Rebecca Naman | Interview 2 | May 21, 2012

DUNHAM: Today is Monday, May 21, and I'm back at the lovely home of Becky Naman. In Sacramento, California. This is our second interview for the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front Oral History Project. We are joined today by Bruce Janigian and his daughter Alison. I'm especially glad that Bruce was able to join us because it's through Bruce's recommendation that we're lucky enough to be interviewing Becky Naman for this project. So thank you again Bruce for that.

I wanted to first check in [to see] if there's anything that you want to focus on to follow up on our last session. I have a whole series of follow-up things, and then I think we want to get a little farther down the war years. Is there anything that was stirred up in our last session that you wanted to address?

NAMAN: Not that I recall because it was so early in my own life.

DUNHAM: That's the nature of this project since we are talking about seventy-plus years ago, and we also did do a little bit of your early family 00:01:00life history, which was great. I wanted to follow up on a few things from that, kind of going back to the Depression. Again, with Bruce here, he was reminding me of your life-long friendship with his mom, and I know we touched on it very briefly in the previous interview. But could you tell me a little bit more about growing up, your childhood, how you came to know Bruce's mom and your childhood friendship together?

NAMAN: I think first of all that our families were friends. And it also happened that we were living right around the corner from each other when we were growing up. So basically it just happened, shall we say? It wasn't really planned, but it just happened. We were both in the same class, with a little difference in age, just a few months. So we ended up being in the same class, and it was very, very easy for us to continue on with our friendship and our families being 00:02:00friends. It just worked naturally. We were friends all through high school. Then after high school some of us went different routes, which usually happens. I think at that point Bruce's mother was married and left and went to San Francisco, and the rest of us kind of dispersed a little bit; one went here and one went there. So that was about it. For several years we really lost touch with each other although our families, our mothers were friends. I knew what was happening to her.

DUNHAM: I wanted to touch base--of course you grew up in the Depression in Fresno, I know your mom was quite a cook, which obviously you've inherited from 00:03:00her--were there any specific changes during the Depression, limitations? What types of things did you eat during those years?

NAMAN: I don't recall that there was any difference because food was very important to our culture, and that didn't change. If we were poor I didn't know it, because in the Armenian culture food is the important thing. If fifty people showed up, you are always prepared to feed them.

DUNHAM: Right. Well, I can tell that from my own experiences in your home. Were there particular dishes--?

NAMAN: Well, the Armenian rice, pilaf, is kind of a staple of the cuisine. But there are so many of them if I started in on them it would take a while. Their 00:04:00cuisine is really--I'm proud of it.

DUNHAM: We touched on, later in the interview--you went to Armenian school on Saturdays. You studied that through all growing up?

NAMAN: Well, no, it was roughly through grammar school and junior high school. It was about seven or nine years that I went every Saturday. But I don't recognize any of it now because naturally I haven't spoken--I have no one to speak it with.

DUNHAM: What was it like going to Saturday Armenian school?

NAMAN: It was fun. Kind of looked forward to it, you know. I enjoyed it very much. Then I used to correspond with my uncle. I lived in Fresno; I grew up in Fresno. But my uncle, my mother's family, all lived in Sacramento. And my mother's oldest brother was very learned, and he would tell me, "You write to 00:05:00me, and I'll write back, and that will give you some experience." Write to him in Armenian. So I used to do that, and he would write back. It was a good connection that I had there.

DUNHAM: Were you able to take vacations during those years, in the thirties growing up?

NAMAN: Yes, mostly here. Back to Sacramento, briefly. I don't know that families took long vacations like they do now. It was mostly back up to visit my grandmother and all of my mother's people. Basically, that was where we--.

DUNHAM: Do you remember listening to the radio growing up, and were there any Armenian shows on the radio?

NAMAN: Not at that time, but I remember Mert and Marge if you've ever heard of that particular--Mert and Marge was a comedy program, two women. It was very 00:06:00popular. Everybody listened to Mert and Marge. It was one that I never missed. That's the only one that I remember.

DUNHAM: It was like a weekly comedy show?

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Was there any live Armenian entertainment when you were growing up in Fresno?

NAMAN: Not that I recall, although Armenian organizations at times would have various kinds of programs at certain times of the year. But none that I remember that were--

DUNHAM: Those would have been maybe local cultural events?

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: All right. I just wanted to check in a little bit on that period. Is there anything else you wanted to share about growing up? I know that we did talk about it quite a bit.

NAMAN: No, other than the fact that my parents were very devout Christians, and they were both very active in the church. My dad was sometimes on what they 00:07:00called the vestry, and my mother was very active with the women's organization. When they had functions she was right in there with the cooking part of it. It's hard to realize today how particular the women were that used to get together for cooking on those occasions. Even to the extent that my mother, for certain kinds of dishes, was even very particular about the kinds of ingredients that they used. In other words there are certain kinds of onions that they would use for certain dishes that they would make, and if there was a certain kind of an onion that was too juicy, maybe that wasn't very good for them. I was just a little kid then, but I used to hear the women arguing. "Shouldn't use that. Shouldn't use that. Should use something else." They were very, very fussy. 00:08:00That's why their food was so good. I still remember it now today when I'm making some of the dishes that I recall. And I think my mother would turn over in her grave if she could see the kind of onions I'm using for this. It sounds silly--

DUNHAM: Are they less available, the specific types, or--?

NAMAN: No, it was just they couldn't find it at the store when they went, or they didn't carry it. Because I didn't realize that there were so many different kinds of onions, but there are. And some of them, if they're too liquid, why then it may affect the rest of the dish. I couldn't tell you exactly why they were so fussy, but I know they were. That sounds silly but--

DUNHAM: No, no. It's very interesting. Now, you were very active in the church growing up.

NAMAN: Yes.

DUNHAM: When you came to Sacramento did you transition to a new church here?

NAMAN: No, they didn't have an Armenian church here at that time. They developed one--one was formed. I think they just celebrated their fiftieth or their sixtieth year here, of the founding of the church here in Sacramento. It's a small church; they don't have that many people that belong to that particular branch. But they do have a church, and it's a very active group, and they've kept it going. My uncle and my aunts were active in the church formation. I don't belong to the church. When I married my husband he was what they call a cradle Episcopalian. So I joined the Episcopal Church, which is very similar. And I've been an Episcopalian since then.

DUNHAM: You mentioned your husband. I don't think we've properly told the story of how you met your husband. Could you go ahead and share that with us?

NAMAN: My husband was teaching the Rosie the Riveter classes. He was teaching at that time at the Yuba Junior College and bringing them in on Saturdays to get a job at McClellan. And I liked his looks. So I told the staff that I wanted to take care of that young professor from the junior college when he comes in the next time. They said. "Oh, yeah, we know what you've got in mind." I said, "Yeah, I do have that in mind." So naturally that connection took place. But he was very shall we say slow to connect. It took a couple of months. He called me one day and asked me if I'd like to go to lunch on Sunday because we used to 00:11:00work six days a week then. So we had only Sundays. I said, "Yes, I'd love it. Maybe you'd like to come to our house for dinner because my mother always cooks a big Sunday dinner. That's just the way it was done in those days. "Well, yeah, that would be fine," because he was living away from home and so forth, and I thought he would like it.

He came and met my mother and my father. We had a nice afternoon and all. When he left, my mother said to me, she said, "You know, that's an awfully nice boy," with real emphasis. I said, "I know, Mom. I'm working on it. Give me time." [laughs] And these are true words. I said, "I know. I'm working on it." And it was about three months later when we were engaged.

DUNHAM: So you didn't have a lot of time to socialize, or could you get together 00:12:00during the evenings after work?

NAMAN: No, because he was in Yuba City, and I was in Sacramento, and we both had jobs.

DUNHAM: And every Sunday was family dinner, so did that mean a lot of family dinners together?

NAMAN: [laughs] No, usually we spent the weekend. Sometimes he would come, and sometimes I would go up there. So we usually saw each other on the weekends. That was it. But it wasn't always Sunday dinner, although he liked to come to my mother's Sunday dinners.

DUNHAM: What year was this?

NAMAN: This was 1941. No it was '40, excuse me.

DUNHAM: When did you join McClellan?

NAMAN: I joined McClellan in 1941. So it would have been 1940, excuse me.

DUNHAM: But in your first year at McClellan.

NAMAN: Yeah. I went to work out at McClellan February 7, 1941.

DUNHAM: We talked a little bit before that there was a plan in place that was enacted after Pearl Harbor. You already had had a massive build-up, I think, in the six months after you got there from about 500 to 5,000 civilian employees--

NAMAN: Yes.

DUNHAM: --but this plan was in place that was enacted after Pearl Harbor. Were you involved in the formation of that plan, or was it already there?

NAMAN: No, it was already there. I', not sure exactly who worked on it, but I know that my boss at the time was involved in working on it. But I didn't have anything to do with it.

DUNHAM: What were the key components of the plan?

NAMAN: Primarily, when the war took place the men would be going in the service and the women would be taking their jobs. Not specific as to just what the jobs were but actually described that it would be in different categories, that women 00:14:00would be brought in in very non-traditional kinds of jobs. There were certain plans on how they would be brought in and what their backgrounds would be that we would be recruiting for. But it didn't go into the specifics of how it would be done. It was just a general plan that this was what had to be worked on. That's actually what happened, pretty much.

DUNHAM: Right. It seems necessary, but do you know if there had been much debate in the military around the plan.

NAMAN: There might have been at the Pentagon at the time. Not at the Pentagon, but I'm sure there was because things like this were pretty dramatic, and they weren't going to let anything like that happen without a lot of discussion. In military outfits at that time women were not brought in with open arms or 00:15:00anything like that. It was something kicking and screaming almost. And that's almost what had to happen; there had to be a shortage before anybody was brought in.

DUNHAM: Since you mentioned that, in your own role as a woman who quickly rose in management, did you experience much of that backlash as a women in a military arena?

NAMAN: One incident took place. After the war--it was early '42--a conference was being held back at the War Department. I had been on a recruiting trip up at Berkeley and over at Stanford with all the graduating groups and hired all the top-notch students that were in the graduating classes. My boss made the 00:16:00decision that some of these that I had just recruited--these people were working for me--they were going to go to this conference back there, and I wasn't going to go. He called me in. I don't know that I was really upset about it because I figured if this is the way it is, this is the way it is. That was my attitude, really, at the time; maybe I didn't know any better, frankly. But he called me in and he said, "I just want you to know that I'm sending the people that are working for you, and I'm not sending you because you're a woman, and you'd probably be the only woman in the group if you did go. And I think it would be much better for you, you would be more comfortable if I sent the men that are working for you and not you." And he said, "How do you feel about that?" I said, 00:17:00"Well, I guess I don't have a choice. Anything you say you're not going to change your mind about because people have already been designated to go." I didn't say too much, but since he gave me an opportunity I probably was foolish not to make some comments about it. But I didn't. I just let it go. But it must have bothered him that he bothered to call me in and to talk to me about it. It was okay. They went, they came back, and they shared their information with the rest of us that were there, the women. Things went on, and nobody was too badly hurt by it.

DUNHAM: This was during World War II?

NAMAN: This was in the early part in '42.

DUNHAM: What type of conference would that have been?

NAMAN: It had to do with personnel, hiring and things of that--and changes that they were making which relaxed some of the requirements: we didn't have to do 00:18:00this and do that. Just changes. Regulatory stuff, mostly.

DUNHAM: Would that have changed, your going to such a conference pretty soon thereafter in the subsequent years?

NAMAN: Oh, yes. It changed very fast.

DUNHAM: Did you have to play a role in enacting that change?

NAMAN: No. I wasn't asked, and I think it was done at the top. I think it was pretty well known that it was going to have to be changed. They didn't have any choice because the men were all going in the service. It was the women that were in these roles that they were addressing, so they didn't have much choice. But at that time, that's the way it worked.

DUNHAM: In this case the men came back and reported. Was there any issue with the any of the men as subordinates to you that you ever had a problem with?

NAMAN: I didn't because I hired them. And they knew that. I always got along 00:19:00very well with them. Many of them went in the service, and some of them never came back.

