Norma Wilson | Interview 1 | December 31, 2011

DUNHAM: It’s December 31, 2011. This is David Dunham with Norma Wilson, in her home in San Diego, CA, and we’re here to do an interview for the Rosie the Riveter Oral History Project, the World War II American Home Front Project. We usually start at the beginning so can you tell me your full name and your date of birth.

WILSON: Norma Irene Wilson, and I was born on May 9, 1921.

DUNHAM: And where were you born?

WILSON: Pasadena, California.

DUNHAM: And were you in Pasadena very long?

WILSON: Till I was about four, I think the business my father was in was destroyed by the—what do you call the—

DUNHAM: During the Depression or earlier?

WILSON: He was working in a machine shop for the Stearns-Knight car, which is not made anymore, and he was an expert at that. When the—what do you call the bad news that came in?

DUNHAM: The Depression?

WILSON: The Depression. The Depression came and he lost it, and he somehow got the idea that he could do better if he took the family up to San Francisco, that he’d be able to find some kind of job. So we got in the old Stearns-Knight car, which had isinglass windows that you fastened on, and the wind would make them flap. We kids sat in the back that way getting the breeze all the time. We stopped every night and my father tried to find some job while he stopped. When we got up to the dessert he found a job picking cotton. We stayed in a park overnight, and I remember Dad had to pump the water with a pump to get water for the people that parked there. So he took a day or so, and then my mother went out in the cotton field and took us. My mother had a long bag, and my father had a long bag, and we kids had little bags.

DUNHAM: Oh really, and you were four?

WILSON: Something like that. I could’ve been five but I don’t remember exactly.

DUNHAM: And how many siblings do you have, older or younger?

WILSON: My brother was there. So I remember sitting in the dirt and thinking, “I don’t like this.” Anyway, we didn’t stay there for very long. [laughs]

DUNHAM: Like a few nights?

WILSON: We had other campouts; there was the campout in a mountain. My father was going to sleep outside on a mattress or something, and I was so worried about some animal getting my father sleeping out there all alone. My brother and my mother and I slept in the car. He lived through the night, but oh, I remember how afraid I was for him.

DUNHAM: Was that because there wasn’t enough room for all of you to sleep in the car?

WILSON: Well, yeah. There’s no room in the back seat, or the front seat. It was a very uncomfortable night. But we could put the seat down somehow. Anyway, we got to San Francisco. My brother was sickly and I don’t remember where we parked but they did take us to a museum. My brother, I know, was sick that day, and he was sucking his thumb, and he was just tired out and I felt so sorry for him. Anyway, we were walking around in this museum in Balboa Park, and when we stopped there he kind of woke up a little bit and he looked around and he says, “Mama, buy me a ‘nake [snake].” So I always thought that was something that stayed with me all those years. This tired little boy and he wants his momma to buy him a snake. 00:05:00 Well my dad got a job as a manager of a farm. Not the job that he wanted. He wanted machinery, but he couldn’t get it. He got a job in Vacaville, and it was a torn down old house. Everything was old and dirty and decaying. My father was supposed to bring it back to life, and he did. I loved that place because there were so many things to explore. I could go down to the north pasture and walk along the fence and the horses—I was always afraid they would come and bite me or something, but they weren’t interested in me. But I just loved doing those things.

DUNHAM: Was this the dairy farm?

WILSON: No, it was not a dairy farm; it was a fruit farm. They had two hundred acres of fruit, and then it was cut a dried in the summer time. The workers would come in trucks and they’d go into the orchard and set up their camps. They usually had a lot of kids and the same people would come every year.

DUNHAM: You didn’t have to work the farm?

WILSON: No. My father sure did. But I got to go free. I guess somebody watched that I didn’t go across the freeway, but I was interested for a thing. So life was fine with me. We were very poor and my father didn’t like the owner of the ranch. He didn’t like staying there, but we stayed there three or four years and he built it up so it was a great place. The house was livable and—

DUNHAM: Were you going to school while you were there?

WILSON: Yes, I did go to first grade. I went to kindergarten and they said, “Well, you’re too old for kindergarten; you go to first grade.” I really didn’t need the kindergarten. I didn’t know about playing with children. I didn’t want to be pinned up in a room. I wanted more exercising places. I like just a little bit of danger sometime. I remember there was a cart that went down the dry-yard. They’d stacked trays of cut apricots down to the dry-yard, and then they’d put it on a little car with tracks, and it would go out in the field. Then they’d take the trays off and put them on both sides. Well, sometimes we kids played with that. We weren’t supposed to. But one time we were playing it and a whole bunch of kids were on it. I was the youngest and they said, “Norma, don’t fall!” And I said, “well that’s not very far to fall.” 00:08:00 So then the train—I mean this little track curved a little bit and it started going a little faster and they said, “Norma, hold on!” And I thought, “Nuts. I’ll fall off because that won’t hurt me.” So I did.

DUNHAM: And did it hurt?

WILSON: Oh yeah, it hurt. [laughs]

DUNHAM: Were they worried about you? Did you do it again?

WILSON: No. They told on me.

DUNHAM: Oh, so you weren’t allowed to do it again.

WILSON: No. Well, we weren’t supposed to do that in the first place.

DUNHAM: Did you find other adventures there on that farm?

WILSON: Oh yeah, and I loved the animals. Oh my goodness. My favorite animals were Coonie and Agnes; they were a team. My father had a team of horses, and we could go down and meet him when he brought the team up to the barn. He’d take them to the water hole, and they’d drink water for a long time because they were so hot and tired. Then he would slap them on the flank and point them to the barn, and they’d walk over there. Nobody had to watch them; they wanted to go to the food. So anyway, I liked to be there when that was happening. I loved to see him slap them. [laughs]

DUNHAM: Did you know either of your grandparents growing up on either side?

WILSON: No, my grandparents were in Wisconsin, and we had one train trip back there. My brother got polio. We were Christian Science, so no doctor was called. He came home on the train and he was sick. When we were home he got very sick, and we didn’t know how bad. When he was free of the pain, he found out his right arm was shriveled. So he was very weak, and they gave him Ovaltine or something like that to sort of boost his diet. So that was a long time, and it was a very sad time because he couldn’t play as much as I wanted him to. So he never had any medical help, and he came out of it pretty well. He went to school. The only thing is he always got F’s in writing, and I thought that was so unfair. This poor little kid could hardly move, but he could write so you could understand him. But it was pretty sloppy.

DUNHAM: The arm that was injured was his dominant hand?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: No, no it’s definitely interesting. Do you know your grandparent’s ethnicity, or, going back, where your family came from originally?

WILSON: Yes, my mother’s side came from Germany. My grandfather was in the Civil War. His first trip into the war he was sold in a way. A neighbor who had seven kids lived next door, and he was being drafted, and they asked my sixteen-year-old grandfather if he would go to war instead of that man. The man who wanted to stay home with his kids had money to give my great-grandfather for his son going to war. That’s terrible, isn’t it?

DUNHAM: Yeah, I guess power and wealth—

WILSON: So he went to war, but he came back.

DUNHAM: Now which side was he on?

WILSON: North. Then he came back, but then he got drafted because he was old enough to get drafted. And he came back okay.

DUNHAM: Double jeopardy.

WILSON: He never got hurt or anything. So he came back and somehow got enough money for a farm. I don’t know if it was deeded to him from his own father or what. But anyway, he had a farm—he was in his thirties, I think, when he married my grandmother, and she was in her twenties. They had eleven kids. Every one of them lived to be grown up.

DUNHAM: And were they raised Christian Scientists?

WILSON: No. No, that was completely my mother’s idea. I don’t think they had any particular religion. I don’t think they went to church, but I don’t know.

DUNHAM: Did you go to church regularly growing up?

WILSON: My mother was a real Christian Scientist. So we went every Sunday when we could, and my father would come along part of the time, reluctantly. But you see, it saved money so we never had to go to the doctor.

