Shirley Henderson | Interview 1 | April 3, 2012

THOMPSON: This is Travis Thompson. I'm speaking with Shirley Henderson, in Oakland, California, April 3, 2012, interview one, tape one, for the Rosie the Riveter National Home Front Oral History project. Thank you very much for participating. I'm really looking forward to talking with you this afternoon. Just to get started, can you please tell me your full name and date of birth?

And if you would, please give the correct spelling of your first and last name.

HENDERSON: My entire name is Shirley Belle Queen Henderson. Born September 28, 1923, in Berkeley, California. Shirley is S-H-I-R-L-E-Y; Henderson, H-E-N-D-E-R- S-O-N.

THOMPSON: Okay. You were born in Berkeley?

HENDERSON: Yes.

THOMPSON: You were, okay. What is your father's name?

HENDERSON: Harold Ellis Queen.

THOMPSON: Do you know your grandfather's name?

HENDERSON: Well, the only grandfather that I knew was Daniel Benson Replogle. I'll spell Replogle. R-E-P-L-O-G-L-E. It's an American name, because the illiterate boy didn't know how to spell his name. My father's father was Albia Jay Queen.

THOMPSON: Do you, by chance, know your father's date of birth?

HENDERSON: Oh, sure I know it. December 27, 1889.

THOMPSON: Where was your father born?

HENDERSON: He was born--it's Aberdeen, South Dakota.

THOMPSON: Is that where he grew up?

HENDERSON: No. When he was ten years old, his family moved to Riverside, California.

THOMPSON: I see. Can you provide any other background or additional context to his life?

HENDERSON: Well, he was descended from Quakers in North Carolina. They had come in the seventeenth century. They were very active in the Abolitionist movement. They bought blacks off the ship and educated them and sent them on the Underground Railroad.

THOMPSON: Right. What is your mother's name?

HENDERSON: Maude Mildred Replogle Queen.

THOMPSON: And her date of birth?

HENDERSON: April 28, 1896.

THOMPSON: Where was she born?

HENDERSON: I believe Scranton, Pennsylvania.

THOMPSON: Do you know if that's where she grew up?

HENDERSON: She left there when she was five.

THOMPSON: Okay. Is there any other insight or background into your mother's life that you'd like to talk about, that you know of?

HENDERSON: She was the only child of a second wife to my grandfather, who was a Pennsylvania Dutchman. English was his second language, even though his family had been here since 1740.

THOMPSON: I see. Do you have any siblings?

HENDERSON: I had two older brothers.

THOMPSON: What were their names and ages?

HENDERSON: My brother Harold was five years older than I, and my brother Albert is still living; he's three years older than I.

THOMPSON: So you're the youngest.

HENDERSON: And a girl.

THOMPSON: So I'd like to change topics for a little bit, just to understand you a little bit more, and your childhood. I was wondering if you could explain to me where you grew up as a child. I know you were born in Berkeley, but did you grow up in Berkeley?

HENDERSON: I was born in Berkeley, but my parents were living in Kingman, Arizona. My father was a mining engineer, and we went from one mining town to another through the Southwest. There were not hospitals and doctors. My mother 00:05:00was a city girl, and so was my father. So when it got to be about seven months into the pregnancy, they would come back to Berkeley and be here until after the birth and then resume their desert life.

THOMPSON: What other childhood experiences come to you? Do you remember anything from your past, when you were little, that really stands out?

HENDERSON: Well, when I was four my father, who'd been a flier in World War I, having decided not to be a mining engineer anymore, got a job in Akron, Ohio, in a chair at the Akron university, financed by Goodyear. He was a Goodyear researcher, in the zeppelins. So I learned a lot about zeppelins as a kid. My 00:06:00father was contemptuous of blimps.

THOMPSON: So your father talked about blimps a lot, then, when you were growing up?

HENDERSON: Well, if you've done research, you know you're dealing with materials. They were looking for an appropriate material for the dirigible to be enclosed in. So there were samples of dirigible cloth, and I was brought up with furnishings and garments and such made of dirigible cloth. I made draperies that were translucent. Private, but they let in light.

THOMPSON: This is a little off topic, but did your father ever speak of the Hindenburg?

HENDERSON: Well, that was, of course, the end of dirigibles, essentially. The 00:07:00public lost interest in flying in one. So when the Depression hit Akron, along with everybody else, they didn't need an instructor in aeronautical engineering anymore.