DUNHAM: I wanted to touch briefly again on the period after the Pearl Harbor attack. I know you had the three days straight almost of working around the clock and particularly you had to black out the entire base. Rainbow Plan Number Five, does that ring a bell? I had read that that was enacted. Was that about the blackout, or did that have to do with the hiring plan?

NAMAN: I'm not familiar with that term.

DUNHAM: So did you also have to black out your private residence during that time?

NAMAN: No. They didn't get to that point. It was mostly, I guess, areas that were accessible because they thought that the Japanese were going to come into 00:20:00the mainland, and so they were blacking out those areas that would be noticeable. Like the whole Bay Area at that time, you had to drive with your lights out and all of that, because I know my husband and I one time were driving--I think it was from Berkeley to Sacramento-- and somehow or another he had his lights on, and we were stopped. He was given a ticket for driving with his lights on. That's what was happening.

DUNHAM: Between December 7 and 28, I read that the depot hired 2,500 employees in that short time span. Were you heavily involved, then, in that hiring?

NAMAN: Yes, we were. It was bringing people as fast as we possibly could, 00:21:00whatever our capacity was at the time. We were hiring them as fast as we could. We had some men that were designated 4-H, and we were considering hiring them. But basically most of them were women or older persons beyond the drafting age and all. Yes, we worked night and day. We hired on the day shift and on the swing shift, as we called it.

DUNHAM: Did you have a graveyard shift yet, or did that come later?

NAMAN: No, the graveyard shift started but we hadn't started to assign them there yet because they were very careful about who they put on the graveyard shift. It was too early yet to see what the workload assignments were going to be for those shifts. This was on the repair of aircraft, so the workload had really not started yet. It hadn't materialized yet as to what extent.

DUNHAM: When you say "careful in hiring," what were the key factors to consider for hiring someone for graveyard shift?

NAMAN: Mostly maturity, you might say. People that could be trusted, you might say. A lot of theft that could go on, and so many different things that would come up. I don't even know that they had developed a lot of the things that they had to watch for. But they just knew that we had to be careful.

DUNHAM: Some of it probably couldn't have been predicted until it happened.

NAMAN: Yes.

DUNHAM: I know that at the shipyards at Richmond certainly there are stories of swing and particularly graveyard shift of either theft or just more carousing--

NAMAN: Well, and they paid more on those shifts. See, we had shift differential. The second shift, I think the difference was 10 percent, and then I think the 00:23:00graveyard shift was either 15 or 20 percent more than what the day shift got. And there were some people that wanted those because of the money and there were others that didn't.

DUNHAM: Would that be based on seniority? Of course everyone had been hired so recently.

NAMAN: Well, I think it was mostly on their ability, because some of them did come in with some experience in these areas, and so those judgments were made. They were independent judgments that were made at the time.

DUNHAM: Do you remember about what the weekly rate was for day shift back in '41-42 for airplane mechanic?

NAMAN: I wish I could remember, to be perfectly honest with you.

DUNHAM: That's okay.

NAMAN: I really don't. There are ways I could go and find out among some of my 00:24:00papers, but I don't--

DUNHAM: No problem. So this tremendous hiring boom that was happening after Pearl Harbor, what was the interview process like? You were interviewing many of the candidates that came through.

NAMAN: Basically, I did very little of the actual interviews because I was the supervisor over the function; I had people doing it. But I would say it was pretty fast. We didn't have time for a lot of--we were hiring them as fast as we could. People that were doing the work were pretty well-experienced in judging what we were looking for. Mostly to make sure that they would be trustworthy and 00:25:00we would be able to keep them for a length of time; we didn't want to go through the process of hiring them and then having them leave in a hurry. That didn't happen, of course. They did not leave in a hurry. Some of them were leaving non-governmental-type jobs and coming in to help the war effort. There was a tremendous amount of attitude about helping in the war effort. People felt like it was their duty to help in the war effort. It's really funny how something like that can occur practically overnight. This country was not really ready for it at all. All of a sudden we were a peace loving country and then we were thrown into a war situation.

DUNHAM: In your advertising for positions and all, did you have a lot of marketing around supporting the war effort?

NAMAN: To a certain amount. But not as much. The people already felt that--at least it's my experience--they already felt that they wanted to do it. They felt it was their duty to do it.

DUNHAM: You said that the people under you who were doing the interviews were sort of expert at figuring out who was reliable. What would be the key ways in which the interview process would--?

NAMAN: Well, the length of time that they had been on the former job, the training that they had for the jobs. Length of time that they had been in a particular job had a lot to do with it depending on their age, of course. If they were just a youngster right out of high school, and some of them right out of college, why then it depends on how long they stayed with what they were doing. When they're job hopping you can pretty much tell just how reliable they 00:27:00are. But not always. It's a judgment.

DUNHAM: And you were having to hire so many so fast that you were probably hiring a high percentage of applicants. Was there a probationary period, or was there much instance of having to lay off people as soon as they arrived--?

NAMAN: The probationary period was a year at the time as I recall. Then they eliminated that. They didn't even have to have that length of time. But at the beginning there was; it was a year.

DUNHAM: And the typical training for an airplane mechanic was three months?

NAMAN: Well, they came in as a junior mechanic at three months, and then they became a junior mechanic, and then sometimes for certain areas it was either two 00:28:00years or three years. Most of the time to become a full-fledged journeyman it was four years. But it depended on the area of the aircraft that they were working on. They weren't all the same, but most of time that was basically it.

DUNHAM: You mentioned previously that as women and men increasingly began working together in a new environment for that, and with a lot of young attractive women, that there were some issues of harassment. Maybe that wasn't the word at the time reported. But can you share any examples of the types of events that might have occurred?

NAMAN: I don't remember exactly, but some of them were things that reported to us that had happened. There were some training programs that were set up to acquaint--before they even brought the women in they set up programs to indicate 00:29:00that there would be a change in this environment pretty much, and that they were going to be confronted with it and that they would have to put up with it, shall we say. Not to create problems in this area because this was going to be a way of life. Not those words; those are my words.

DUNHAM: This was directed at the pre-existing male worker, predominantly male workers--

NAMAN: For everybody in the workforce, whoever was there. "You must realize that this is going to happen." And it was done very diplomatically so that the understood what it was and not make a joke out of it. I'm sure there were a lot of jokes that were made of it; I'm sure of that. I wasn't there, but you'd hear these things, but all you could do was ignore them because they're going to have to get with it or out they go.

DUNHAM: They being the men?

NAMAN: The people that might have been causing the problems if there were such 00:30:00things. And there were some, but they were nothing major. But I was not involved in those situations.

DUNHAM: You were more bringing--

NAMAN: Bringing them in.

DUNHAM: Rather than dealing with managing ongoing issues. But you may have heard about some of that type of thing.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: I was just curious. As I said, we've heard of a lot of different stories around that. What about with regard to race, because certainly during the course of the wars, you were recruiting more and from the South, and more diverse workers, I understand. Many of the workers were coming from segregated environments. What challenges did that pose?

NAMAN: I didn't get involved in those too much, but there were incidents that took place. When we were in the hiring process, we knew that whoever showed up it didn't matter what color he was; it was his qualifications and background. 00:31:00But if there were situations where they had served time--we used to get arrest records on them--that would have something to do with it. And that would be for everybody, not only for black or white, but basically if their situation, their background, indicated that they'd had too many arrest records, why, we would try to get more information on them and make some judgments on it. But we did hire some that had fairly extensive arrest records but who had shown a certain amount of rehabilitation, shall we say.

DUNHAM: And that was also a factor of supply and demand.

NAMAN: It depends on their background, too.

DUNHAM: Again, I know you were more on the entry, when people came in, but in 00:32:00the actual workplace, did you hear, again, of stories where there may have been difficulties between whites and--

NAMAN: Yes, there were, and they would move them around. They would move the people around and try to get a happy atmosphere.

DUNHAM: Did they have segregated shifts of non-whites, of blacks, or Mexican Americans?

NAMAN: We didn't.

DUNHAM: Were you familiar with the preparations for the Doolittle raid, the first American raid of Japan, because I read that McClellan was a key planning stage for that. Again, I know not your area of expertise, but was that something that was well-known at the base at that time.

NAMAN: Not--mostly rumors.

DUNHAM: Did you hear about it after the fact?

NAMAN: After it was done, yeah. And then we did have something that was strictly an optional and a voluntary thing where some of us were part of a group that 00:33:00used to bake cookies and give it to those going overseas. We would be told that there was a group leaving at a certain time, and if we wanted to come down with our little cans of cookies and things like that, we could give it to them. Then, on the Doolittle one, when we went down--we didn't know who it was or where they were going; we just knew they were going overseas--we took our stuff down and gave it to them. Then afterwards we heard that it was the Doolittle group that we gave to. But otherwise we didn't get involved in that too much, other than the fact that we would bake cookies and take it and it was given to them.

DUNHAM: But there was sort of a celebratory sendoff, if you will, at the time--?

NAMAN: Yes, there was. There was quite a bit of that.

DUNHAM: What other kind of events like that? Were there events welcoming people back?

NAMAN: Not the welcoming back. It was mostly those going on over.

DUNHAM: What would those events be? You said you brought cookies and things.

NAMAN: That was about it.

DUNHAM: Would there be music?

NAMAN: No, nothing like that, no.

DUNHAM: What was the social and cultural life like at the base? Obviously, the base expanded tremendously during the war. My sense is that '41, '42, there's just this tremendous expansion, and it's maybe not till '43 or farther into the war that maybe the social scene, with having more music and entertainment, there's a bowling alley built, I believe--

NAMAN: Yeah, I don't remember too much of that actually happening, to be honest with you, because it wasn't part of my responsibility, and I didn't get involved in it. Busy with other things.

DUNHAM: But there were performers that came, such as Bob Hope, Tommy Dorsey--

NAMAN: Oh, during the war we had a lot of celebrities. I wish I could remember 00:35:00them all.

DUNHAM: Did you go to some of those concerts and events?

NAMAN: Not too many.

DUNHAM: But they were open to both the civilians and the military side?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: We talked a little bit about as there was this tremendous expansion of the civilian side, was there much issue around civilian versus military? How did that play out?

NAMAN: You know, there were rumors of that sort of thing, but it never really reached any large proportion where any decisions had to be made, setting of rules. I don't remember; there may have been. But it wasn't part of my package. I really didn't get involved in that too much, but I'm sure there could have been. I don't remember.

DUNHAM: I understand your focus was the hiring process, but you're kind of our 00:36:00representative for the McClellan Air Force Base, so I'm trying to explore some things I've read about a little. I'd also read, for example, that the boxers Max and Buddy Baer came to the base. Were you familiar with their presence--?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. Actually, his wife lived over here just a couple of blocks away.

DUNHAM: So did you know--?

NAMAN: I didn't know her, but my husband sold her cars. So he knew her. Yeah, my husband knew her pretty well. And their daughter lived just down the street here.

DUNHAM: So I guess the Baer brothers did--they were P. E. instructors and then also put on boxing exhibitions.

NAMAN: Oh, yeah, and they were very available. They really were. Sometimes you find these celebrities that are sort of "leave me alone" type. They weren't that way, as far as I know. They always seemed to be very available for handling.

DUNHAM: And similarly there were baseball players, a star attraction baseball 00:37:00team, is that provided--?

NAMAN: There were. And there were bands. If I stop and think about all of them that were available, there were just so many of them. Even like Walter Chrysler's son-in-law was one of the members of one my former bosses up the line about a notch or two, just the nicest guy you'd ever want to know. I guess when he was with the Chrysler firm, he was I guess in charge of production, from what I'd heard. Then he went into the service as a lieutenant colonel, and when he was assigned to us, why, he was a lieutenant colonel. He was the son-in-law, married to Walter Chrysler's daughter. They were really the high hoity-toit of 00:38:00society. He was stationed out there about three or four years. Nice guy.

DUNHAM: You worked directly with him some?

NAMAN: I had contacts with him because he was in military maintenance, and I was being personnel. So it was a different organization, but we had a lot to do with bringing people into his organizations. He would have certain things that he wanted changed, and he would come to us and say "Can we do it this way?" and "Can we do it that way?" And we'd try.

DUNHAM: With the massive hiring increases and the base expanding to meet the needs of all these employees, were you involved at all with meeting or assessing those needs and what services and things--?