DUNHAM: Was there any conflict between your mother and father about that, especially with your brother’s illness?

WILSON: No, not that I know of. My mother had her wedding ring scrolled so that there was an olive branch design around that, and that was for peaceful life. She said she wouldn’t marry my father if he drank, and he did smoke and that really gave her terrible—gave us all—he was constantly smoking.

DUNHAM: Well, when you were playing with the kids back in the farm in Vacaville, was that friends from school, or was it the farm workers and their kids?

WILSON: The only children that I had was summertime when the people came in the trucks.

DUNHAM: Do you know what their background was, or their race?

WILSON: No I don’t. They talked English all right.

DUNHAM: They were Caucasian, basically some—

WILSON: Yeah, uh huh. We never had anybody who didn’t speak English.

DUNHAM: But they were migrant-farm workers of some kind who just came in the summer to work?

WILSON: Well, they might have been home owners really who came to earn money because that was the only way they could make money to keep their own farms going was to do summer work.

DUNHAM: You were saying that your father didn’t care for the owner of this farm. Is that was led to you leaving Vacaville, or? Or what led to your moving on?

WILSON: Yes, that was the reason we left. I hated to leave, but I wasn’t asked what I thought.

DUNHAM: You hated it just because it was fun and it was beautiful?

WILSON: Yeah I was—I belonged there. I liked the animals. Well we moved to Martinez, California, and there my father was able to get a job in the oil company. We thought, “Oh, at last. Some money.”

DUNHAM: As a machinist, or some other type of work?

WILSON: No. I don’t know he did when he worked there. He may have been a scab.

DUNHAM: At Standard Oil, or do you know?

WILSON: I don’t remember. I don’t remember.

DUNHAM: It’s now Chevron.

WILSON: It was Martinez, and it was a big oil—

DUNHAM: Yeah, they still have big oil there at Richmond.

WILSON: But we got, again, an old house that had to be fixed over and there was quite a few empty houses around because it was the Depression, you remember, and the Depression was terrible. So he was able to find a house for us in the hills. There was a creek in the property but the house was a wreck. I remember the most, working for a month to get that house livable. We lived in another house that wasn’t livable while we were getting that one fixed because there were a lot of empty houses around there. 00:18:00 So we started school there, and we walked to school, and my mother said, “I can’t believe the school would be this far away from the place.” She says, “Couldn’t there be something better?” It was two and a half miles from our home, and we walked it every day. And we came home every night. One time I said to my brother, “I know a cross-cut here. Let’s go through this orchard, and then we’ll come out on another place, and we’ll cut off a lot. We’ll have a real shortcut.” Well, my brother always agreed with me. He couldn’t help it. So we walked through it one time. We saw a meadowlark fly and come in front of us and try to divert us. I thought this was so fascinating that that bird was trying to tell us something. It was that she had a nest, and we did find it. I thought that was my kind of stuff. 00:19:00 So we went through that shortcut way quite a lot, and we was proud that we knew how to do it. But then some of the neighbors found out about it and said they don’t want kids going through their orchards. So we had to go the two and a half miles all the way on the street and not go off the street.

DUNHAM: Longer and not nearly as pretty.

WILSON: And oh boy, were we tired.

DUNHAM: So how long were you in Martinez?

WILSON: I guess—I can’t think—I could figure it out if my brain was a little—

DUNHAM: That’s okay, a few years?

WILSON: Four or five.

DUNHAM: Yeah, another four or five.

WILSON: Then we moved to Walnut Creek.

DUNHAM: And that’s where you had the dairy farm?

WILSON: No, not yet. No, my father is still trying to find odd jobs. And he is getting farm jobs, but nothing is secure. My mother said, “If I could only have $100 dollars a month, we could live well.” But she never knew what she was going to have to work with. Then she worked as a cook in one of the private schools for a while, and she worked as a cook in the town for a while. But she didn’t keep her jobs very long.

DUNHAM: You’re in Walnut Creek; how did Walnut Creek compare with Martinez and Vacaville? Were they—?

WILSON: Well it did seem like a cut-upper. We rented a house, and then my mother got some money because my grandfather had died. She got five-hundred dollars. So she wanted to put that into a house, and my father was known as somebody that could do anything. So he and my mother built a house with five hundred dollars. [laughs]

DUNHAM: This is in Walnut Creek?

WILSON: Yeah, Walnut Creek?

DUNHAM: Whereabouts in Walnut Creek? Do you know?

WILSON: On Oak Road. It was near the railroad track. We built two houses on Oak Road.

DUNHAM: Do you know about what the population of Walnut Creek was then?

WILSON: About 2000. It was something like 2500. So then I was in the eighth grade there, and I got some jobs in the neighborhood watching babies, and my brother carried papers. And my father kept trying to get more than temporary work, but he couldn’t do it.

DUNHAM: Were you closer to the school there?

WILSON: Yes.

DUNHAM: Was it Walnut Creek Intermediate, or was it another school?

WILSON: It was, yes.

DUNHAM: So that’s pretty close to Oak Road.

WILSON: Well it isn’t the one that’s there now.

DUNHAM: Was it in that space though, or was it?

WILSON: I think.

DUNHAM: It’s pretty close to Oak Road.

WILSON: I don’t know. We were on a hill, and it seems to me when I went back to Walnut Creek the hill was gone.

DUNHAM: There is a hill if you go—you know Ygnacio Valley Boulevard? I don’t know if it was called that then.

WILSON: Well, it isn’t near Oak Road. The school was right in the town, right across the road from the—what do you call the man, the guy that shoes the horses? They shoed the horses across the road from school. And he did other kinds of repair work, you know.

DUNHAM: So you were in Walnut Creek for several years?

WILSON: Yes, and things looked better because we had our own place.

DUNHAM: Yeah, you had gotten the money to build a house.

WILSON: Yeah, and then they talked it over because he wasn’t getting enough work. My mother, I think, went to the bank and asked for a loan so they could buy some cows and have a dairy. I remember how she worshiped that man who gave her the money because, you know, it doesn’t look like a very good investment. But he did invest with her, and she thought of him as sort of a savior of our family. So they did make it go, and they could cut the—they got the right of way as a good place to feed the cows, and they cut the stuff off. We could go to school, and it wasn’t far, and then when I went to high school I went on the train, the same train that goes out there.

DUNHAM: That was to go to Concord High School?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: What was Concord High School like then?

WILSON: Well, it seemed a bit like a big high school to me. I got art work there, which I had never tried. I just tried the one course, and I liked it. But I couldn’t do it because we were supposed to learn perspective.

DUNHAM: Careful, the microphone is a little sensitive just to let you know. It just happened—I mean don’t worry it’s not a big deal. When you were in high school did you have any particular idea of what you wanted to do or be when you grew up?

WILSON: I think a teacher. I don’t remember making it real strong, but I presumed that I was good with kids because I did babysitting. I was sort of a caretaker for my brother a lot of time. He was only a year younger, but he had the disability. And he was shy. I was shy too; we were both very shy people. We didn’t know how to go up and talk to people, and we weren’t friendly.

DUNHAM: Did you make friends in high school?

WILSON: No. I had trouble. I did have a friend in the eighth grade, and I liked her. But she—when we got to high school she met another girl and I was left out. And it was very cruel because she did it in a way that—I belonged to a little group of girls, and we always ate lunch together. Then one day I went to get my lunch, and there was a note there in that place, and it said, “Why don’t you go somewhere else?” I can’t tell you how that crushed me because then I wouldn’t go back and eat with them. And I was very miserable.

DUNHAM: That’s very cruel.

WILSON: Finally she sort of forgave me and I came back into the group for my last year, but I was out of that group for a long time.

DUNHAM: She forgave you? Was there something you had done?

WILSON: [laughs]

DUNHAM: Did she say there was something you had done that made her—?

WILSON: Yeah, that’s the way I would read it. But she did regret that she had done it, and I regretted I did it. So school was hard for me because I was so stressed with that experience.