THOMPSON: That's interesting. I definitely want to speak more about that, coming up here. But maybe something more basic. I was curious; what was normally served, when you were younger, for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

HENDERSON: Oatmeal.

THOMPSON: Oatmeal?

HENDERSON: I was a finicky eater. I just had a very limited number of things that I was willing to eat. Lots of bread.

THOMPSON: Lots of bread. So that was for breakfast? Or for all meals?

HENDERSON: No, after breakfast, which was oatmeal. I remember when we had our first corn flakes, because that was a, well, 00:08:00a discovery. Like everybody else in my generation, we only had corn flakes and Grape-Nuts and shredded wheat and Rice Krispies, puffed wheat and puffed rice. Quite different from all the stuff up and down the aisle today.

THOMPSON: Can you remember eating any types of meats or fruits and vegetables?

HENDERSON: I remember very distinctly, as a very small child, that we got very tired of jackrabbit.

THOMPSON: How did you go about getting jackrabbit when you were younger?

HENDERSON: My father put meat on the table in the desert.

THOMPSON: Okay. So he would hunt. Is that typically how you received your food for dinner?

HENDERSON: If it was going to be a fresh meat, it was something my father shot.

THOMPSON: How about water? What did you drink when you were younger? How did you 00:09:00come to get water when you were younger?

HENDERSON: That's a kind of a tender subject, because I didn't know milk, and the water wasn't necessarily palatable. Mother had to boil water, because she was suspicious. Probably with good cause. Partly because my other grandfather died of typhoid fever, due to bad water.

THOMPSON: So your mother would boil water.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: Where did she get it?

HENDERSON: Darned if I remember, because I was really little.

THOMPSON: How about when you were younger, what types of clothing would you wear?

HENDERSON: More than were comfortable.

THOMPSON: More than were comfortable. Could you describe?

HENDERSON: Long cotton stockings with terrible, baggy wrinkles. Really uncomfortable. My mother treated me as a hothouse flower, because I seemed to 00:10:00have all the childhood diseases. A lot of the diseases that are now no longer a problem for people. I guess I just was sick so much my mother treated me as if I was, as I say, a hothouse flower. I wasn't allowed to play outside, like my brothers were.

THOMPSON: You mentioned diseases. Would you like to speak a little bit more about that, what you mean by that?

HENDERSON: Well, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, measles, mumps, chicken pox.

THOMPSON: So all of those, you had when you were a child.

HENDERSON: Yeah. I remember not being in school very much.

THOMPSON: Because of your illnesses?

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: Well, that leads me to my next question. Where did you attend 00:11:00elementary school? Could you talk about your elementary school experiences?

HENDERSON: Well, when I was four, part of that time we lived in Berkeley, and my brothers went off to elementary school, and I would tag along about a half a block behind them, and end up in the kindergarten room, while they sent for my mother to come get me. After a while, they got tired of going after my mother, and I was allowed to be in the kindergarten room, even though I didn't get any credit for it. So I had a year and a half of kindergarten.

THOMPSON: What about your other elementary school experience?

HENDERSON: Well, we gypsied around a lot. As I said, we went to Akron, where I finished kindergarten, had first grade. Then we lived in Washington, DC, where I 00:12:00went to John Oyster Elementary School. I've always wondered, who was John Oyster? Then when I was not quite ten, we returned to California.

THOMPSON: Are there any particular memories you have of the East Coast that you wanted to share--or even Akron--other than zeppelins?

HENDERSON: Well, I remember in Akron, the snow came down gray, because the air was so polluted from the Goodyear tire plant that the snow came down gray. Then in Washington, which is hot and steamy in the summer, I remember being indoors during the day, then after dinner, after the sun was gone, going out to play. We 00:13:00played in the street, things like kick the can and Beckon and hide and seek.

THOMPSON: What type of shoes did you wear when you were younger?

HENDERSON: Well, I remember a particular pair of shoes. They were high-top, red leather shoes that I got for Christmas. That was my Christmas present, during the Depression day. I remember bawling because I got the new shoes, because I outgrew shoes. I had overheard my mother talking to my father of Christmas plans. She needed a new housedress. Well, Christmas came and Mother didn't have a new housedress; I had beautiful new red leather shoes.