NAMAN: Most of that was done by the organizations themselves. So only to the 00:39:00extent that it was going to affect the kind of person that we brought in. If they had a change in the kind of person that was being brought in. But I don't remember anything quite like to that extent. Sure, they might have a new need. Maybe it was going to require a different emphasis that we were bringing in, but not an awful lot. There were always changes that were taking place, of course, in a growing organization.

DUNHAM: We've talked a little bit about the ebb and flow of hiring and laying off, and I had read that even during the war in 1943--I think it was around January 30 of 1943--there was a hiring freeze?

NAMAN: Could have been.

DUNHAM: Of about five days?

NAMAN: Could have been.

DUNHAM: A General [Edward Sanders] Perrin maybe directed that?

NAMAN: Could have been.

DUNHAM: It wasn't a specific challenge that you recall at that time?

NAMAN: No.

DUNHAM: Basically it described that although there'd been all this expansion, there were too many people for the facilities you had.

NAMAN: I don't remember that specifically, but that doesn't surprise me because that kind of situation would happen. If we were growing too rapidly, and they didn't have the room, or they had a need to assess what was happening and stop and take a look at this first before we go any further, those were situations that happened quite often. Quite often.

DUNHAM: And this coincides with expansion of new bases. I mean Ogden, Spokane, San Bernardino. You were still the hub for most of the training, is that right?

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Individuals would come to do the training at McClellan, and then some 00:41:00would go on to the other bases, is that right? Or did they train at the individual bases?

NAMAN: After the initial manning of the base when the base first opened, our role pretty much stopped there, and they did their own recruiting after the initial group went in.

DUNHAM: So you helped them get started, in other words, and then they had their own--

NAMAN: Then they had their own, and then they continued on with it.

DUNHAM: I wanted to talk a little more about home front life and social life off the base. I know you worked hard and were working most of the time and had family dinners Sunday. But you did talk about taking the train to San Francisco during the war years. Did you go dancing, or what were your favorite types or music or dance during those years?

NAMAN: Heck, we didn't have time to be thinking about those things. For a dollar and a quarter you could go on a round trip, a train trip, to San Francisco on 00:42:00Sundays. You went in the morning, and you came back at night for a dollar and quarter.

DUNHAM: How long was that ride each way?

NAMAN: About an hour and a half, two hours. You'd get off the train in San Francisco--we had friends in San Francisco. My cousin and I were both single gals, and we were having a good time, and we'd go and meet our friends. Sometimes we'd just visit with them, and other times they would have things planned for us. These were people we'd known all our lives, practically, and so we had fun. Sometimes it would be a show that we would go to. But for a dollar and a quarter--it's hard to believe.

DUNHAM: What types of show would you go to; was it live music?

NAMAN: Movies or live shows. Nothing special. Something that was there and 00:43:00something to do.

DUNHAM: Do you remember what theaters you may have gone to?

NAMAN: Well, the old Geary, and the Curran. They're still there.

DUNHAM: How did you get your news of the war during those years? Did you get it more directly from the base and through there, or the radio or newsreels at the movies?

NAMAN: You know how I got word that Pearl Harbor had been bombed? It was a Sunday. I was working in the office. I'd gone out to work overtime that day on my own because I had so much work to do. Our office was at the end of one of the barracks buildings there, and we were right across the street from the commander's residence. The commander's daughter worked for me in the office. She was one of our employees; we'd hired her. She saw the lights on. It was about 00:44:00eleven o'clock in the morning. So when the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and the news had reached the commander, she came over to find out what was going on, what the lights were doing on.

She came in and saw me there. She said "What are you doing here?" I said "Well, I'm working overtime; I've got all this stuff that has to be done." And she said, "My dad just got word that the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor. He's getting ahold of all the department heads and asking them to do thus and so, whatever it was. And she said "I think he's going to want to get a hold of your boss to get whatever news he had, that we were to hire all the carpenters and painters that we could get ahold of because they want all of the windows blacked out because they think they're going to come to the mainland, and they want to black out blah, blah, blah. So I said, "Well, I'm here, and I'll call 00:45:00anybody that he wants and so forth." It wasn't but a half hour when he came over, and he said he had gotten hold of my boss, and he was coming right out, and blah, blah, and that we were going on the air to get as many carpenters and painters that we could hire, and this is what we were going to do.

So that's what happened. We worked all night that night, hiring and the radio announcements were made, and people came out. We had no trouble reaching people; they sure came out in droves.

DUNHAM: Right. They just came out and lined up--

NAMAN: And that's how I found out.

DUNHAM: Subsequently, during the rest of the war, would you normally find out updates from the war directly through the base?

NAMAN: Through the chain of command.

DUNHAM: So you had an inside--?

NAMAN: Yeah, that was the official way things were done?

DUNHAM: What were your experiences with rationing during the war?

NAMAN: Well, everybody thought it was going to be terrible, but somehow or another we survived. I'm not sure what the rules were on them because my mother's the one that worried about that. But there were rules on how many in the family and how much butter you could have and how much of this you could have. Somehow or another we managed. At that time there were three of us in the family. My brother and sister were both married and on their own, and they had their own families. But it didn't seem to bother us at all.

DUNHAM: You didn't notice a change in foods that were available?

NAMAN: No. I mean, with some families I think it was a problem. But you learned, I imagine, to be very careful in the usages. I'm not sure what all--the oil and 00:47:00the meats and this and that, but somehow or another it seemed to be reasonable enough.

DUNHAM: Anyway, your mom was handling that.

NAMAN: Oh, Yeah, and my dad did the buying, and he knew how to do that. So I never worried about it.

DUNHAM: Did you participate, or anyone in your family, in maintaining a victory garden or canning, recycling.

NAMAN: My mother did. She did some canning, and my dad always had a little garden. He always had a garden, before the war and after the war. It was just kind of a thing that he did; that was his thing. But that was very common; victory gardens were very common.

DUNHAM: Did you buy war bonds, and was that promoted on the base?

NAMAN: Yes, it was promoted on the base, and you had your arm twisted to do it. 00:48:00To be honest with you, when we bought this house I used all of the war bonds to pay cash for the purchase of this house.

DUNHAM: What year was that?

NAMAN: That was 1957, I think it was. 1957. I said to my husband, "We've got these. They're coming due. Might as well use them up." It was something like $20,000 worth of war bonds. That's what we used. Nobody pays cash for anything anymore. It's not even popular. But I don't mind telling you that that's--

DUNHAM: That's great, yeah. You mentioned you'd met your husband in '42, and he was Episcopalian. Did you attend church during the war?

NAMAN: Yeah, oh yeah. The same church we go to now. It was a different building 00:49:00because they built a larger facility. But that was--

DUNHAM: And what were services like during the war, and did they change?

NAMAN: The Episcopal Church doesn't change anything. It's the same thing that it was-- [laughs] No, there have been little changes to modernize. "Thee" and 'thou" and all this stuff is kind of modernized some.

DUNHAM: Were there other community organizations that you participated in?

NAMAN: At that time the Soroptimist Club was a woman's service club, like the Rotary Club is for men. Of course, now it's for men and women; they all can belong. Same thing, you know. But at that time it was just for women, and you had to be invited to join. You couldn't ask to join; you had to be invited to join. There was an article in the paper about me being out at the base and being 00:50:00one of the women and all this stuff. So the person that was in charge of membership for the Soroptimist organization for this area saw the article, so I got an invitation to join the club. And I did.

DUNHAM: What did you do in the Soroptimist Club?

NAMAN: It was just like you men for a men's service club. You are working to raise money to help people in needy projects. The needs today are greater than they were then, frankly. I've been a member for over fifty years in the organization and have held every office in the club that you can possibly get. I go to all the meetings and all, but I'm not too active now because I'm getting 00:51:00older, and I've done everything. So, let the younger ones do it, you know?

DUNHAM: Absolutely. How did your role back in your job at McClellan change over the World War II years?

NAMAN: With more responsibility. I found that if you're doing it without them telling you to do it, you're going to get stuck with it as a responsibility. That happened all the time. There was a need there, and you had to address it because after all, it was part of my responsibility. I would go ahead and do it, and then pretty soon my boss would find out about it, and he'd say, "Have you been doing this all this time?" "Yeah, had to be." "Oh, well, gee, that's nice of you to do that." I got stuck with it. That's how those things happen in most 00:52:00organizations, I've found. If you see the need there, and you address the need, why, then you're pretty much stuck with it.

DUNHAM: Right. Some organizations and managers do a better job or recognizing and promoting for that. Were you rewarded for your extra efforts?

NAMAN: Well, I'll tell you. I was hired at the lowest level, and by the time the war ended I was almost at the highest level. I don't know if that says something.

DUNHAM: Absolutely.

NAMAN: Because the need was there, and you addressed it. And of course I was lucky enough to be, when the men were leaving, I was there. I have to say that that was part of it, too, that I was in the right place at the right time.

DUNHAM: We touched on this before, but you were doing this hiring and handling this plan, and Kaiser management came to you at some point and asked for advice. 00:53:00Can you share with us that advice?

NAMAN: When we started to hire the women, we had the testing expert develop tests on how you bring in somebody, to test the capabilities of a person that is not in mechanical work. How do you bring a woman in from the kitchen? And how do find out what they can do to see if they're going to be successful in mechanical jobs. So he developed this test. It tested the aptitude of women in mechanical jobs. Can they repair a toaster? Can they repair an iron? How much do they know about these things? It was very effective because it worked. There were lots of 00:54:00women who could do those things without realizing it.

So we had those tests, they were developed and they were sitting on the shelf. When the war broke, my boss, who was part of that development, pushed the War Department to give us authority to hire women in those jobs. It was about a month or so before we got the final word and started in, which was about March of 1942, as I recall. That sits there, and we had the information that was available to us, and we were hiring based on the tests and revisions were made to the tests as we went on and got more experience in what changes had to be made and all. So, somewhere around in the early part of 1942--I can't be sure 00:55:00whether it was March or April or somewhere in through there--we had a call from one of the shipyards--I don't remember which one it was; I think it was the Kaiser one--asking if they could come meet with us. They wanted to get information on how we did this in bringing women into mechanical jobs. So they came, and we met with them for a full day or so. We made everything available to the; we gave them copies of our tests and all of that.

That's how I knew that they were beyond us after we had developed all of this and we were working and we'd given them this information, about the early part 00:56:00of '42. Then, and this is in the last thirty years, I attended a women's conference down in Berkeley, and I can't remember whether it was in connection with my Soroptimist work or whether it was in connection with my government work or what. But it was a conference that I attended, and two women were presenting their dissertations on who was hiring women in mechanical jobs during World War II. In this presentation these women said it was the Kaiser Shipyard who was responsible for bringing women into mechanic jobs during World War II. And I thought, "Hey, this is wrong."

So I waited until the whole thing was over with, and then went up and introduced 00:57:00myself to these two women who were presenting their work and told them who I was and blah, blah, blah, and where I got the authority to come to them and so forth. And I told them my story. I said, "I think your information is wrong. If you've captured history, why, you've missed it by a few months. So I gave them all the information and told them that if they would go to the Air Force Museum at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, I think they could find that it would show when they first hired women in mechanical jobs, I'm sure. I think if you look it'll be somewhere in January or February 1942 and so forth. So they took all the information. They were very happy about it. They weren't mad or anything; at least they didn't show it. And I don't know whether they ever followed through 00:58:00to correct that bit of information. I really didn't. It wasn't my role to do it. It was just that I felt that if this is the way history is captured, we'd better revise the way that we do it. Anyway, I left it there. That's as much as I knew.

DUNHAM: Was there a continuing dialog between McClellan and the shipyards or was there just that one meeting?

3

NAMAN: Anybody that came to us that asked for information, we gave it to them. We did. We weren't keeping the information under wraps for any reason; we had no reason to. We were proud of what we'd done. Actually, we were starting from scratch almost.

DUNHAM: Absolutely. It was important.

NAMAN: That's a bit of history that I was involved in.

DUNHAM: There was a lot of history that you've been involved in. Was there any 00:59:00concern around competing with Kaiser or other--?

NAMAN: No. We didn't have that attitude at all. Whenever we had a need we addressed it. So often we found that we were the first ones because this was how we were faced with a problem.