DUNHAM: Did you go all four years to Concord High?

WILSON: Yeah. Then I knew that I wanted to go to college.

DUNHAM: And what year did you graduate high school, then?

WILSON: I don’t know, I graduated—

DUNHAM: So you were born in ’21, was it ’39 or ’40? It was before the war, right?

WILSON: Thirty-nine is when I graduated from high school.

DUNHAM: Then you went on to San Francisco—?

WILSON: And I had babysitting jobs, and then my mother said all through high school she wanted me to learn typing. I went to the typing class one time and I thought, “I’m not going to sit at a typewriter.” So she kept saying, “But we can’t afford to put you in college; you’ve got to find a way to make some money yourself.” But I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to learn a typewriter. Anyway, one summer in high school I wanted a job so bad, and I told my mother I wanted the job and she said, “Well, So and So’s babies are grown up. What could you do?” I said, “I don’t know, but I want a job.” So she found in the paper that there was a woman that was blind that needed somebody to live in, and I got that job. They treated me like a princess. They were so grateful for having somebody to care for their child—maybe do a little cooking and so on. Then I took the blind woman on long walks, and nobody would do that. We would go two miles, and I would do it every week probably because I enjoyed it.

DUNHAM: This was a summer in between one of your high school years?

WILSON: Summer job. They wanted me to stay, and he made a little car for me, and he said, “You can take the money to the bank on Saturdays.” So I learned to drive.

DUNHAM: Did he teach you to drive?

WILSON: Yeah, he taught me to drive. My father didn’t like the idea, but there was nothing wrong with it.

DUNHAM: Did you get a license?

WILSON: Yes, and I did the job. Then I had to sit in the office and do some of that job, but I didn’t like that at all.

DUNHAM: What was the office job?

WILSON: Well he had a little—it was bookkeeping. Anyway, they treated me—as I say, their relatives—everybody treated me—I was never treated like that before in my life. Everything about it—the little boy was so cute. He grew up to be a physicist or something. But anyway, that was a big opening of a positive life for me because the things that my mother believed about Christian Science seemed very limiting to me because I was different. I didn’t believe in it, I guess.

DUNHAM: What were those limitations and differences?

WILSON: Well, one of things was in school everybody knew you were Christian Science because you couldn’t stand and get shots. If you were sick at school you couldn’t see the nurse. You weren’t supposed to even see the nurse. They weren’t supposed to touch you. Well, all the kids knew that. “What’s different about you?”

DUNHAM: So that was a big reason why you and your brother had a hard time socializing, you think?

WILSON: Well, I don’t know that you can put it all on that, but it did have a—

DUNHAM: But it made you an outcast, a minority.

WILSON: Yeah. It was just—my mother was very nice to everybody. Doing food for people that were sick and stuff like that.

DUNHAM: Were there other conflicts between you and Christian Science?

WILSON: Well I wouldn’t have shown it if there was. I didn’t verbally—no, I remember thinking that—

DUNHAM: You mentioned the family you were working for and that kind of opened your eyes to some of the—we were talking about when you were working for this family—first off, you mentioned about office work. Did they have a business as well?

WILSON: Yes, he had a little gas station. And he fixed all the tractors in the neighborhood.

DUNHAM: Was this in Walnut Creek?

WILSON: Yeah. And his hobby was flying. He had his own plane. Well, his wife was blind, so she didn’t particularly want to go. I wanted to go a lot. And so he says, “I’ll teach you how to fly.” He gave me a book and he says, “You read this book and then I’ll help you get—” Well, I didn’t go for that. I didn’t want study any book on machines. About motors and math.

DUNHAM: Did you fly with him though? I mean as a passenger.

WILSON: Yeah, he let me take the stick. He would say, “Well, you can bring your friends.” So I brought that girl that was mean to me, and everybody else that I knew on Saturday or something would go down there to the little old airport at Martinez.

DUNHAM: How many people did the plane hold?

WILSON: I don’t know, three or four. And there was an {Arranca?} and a Fairchild; I don’t know how many planes he had.

DUNHAM: Wow, so he was a very wealthy—

WILSON: No, he wasn’t. He was just a guy with a business—

DUNHAM: He just loved planes and things?

WILSON: Yeah. He was just a mechanic. He had to do the repairs for the airplane you know, to be sure; every six months or so he had to do that kind of repair.

DUNHAM: Were you inspired to fly more or—?

WILSON: No.

DUNHAM: You liked flying, being a passenger.

WILSON: Well I thought, “I’ll never be able to earn enough money to fly a— or buy a plane.” I mean, nobody in my family ever had that kind of money. I really didn’t want to fly it. I mean I loved it, but I didn’t want to do it myself.

DUNHAM: So did you make enough money to be able to afford to go to college?

WILSON: How did that work? When I went to college I had two hundred dollars, and I don’t remember how I got it. I guess I got it from that job.

DUNHAM: Saved it from that job mostly.

WILSON: Yeah. I had two hundred dollars, and that took care of the first year.

DUNHAM: At SF [San Francisco] State?

WILSON: Yeah. Then when I went to college I worked in homes, and they weren’t nice to me. There was no princess in those jobs. I was the servant.

DUNHAM: So it was very different then the nice friendly family you worked for in Walnut Creek. They were very condescending.

WILSON: The first one—they weren’t friendly at all. I was the servant. I couldn’t eat with the family.

DUNHAM: Were you living with them?

WILSON: Yeah, I was living in the house with them.

DUNHAM: Did you do that job all year?

WILSON: I did it for the first year. Then I got out of it, and I said I wanted to get another job. Somebody helped me find one. So the next job I was not the servant; I was part of the family. But I had to come home on Mondays and wash the clothes on the wood board.

DUNHAM: It was still hard work, but they weren’t quite as rude.

WILSON: No they weren’t rude, and the father was a traveling salesman, and he was a nice guy. The child I had to room with was a very nice child, very bright. The mother was—she was good. She wanted to make friends with me, but I didn’t want to make friends with her. Anyway, I had access to the telephone. There was a closet where I could go to do my homework, and the telephone was in there. So I talked to my friend every night.

DUNHAM: Your friend from high school?

WILSON: No, from college.

DUNHAM: And where were you living? Was this close to the university?

WILSON: No, it was where they had the earthquake.

DUNHAM: Oh, by the ballpark kind of? Or the earthquake in the early 1900s?

WILSON: There’s a building there that’s famous but I can’t think what it is. Anyway, it’s near the ships. There’s a lot of ships, and “Green something” is the street.

DUNHAM: Well there’s Green Street in North Beach.

WILSON: Well, I lived on Green Street.

DUNHAM: How did you get to the university?

WILSON: On the trolley.

DUNHAM: It sounds like you had some struggles with studies growing up. Did you take to it more in college?

WILSON: I didn’t do well in high school so I was a little worried about getting in. My friends went to Berkeley to school; they got in there. I didn’t get in there; I got into San Francisco State. My first year at college I was riding on the bus with the principal; it just happened. And she said, “How do you like college?” I said, “Oh, I like it better. I get A’s in college.” And I did. I got A’s in college but I couldn’t do it in high school.

DUNHAM: Were you working harder or was it easier?

WILSON: I liked it. The subject matter. I didn’t like the subject matter in high school.

DUNHAM: So what were the differences?

WILSON: I don’t know. But sociology was one thing I liked very much. I did not like economics, but I liked sociology a lot. There was others that I liked—

DUNHAM: And you became involved in some organizations? Like the Peace Committee?

WILSON: Yeah that was something. I didn’t want anybody to know about that. How’d you know that?

DUNHAM: Oh, well I think it’s in your bio. You know if you don’t want to talk about it.

WILSON: I didn’t know that was in there.

DUNHAM: If you don’t want to talk about it, we don’t have to talk about it. But I think it’s very interesting.