THOMPSON: That's a very nice story. Do you know about what years that you went back to Akron and Washington, DC?

HENDERSON: Akron was 1928 and '29, and then Washington--I remember that Hoover was President.

THOMPSON: So it definitely would've been from '29 to 19--

HENDERSON: We returned to Berkeley about 1932.

THOMPSON: So right in there. Do you have any other memories about your childhood that you would really like to share, as related to your elementary school years?

HENDERSON: Well, I have one story, in Washington. I think I was in the second grade, and we were assigned to draw a picture of a tree. I remembered a tree 00:15:00that I remembered in California, and I did a driveway of eucalyptus trees, very tall eucalyptus trees. My teacher took exception to these trees and asked me what kind of trees they were. I said they were eucalyptus. Well, she didn't know about eucalyptus trees, and she accused me of lying. I was truly outraged. I remember that my mother stormed down to the school and gave the principal and that teacher a piece of her mind and mine. That teacher never, ever liked me, and I never liked her, either.

THOMPSON: So you remembered a eucalyptus tree from California.

HENDERSON: Yeah, I remembered that from childhood. It was an important tree to 00:16:00me, because my brother had gone up one of these eucalyptus trees and was way up

in the top of the tree. My mother went out to call him and found that he was way up the tree, and then she just sort of sweetly called for him to come down, because she was so worried that he's going to fall down.

THOMPSON: Do you remember what you used to draw that picture when you were younger?

HENDERSON: Well, it was crayons.

THOMPSON: Crayons. Is that all the art supply that you had?

HENDERSON: That was at school, and there was a box of crayons.

THOMPSON: Crayons. How about high school? Where did you attend high school?

HENDERSON: I went to Berkeley High School.

THOMPSON: What year did you graduate?

HENDERSON: 1941.

THOMPSON: Can you talk a little bit about your high school experience, what you 00:17:00experienced at Berkeley High during those years? I'm guessing it would've been 1937 to '41, right?

HENDERSON: Well, actually, it was a three-year high school. I was a good student, but not an excellent student. I was bookish. I hated all the classes that had to do with art or cooking, sewing. All those things didn't matter to me a bit. Partly because I had to do these things at home. I was ahead of the class, for either sewing or cooking, and so it was boring.

THOMPSON: Do you remember any other subjects that you really took to while you 00:18:00were there?

HENDERSON: Oh, yes. I always loved anything that had to do with history. Always liked anything that had to do with drama. Oh, kind of stage-struck little girl.

THOMPSON: How about the student population? Can you talk a little bit about what types of backgrounds and ethnicities were encompassed inside of Berkeley High during that time?

HENDERSON: Well, overwhelmingly, Berkeley High was Caucasian. The minority were the Mexican Hispanics, which we didn't call Hispanics in those days.

THOMPSON: What did you call them?

HENDERSON: Mexicans. I was not brought up with any of the ethnic derogatory words. That was forbidden in my house.

THOMPSON: Did you hear those often?

HENDERSON: I heard them, I knew what they were, but they were not to be used. THOMPSON: Where did you hear them?

HENDERSON: Oh, from other children. But if I came out with anything--I didn't even know what many of them meant, until much later.

THOMPSON: So the population was primarily Caucasian, at Berkeley High during that time.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: Then the second minority group, you said, would've been Mexicans or Hispanics?

HENDERSON: Yes. There were some Asians. A particularly close friend of mine was Chinese, whose father was a political science professor at Cal. And I wanted to invite her to a birthday party, and my mother wouldn't allow me to invite her. Then I held my ground and I said, "If I can't invite her, I don't want to have a 00:20:00party." So I did not have a party. My mother was very impressed, and her attitudes, I think, were affected by it.

THOMPSON: She would not allow her to come because she was Chinese; is that why?

HENDERSON: Yes.

THOMPSON: Do you remember her name?

HENDERSON: The girl's name? Winberta Mah.

THOMPSON: Do you remember any other experience?

HENDERSON: But Winberta never knew it.

THOMPSON: Do you remember any other experiences that you had with her that really stand out?

HENDERSON: With Winberta? No, we were just-- My maiden name was Queen. That's not too far of the M's. So in our class, I was likely to be sitting near her.

THOMPSON: Let's talk about your clothing in high school.