DUNHAM: Well, not so much with solving getting the test that was pioneered there but competing for labor. I think we touched on the issue of folks leaving jobs sometimes if they could find a higher paying job--

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. Well, that--

DUNHAM: --so was that a problem? Because officially you had to get permission to be able to leave a wartime job, too, right? So how was that handled?

NAMAN: I didn't get involved in those situations too much, but there were some of the jobs that had requirements on them where you couldn't just leave and go and do what you wanted; they put the squeeze on you. And that was good in a way. 01:00:00In a way, that was very good because they had to have the people there to do the job. Once they came in they had to stay with it.

DUNHAM: On the hiring side, when you were trying to get somebody in, did you ever have to request from their previous employer to have them be let go?

NAMAN: Not too much of that, but it could have been. I'm not saying it wasn't an issue, but I don't recall.

DUNHAM: It seems like that was the letter of the law but wasn't too often--

NAMAN: Used, yeah. It wasn't really, as I recall, that necessary.

DUNHAM: You were able to find the folks you needed.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Well, we're just about at the end of Tape 1 here. Let's take a pause, and then I'd like to continue a little more.

DUNHAM: This is David Dunham again with Becky Naman on May 21, 2012. This is our Tape 4 of our interview with Ms. Naman. I wanted to ask you, in your role of 01:01:00hiring, and especially of hiring all these women in this new thing, what was your feeling of how these women felt in doing these new jobs, what was a sort of pioneering.

NAMAN: I think there was a little bit of trepidation on their part, really. But I think they were also very anxious to get going. They didn't feel like they had all the answers, and I don't really know that it was even emphasized how much of a role they were playing in this whole process. None of us did. We had a need there, and we were addressing the need. That's the way we thought about it, really. We didn't think about about it as "Gee, this is a great thing that's happening." We didn't think about it in that role. We were trying to get this thing done.

DUNHAM: Not in terms of the pioneering gender aspect.

NAMAN: No.

DUNHAM: You were thinking of it as contributing to the war effort--

NAMAN: Oh, sure.

DUNHAM: --but just as humans.

NAMAN: Yeah, that's right, because we had a need there, and it had to be addressed. When I think about it, we never emphasized what an important part they were going to be playing or anything. All that developed as time went on, because they were making a contribution, and a good one. In fact, I think I'm safe to say that it was even better than we thought.

DUNHAM: Say more.

NAMAN: We weren't sure. Let's face it; we weren't sure. This was a whole new thing. It was a whole new thing, and nobody knew. But we just thought that here were so-called group of experts that were trying to figure out how to meet this 01:03:00requirement and do it well. Because we had a job to do.

DUNHAM: So "weren't sure" in terms of some of the nay-sayers who may have said, "Oh, a woman can't do this job."

NAMAN: Yeah. Nobody knew. Nobody really knew. These were women who knew how to repair their toasters and their irons, who had mechanical aptitude. That was tested through the tests, and it was proven. They did it and did it well, really.

DUNHAM: Just as you excelled in your job in personnel and moved up with a series of promotions, were there some women in the mechanical areas who had particular aptitude and rose, did particularly well, faster--

NAMAN: Oh, I'm sure there were. I don't remember any of them right now, to be 01:04:00honest with you, but yes, there were some that ended up being supervisors over the functions in which they were hired to work in. Over a period of time, not right way. But yes there were some that rose to those levels. And there were some toughies among them. I mean,T they could cuss like the men could cuss. And they got along with the men very well.

DUNHAM: That was a positive quality in that arena.

NAMAN: Yeah. Some of those gals were pretty tough, believe me. I wouldn't want to be like them as far as personalities, but they fit in very nicely. I don't know of any examples; I used to be told by some of the people that worked out in those shop areas, that used to say, "Hey we've got one here that really--" But some of the men liked it, because it was almost like it was part of them.

DUNHAM: You certainly had to have your own kind of toughness and strength and 01:05:00perseverance to excel as you did in your role, though. Not necessarily swearing but being a strong--

NAMAN: Oh, yeah, and you had to stand up for what you believed in, or if you didn't agree with them and all that. No, you can't be a--

DUNHAM: Were there any particular battles that you had to fight for that came up that are memorable?

NAMAN: Not that I can think of right now, but I'm sure there were, because you can't be in a situation like that and not have them, to be honest with you. And there were a lot of situations where the men might have resented it. It's just like I even hear stories today of situations where organizations are looking to 01:06:00promote women in certain jobs because maybe they're being accused of not hiring enough women. Not necessarily in the aircraft industry or anything, but any business where they want to put a woman in a management role, and they haven't got one, and they're being criticized for it, and they're looking for ways in which to find women in certain jobs. And you hear them saying they're giving them an advantage so that they can go into this, and they're just lucky to get an assignment. And sometimes men will feel like they're being pushed out because they want to have a woman in there. And maybe that's true in some cases where they will put a woman in there when she's not maybe quite qualified like she should be. I'm sure that's been done. Sometimes the best comes out in them when 01:07:00they're put into a spot like that. Other times, the best isn't brought out in them. I've seen that happen where the best will come out in a woman when they're given an assignment like that. But not always. It just depends. Sometimes it's luck; believe me.

DUNHAM: Being in the right place at the right time.

NAMAN: I mean, heck, I think I was twenty-five years old when I was supervising an organization that had over a hundred people in it. I didn't know anything about supervision. I learned.

DUNHAM: You learned, and you put yourself out there and made--

NAMAN: I listened to my bosses. And I had some very capable bosses. My bosses would say--difficult situations were what I used to hate, where you'd have 01:08:00difficult situations with staff and how to handle those situations. Sometimes you never do handle them.

DUNHAM: What would be an example of that?

NAMAN: Difference in personalities of people and they don't get along, and they have to get along. That's a tough one. Believe me. If two people that have to work together have problems of getting along with each other, you've got a problem. Sometimes you never solve it. Sometimes you have no choice, and you have to move them around and separate them. And other times they're smart enough to realize that they've got to get with this.

DUNHAM: So that's the hardest; there's no easy solution with personality conflicts.

NAMAN: No. You never do solve it. You never do.

DUNHAM: During World War II, and I know there were later instances we can talk about, too, particularly around women, were there fashion changes that were happening in the workplace and/or outside the workplace?

NAMAN: The fashion change that I remember distinctly was when there was a decision whether or not the women could wear pants in the offices. I think I may have mentioned this before.

DUNHAM: I don't think we were recording that.

NAMAN: Oh, is that right?

DUNHAM: Yeah. This was later in the sixties we're talking about, right? But this is important.

NAMAN: My boss called me one day, and he said that the commander wants us to develop a policy, and write it up, and set it up for his signature: whether or not we recommend that women are authorized to wear pants in the offices. Now, 01:10:00they wore pants in the shops from the very beginning, but not in the offices. So you almost have to have been there to appreciate what a tough spot that was to be in, to make that decision. Today, it seems ridiculous. You go to a function. And to see how many women have skirts on; there aren't very many. Anyway, I was given this assignment to develop the policy, and write it up, send it up to the commander for his signature, whatever we recommended. I'd been agonizing over this, and one day I was in my office looking out into the outer office, and this was in the day of the mini-skirts. One of our girls was filing, and she had on a mini-skirt. She was leaning over the file, and I could see her panties. I 01:11:00thought, "That's it. If she had on pants, that wouldn't happen." That helped me make up my mind that that's what we would recommend. So I sat and wrote up a policy, sent it up through my boss and told my boss how I came to this decision. He got a big kick out of it; he laughed about it; he thought it was the funniest thing there was. But it was the thing that made me make up the mind that women could now wear pants in our offices. And that was no small deal. He signed it, and that was it.

DUNHAM: So then it was the option. Did many women choose to start wearing--?

NAMAN: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

DUNHAM: It happened over night?

NAMAN: They were already pushing for that. So they were just waiting for that. We were pretty modern.

DUNHAM: And yourself as well?

NAMAN: Oh, yeah. [laughs] Oh, they made a big thing of it. The fellas made a big thing of it. Boy, they took pictures of me with my pants suit and all that. I 01:12:00don't even have those pictures. But they thought it was a funny thing. I don't think. I have very many skirts now. I've got long skirts, but when it comes to short skirts, I love the pants. And here I am--when I tell people this they can't believe it because today it's so common. "You mean you went through all that?" But you have to realize the timing and what it meant.

DUNHAM: In some ways we can see Rosie the Riveter/World War II female workers as a precursor to that.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Because at that time, even though they had to for doing that work, the whole thing was an adjustment.

NAMAN: That's right.

DUNHAM: Now, did any women wear their work clothes outside of the work environment? Did you notice during the war years at all, women at all wearing pants in the community?

NAMAN: No, I don't remember it to that extent. Today, one of my Soroptimist sisters and I were sitting together at a funeral of one of our members here about a month ago. It was a pretty good sized funeral, and I said, "Let's just for fun see how many women have skirts on today." There was not one out of over a hundred women in that group that had skirts. And these are women with gray hair like me. Not a one of them was wearing a skirt. I said--because I was involved in it, and I'm just curious, that's all. It's just curiosity.

DUNHAM: Did you, during the war years, know of any gay or lesbian people in the workforce or the community?

NAMAN: I did, yes, because we used to get the--this was very early in the start 01:14:00of the war, and in those days the lesbians looked it. Today, you can't tell the difference. We've got them at our church. Our church happens to be one of them where we welcome them all; it doesn't matter who it is or what or anything. And our minister is very, shall we say, open to gay and lesbian issues. And we've got quite a few of them that come. You can tell because of their behavior with each other. But they don't look it at all; to look at them you can't tell. But in those days, 1942, we'd get the FBI reports on them. And we fired them. Right away. All the way from firing them to keeping them on the job, because when I 01:15:00left work we weren't firing them. We were keeping them on the job because they no longer felt that the issue of compromise would come up. That was what they thought then. And that's why we were told to get rid of them in the early part.

DUNHAM: Compromise because of working alongside the same--although even then you were having men and women working alongside each other.

NAMAN: It was primarily that they could be used and get information out of them that wasn't supposed to be made available or something. Whatever the reasoning was--

DUNHAM: Oh, you're saying because there was discrimination against gays and lesbians, they could be blackmailed, essentially, for military information, you mean, by others. That was the concern?

NAMAN: Basically, yeah. That was basically it.

DUNHAM: So if you got an FBI report that indicated--

NAMAN: So I had this gal that worked for me; she worked in our payroll department. A pretty attractive person and a very nice person. I liked her. She was very capable. But she was a lesbian, had a living partner, and they had all kinds of information on her. She was the first one that I was confronted with. She worked for me, so I had to do something about it. I did. I called her and told her what I was going to do, what I had to do. She wasn't a bit surprised. She says, "I've been faced with this many times." So she says, "I'm not surprised." She quit. I didn't even have to fire her; she quit.

DUNHAM: Do you remember how long she'd worked for you,

NAMAN: Yeah. About a year before the report came in. It was a very thorough investigation.

DUNHAM: So the FBI would surveil these people?

NAMAN: Oh, no question about that. It was a very thorough--

DUNHAM: Now, you said you could often tell in those times. So, did you ever suspect?

NAMAN: Oh, I wondered. I wondered because she always wore very attractive outfits but very masculine. Hair was very short, which the style was not short hair like men's grooming.

DUNHAM: Couldn't wear pants though in the office, right?

NAMAN: She didn't, but skirts with a jacket that had a very--you know, just like a man's jacket, just like a man had. You could tell.

DUNHAM: Were there other examples, then, where you didn't have an FBI report but that you suspected that somebody might be

NAMAN: I didn't have any. I wasn't confronted, but there might have been some, like today you'd never know. I bet we have at least ten couples that I can spot that are members of our congregation that I know are gay couples. They're together all the time. They're putting their arms around each other. They're holding hands when they go up to take communion. They do that on purpose somehow to let you know that that's what they are. I swear. It's not necessary to hold hands when you go up to take communion or anything. Some of them will do that. It's just to let you know that. There are certain behavioral signs that I have noticed. I've not checked these out with anybody, but I can just tell.

DUNHAM: Yeah. One might argue that because it's a relatively recent phenomenon for them to be able to--

NAMAN: Oh, yeah, show--

DUNHAM: --so happy to be able to do that in a church. Has your perception around homosexuality changed over the years?