WILSON: But as a teacher you know I was—I had to sign that. I never told anybody in college that I was going to those places. I would go at night by myself.

DUNHAM: You mean later as a teacher you had to take the loyalty oath, later is that what you mean?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Well, you don’t have to worry about any of that anymore, right? [laughs]

WILSON: They aren’t going to get me now, are they? [laughs]

DUNHAM: No, no. Unfortunately. not as big as a pension as you deserve I’m sure. They’re not going to come after that. You also, if there was any issue at all, you have the option—you know, you’re going to review the transcript. You could seal material until after your long gone too. That’s an option too.

WILSON: [laughs] Somebody come hammering on the door and say, “Open up!!”

DUNHAM: No, that’s not going to happen. It’s very interesting that you were drawn to that and participated in that, and so I would like to know about it.

WILSON: Well I had an uncle who was in the—in Sacramento. What do you call what they do in Sacramento?

DUNHAM: Well the State Capitol was there at some point. I’m not sure what year it started being there but—like a state government?

WILSON: Anyway, he was in politics.

DUNHAM: Lobbying or—?

WILSON: No he was a—

DUNHAM: A legislator?

WILSON: Yeah, a legislator. And he was reading all the books that were being written, and you know it was—there were a lot of people who were interested in the Communists. He was interested in them. He didn’t, I don’t, think do anything, but he read about them, and I was interested in what he was reading about. So when I went to college, here were these people who knew about the strikes that were going on. They had a committee of people that met, and I would go over there. I didn’t know much about what they were doing, but I was just interested. So even that much activity, which really wasn’t active, it was just an interest. Like one day I broke [laughs] —I heard that there was a man who was doing special study on the schools in Russia. They said he was doing it down on El—that street that—anyway.

DUNHAM: El Camino Real or—?

WILSON: No, no—the street that goes through the center of San Francisco.

DUNHAM: Not Market Street?

WILSON: No it’s the other one that crosses that.

DUNHAM: Van Ness?

WILSON: Van Ness, yeah. You know there was a lot of government—well, this man was giving a speech in a government building that I didn’t know anything about. But I thought, “Doggonit, I’d really like to know about the school in Russia.” So I thought I’d cut my class and go and—but I wouldn’t dare talk about it. But I went down, and he was a man who was writing a book on schools in Russia. It was really very interesting, but I wouldn’t tell anybody I did it because somehow I’d be labeled.

DUNHAM: Well what do you remember about that talk or other things you got from that group?

WILSON: That they taught their politics to the young children. I was interested, and then I thought, “Well, I don’t think that’s a bad thing to do.” What he said made sense to me, that the Americans should study their schooling to see if any of it was any good, for us. So I didn’t talk about it to anybody, except maybe my uncle and my mother.

DUNHAM: Did you develop friends from the Peace Committee or other of these type of—?

WILSON: Yeah, I did.

DUNHAM: So you talked about it with them, but not your preexisting friends or something—

WILSON: And I would go out at nights by myself to meetings that would be in new neighborhoods that I didn’t know anything about.

DUNHAM: Were these meeting called Peace Committee? Or were they Communist Party meetings, or something else?

WILSON: No, they were Peace Committees, and that was the only social life I had, was going to those Peace Committees.

DUNHAM: Did the ages of the people vary, or were they mostly young people like yourself?

WILSON: Well, they were college people. I remember there was one man that was mysterious to me. He came to the college, but he didn’t seem to be of the college. He seemed to be there to work with committees or something. He took a course or something, but he wasn’t—I got the idea that he’d already graduated. So I was suspicious of his background. But he was really nice, and I didn’t have anything against him except we didn’t know why he was there?

DUNHAM: Did you think he might have been an undercover—like investigating?

WILSON: Well, he could have been, but I think that if he were undercover the people in my group would know it. He was very accepted, and a leader. So I—just kind of vague there, and I didn’t know what was going on because people were older than I was.

DUNHAM: What was San Francisco like at the time? Did you go out at all to the movies or the clubs?

WILSON: Well, I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have any boyfriend.

DUNHAM: Were you dating at all?

WILSON: No, I wished I could. I wished a boy would ask me and all that, but it never happened. Of course, the first year I was in college I came to class one morning on the trolley and there was Japanese people standing on the street corner. They had all their luggage there on the street car, and they looked sad. And I thought, “What has happened to all the Japanese people on the sidewalk?” Well, you know what happened.

DUNHAM: Yeah. This is in ’42 after Executive Order 9066.

WILSON: Yeah. So that made me feel very angry—up all that—but didn’t go anywhere.

DUNHAM: Were you still involved with the Peace Committee at that time? So what was their response to the war? The attack on Pearl Harbor and the US joining the war.

WILSON: Well, the boys all disappeared. There wasn’t anybody to talk to—really and truly. When I got to school that day—I don’t know that it was that day, but all the boys were gone. They had a football game one time, and next time you look around there is nobody to play anything. The boys were all gone, and that was a terrible blow. Really, you know, it was so startling and terrible. So there was two men that were still there. One was a real small, runty, ugly guy. But he could dance. And I did try to do square dancing as my outlet. He was such a good dancer. He taught me something I didn’t think I could ever learn, but I couldn’t do it with anybody but him. So I did have a little social life, but not very much because I really wasn’t a good dancer.

DUNHAM: But he taught you square-dancing or a particular move?

WILSON: Yeah. Well, no it was folk dancing. And we went to a folk——

DUNHAM: Concert or music or club?

WILSON: Yeah, well, you could go once a week to this dance place.

DUNHAM: Was that in San Francisco?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Do you remember what it was or what it was called?

WILSON: I did know.

DUNHAM: Was it a particular type of folk music or a particular heritage?

WILSON: Well, it was for good dancers. You know, the real thing from the old country.

DUNHAM: So did you have to dress up in particular outfits?

WILSON: No, it wasn’t—everybody came in their work clothes. It was just that sort of thing. I don’t think they ever had a dress-up time.

DUNHAM: What were your work clothes at the time? Was there any kind of changing fashion during the war that you noticed for women particularly?

WILSON: Well, when I went to the college I had to have some clothes so I thought, “How could I buy the most useful?” So I bought a brown skirt and a black skirt, and I thought, “How boring.” But that’s what I had. That’s all I had.

DUNHAM: What would you have wanted to buy?

WILSON: I would want to buy a coat. I didn’t have a coat, and my mother gave me a little summer coat, and I had it and I was actually cold. I really was cold.

DUNHAM: It can be very cold in San Francisco.

WILSON: Yeah, it’s awful. The wind!!

DUNHAM: The summers can be cold too.

WILSON: So that first year I was cold, but I somehow got a coat after that. I’m getting tired.

DUNHAM: Oh, I’m sorry. Well we should get into the war years then.

WILSON: You didn’t know how long my life was.

DUNHAM: Oh, I knew there was a lot of interesting stuff.

WILSON: I didn’t know anybody would let me run on like that.

DUNHAM: Well we have about ten minutes left on this tape and then we can take a little break. Would that be okay?

WILSON: Okay, do you want some tea?

DUNHAM: You want to take a break right now?

WILSON: Yeah, yeah.

DUNHAM: Then we can do that.

DUNHAM: It’s December 31, 2011. This is tape two with Norma Wilson. Go ahead.

WILSON: Okay, the one man that I remember who was 4-F, he was a dancer. Very ugly, very small. He was living with his mother and supporting her while he was going to college. He didn’t seem to have friends with men, and of course as a 4-F and the only guy left who wasn’t taken with the first sweep, he was talking to me about how he did not want to go to war because if he went to war he knew he’d be killed. So I felt so sorry for him, and I was thinking how brave he was to work to take care of his mother and put himself through college and do dancing. So I liked him. He did not get his order to go to war until our last year of college. Then he said, “I know I won’t come back.” You know how pitiful people get picked on, and I felt so sad that he—I said, “Oh well, maybe you’ll get another kind of job or something,” and he says, “No, I won’t live through it.” I felt that so deeply because he was trying so hard to make a life when he didn’t have much to start with. And when he went he never came back. And I don’t know what ever happened to his mother—and how he did love to dance.