HENDERSON: Awful!

THOMPSON: What types of things would you wear during that time, to high school?

HENDERSON: Well, I was a very plump girl in school, and I looked terrible in argyle socks and white shoes and cashmere sweaters, that I didn't own one of. So I had, I thought, terribly tacky clothes. I still think they were pretty tacky clothes.

THOMPSON: Do you remember what the boys wore?

HENDERSON: Boys weren't into jeans much. I really don't remember what the material was, but they were more straight-cut--

THOMPSON: Pants?

HENDERSON: Yeah. I remember that when you got to Cal, I think it was the freshmen who wore jeans, and the seniors wore corduroys. Which were never, ever washed. They could stand alone.

THOMPSON: Do you remember how many classes you had during the day at Berkeley High?

HENDERSON: Oh, I would guess six or seven. It depended on whether you went at eight o'clock and stayed until 3:10, or whether you went at 8:40 and stayed till 3:10. I liked to go down for the eight o'clock, because it gave me more time for an extra study period, so I didn't have to take homework home as much.

THOMPSON: Do you remember what those classes were, by chance?

HENDERSON: The ones that I liked?

THOMPSON: Maybe all of them that you had taken at the time.

HENDERSON: Oh, of course, you couldn't graduate from Berkeley High until you could swim. So there was a swimming pool. As a fat little girl, it was sheer misery to have to go swimming with the other girls.

THOMPSON: So you had to learn how to swim in high school?

HENDERSON: Well, I knew how to swim before I went to high school, but it was just part of PE.

THOMPSON: So you had physical education.

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: What other classes?

HENDERSON: Well, I remember I was not too adept at math. I did all right in algebra, but I didn't take the second year of algebra. I got a D in geometry, from a very strict teacher, and I asked to be changed to another teacher, for the second semester, where I got a B in geometry. He didn't understand why I had 00:24:00had a

D. I felt it was a case of a prejudiced-against-girls teacher.

THOMPSON: So you had math and you had physical education. Did you have English and art?

HENDERSON: Oh, there was an art class and, as I say, I suffered through that. Although I got a good grade. I just didn't like the class. I would work for a teacher I liked, and if I didn't like the teacher, I wouldn't. There were some teachers that I just adored. I was always in the a cappella. Not in the girls glee club, but in

the chorus. That was great fun. That was where I was more likely to meet kids from some other ethnicity, because there were six black kids in my high school 00:25:00class. There were more in the rest of the school. At that time, they either were blacks that came during the Gold Rush or blacks that had come as railroad employees, the porters and the cooks and such. When the war came and the plantation blacks arrived to work in the shipyards, I felt so sorry for my friends.

THOMPSON: Why is that?

HENDERSON: Because the community then was anti-black, no matter--the few blacks in town were overwhelmed by the different kind of culture that came out of the South.

THOMPSON: I definitely want to speak more about that later, but something more general now, and maybe a little bit more fun. What types of things, growing up, did you and your family do for entertainment?

HENDERSON: Well, I was brought up in a very strict evangelical Christian church, so you couldn't do hardly anything fun on Sunday. I remember that we had a

vacation at Lake Tahoe, and my parents relaxed the no-swimming-on-Sunday rule, because it was ridiculous to be at Lake Tahoe and not go swimming.

THOMPSON: Even now.

HENDERSON: But there were no games on Sunday. Even though my parents played cards all the rest of the week, not on Sunday. No dancing on Sunday, although my parents met--. And I always remember my parents dancing together.

THOMPSON: Could you talk a little bit more about that?

HENDERSON: Well, they met at a Cal dance. My mother was a freshman and a town girl, and my father was a senior from Riverside. I don't know where they held the dances; I'd love to know what the ballroom was. But the mothers brought

their daughters to the dance, and they sat around the perimeter of the room, and the young man would come and introduce himself to her chaperone, to the girl that he was interested in, and then ask to be introduced to her daughter.

That's how my parents met.

THOMPSON: So both of your parents went to Cal.

HENDERSON: Yes.

THOMPSON: Do you know the times that they went, about the times that they went and what they studied?

HENDERSON: My father took a long time to go to Cal, because he had to work his way through his school and was also taking care of his invalid mother. So it 00:28:00took him, I think, seven years to go to Cal. My mother had two years of Cal, as I did, and didn't have the rest for the obvious reason; we got married. In those days, you didn't go on campus pregnant. Of course, you never used the word pregnant.

