you have many blacks and Latinos?

NAMAN: They were coming in. But as far as I know, we were not advocating that we not bring them in or anything like that. If they showed up and were qualified, they were hired. But, you know, you're going to have that; there's no question. There's some of that, but it wasn't a problem as far as I'm aware of. We used to get complaints all the time from the various organizations that represented the minority groups.

DUNHAM: Like the NAACP?

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And as early as during the war years would you get--

NAMAN: No, not then. It was mostly after the war when jobs became a little harder.

DUNHAM: Would you know from an application, if a person didn't come in person, what their race was?

NAMAN: No.

DUNHAM: So there were times when somebody was hired, and it was a surprise, or was that ever a--

NAMAN: Could have been, but I don't remember any incidents. But I suppose there are ways that you could tell if you're looking for that. Most of the time we weren't looking for that. We were looking for qualified people. That was very important, having qualified people.

DUNHAM: But to some extent, as you said, you had to lower your standards when you're having to hire so many at once, and expanding to women, and others, many of whom didn't have a lot of experience. What was the main reason most people 01:54:00were coming for the jobs, especially after the US joined the war? Was there much of a sense of patriotism, or was it more the opportunity of the job?

NAMAN: I think a little bit of both. The patriotism part weighed pretty heavily in many cases, but also they wanted to work for the government because the government does have good benefits and all. Many of them were looking for this sort of thing, so it was a little bit of both.

DUNHAM: And there were good benefits then? Was there health care?

NAMAN: Oh, yes. Our health care came in during the sixties.

DUNHAM: What about during the war years, though?

NAMAN: No.

DUNHAM: For enlisted folks there was health care on site.

NAMAN: I'm not familiar with the military part of it; the civilian part is what I am knowledgeable about. The military part, they had it, definitely had it. They were cared for. But not the civilian.

DUNHAM: If a civilian worker was injured at the base would they have been taken to the base hospital, or would they have had to go somewhere else?

NAMAN: No. Usually, from an emergency standpoint they might have been taken there from the emergency standpoint and then referred to a civilian hospital. I'm not sure what the system was as far as how long they could keep them there. It depends on the injury and all. But most of the time they would go to a civilian hospital.

DUNHAM: And what were the salaries like, and did it change much?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We were a separate division from the personnel office that ran wage surveys. I believe it was every two or three years in the area. What the going rate for this particular kind of work in this area--we had regular people that were trained for that, and then that would go into the headquarters in Washington, and then they would decide whether or not it calls for an increase. Every two or three years--I think it was three years, every three years.

DUNHAM: In '41 and '42, at the beginning of the war, as women are hired in the same roles as men, were they given the same pay at first?

NAMAN: Some of the people will tell you they weren't. Some of them will tell you they weren't. But basically, there wasn't a different scale for women and for 01:57:00men. The way ours worked at the time--I didn't have anything to do with this--bust basically, it was what they call light and heavy work. The heavy work went to the men, and the light work went for the women because they aren't as strong and so forth and so on. And that caused a little bit of a problem. But eventually that took care of itself because then they outlawed it; you couldn't have the light and the heavy. Physically, if a woman could do it, she could do the same thing that a man could do.

DUNHAM: Were light and heavy actual job titles, or was that within the same job title?

NAMAN: That was within the same job title but for--

DUNHAM: Different pay or same pay?

NAMAN: Some of it was different, a lower level. Some of it. But it didn't last 01:58:00very long because it showed where the--the women didn't want to do this heavier work. So then they started to change the job titles, so that if they were, for example, a shopkeeper that required a certain amount of heavy work attached to it they would ask their male buddy to do the heavy work, and they'd just do the light work. They were able to get around it. And most of the men didn't mind doing this for the women, like if there was something heavy, "Hey, Joe, will you do this for me?" Well, Joe would be glad to do it. But it wasn't all day long; it was just an incident that might have happened. These kinds of cases eventually took care of themselves, where they were not designated that way.

DUNHAM: Were there some women, though, exceptional individual women who were capable and wanted to do--?

NAMAN: Yes, there were. Yes, there were. And eventually they were able to prove that, and then they got the same pay as the men. Originally, there was not supposed to be any difference other than the light and heavy stuff. They kind of messed that up a little bit and had to go into it where they gave them different job titles, which required if the woman wanted it--most women didn't want it. They didn't want to injure themselves, which is what could happen. Some women did. There were some women that wanted the money that the men were making even 02:00:00though they were going to ruin themselves from heavy duty. Maybe they'll ruin their shoulders, whatever. There were situations like that where the women wanted it because they want the more money. So they would say they could do it. It didn't bother them; it was really for the money that they wanted it.

DUNHAM: I'm sorry to belabor; I'm just trying to understand. When you said they messed it up at first, do you mean how it was set up?

NAMAN: Yes, it was probably because of the way the job titles were set up and how they identified the jobs that were light and those that were heavy. So they eventually were able to give them different job titles so that they were not the same, because they found that many of the women didn't want those heavier jobs. It was too hard for them. Then there were those that could do it, do it better 02:01:00than a man could do it. So it was mostly from a physical standpoint.

DUNHAM: Did those women have to fight for that opportunity?

NAMAN: No. Jobs were there, and they were able to test them. And it fell on the medical people many times-- [end of tape]