DUNHAM: Was this the one who taught you to dance, or was this the one—?

WILSON: Yeah, this is the one who would spend time with me, and he taught me a certain step that was really difficult, and the people that did it—boy, it was just wonderful to watch. I don’t know if I could identify it now or not, but that was a thrill that I could do it a little bit.

DUNHAM: Do you know if he considered, or did you know anyone through your work with the Peace Committee too, that filed for Conscientious Objector status?

WILSON: I don’t think he did—he wasn’t in that.

DUNHAM: Did you know anyone who was a conscientious objector during the war?

WILSON: No I didn’t. No.

DUNHAM: You were two years at school already, and how did you come to work at General Cable in Emeryville? What year was that?

WILSON: Well, I was in San Francisco as the only person from my college who went to that college. It was a tumble-down building that looked terrible. I mean, when my friend took me into see it, and to plan to go there, I certainly wasn’t flattered.

DUNHAM: This was the building in Emeryville?

WILSON: This was San Francisco College on Market Street. It was right on Market Street next to the Mint. It was a tumble-down building near the Mint.

DUNHAM: This is San Francisco?

WILSON: Yes, and when I saw it I thought, “Yew. I didn’t know schools looked like this.” A new school was being built on beyond the tunnel. I was told the new college would be ready when I was ready to graduate. Right on Market. So I was the only one from my college who went there—

DUNHAM: From your high school, from Concord High?

WILSON: Yeah. No, I wasn’t either. There was other people too. I forgot about them.

DUNHAM: How did you find out about the jobs at General Cable, in Emeryville?

WILSON: Oh. My friends that I knew in the group went to Cal, and they were working in the—

DUNHAM: At General Cable?

WILSON: At General Cable, and they belonged to carpool. I said that I didn’t know how I would be able to go on my last year of college because I didn’t have any money and I didn’t have any job, and they said, “Well come on over where we are! We’re getting really good money.” It’s interesting, and I said, “You quit college?” “Yeah” they said, “We couldn’t make money like this anywhere else.” They had two or three from my high school, and then they had two or three girls who came from the Midwest who came out because their husbands were in the war. They were alone at home and they wanted to do something. So they came out to Berkeley, and they got the job. So there was five people who were in the car already, and they said they could fit me in. They said, “Come on over and you can get a home in our—”

DUNHAM: A dorm room, a room in a dorm?

WILSON: Yeah, the dorm. Yeah, there was a dorm there that they belonged to, and their parents had been supporting them through college s so they could stay in that dorm. And they said they could get me in that dorm, even if I wasn’t going into college.

DUNHAM: And they did?

WILSON: And they did. So I got a room by myself. Everybody else had a partner, and I was downstairs in a little tiny room by myself. I found out why they didn’t want to rent that room; it was because the girls who were kind of crazy about guys would go out late, and then come back late, and come through the window of my room. It was just—they didn’t usually have anybody in there because they had to watch it.

DUNHAM: So did they continue doing that while you were staying there?

WILSON: Yes they did, and what was terrible was the girl was only sixteen. She was bright, you know, and in college early, but she was going out with a guy and coming in late. I’d be a real traitor if I told on it. Well, I didn’t like it, and finally she was found out, but not right away.

DUNHAM: Was there an adult chaperone in the dorm?

WILSON: Yeah. She was right across the hall from my room. But she was so old, and she was sickly, and she really didn’t function. So anyway, I had food and lodging in a nice clean place. I had transportation to the job and pleasant people to be in contact with.

DUNHAM: Do you remember applying for the job?

WILSON: Not specifically.

DUNHAM: Do you remember your first day on the job, what it was like, what kind of training you got?

WILSON: Well, I don’t remember. They just put you on the machine and say, “Well you do this, and you do that.”

DUNHAM: What were you doing?

WILSON: Well, I was working on a machine; it was a great big long machine. It wound the tape around a big cable that was this big. The cable was to be shipped to Russia. It was miles long or something; anyway, a huge cable. My job was to see that the wrapping tape kept going and was even. So I pushed a few buttons and I stood there, kind of boring.

DUNHAM: So it wasn’t hard work, and it was tedious?

WILSON: No. It was annoying because you didn’t know what made it break. So you were nervous because when it broke you had to stop the machine and rethread it and, you know, tape it together.

DUNHAM: Was it unavoidable that it would break sometimes?

WILSON: Yeah, it was unavoidable. That’s what was your job; you were sitting there all day, and it broke quite a few times. Or went crooked or something.

DUNHAM: Do you know what the cable was used for?

WILSON: Well—

DUNHAM: Went to Russia—

WILSON: The ships I think. I don’t remember exactly, but I remember it was bigger than any cable I had ever seen. So it was not a hard job. It was a boring job. The other girls were so intent on theirs because they could get bonus.

DUNHAM: How did you get a bonus?

WILSON: I don’t remember. Anyway, I didn’t want it. I thought—

DUNHAM: Were they doing the same type of work?

WILSON: Well it wasn’t the same machine. They had all kinds of machines working, and some of those were even dangerous. There was one girl who knew that she was in a dangerous area because some white stuff was poisonous for her to breathe.

DUNHAM: Asbestos?

WILSON: Yeah, and she said, “I have two children, and I’m not married, and I’ve got to earn money.” So she knew she was doing it, but she didn’t believe it really. She didn’t want to believe it, and the factory was not doing anything to stop it. I was the only one who believed it really might be very dangerous.

DUNHAM: How did you know it might be dangerous?

WILSON: I guess my dad told me.

DUNHAM: Did you talk to her or anyone else about it?

WILSON: Yeah, I said to her, “Somebody said that stuff is bad for you.” She says, “I can’t help it.” She didn’t believe it; you know, she didn’t have any background to believe it or anybody who would tell her, really, “This is dangerous.”

DUNHAM: Were there another health issues or injuries that happened there?

WILSON: No. I didn’t know of any others. Nobody seemed to believe that that was poisonous. I was the only one who thought it could be. So anyway, I was not a person who would go crazy over a bonus. I wouldn’t work for money. That’s kind of foolish, but that’s the way I am. I thought, “Nobody is going to bribe me on something.” So I would do my job, but I wouldn’t do the racing. So finally I got the job of being the person who takes over when you go for lunch or something.

DUNHAM: Like a relief worker?

WILSON: So I worked on all those easy machines.

DUNHAM: But you had to learn multiple machines? But they were all pretty straightforward?

WILSON: Yeah, but it was about as smart as mine. There were some that were—[tape break]

DUNHAM: We were just talking about after a certain amount of time you transferred to kind of being the relief worker when people went on breaks.

WILSON: Yeah, the relief girl.

DUNHAM: So did that keep you busy? Was it less boring?

WILSON: Yes. I wasn’t particularly well liked for doing it but I don’t know why. Anyway, I did that for quite a while. My father died while I was there.

DUNHAM: Had he been ill, or was it sudden?

WILSON: Yeah, he had heart trouble and he had been ill. So that meant my mother—I guess that was my last year of college—my mother had to get somebody to milk the cows.

DUNHAM: So she kept the farm?

WILSON: She tried to get rid of it, the house and everything as quick as possible. I guess I really was out of college. It must have been summertime. Yeah, he died July 4.

DUNHAM: It seems like from what you wrote in your narrative before that you worked a while for a the cable, General Cable, took a break from college, saved some more money doing this work, and then returned to college after.

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Did you return to SF State?

WILSON: Yeah, I had another job. The next time I went there I was an expeditor.

DUNHAM: But you had made—it says you made pretty good money I guess in the year ’43. You did nine months and you earned $1500 and something before taxes.

WILSON: Uh huh.