NAMAN: No. No, but I'm tolerant of them; let's put it that way. I took a course over at [UC] Davis in their extension division--oh, I guess it's been forty years ago when this issue started to develop--and it was basically to try to be more tolerant towards them. And I'm glad I did because I wanted to appreciate because, having come from this background of having to fire them when you got the report way back to where we are today, that's a big change, all during my lifetime. So I just felt--I'm more tolerant because I know that there isn't more 01:20:00of an emphasis, I should say maybe. I don't know. But I know that there are different categories of these people. Now, there are some that I think can't help but be this way. I mean there is something in their chemical make-up; let's put it that way. Then there are some that choose this lifestyle. This is what we were told in the classes: there are different categories of them. So I'm a little more tolerant of them. And then I look at some of them, and I think "My God, why are you in this swim?" But they seem to be very happy. So I'm tolerant of them; I'm friendly towards them. But I don't want to be a part of their little circle; let's put it that way.

DUNHAM: Well, again, one may argue, gay or straight, that there's a lot of young 01:21:00people today that are a lot more out there, in your face maybe, with {sexuality?}--

NAMAN: It's hard to tell, yeah.

DUNHAM: But I'm curious, then, seeing that transition from the military openly discriminating and having to fire anybody who was known to be to ultimately having to, it sounds like, protect and not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference, what other evolutions did you see, maybe around race or anything else? When you joined the military the civilian side, it sounds like, was being integrated. Of course, the military was still segregated. What kinds of transitions did you see there?

NAMAN: I may be wrong on this, but I sort of feel that the transition, it didn't come because we saw the change as inevitable. But we were told that we had to 01:22:00change, and we better get with it or else. I think a lot of the change came about because we were told that we had to change; we had to accept them. So we did. I think there were situations where southerners who had no use for the blacks and wouldn't have made any difference as far as they were concerned unless they were told that they had to change or else. So they did. And they probably really hid their true feeling about it. I may wrong. I can't prove it scientifically, but I just feel that a lot of it took place that way. In my 01:23:00case, I didn't have a feeling of dislike for the blacks or anything like that, not like the southerners did. True diehard southerners.

I had one example. My husband taught out at the base for a while. It was for a short period before he went out to the junior college. He had a boss who was part of the family that owned the Royal Tire and Rubber Company. I think it was a national firm. He was brought into the service, and he was a captain. He was working in what they called rubber conservation, how we can save on rubber tires and this and that. My husband was helping him teach classes on rubber 01:24:00conservation; Roy worked for him. And this man--they were from the East, his family--rented a home out here not far from where we live. One evening he invited us to his home for dinner because his mother-in-law was visiting from the South. They owned a big department store in one of the southern states. It was in Georgia or someplace like that. I can't remember exactly; this was back in the '42 or '43 period. So we got there, and we were the first ones to arrive at the house. My husband was also teaching with a black instructor who was a smart guy; he'd written several books and all and one of the ones that would go out and deliberately stir up things to cause change among the black community. 01:25:00He had no fear about causing problems that take place. So Roy had told him, he said, "You want us to pick you up?" He said, "No I'll come on my own." We got there; we were the first ones to arrive. The mother-in-law was upstairs taking care of the new baby that they had. So she didn't know that there was a black person among the guests.

She observed that this black man showed up, and she never came down the rest of the evening. The captain knew that this was going to happen, but he was, shall 01:26:00we say, modern enough--this was 1942, '43--that he wanted to bring about some change. It was nervy of him to do this with his mother-in-law visiting and knowing how she felt, because these people were wealthy southerners, owning one of the big department stores in wherever it was. She didn't come down for the rest of the evening, when we sat down to dinner and all that. My husband and I wondered. So we stuck around until the dinner was over with and everybody was leaving. The captain told my husband, "Did you notice my mother-in-law did not show up for dinner? I figured that this would happen." Then he explained to us that she was very much against it. A southerner is a southerner. You don't 01:27:00change, you know? But he knew what he was doing because they'd never been confronted with this before.

My husband later said to him, "Well, how are you going to clear this with her?" He said he didn't care because he felt the time had come for changes to take place, and he wanted to make sure that she would see the change. But I don't know that it ever happened because Roy never asked him after that. But I thought it was pretty dramatic. To me it was. A pretty dramatic incident to take place. I've never forgotten it because I've never quite been confronted with anything like that before.

DUNHAM: You mentioned that you didn't think the southerners would change, or at least change in the workplace, without the order. So do you mean in 1948, when the military was desegregated, is that the message, do you think, that made them 01:28:00change? Or were there other--because you were--

NAMAN: No. I think that it was that the time had come, to be perfectly honest with you. I don't know whether you--of course, you weren't around. But when I traveled in the South during that period before--it was about '46 or '47--I was headed for Atlanta to a conference or something, and I took the train. For the first time, in Texas, I saw for colored people and for white people rest rooms. I was appalled because we didn't have that here. I'd read about this; I'd heard about it. And all through the South on that trip I saw that. I couldn't believe 01:29:00it because I hadn't grown up with anything like that. I was glad for it. I worked with southerners, and they were used to it.

DUNHAM: Although you had felt your own--

NAMAN: Not really.

DUNHAM: --somewhat prejudice growing up.

NAMAN: In my high school graduating class there was one black man, and he became a doctor.

DUNHAM: Actually, I meant as an Armenian American in Fresno where you had that significant minority--

NAMAN: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: Almost it was significant enough that you became ostracized--

NAMAN: Well, yes. I think maybe I was more appreciative, shall I say, of that fact that people are discriminated against.

DUNHAM: Going back to your high school classmate, who became a doctor, do you 01:30:00remember much about him?

NAMAN: Nice guy. We never figured him any different really. He was black, but it wasn't discrimination as we knew it.

DUNHAM: But even in California in those times you must have seen some kind of de facto segregation, in housing or communities, that type of thing.

NAMAN: There was in Fresno, of course. There was towards Armenians in housing.

DUNHAM: When you left Fresno did you ever again experience discrimination as an Armenian American?

NAMAN: No. Not here in Sacramento at all. But I did there. I did experience it in High school.

DUNHAM: Yeah, with your graduation--

NAMAN: But I think it made me stronger, to be honest with you, as far as "so 01:31:00what?," you know? My parents, when I would say something about it at home, my mother would say, "Just don't pay any attention to it." That was their attitude. We weren't brought up with any poison towards it or anything like that. It was just, "Don't pay any attention to it." Just because it's said--and I never did know exactly why the discrimination developed towards the Armenians there. It probably went way back to the first ones that arrived from the old country. Whatever brings about those things you just don't know.

DUNHAM: I was wondering, did you hear about the Port Chicago explosion and/or feel it or hear it when it actually happened July 17, 1944? Port Chicago Naval 01:32:00Base explosion.

NAMAN: All I know is that there was such a thing that took place, and it was in Port Chicago, but what brought it about--

DUNHAM: It wasn't something that you heard about at the time?

NAMAN: No. But I can't say I never heard that, an indication, Port Chicago but what was it?

DUNHAM: There was an explosion. It was ammunitions loading dock extension of Mare Island, across the way from there. And there were predominantly African American soldiers who were loading on two docks, and there was a tremendous explosion where over three hundred people were killed almost instantly, over two hundred of them African Americans. Subsequently, there was a mutiny trail because the African American soldiers refused to go back to work without some assurance that there would be some change in the working condition, because a lot of them felt this was bound to happen already. Now they'd just lost many of 01:33:00their peers. But they were made an example of and were court marshaled. The NAACP did come out, Thurgood Marshall, and appealed and got their sentences reduced. This is actually a national park now, a national monument out at Port Chicago. It's part of the story we're telling. Of course there are very few survivors left. But I wondered, with your proximity--you weren't Navy, but maybe you had heard about it more at the time, or the aftermath.

NAMAN: No, it's news to me.

DUNHAM: And then it's also considered part of the ultimate civil rights story that helped lead to the desegregation of the military.

NAMAN: I can imagine, sure.

DUNHAM: So that's why I mentioned it. And in the Bay Area where--in Berkeley, Richmond, those areas--almost everyone felt the explosion. Of course, at that time, '44, some thought that it may have been an attack or sabotage. It was pretty quickly learned that it had been an accident. But a lot of people 01:34:00throughout the bay felt it. So that's why I mentioned it.

Any other significant changes that happened during the course of the war and your work at McClellan and the changes at the base that you'd like to share as World War II was unfolding?

NAMAN: No. It's hard to think of it in those terms because anything that took place seemed routine to me. To someone else it may have seemed a little more than that. But to me it probably seemed more routine than anything. And really and truly--I had little things that took place that I think of as significant, 01:35:00but it was always in my favor when the decision was made, so it was never anything that was used against me. I had a fellow that was on a par with me as far as the organizational chart is concerned. He was in charge of our payroll department. He always wanted my organization to be placed in his organization so that it could be a promotion for him. I didn't know that all this was going on. He was in pretty good conditions with my boss, but my boss was also very good to me too. He was always working on my boss to bring this about. I didn't know all this, as I say. I was told about it later on when a later decision was made in a 01:36:00different manner. He always would indicate to me that he was in favor of what I was doing and he wanted to make sure that I got my credits; let's put it that way. But he wasn't working in my favor. This other colleague of mine was keeping me informed on what he was doing. This was the kind of stuff that I couldn't be bothered with. I never entered into these--because to me it's a mistake. You get involved in that kind of stuff, you're going to pay for it. So when the time came, and the decision was made that our payroll operation was going to be moved to another organization out of the personnel--it was going to go to the comptroller's organization, which was out of our bailiwick--he and his operation 01:37:00moved out of the personnel organization and all of his shenanigans had no role to play.

The long story that goes with all of this is that he never got what he wanted. It was my male colleagues that had come to, shall we say, my rescue with my boss and alerted him to the fact that others were aware of what he was up to. So that in the event that my boss thought that this fellow was being sincere with him, with all these things that he was being told, they wanted my boss to know that it wasn't accurate, that it was stuff that was being trumped up. I didn't know all of this until it was all over with.

DUNHAM: That's fortunate. Was he making false accusations against you?

NAMAN: Yeah. It was a pretty dangerous situation, really. But thank God I didn't 01:38:00know about it because I probably would have told him off at some point. But I didn't, and I'm glad. My colleagues told me. They said, "If we'd told you, we know that you wouldn't have kept your tongue." But it was an interesting situation for several years, because he'd been hoping to get his promotion by having me--. And then I was a worker, too. If I had a job to do I did it. Anyway, it was an interesting--I'm not going into all the details, but it was an interesting situation with how my male colleagues had come to my rescue and actually saved me.

DUNHAM: Which was another of many assurances that you had broad support.

NAMAN: Yeah, because I never got involved in those petty situations. I couldn't 01:39:00be bothered with it.

DUNHAM: Can you tell me any more about your husband's experiences doing actual training of women and others who were coming? He was also, I assume, training folks coming from the South. Did he ever relay some of those experiences and challenges?

NAMAN: He would talk about it once in a while, but I'm not sure how important and how significant. There were times when I know that he had nothing but women in his classes, because that's all that were available. There were some times in the beginning where there would be some men in the training sessions, but towards the end, why, they were mostly all women. In fact, I have a picture hanging in our family room that was a gift from one of the Asian students that he had whose father owned an export-import store in San Francisco's Chinatown. 01:40:00It's a gift that he gave us, and I had it framed, and it's hanging in our family room. I'll show it to you. But he had students that really liked him so well. We were given a number of gifts that were of significant value. He was very well-liked by his students because he took the time with them. If he thought they were kind of struggling or something, he would spend extra time with them. He was a good teacher.

DUNHAM: Do you know if he felt there was any special approach to take with women or people from a different culture?

NAMAN: Most understanding, trying to understand them. And of course like anything, some people have more difficulty in accepting or understanding what's 01:41:00taking place. But Roy would take the time to spend extra time with them in order to help them along and bring them along so they could--he had very few cases that failed because he would spend time with them. I know one incident that he had that really annoyed him. They took over the students from the WPA period. During that period he had one man that wouldn't give his 100 percent in going into this training because he was going to be making less money under this 01:42:00program than he was making under the WPA program. But Roy knew that the WPA program was going to be done away with; this was going to take care of all that. And this fellow was going to hang out until that actually happened because he wasn't going to lose the additional money. So he kept putting Roy off on some of his assignments, and wouldn't do it, and all this, because he didn't want to excel in this program because he wanted to stay in the WPA program because that had not been done away with yet. But Roy knew that it was going to be done away with. He told Roy the reason that he was being very slow about this--he told him that was the reason for it--was that he was making more money on this, and this 01:43:00is why he wanted to stay with it. And it annoyed my husband to have him, as a government program--.