DUNHAM: So that a—it looked like you had been able to save most that. I wanted to ask you about your brother Paul during the war years because you did have a little bit of an interesting story about his experience. Could you tell us about that?

WILSON: My brother wanted to go through college, and of course he was working hard to do it. He did live in a home where he took care of two little unreasonable little boys. He kind of liked them, but it got pretty boring, so he didn’t stay with that. He was in San Francisco, I think. I don’t know. I didn’t see much of him. He was busy, and I was busy. Anyway, he kept saying he wanted to go to war. I said, “You don’t want to go to war,” and he said, “Yes, I want to go.” Then I said, “Well, they wouldn’t take you with that arm.” He says, “Well, I know. But I wish I could go.” Stupid guy, wanting to go to war. So finally, he was in San Francisco I think, and he saw a long line of men and he says, “The only way you get a long line of young men like that is to be taking them in the war.” So he just went and stood in the line. He came to it, and they didn’t even notice the shriveled arm. They passed him right through. 01:07:00So he went to boot camp. He couldn’t carry a gun, so you’d think they’d kick him out. But they didn’t. They said, “You stick in.” So they gave him a job as radio man, and he was shipped to Alaska right up near the pole to do weather making reports. He did it well, and the job was so awful that the kids who went up their really went crazy.

DUNHAM: Because of the darkness and the winter?

WILSON: The isolation was just awful.

DUNHAM: Yeah, isolation.

WILSON: But he could stand it. He didn’t get sick, and he stayed long enough to get back after the war, and he was okay.

DUNHAM: You said his forecasting along with others there was crucial for the D-Day Landing. Is that part of it?

WILSON: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: How did your parents feel about him joining the military?

WILSON: I think my mother was terribly upset, and I think my father was too because he was thinking his son would take over the business and take care of my mother because he knew he was in bad shape. But that didn’t happen.

DUNHAM: How did they feel, your parents, more broadly about the war as Christian Scientists?

WILSON: I wasn’t home a lot, so I don’t remember. But I think they were very, very, upset about it. But I don’t remember the talk really. I know my mother was terribly against it, and I think my father was too. He said he wanted to go to the first war, [World War I] but he was flat footed. So he couldn’t go, and so maybe he felt with “my son”—I don’t know.

DUNHAM: It sounds like your brother was—he was so eager to serve and he was able to and must have been proud—

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: —for his contribution.

WILSON: Yeah, and then he got a trip after that—after the war to Japan and the southern islands, and he was shipped out there to do jobs. Then they didn’t have the equipment there, and he just had a big vacation the whole time because they never had the equipment.

DUNHAM: He went there—he was supposed to be doing the weather forecasting work but then they didn’t—?

WILSON: Yeah, yeah. Nobody prepared him.

DUNHAM: Prepared there?

WILSON: It just wasn’t happening. So he got a trip to Japan; all this as vacation.

DUNHAM: This is at the end of—after the war?

WILSON: After the war.

DUNHAM: Well, back at General Cable in Emeryville do you remember joining a union?

WILSON: Yes. I went to union’s meetings, and I was very interested in it, but I didn’t really understand what they were talking about because their problems weren’t my problems.

DUNHAM: Was it men and women in the union, or was it always—?

WILSON: Yes.

DUNHAM: What kind of problems were they talking about?

WILSON: Well, I just don’t remember because I didn’t feel a part of it. I didn’t understand what they were talking about because their jobs and my job were very different. I just don’t know.

DUNHAM: What were their jobs? You mean at General Cable, or was this a broader union meeting?

WILSON: Broader union meeting, and it was the subject matter. There wasn’t any particular job that I knew of that they were carrying some kind of—there wasn’t any reason for thinking about strike or anything like that. Just other smaller problems that I didn’t know what—

DUNHAM: Wage or working condition issues, or something else?

WILSON: I went to a couple of meetings, but I didn’t know what they were talking about then, and I can’t recall anything.

DUNHAM: Well you mention your carpool mates were from Kansas, women whose husbands were in the military. Were there people coming from other parts of the country to work at General—

WILSON: Oh yeah.

DUNHAM: Where all were they coming from, and what was that like with all these people coming together there?

WILSON: Well, it was women that was coming.

DUNHAM: Okay, all women.

WILSON: The men in the factory—well, one place there was two men who worked on hot, stinky stuff, I think.

DUNHAM: Yeah, you called it—I don’t know—yeah—anyway—what about them? They thought that—?

WILSON: Well they said, “Women would never be able to do this job!” They were little men because of the machinery was low to the ground, but they were strong armed. They said, “Women could never do this over a hot steaming motor and cut this tough rubber!” Well, the next time I came there was two girls there. The guys had gone to war.

DUNHAM: Was that indicative of the attitude that the men had in general towards women?

WILSON: Oh yeah, they always said, “You would never have a woman on this machine.”

DUNHAM: Sometimes we’ve heard about men giving women a pretty hard time at the shipyards and elsewhere. Some harassment, if you will.

WILSON: They didn’t like it, but it didn’t show up anywhere where we were. These two little guys on the hot thing, they would say it to anybody. Well, they knew that “no woman could do this.” There was one man who was a head guy, and he was just the nicest kind of human being there ever was. He had three or four kids, and he was excused because of his knowledge. I think he did stay out the war even though he was healthy man.

DUNHAM: He was a manager there?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: This was Oliver?

WILSON: No, Oliver was a college man that came and—I don’t know whether he was married or not; I guess he was. But he didn’t have kids, I don’t think.

DUNHAM: Okay, and Oliver also worked there at the plant, at General Cable?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And he was also—

WILSON: I didn’t know I wrote that down.

DUNHAM: Yeah, you talked about him being both a friend and a manager.

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: He wasn’t someone you dated.

WILSON: No.

DUNHAM: But he was a colleague and was—cared about your family and especially through your father’s—

WILSON: Yeah. He talked like an educated man, and that was unusual in the factory. The swearing—boy, that really shook me up. It was just that they couldn’t say anything without swearing, and I hadn’t been in that type of atmosphere. So it was kind of—it was disgusting to think that they had to say “shit” with everything and people weren’t saying “my God” in those days. They didn’t say “shit” in my lifetime and neighborhood.

DUNHAM: Did you say anything about it, or did you just kind of wince?

WILSON: No, we girls weren’t doing it. There were some girls that were not college people; they came from the farm somewhere. There was one good-looking fat girl, and she was laughing all the time. She was something to watch, and she swore just like the rest of them. Oh, and I couldn’t imagine that. But I had to laugh at her because somehow she was giving relief with all those stories that she told.

DUNHAM: With people coming different parts of the country was there racial diversity in the plant?

WILSON: I don’t think there was any Negro in that plant at all. There was no foreign language that I—

DUNHAM: Or no Latino or Asian workers that you noticed?

WILSON: No, not that I noticed them. I think I would have noticed it.

DUNHAM: But people were coming from various parts of the country, some different levels of education.

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Was there any friction or challenges then, any conflicts or fights that you noticed?

WILSON: Not that I noticed. It could have been there in great—because there was sort of one part of the factory that we didn’t go into.

DUNHAM: Just other work being done on the cables then? Do you know?

WILSON: Uh huh.

DUNHAM: Were there three shifts? Was there a day, swing—

WILSON: Uh huh.

DUNHAM: And what shift were you on?

WILSON: I worked on the 4:00-to-12:00.

DUNHAM: Okay, the swing shift? You carpooled with the group; you were all on the swing shift then?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: Sometimes we’ve heard that the different shifts didn’t necessarily leave things in great condition for the next shift. Did you have any issue with that?

WILSON: Not that I know of.

DUNHAM: Was there much dating or fraternization going on between the men and women who worked there at the General Cable?

WILSON: Not enough men. Married men, and crippled men or something. But there wasn’t any—well, there was one that asked me for a date, and I think I went out with him. He was kind of nice, but I didn’t want to get mixed up in anything. He—I don’t think—he was a nice guy but he wasn’t a college guy, I guess.

DUNHAM: That’s why you didn’t want to get mixed up with him maybe, because he wasn’t—

WILSON: I was just afraid of him. That’s all. You know. You get too rushed.

DUNHAM: He might have been pushy?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: About how long did you work there, just a year?

WILSON: I think it was over a year.

DUNHAM: The first part of the year, the first semester you took some classes at Cal?

WILSON: I tried to.

DUNHAM: It was too much?

WILSON: But see, I’m not a morning person. It’s awfully hard for me to get up in the morning, and 4:00 to 12:00, getting up the next morning at nine o’clock and going to classes after I’d had a shift. I wasn’t awake. I took a sewing class just to do something.

DUNHAM: So it wasn’t continuing your studies from SF State. It was just finding whatever class.

WILSON: No. It was just time.

DUNHAM: So you worked—basically you took a year off from school—did the—worked and went back to SF State?

WILSON: I don’t remember that. I just don’t remember the details of what was going on, what happened.

DUNHAM: So once you weren’t going to school, after your swing shift would you just come straight home, or would you ever go out? There was a lot of stuff going on during the war years late.

WILSON: You can’t go out at twelve o’clock at night.

DUNHAM: Well I’ve heard it was kind of twenty-four hour—

WILSON: Not for me!

DUNHAM: —twenty-four hour towns at this time. But no, you didn’t partake of that?

WILSON: I didn’t know people who were doing that?

DUNHAM: You probably had to be back in your dorm even though the tenant wasn’t that with it?

WILSON: Yeah, yeah.

DUNHAM: Well what did you do for fun outside of work? Did you go to the movies, or music? Did you continue with the folk dancing?

WILSON: I went home. I went home to Walnut Creek.

DUNHAM: To visit your parents?

WILSON: Uh huh.

DUNHAM: Do you remember finishing up at SF State then? You got your teaching credential, is that right?

WILSON: Graduated in the Opera House. Because this beautiful college that was to be ready for me to graduate never happened, and they had to find some place to graduate. So they did it at the opera house.

DUNHAM: Your whole class graduated there? So what happened after graduation? What year did you—do you remember you graduated?

WILSON: Oh yeah. After graduation there were superintendents out there sitting in chairs waiting for teachers to come and talk to them. I went to talk to them, and they were nice, and they said they had a job for me. So I had the choice of three jobs. One was in Santa Barbara, one was in the desert, and one was in a border town. I don’t know, let’s see. There was three that were nice like. One of them was Riverside.

DUNHAM: Santa Barbara? Is that where you went?

WILSON: Santa Barbara, and I don’t remember the other one. But anyway, they were all good jobs. The one that paid the least money was the one I took in Santa Barbara. I thought, “Oh there I go, not paying attention to the money.” I was paid $1700 per year. Because I said in my life I was not going to have money, make money—was not going to make my decision. Anyway, it was a beautiful house. My mother was widowed by that time, and she assumed that I wanted her to come, and I didn’t. But if she hadn’t come I wouldn’t have made it. 01:23:00She came down, she rented a house, a two story house. And she took in boys from college. I think she had six boys there, and I had a room downstairs and then she cooked for them. It was a nice experience. The guys were good guys. I didn’t date any of them—well, I was married?

DUNHAM: You were already married in Santa Barbara? I thought you met your husband later in Hawaii?

WILSON: I went to Hawaii after teaching one year in Santa Barbara. I don’t know how I got that—

DUNHAM: I’m wearing you out. I’m sorry. We won’t do too much more.

WILSON: [laughs]

DUNHAM: Well, why was it that you didn’t want your mom to come, and why would you not have made it if she hadn’t?

WILSON: You see, I was trying to get away from Christian Science. The day I set into my first visit at State College, I went to a Christian Science meeting because I thought that’s where I’d find friends. After the meeting was over I thought, “This is it. I’m through with it.” Never went back.

DUNHAM: Do you know what hit? Was it anything they said, or—?

WILSON: It was just who they were and—I don’t know that they said anything.

DUNHAM: But that was the turning point?

WILSON: They were a very close group that was helping each other, and I didn’t want to fit in there. I wanted to be—I didn’t want that. But it was definite with me. “This is all I’ll ever have of that—period!” And I didn’t have any guilt or anything. I just didn’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings. But she didn’t break down over the little things.

DUNHAM: You did tell her?

WILSON: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: Why was it that her coming to Santa Barbara helped you?

WILSON: Well, all of my life I had this feeling that my mother wants to make a new person out of me, like her. That she was pointing the way to go the way she went. I didn’t want to go that way; I wanted to be myself. She wasn’t overly insisting. She was just trying to figure out a way where I could make a living. But rentals were almost impossible. She gave me her car. I could not get transportation to my school without it. But I always had this feeling I wanted to get away from my mother, all my life.

DUNHAM: Partly because of the affiliation with Christian Science?

WILSON: No, that wasn’t it. It was that I felt she was trying to make me into another Pheme [her name]. She was doing it with the greatest of care because she believed in me. She just thought I ought to go the same path she went. She ran her own business, and she was very good at things I wasn’t good at. I just wanted to do it my way.

DUNHAM: So this is in ’45? Is this when you started teaching? You graduated right before the end of the war. Do you remember where you were on V-E and V-J Day?

WILSON: I remember where I was when President Roosevelt was shot, or died? He wasn’t shot in May.

DUNHAM: No I don’t think so. You had him mention in your bio about seeing President Truman speak in ’45.

WILSON: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: Do you remember that?

WILSON: Yeah.

DUNHAM: And what was your impression from that?

WILSON: Gosh, I don’t remember. I did have an impression.

DUNHAM: Let me just read the quote that you had mentioned. You said that he told the delegates—it was at a conference to address the United Nations. He said, “We must build a new world, a far better world. One in which the eternal dignity of man is respected. Our soul objective at this decisive gathering is to create the structure. We must provide the machinery which will make future peace not only possible, but certain.” Do you remember how you felt when you heard—if that resonated for you?

WILSON: I saw him sitting on the top-down car on Van Ness. Everything about war would just kind of melt me away. I mean I still feel that way. You just mention war and I think, “How could it possibly be a culture that sent all their young men into certain death?” And that just hung over everything, and it still does. How can we do that? Then to tell the young men that they’re doing such a wonderful thing to go off and kill other young men. It just makes me think the whole world was crazy.

DUNHAM: I understand how you feel.

WILSON: And I still do. I see the young men on KPBS and on the list of men that died today.

DUNHAM: You have lived for many years down here in a very military-centric community. How has that been for you?

WILSON: Well, when my son was about seven I went to a meeting or something, and a man said there will be more war. There is going to be more war? He said it for sure. [tape break] Anyway, when I heard that I thought, “I’ll do something.” So when my son was old enough to go to war I said, “I can’t send you to Canada, but I want you to go. I don’t want you to go to the war.” He says, “I don’t have to go. I’m gay, and all I have to do is say I’m gay and they won’t take me.” [sigh] I was so relieved.

DUNHAM: Had you known that he was gay?

WILSON: Yes, I did.

DUNHAM: This is during the Vietnam War? Was he drafted and have to—?

WILSON: He was drafted but not called, and that was a place that I was so afraid of, that he would get called. He says, “No, I don’t have to.” There’s not much more of this life to tell. [laughs]

DUNHAM: [laughs] Well there is much more I’m sure, but I—

DUNHAM: I know you don’t want dwell on the war years, but I just wanted to ask about the common home front experiences we talk about, around recycling or rationing. I didn’t ask you about those things, but did you have experiences and realities of things you had a hard time getting due to rationing and realities of the war?

WILSON: Oh, when we were in the war.

DUNHAM: Yeah, back during World War II.

WILSON: Oh, yeah. The rationing was very much part of life. No sugar, or—

DUNHAM: Can you tell us a little bit about how it affected you?