So Roy went to the director of this program at the state level to tell him that he wanted something to be done to get the fellow out of his program or kick him out of the WPA program, one or the other. He didn't like this business that he was being told to go to the Rosie the Riveter program--I'll call it that--and also stay in the other program too until it was ended. Because he didn't think it was right for him to have that advantage. Nobody else was doing it. He was truthful enough to say this is why he wanted to do it because he was making more money on the other job. In a way, you can't be in his favor for thinking that, but still it wasn't right. The system shouldn't allow it. That was what my husband--

DUNHAM: Was it that he was supposed to be doing the same work, but he was getting--?

NAMAN: No, they were different jobs. It's just that he was being told to do the Rosie the Riveter classes because they knew that the other jobs were going to be done away with, and they wanted a place to put these people. But he wasn't given the Rosie the Riveter jobs, the best that he had in him, because he wanted to stay in the other job until it was cut out. Roy felt that it ought to be one way or another, that he shouldn't have that kind of an advantage.

DUNHAM: Had Roy started in the WPA?

NAMAN: No, he hadn't started in the WPA.

DUNHAM: So he was working as a civilian for the civil service at McClellan--

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: --doing the Rosie the Riveter--

NAMAN: Just when he got into the program. He was selected for these classes because he had the degree in--let's see, what was Roy's secondary degree? It was 01:45:00something that attracted them on his application when he was hired for this job, that he would be right for handing these people. And he was; he knew how to handle them. Oh, the degree was in industrial arts or something like that.

DUNHAM: He left the training program, though, and went to teaching?

NAMAN: Went to teaching. And he was given a special teaching assignment to do this. Because they needed people like him to be in the program. State Department 01:46:00gave him the special teaching assignment. And he was with the program until the program ended, until the funding was cut out.

DUNHAM: When did that program end?

NAMAN: I think it was about in '44, somewhere around that.

DUNHAM: And after that he--

NAMAN: After that he quit, and went to work for his dad. My father-in-law owned a raisin packing firm in Fresno, and he went to work for his dad. Then after that is when he quit and, long story, went into the automobile business.

DUNHAM: He had a long, successful career.

NAMAN: Yeah, he did. My father-in-law's business partner, his silent partner in the packing business--he invested in their firm--was a very close family friend. 01:47:00He said to Roy, "If you will come and be in the automobile business--. He had about ten firms in California that he invested money in just as a silent partner. The fellow was a very wealthy man; he owned land in the Central Valley that his grandfather had bought when he first came to this country, and he ended up inheriting it, and he was a very wealthy man, and he was looking for ways to invest his money. This is where he was looking for people. His two sons wanted no part of representing their father's interests. They were rich man's sons is basically what they were. And they weren't interested, that's all. They were educated and all that. Their father didn't even ask them to do it. He thought of 01:48:00Roy as his second son, anyway. So he said to him, "If you'll come and go into the automobile industry and represent my interests, why, I'm sure it's going to be a good thing for you. Don't go back to teaching." So Roy thought about it for a long time, and he asked me what I thought. I told him what I thought. I said, "If you're going to be happy in it, why, go ahead." So he did, and that was a long story. That was in August of 1949 or something like that when he did that. So he was in the automobile business for that length of time.

DUNHAM: When did he retire?

NAMAN: Then he retired from the automobile business. He was ninety-two. He retired in August, and he died in November that year. He was ninety-two when he retired,

DUNHAM: He worked all the way--he was a lifer.

NAMAN: He had no intention of retiring. I told him he was crazy for staying as long as he did. He didn't have to work. It was crazy. That's an example of someone that really did not have to work because I had a good job and all that sort of thing, and we had invested wisely. So he just didn't. So finally one day he said, "You know, I think I'm going to quit." He wasn't selling anymore; he was mostly P.R. for the firm, take care of people that would come in and have problems and be unhappy. And he would put his arms around them and take them in the office, and he'd say, "Let's go talk about this." Pretty soon they were happy when they were walking out of the place. Whatever it was he did why he took care of them. He did that for ten years. Then he just decided that this was 01:50:00enough. So he was retired for a few months, and then that's it. But he went the way he wanted to go. He really did. He went the way he wanted to go. He had a massive heart attack, and he lived for two days.

DUNHAM: I wanted to ask, when he accepted the position did he live in Fresno for a time; were you apart for a time?

NAMAN: He lived in in Fresno until he went away to college. He was eighteen when he went away to college, to Cal Poly.

DUNHAM: Oh, so this is before he did the Rosie training.

NAMAN: That's right.

DUNHAM: So he was reconnecting with the man who he was like a second son to.

NAMAN: That's right.

DUNHAM: So once you were married, you guys lived together.

NAMAN: That's right, never apart, yeah. He never went back to live in Fresno. 01:51:00He'd go back several times when he was helping his dad when they had a dehydrator, and they had government contracts where they were dehydrating stuff, just to help out, not for any length of time.

DUNHAM: Your family had basically all moved up here, but he--

NAMAN: My mother and dad. See, I'm the third youngster in the family. My sister was older; my brother was older, and I was the third one. When I was up here and the others were married and had their own families down in the valley, my dad retired, and my mother and dad moved up here to Sacramento.

DUNHAM: We're almost out of this tape, but we have a little bit more to go. Let me pause it.

DUNHAM: I'm here with Becky Naman, and this is Tape 5 on May 21, 2012. Just want to wrap up with the end of the war. You know we were just talking about the 01:52:00temperature, and that reminded me of a question I had about McClellan and Sacramento and people coming to this area, and that's the heat. Was the heat ever an issue for the people at McClellan working?

NAMAN: Not that I know of. I'm sure it must have been, but nothing was mentioned.

DUNHAM: You didn't hear people complaining about the difficult summers?

NAMAN: Some of them had--you know, I think our weather patterns are changing. They're not like I remember them when we were youngsters. When I was a youngster growing up we didn't have air conditioning in the home; we had fans in every room, practically. I think that our summers are not as hot as they used to be.

DUNHAM: Well, the last couple certainly haven't been.

NAMAN: No, I know it.

DUNHAM: They've been these little waves, but then, where I am in Walnut Creek, it's cooling off at night more than it does sometimes.

NAMAN: I know. Yeah.

DUNHAM: I was just curious about that. Let me ask you about, as we came to the end of the war, do you remember where you were on V-E Day and hearing about that?

NAMAN: Well, I know it was in August, I think. August of '45.

DUNHAM: V-J Day was August '45, yeah. Go ahead.

NAMAN: Well, we knew it was coming. We had some indications that it was winding down pretty much. But funny, I can remember where I was the day that President Kennedy was shot, but I can't remember exactly what I was doing on the other.

DUNHAM: Had you begun already to have a decrease in staff before the end of the war?

NAMAN: No, it was after that that we started in. We weren't doing, naturally, as much hiring or anything like that. We knew that there would be significant cutbacks.

DUNHAM: How did that unfold?

NAMAN: It took a little while, of course, and then we were told what the cuts were going to be. Naturally, when they figured those out and we were told, it was a gradual pattern of reduction. As I remember, there were so many hundreds of people on this date and so many hundreds of people on this date. It took time over a period of about six or eight months before the real reduction hit.

DUNHAM: So from late '45 through early '46.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Back to the end of the war, maybe this will ring a bell. I read that the 14th and 15th of August, [reads] "McClellan was quiet and almost deserted for the first time in five years." Does that ring a bell?

NAMAN: Could be.

DUNHAM: Two days in a row off?

NAMAN: Could be.

DUNHAM: What was your role in the layoff process? Were you heavily involved in that?

NAMAN: We processed the notices to the people if they were going to be hit. Each organization was given their--we didn't have anything to do with that. We were given the information as to what departments were going to be cut and how much and then we had technicians that worked with those various departments regarding which categories they were going to cut first. Then of course we had a process for that. We had what we called a reduction-in-force process, and my organization had to develop the reduction-in-force notices from the occupations 01:56:00that were going to be cut. The last one in is the first one out kind of thing.

DUNHAM: Based on seniority.

NAMAN: Yeah. Reduction in force. It was all done very mechanically, shall we say.

DUNHAM: There weren't exceptions around men returning.

NAMAN: They may have made some decisions like that, but that was up to the department heads that were affected.

DUNHAM: So if not specifically requested, it was by seniority, but the department heads might have made some specific--

NAMAN: They might have. But not that I recall that there was anything. You know, there were twenty-five notices to these twenty-five people out of this category of people. We would prepare the lists, and they were done--our automated procedures developed those, and then we would give those to the departments. 01:57:00They would tell us twenty-five here, or ten here, or thirty here. So there was really not much--the judgment part of it came in as to when they decided how many out of each category of job. But it was all done in very, shall we say, fair--. But there could have been some decisions as to why these jobs and not those jobs. We didn't have anything to do with that. That was up to the department.

DUNHAM: You talked about automatic, because at the beginning you talked about everything being very manual. Had there been rapid development?.

NAMAN: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: What kind of automation had come about?

NAMAN: Well, we went actually from keypunch card-punch IBM stuff to pretty much 01:58:00the systems that we know today with the computers and information fed into the stuff and comes out automatically depending on the way you tell them to do it.

DUNHAM: You had a version of our modern computers in '45?

NAMAN: No, it was pretty much the IBM system. I've forgotten what the name of the system was, but it was an IBM system. I can't remember exactly what the system was known as, but it was done pretty automatically.

DUNHAM: That was incorporated during World War II.

NAMAN: Yeah. When the war started, lots of emphasis was given to automate things as fast as we could, which was logical. Whatever information was available at the time.

DUNHAM: Sure. Was there any type of severance or job counseling or anything for laid off workers?

NAMAN: What can you tell people? Yes, I'm sure there was. Yes, there was, but I don't think it made the people very happy. Naturally, they're losing jobs. But there was, to make them feel like they had been appreciated, which they were. They had been appreciated. But you knew that someday this was going to come to an end. And this was the day. It's here. And then they were told that any job 02:00:00openings that came up in the future, they would be the first ones considered, which they were. Of course, in the meantime they've gone out and gotten other jobs. They didn't want to come back to this yo-yo operation, up and down all the time, because then we had the other wars came along.

DUNHAM: As people were being laid off, were people leaving the area, either returning to the South or other locations where they came from?

NAMAN: Some of them stayed in the area, but some of them went back, yes. We didn't keep track of them once they left. But there were some. We had addresses to mail whatever stuff came up there, and they would tell us, give us addresses. 02:01:00Many of them stayed in the area.

DUNHAM: Do you think there were any exceptions made based on need for those who were more dependent on having a job, be they women or other workers?

NAMAN: Well, I'm sure there were, but I don't know of any that--

DUNHAM: Perhaps in individual departments.

NAMAN: Yeah, I'm sure there were. Can't help but have some.

DUNHAM: Were there a number of workers who resigned voluntarily soon after the war ended?

NAMAN: There were a few, but the majority of them stuck around until--

DUNHAM: Not a lot; there wasn't a tremendous exodus of women or others?

NAMAN: No. There were some, though.

DUNHAM: Did you consider leaving your job at the end of the war?

NAMAN: No. I did not because this was my home. We were living here, and I had no indication. I intended to stay and retire from the job, which is what I did.

DUNHAM: And your husband was always happy to--?

NAMAN: Yes. What was he doing right when the war ended? I think he was helping his dad on some project at that time, when the war ended, I believe. They had some government contract.

DUNHAM: So it was before he'd moved into the auto sales industry and solidified--?

NAMAN: Yeah. He came to the auto salesmanship in '49, I think it was,

DUNHAM: When did you have your daughter?

NAMAN: My daughter was born in '53. We'd been married eleven years before she came along. She will have been married--next week it'll be thirty years for their anniversary. She's going on a trip to Armenia with a group beginning June 02:03:0020, I think it is. My nephew is an attorney down in Santa Barbara, and he is the attorney for one of the Armenian churches down there. This one minister is taking a group of families, three generations in each family. The grandmother and grandfather are taking the children and their grandchildren. There are two different families that are going that way with this group. So my nephew being the attorney for the diocese, they asked him to go along also. They have to pay for their trip, of course, so he tried to talk my daughter and son-in-law--well, my son-in-law can't get away from his work; there's some deadline that he's working on. He works for the Army; he writes regulations for the Army. They've got some deadline that they're working on, so he can't go. But then my daughter 02:04:00sort of thought about it, so then I encouraged her to go. I said, "I think you should. This is an opportunity that may not come your way again."

DUNHAM: Is this her first trip?

NAMAN: This is her first trip to Armenia. Now, they've done quite a bit of traveling. They were stationed in Germany, and when they were there they did quite a bit of traveling in other spots. But she didn't really have much reason to want to go to Armenia other than the fact that it was her background, shall we say.

DUNHAM: Not in touch with any--

NAMAN: No. One of our cousins is a doctor down in Pasadena, and he takes medical missionary groups over to help the country. It's been about five years now that he has taken groups over. And he's been trying to get my daughter--she's a nurse, too and a dietician--he thought she would be very good for his group. 02:05:00He's been trying to talk her into going with their group. But she has to pay for her own expenses, and then also would take time off from her job. She's not quite sure that she wants to put in that kind of money and time into going on a medical missionary trip. So she's been putting him off some. So he's been putting the pressure to her. She thought, "Well, maybe this'll be a good opportunity for me to go and see what it's going to be like," although she's going as a tourist this time. Then if she decides in the future some time that she wants to go with his group, why, maybe she'll do that. So it's that kind of trip.

DUNHAM: Have you visited Armenia?

NAMAN: No. I could have gone with them, but I'm having this trouble with my arthritic shoulders, and the sciatica on my left side. I think I've got the sciatica pretty well captured, but the arthritis in my shoulders has been 02:06:00very--I'm still treating it; it's over a year now, and I go for all kinds of treatments and physical therapy and acupuncture. Now I'm even considering chiropractry. [laughs] That's another story.

DUNHAM: Back to McClellan. Tell me what it was like in the post-war years, after World War II.

NAMAN: I would say this. It was kind of depressing at times because of the downturn. We went down from eighteen or twenty thousand employees over a period of couple of years down to 5,000, close to 6,000 people. Then would come along the Korean War, and we'd go right back up again. And then the war would end, and we'd go back down again. And then would come the Vietnam War and the same kind 02:07:00of yo-yo stuff.

DUNHAM: When it came to the Korean War, how was it different from that first experience during World War II?

NAMAN: Only in the sense that the workload pretty much was, shall we say, changed a little bit because of the kinds of aircraft that they were repairing, and the people that they were training at the time for the Korean War was different than what they had--I don't know the details--but it was different than what it had been. So the training programs changed some, and the kinds of people that were hired changed some.

DUNHAM: How so?

NAMAN: Well, the people that were hired were people of maybe a higher 02:08:00classification or a lower classification, not necessarily the same kind, although most of the time they were pretty much the same thing. But it all depends on what emphasis in the repair of aircraft came about and then the kinds of people that would have to be hired for it. So those always went on.

DUNHAM: With the development of the aircraft industry, maybe were there were more available, specialized--

NAMAN: Yeah. And then the aircraft were different. They weren't repairing them; they were taking out the part and throwing it away and putting in a new one.

DUNHAM: During the Korean War, was the Women's Air Force stationed at McClellan? I read about the WAF growing from about forty to a hundred twenty-five in '51. 02:09:00Was that--?

NAMAN: It could have been, but I'm not familiar with that. Could have been.

DUNHAM: I had read that the expansion that happened during the Korean War resulted in greater problems with housing, traffic, organization, because unlike World War II when there was gas rationing and maybe greater government--even though it was in such a rush, there was just more government involvement in that, with rationing and such. Did you experience any issue with that?

NAMAN: No, but I'm not surprised.

DUNHAM: I had read that staggered shifts were adopted during that time.

NAMAN: Um-hmm.

DUNHAM: And of course the Air Force came into being; it became McClellan Air Force Base.

NAMAN: 1945.

DUNHAM: 1948, I think.

NAMAN: Yeah, it was.

DUNHAM: Did that represent any significant changes?

NAMAN: No, it was just a transaction change, pretty much. At our level, that's 02:10:00the way it seemed.

DUNHAM: Were there other significant expansions of McClellan? Did you move around a lot, your offices?

NAMAN: No, our offices might have moved because of newer buildings or a more permanent style because during World War II we were pretty much in what they refer to as temporary housing. Buildings weren't fit to stand fifty years, or something like that. So we would be moved around as the temporary-type buildings were being torn down. We were moved, but we were only moved a couple of times. We finally ended up in an original-barracks building that was built when the base was first built. That building stands today. I don't know what's in it now; 02:11:00I haven't been out there. I haven't been out there since--oh, I've been out to various social functions when they have a retirement or something. But I have no reason to go out now.

DUNHAM: At the end of the Korean War, when you had to have a significant reduction in the workforce again, was that much different than the end of World War II?

NAMAN: No, it might have been as far as the attitude of the people or something like that, but basically the process that we used was a reduction-in-force system that the whole federal service has. We have a way of creating those reduction-in-force lists, and it's based on the number of years of seniority that a person has in the job. So when they're cutting, you cut from the bottom up.

DUNHAM: Did the hiring involve the hiring of many women in traditionally male roles?

NAMAN: Not differently than it had been during the beginning of World War II.

DUNHAM: So it was still open to women, but were many women applying?

NAMAN: If they were qualified.

DUNHAM: And had many women stayed on in those roles?

NAMAN: Some.

DUNHAM: Were there some who served their entire career as--?

NAMAN: Could have been, but I'm not sure. Now that you ask that question, I couldn't tell you specifically that there was this one, that one, but I'm sure that there were.

DUNHAM: How did your role change over the years?

NAMAN: I think just more responsibility. Honestly, that's about the way I look at it, just more responsibility

DUNHAM: Managing more people being hired in the--was Personnel Department the name of your department?

NAMAN: It was the Civilian Personnel Office. My department had different names 02:13:00at different times depending on--it was known as the Administration Branch of the Civilian Personnel Office. At the time I retired it was the Data Management Department because we'd come in with the more sophisticated computers and all that. So my office name was changed because of that; we were going into the computer operation. At the time I left--I stayed a little bit longer than I had planned on because my boss asked me to stay and see the computerization of our operation and see that completed before I left, which I did.

DUNHAM: Was that challenging?

NAMAN: Yeah, but I had somebody; I had a data processing manager who was in charge of the actual operation, and he worked for me.

DUNHAM: Was this using IBM equipment?

NAMAN: I don't know whether it was IBM or--I'm not sure. It might have been, but I'm not sure. Can't say specifically.

DUNHAM: Over the course of these hirings and layoffs was there ever any tension between the civilian side and the military side--

NAMAN: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: --as to who did what, or who should be laid off, or assigned?

NAMAN: Not really, because at the system command bases the civilian side of the operation was very well spelled out, and the military operation was pretty well spelled out. At my operating level we didn't see any of that. I'm not sure that 02:15:00there wasn't something that might have gone on, but it was not known.

DUNHAM: From your perspective it was not really up for debating.

NAMAN: The other commands, some of them may have had, you know. Places like Mather, being a training command, it might have. The majority of people at McClellan were civilians. In the Air Force Logistics Command they were mostly that way; they were mostly civilians. Places like Mather, which at that time was a training command, it was mostly military. So it just depended on the mission of the organization.

DUNHAM: As McClellan entered the space age, if you will, and was involved with that, did that impact you in any way? Were there events related to that?

NAMAN: Only to adjust to the new environment that we had and to the new 02:16:00equipment that was given to us. We were always aware of things that were going to make things easier for us, new equipment that would make it easier for us. But nothing that was significant that I recall. Not that there wasn't any; I'm sure there must have been. But nothing that was that significant.

DUNHAM: How about the contrast of patriotism and the war effort from World War II compared to the experiences during the Korean War and the Vietnam War inside and outside of--?

NAMAN: My opinion, and this is strictly my opinion, but I would think that there is nothing that can match the patriotism of the World War II effort. Really and truly, it was amazing how the people felt. The average citizen felt that they had to do something, even to the point of more or less having to give up 02:17:00something that they really didn't have to give up in order to--people would say they needed to get into this. And they would; they'd give up good jobs to get into government jobs. It was terrific. I wouldn't say that that same attitude prevailed during the Korean and the Vietnam War. I don't think so. It was a different type of situation.

DUNHAM: Particularly during the Vietnam War, but at any other times too, did you ever have to deal with any form or protest or dissent as far as being on a military base?

NAMAN: I was never personally involved in anything like that. If there were any, I wasn't aware of it. I'm sure there were, but I don't recall being involved.

DUNHAM: It was a very secure facility, I'm sure--

NAMAN: Absolutely.

DUNHAM: --from your seventy-two hours after Pearl Harbor of having to black out everything to, I'm sure, many improvements along the way in terms of the level of security.

In reflecting back on the war and how it fits in the story of your life, is there anything else that you'd like to share with us?

NAMAN: I feel I was very privileged, really, to have the opportunity to serve. I think I may have mentioned how it happened that I went to McClellan. I think that I mentioned that my boss with the State of California was a reserve 02:19:00colonel, and he knew his outfit was going to be--otherwise I probably would have retired from the state.

DUNHAM: But he very much recruited you.

NAMAN: Well, that's how life is. These opportunities come up. I'm grateful for it, and I think it was a wonderful opportunity. For me it was a great career; I put in lots of hours, met some interesting people. That isn't how I planned my life, but that's how it worked out.

DUNHAM: How might you have envisioned your life otherwise?

NAMAN: I probably would have still been in Fresno working at some desk job someplace and not had any of the opportunities that I had here. Interesting people. I always used to kid; we had several people locally here. One ended up 02:20:00being a superior court judge who used to work for me and that I recruited from Cal when he was graduating in 1941. I went down on a recruiting trip. I always used to tell him that when he became a superior court judge, I'd say, "Don't forget where you got your experience from in the beginning." We always used to laugh about that. He's dead now, but we used to have a lot of fun when I'd see him. I'd say, "Don't forget, now, where you got your training."

Then we had another fellow that ended up being chairman of our board of supervisors here in Sacramento. Toby Johnson; he was a schoolteacher. We hired him when the war came along. He came out to get a job for the war effort, one of 02:21:00those that felt that he should be in the war effort. Every time I'd run into him there'd be some ridiculous thing going on in the newspapers about what the board of supervisors was doing or not doing and all. I'd be teasing him about it that--other many incidents of that type. But it was fun to be able to--

DUNHAM: Cross paths with many people and--

NAMAN: Yeah, and there've been a number of incidents like that that are still available that I like to kid about it. But I wouldn't have had those opportunities.

DUNHAM: In your role you continued to recruit at university and go to conferences over the years. Did you see initially, where maybe you were one of a very few women, where there were an increasing number of women in roles similar to yours over the years?

NAMAN: I think very early during World War II that evident with women. But it 02:22:00became more evident as time went on during the war because the men were not available, and the women were coming into it. But it took a while.

DUNHAM: After the war, then, you were more unique then for some time.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And what was that like? How did you feel--?

NAMAN: People were still asking questions. A lot of women were still asking questions. I happened to serve as chairman on a federal women's program committee for the northern California area, and when I would speak before groups these women would ask me, "Why are you here?" Honestly, they wanted to know I think it's the attitude of the bosses. I hope this doesn't sound like I'm--but they'd think "Well, you've made it. What are you here for?" That was basically 02:23:00what they were thinking. I said, "I'm here to help my daughter. Not me; I'm not going to benefit from this." And these were still in the, shall we say, informative years. I don't know whether we've--we've reached it a lot now. No question about it. But I don't know that we've really reached it to the maximum.

DUNHAM: Where do you see the progress, and where do you see the shortcomings, and why?

NAMAN: I think it's the attitude of the bosses. I think it's the attitude of the bosses. If they decide that it should be, it's going to be. But if they decide it isn't going to be, it isn't going to be. They're the ones that are in the driving force.