WILSON: Well, it really was something that had my attention, but I can’t bring it back much. I don’t even—I know it’s there but it won’t come out.

DUNHAM: Okay, no problem. I know you probably weren’t following the war that closely, but did you get news updates about the war from the radio or from movie newsreels?

WILSON: My gosh, I got the news that seven hundred young men had gone down with that ship, and the next day seven hundred more went down on that ship. Every day there’d be a ship go down——it hit real hard. Then how could people accept the fact that all those ships went down and they keep sending them.

DUNHAM: How did you hear about those things?

WILSON: In the paper.

DUNHAM: Yeah, newspaper. I want to ask you a little more about your post-war—when you went to Hawaii. But first is there anything else about the war years when you reflect back on it? You’re working at General Assembly in Emeryville, and your years at school, getting your credential during the war years, living in San Francisco—anything else you’d like to share with us about those experiences?

WILSON: Well, I did find out a lot about the other side of life that didn’t connect with mine. The first one was a woman at the factory who told me about how she was cheating on her husband, and I thought, “Huh, I didn’t know people did that.” I was really very naïve on the bad part of life, and then there was another part about a woman who was dating a soldier who came back from the war and was injured and didn’t have a place to go. He moved in on her mother and her, and he lived with them. I don’t think they lost—the girl loved him but she knew what he was. He was not an honest man, and her mother didn’t want the guy there. I thought, “How could he move in on those people?”

DUNHAM: He was not honest because he had a wife, or because something else was up?

WILSON: Well, he was not earning his living; he was sick. He was from the war, and he was a big strong guy, but he moved in on them, and they couldn’t get rid of him. The girl liked it, but she knew what it was doing to her mother. She was going to school, and the mother was earning the living. He was taking advantage of these two people in a way that I didn’t know that could happen. So I was meeting a lot of people that my friends were not meeting?

DUNHAM: Did you know of any gays or lesbians during the war years, at the factory or university or elsewhere?

WILSON: No, I didn’t—I really didn’t know what it meant. I wasn’t curious. Well, I was curious, but I didn’t have any way of finding out. Nobody I knew was gay. I didn’t know anybody in my hometown who was gay. They were there, but I didn’t know it. I was kind of afraid of the subject, so I was very ignorant. I don’t think my mother and father were tolerant. But we didn’t talk about it.

DUNHAM: Did your mother live to know your son?

WILSON: Yes. Well, did she?

DUNHAM: Maybe as a young boy, maybe not? When he came of age and came out?

WILSON: No. It was high school when he sort of knew he was gay, but I didn’t. He was, I guess, figuring out if he was or not. He didn’t have anybody to talk to. But he found him in a fine man music teacher at college.

DUNHAM: Was that hard for you at first, or did it coincide with the Vietnam thing and so it—did that help?

WILSON: It was very hard for me at first, because I said to him, “How can you be gay when you can’t even read stories?” Love stories. I said, “All literature is written for straights.” The Unitarian church and gay men I met and loved helped. I actually had a little library of gay books that I read while he was gay, and I gave the book to another person in our religion so she could use it. I wish I had the books to kind of review because I’ve kind of forgotten what—but I don’t know. Where’d we start that from?

DUNHAM: I was just curious; you were talking about things you encountered during the war, World War II years. So I had wondered if you had encountered any gays or lesbians during that time. They were certainly much more closeted, there’s no question, but also it was a reality I think in part because of so many men being away. That was part of the equation for women as well, but we don’t have to—It’s true you were in San Francisco, although I don’t think there’d been the tremendous migration that there has been in the decade since, where so many people came there for comfort, a community of commonality like has happened. But now, I think fortunately there is more openness in a lot more places. 01:40:00 Well, I just wanted to ask you a little bit about just there after the war. You spent a year in Santa Barbara, and then you had really wanted to go to Hawaii and teach in Hawaii. How did that—is that right—that you particularly wanted to do that? Or how did that come about?

WILSON: Yeah, that’s the way it came about, I think. My mother had done a lot of traveling in her life for that time. She was not afraid to do things by herself. My father quit school when he was in eighth grade, and he took a horse and buggy and some friends and ran away from home and school and stayed away for three years. So they were both travelers, you might say.

DUNHAM: And survivors.

WILSON: Yeah. So I thought it was my job to grow up, to do some traveling. So I applied for a job in three countries—well, Alaska, Hawaii and Arabia. Well, Arabia I didn’t really—when I found out I didn’t reply.

DUNHAM: What about it made you not—?

WILSON: It was just, you know, some sort of American town that was in Arabia. They needed a teacher for the group. But I wasn’t up for that. So I got a perfect job in Hawaii in a little town. I had three other housemates, and we all got along and had a wonderful year. Then I met my husband at a dance. They’d sent a truck around Saturday night to pick up all the teachers to take them to the USO.]

DUNHAM: Oh yeah. So you met—your husband was in the military?

WILSON: Uh huh.

DUNHAM: And this is on Oahu?

WILSON: No. It was on the Big Island.

DUNHAM: Okay. So you met your husband and started dating?

WILSON: Uh huh. He’d tell everybody he walked fifteen miles a night to see me. Well, that was exaggerated but—

DUNHAM: The point is, he very much wanted to make the extra effort to be with you. So you soon became engaged?

WILSON: Uh huh.

DUNHAM: So you just taught one year in Hawaii?

WILSON: I didn’t finish the year, and they were very angry with me that I did that. But he was on the list to go to Japan, and he had to go to Oahu for preparation to go to Japan. So we wanted to get married before he was shipped out. But he never did go, so we took our time until they got a house in the military?

DUNHAM: Using the GI Bill you got a house?

WILSON: No, this was a rental place in Hawaii. While we were first married we didn’t have a place to go to. We didn’t know when he would be either shipped over, or shipped to the states, or what. So we lived in Honolulu for a little while until we got an apartment.

DUNHAM: What was Hawaii like?

WILSON: Oh, I loved it. It was so beautiful, you know. So much culture that I hadn’t been in touch with. It was a wonderful year.

DUNHAM: What type of school did you teach at? Was it a public diverse school?

WILSON: Yeah, a little public school in the country. The children many times didn’t talk English, and they came to school so wide eyed.

DUNHAM: What grade were you teaching?

WILSON: I was teaching first grade. Hakalau. There should have been somebody more capable doing it, but—

DUNHAM: Well, you have to start sometime.

WILSON: I was doing things that they never did before like having the children talk about their pictures and stuff like that. We did that for a PTA, and they wouldn’t believe the pictures the children showed were theirs.

DUNHAM: Why, because they were so creative?

WILSON: Well, yeah, they were good. They were cute, but they didn’t even know their children knew how to draw because they didn’t have that type of equipment at home.

DUNHAM: Were there various races? Japanese, Portuguese—?

WILSON: Yeah, Filipino. And Japanese and Chinese and—what else? Something else.

DUNHAM: Hawaiian maybe?

WILSON: Yeah, Hawaiian.

DUNHAM: So you have been draw to art from when you first got—

WILSON: Well, on the edge. See I really never had any art in college except for one course which was required of everybody. Then I really didn’t take time for it. I always knew I wanted to, but I didn’t take any time for art until I retired. When I retired, I took a couple of courses. I did the portraits like that.

DUNHAM: Yeah. Beautiful—at the end maybe I’ll take a couple shots of them if that’s okay.

WILSON: Oh, yeah.

DUNHAM: Which we are almost to the end I think. So then you and your husband came back to Southern California, and you’ve mostly been here since?

WILSON: That’s right.

DUNHAM: You taught a number of years and—

WILSON: Yes, spent all my married life in San Diego.

DUNHAM: Is there anything else you’d like to add today?

WILSON: [laughs] I’m drained.

DUNHAM: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wear you out. Well thank you again Norma. I really appreciate you taking the time. Sorry you didn’t know what you were in for, but this is a great contribution to our project. So thanks again, we’ll end it there.