DUNHAM: So you see that bosses are still essentially keeping a glass ceiling for women.

NAMAN: Could be. Could be. In some cases, maybe they're leaning overboard in the other direction and giving it so somebody that doesn't deserve it, that isn't capable enough just so it can be given to a woman. You know what I mean? I've seen that happen, too, where they'll give it to somebody that's maybe is kind of mediocre, but "let's give her a chance." And sometimes they do it on purpose. If they know they aren't going to be able to do it, why, they can say, "Well, here we gave this person a chance, and they couldn't cut it." I've seen that happen.

DUNHAM: You've seen that as essentially sabotage of women's progress

NAMAN: Yeah, to prove a point. I'm not saying that it's happened lots, but I've seen that happen. And I'm not sure it's not happening today. I don't know; I can't prove it.

DUNHAM: Do you think military compared to civilian--do you see differences there 02:25:00in terms of those gender issues?

NAMAN: I'm not sure, to be honest with you. I'm not sure. I think the military in a certain respect is a little ahead of the, shall we say, civilian workforce as far as promoting people who are--. Like for example, my daughter gets out of college; she goes and gets a second lieutenant right out of college to serve her internship in dietetics. She goes back to Washington DC, she's stationed back there to serve her internship of two years, and she's got a responsibility of 02:26:00about thirty or forty people right off the bat. She doesn't know anything about supervision. She's been given the training for it; she's in the training program to learn how to manage people of that level. Now where else would she get that kind of opportunity without any experience to go in and get a job like that? I mean it. And she's running a big military feeding operation. I used to see lots of changes like that among the military very early before the civilian occupations even entered. They learned from the military in many respects, I think. They probably learned on their own too, but I used to see that happen. In my case, heck sakes, I was only twenty-five years old and I'm managing over a 02:27:00hundred people.

DUNHAM: While on the one hand it takes the bosses to make the changes, it also obviously takes people like yourself succeeding and showing them that you can do it as well or better.

NAMAN: I'm just being honest about it and talking very frankly to you about it. These are situations that actually happened.

DUNHAM: Were there other things that you did to mentor and speak and talk about your experiences and/or other--?

NAMAN: No, it was mostly in connection with my job, when things would come up and I'd be assigned to, I'd be asked to a group like that. Or else I did chair several organizations of that type; it was during the Nixon administration, I think, when these federal women's program groups were started, and each area had to have someone that would start it and be the head of it. I was asked to do 02:28:00this, so I did. I had no choice, whether I wanted to or not, which meant that I had to drive down to meetings and all that sort of thing. Maybe I didn't want to do it, but I had to.

DUNHAM: What kinds of meetings were these?

NAMAN: Mostly to get people together, mostly women in particular jobs to give them an appreciation for how important it was to give women opportunities so they could rise. Basically, this sort of thing, people that were in positions to do this or to give opportunities for people to be able to do it. And sometimes it was to groups or other organizations that wanted to know how the government 02:29:00was doing it. If they asked for it, why, then somebody would have to go and respond to their needs. I never thought there was anything big about it; it was just something I had to do.

DUNHAM: Of course the women's movement, women's rights is a theme to our entire history, but what was your perspective on the popular women's rights movement of the seventies and of the equal rights movement, if you will?

NAMAN: Maybe I wasn't too involved by that time, but I think it's mostly if the people at the head tell you that these things have to be done, and in the federal service they said that these were the things that we had to be working on too, that we had to be concerned about making opportunities available for women. And this was constantly there. And basically at times we had to show what 02:30:00we had done and how we did it and all. Sometimes it was trial and error.

DUNHAM: So was it more of a nuisance, you're saying, of having to meet--

NAMAN: No, I don't think it was a nuisance, but I'm not sure how much some of the people that were involved in it believed in it. These are people that are there that are going to help move this process along so that we're showing some results here. I'm not sure--

DUNHAM: So from the leadership side {inaudible} providing enough support to have these transitions--

NAMAN: They were doing it because they had to do it.

DUNHAM: So they weren't really buying in, giving the proper training.

NAMAN: I'm not sure that they were, but at least they went through the motions. 02:31:00It was tough in the beginning. This is a big movement for these people. I'm not sure. I can't say for sure. It happened, though. Little by little it happened. So there must have been some push there. What brought it about? Because they had to. They had to make reports to show that they were doing it, but I'm sure how much they believed in it. Only that they were told they had to do it, so they were going to do it. I don't know; that's just my belief.

DUNHAM: I wanted to look at a couple of these images that I wasn't sure about while we just wrap up. This one.

NAMAN: Oh, that's Colonel Graff, and this is Bill Frazier, the fellow that painted that portrait of my daughter [points to picture hanging in room]

DUNHAM: You received a lot of awards through the years. This was some kind of banquet dinner, I guess, in 1960. You know who the principals are there?

DUNHAM: Let me ask, I was reading--you were authorized, of course, to administer oaths. Now, what was the oath? Was it the loyalty oath?

NAMAN: No, I think it was the oath to go to work. I think so.

DUNHAM: Do you remember what that oath was?

NAMAN: That you're going to give your best to the federal service, I think. Something like that. They all have something; it's probably the same thing that they administer today.

[looks at photo] I can't believe that I looked like this. I take a look at myself today, and I think, "Oh my God." [laughs]

DUNHAM: You're timeless; very terrific. Well, is there any last thing you'd like to share with us today about either your career at McClellan or your perspective, again, on--?

NAMAN: I don't know. You know, I've been retired for so long that I've forgotten that I even worked. When they used to tell us that we were going to spend as much time in retirement as we did in our careers we laughed. That was told to us when we were knee-deep in work. That was the funniest thing we'd ever heard. And here I am.

DUNHAM: Not everyone is so fortunate.

NAMAN: Thirty-one, thirty-two years in retirement.

DUNHAM: Anything from your retirement years and your experiences in the community?

NAMAN: I've been so darn busy. I did quite a few things when I was--requests 02:34:00would come in to have somebody on this particular committee working on this particular thing, so my boss would say, "How about you doing this?" I'd say, "Okay, one more thing." I got involved in a lot of things in the community. Nothing big or major, just petty little things. So when I retired some of these places said, "Won't you stay on?" Like I did quite a bit of work, and still do, with the aging population. So I continued on and have in my retirement. I was fortunate enough to be appointed to the California Commission on Aging by 02:35:00Governor Deukmejian. I served for seven years on that. I think you can only serve two three year terms; there are limitations on how long you could serve. That got me involved in traveling throughout the state and visiting senior centers and also finding out how people were happy or unhappy with the legislation that was being passed by the state legislature and all that stuff, and then report back to the governor on things like this. So I was fortunate enough to be involved in some of the things that were passed at the time.

DUNHAM: What is the key legislation that you're proud of?

NAMAN: I wouldn't say that we actually of it, but we supported some of the legislation. And then there were times when our group--there were thirty-five of 02:36:00us, I think, on the state commission; we came from all parts of California, and some were appointees of the governor; some were appointees of the legislature and that kind of stuff--and some of us would have to support legislation that the Governor was against if it involved more money. We were advocates for the seniors, and one time I had to show that our group was against or for, whatever, something that the governor was for or against. I got called in by the Governor's chief of staff and he said had I forgotten who appointed me. This shows you the politics that goes on in this stuff, and you are probably very 02:37:00well aware of this. But I experienced it. Had I forgotten who had appointed me? I said, "Well. I'd like to go in and see the Governor if that's an issue because this is something I have to be for. The Commission cannot say no to something like this. We have to be for it. I know it's going to cost more money, so the Governor's got to be against it" and all that stuff. We discussed it for quite some time. I said, "Tell the Governor I'll be glad to resign my position as chair, but I'll stay on the Commission." "Oh, no, I don't want you to do that," and all that stuff. I waited and waited and waited, and finally I got word that the Governor said to stay put and do what I thought we wanted to do. He wasn't going to push us on it. Now, that's politics. Didn't matter whether or not--.

And I'm sure a lot of that still goes on now. You hear things in the aging network when they'll say, "How come the California Commission hasn't taken a position on that?" Well, the reason they haven't is because the Governor is not either for or against it or whatever it is. They have to--

DUNHAM: Do you continue to follow those issues and advocate--?

NAMAN: When I was on the Commission I had to be very careful after that. I'm not on the Commission now because I could serve, as I say, the two three-year terms and then I'm not. So I don't have to worry about it now. And then I served as chairman of the Sacramento County Commission on Aging for two terms. That's way back when it first started. I didn't have any of those problems there.

DUNHAM: Now is as trying a time as ever as far as funding.

NAMAN: Oh, hey. They don't anything now as far as passing legislation for seniors. In fact, some of the things that they have cut--I don't know if it's going to stand or not--I don't know what's going to happen. If my husband were living he'd tell you it's the Brown Administration. He was a die-hard Republican, I want to tell you that, and his politics showed very fast. And he'd say, "That's just Papa Brown that's the one that's responsible for all of this." He did; he passed a lot of this legislation, and now we're paying for it. What are you going to do with all these seniors that are increasing? If we think we've got a lot of seniors today, we should have looked at the picture twenty years ago, or thirty years, and look at it ten years from now because the projections are, and they have good information to show, it's going to increase and going to increase and going to increase.

DUNHAM: Yeah, it's certainly not just money. I look back to our lessons from World War II when we made such huge cultural industrial shifts and say, "We think we're so stuck in this the way the world is. " But look how fast we moved to change our industries to support the war. I think we have to be open enough to those opportunities--

NAMAN: We have to. Well, look at your grandmother. She's very fortunate to have 02:40:00someone like you and your wife to look after her. But supposing you weren't?

DUNHAM: No, exactly.

NAMAN: There are many, many families like that. Many families. People that are not willing to do it or can't. Or there isn't anybody there to do it. This is increasing. I don't know that anybody is even--they're listening, but they're not doing anything about it because--. They can do more about it, but they don't. There isn't a lot more that they can do. I look at some of the advantages 02:41:00that our legislators have. I don't know that they should be given those advantages.

DUNHAM: In terms of benefits?

NAMAN: If we need the money to take care of this or that, that seems more important to me than it is to give them automobiles to conduct state business. I know that they should have some privileges, but I wonder if we've given them too much. Now, you don't give things and then take it away. You never give it to them and--

DUNHAM: Obviously that's the point we're at.

NAMAN: That's right. Yeah, I remember Jerry Brown. Now this is true. The limo used to bring him here when his dad was governor, and he was a little eleven-year-old kid. He went to school with the two boys across the street; they went to Catholic school here. He knew them from school. So in order for him to 02:42:00have somebody to play with the state car would bring him here and drop him off. The kids would bounce the balls and go over to the school and play basketball. That's how I remember Jerry Brown.

DUNHAM: Of course he's famously advertised leading a very Spartan lifestyle.

NAMAN: I'm sure he did.

DUNHAM: But he didn't start that way, it sounds like.

NAMAN: No. That's true; I'd see the limo drive up, drop him off, bouncing the ball, and then here the three of them would be going down--these two brothers that lived there; one of them's a doctor now, and the other one is raising horses.

DUNHAM: It would be very fascinating to hear about your tenure on the Council on Aging and your work as a senior. I'm glad to get a little taste of that today in 02:43:00addition to hearing about your illustrious career at McClellan. I just want to thank you again for your contribution.

NAMAN: My pleasure. I probably talked a little bit too much, but I'm sure that that's why you're here. So I figure--it's things that I can remember and took place. I'm proud to say that the people that I worked with are still friends of mine. Many of them are gone, of course. All of the people that were in that staff picture that you saw are all gone. I'm the only one left. Those people that were in that group with me, I hired them. Well, I was there; that's it. 02:44:00Somebody had to go out and recruit the bunch. And I always went for the president of the student body. When I went down to Berkeley to hire, I wanted the president of the student body because the war effort was coming up. Everybody was very patriotic; they wanted to go to work for the war effort. So it made it kind of easy. Most of them probably didn't want anything to do with government work. Really and truly, that was an attitude. But when the war came along that attitude changed. Really.

DUNHAM: You were able to take advantage and get some quality people.

NAMAN: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Thank you again for your contribution to our interview.

[End of Interview]