THOMPSON: Did your parents ever talk about any other experiences they had at Cal?

HENDERSON: I have my mother's nutrition class notes. They're hysterically funny by today's knowledge of nutrition. For instance, we cook vegetables in order to soften cellulose. Some vegetables take much longer to cook to a soft state. So 00:29:00green beans were to be cooked for forty-five minutes, by which time they were gray. Yet this was considered good nutrition practice.

THOMPSON: You still have these notes?

HENDERSON: Yes, but I'm not sure where they are.

THOMPSON: Do you know about the years that your mother and father were at Cal?

HENDERSON: My father graduated in '15 and my mother was a freshman in '15. As I say, she had two years.

THOMPSON: Two years. Then your mother became pregnant at Cal.

HENDERSON: No. They didn't marry right away. I think they were married in '17. 00:30:00My mother went off with my father, because the day after they were married, he enlisted.

THOMPSON: In the Army?

HENDERSON: In the Army Air Corps. Army Air Service, it was called.

THOMPSON: He fought in World War I.

HENDERSON: No, he didn't fight. My father was grounded. It's quite a long story, but it's a funny one. He was a good pilot. His class at March Field had just graduated and gotten their wings, and his best friend and superior officer, as a practical joke, gave my father a list of stunts and told him to go up and do the 00:31:00stunts. My father, who had no sense of humor, as a Quaker, went up and did them. There happened to be a visiting general from Washington, at March Field that day, and when my father got back on the ground, the general grounded him on the spot, for endangering a valuable airplane. He never ratted on his friend, and his friend didn't volunteer. It probably saved my father's life, because he was a flying instructor for the rest of the war.

THOMPSON: He was? Did he go overseas?

HENDERSON: No, he was here.

THOMPSON: He was just here. Do you know where he instructed?

HENDERSON: At March Field. Near Riverside.

THOMPSON: One last question related to entertainment. Not to get off the subject of flying, but did you ever listen to 00:32:00the radio, as a child? And if so, what types of things did you listen to?

HENDERSON: Well, my father thought I shouldn't study with the radio on, but it was always on when I studied. I loved all the popular music. The music of the forties and the thirties, that's the best kind. Still is.

THOMPSON: Who were your favorite artists then, do you remember?

HENDERSON: Oh, it was Paul Whiteman's Orchestra, Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey. Even Rudy Vallee. I remember Rudy Vallee. Bing Crosby was really big. I remember the music teacher in junior high school deplored Bing Crosby. Said he sounded like a sick cow.

THOMPSON: But you loved him.

HENDERSON: But she was into the bel canto. That's not quite the same kind of 00:33:00music.

THOMPSON: No.

HENDERSON: I actually have a great collection of Bing Crosby sheet music.

THOMPSON: So the radio was always on in your home, growing up.

HENDERSON: Yeah. As I said, I remember my parents dancing. While I was upstairs studying, my parents were in the living room, dancing.

THOMPSON: Do you remember ever listening to the Grand Ole Opry when you were growing up?

HENDERSON: Not the Grand Ole Opry, no. The Hit Parade.

THOMPSON: The Hit Parade.

HENDERSON: The Hit Parade.

THOMPSON: So the radio was most definitely a big part of your life.

HENDERSON: Oh, my goodness, yes! I was brought up on Jack Benny and Fred Allen. I just don't understand why we never hear about Fred Allen, because he was 00:34:00funnier than Jack Benny. He had a little routine about pimiento paddles, for putting the pimientos in the green olive. It was the most funniest thing I ever heard.

THOMPSON: That's one that you remember?

HENDERSON: Yeah, I remember. I always will remember those pimiento paddles. Allen said pimiento with four syllables to make it funny.

THOMPSON: I'd like to switch gears for a little bit, talk about something very important in American history, but something you've already touched on, and that's the Great Depression. I was hoping you can describe to me a little bit about what your life was like during the Great Depression, specifically, and we can go from there.

HENDERSON: Well, my father was fired at Akron, and so my father was unemployed, along when everybody else was unemployed, too. Fortunately, my mother's father 00:35:00wasn't going to let his daughter's family starve. So he invented a job in Washington, DC for my father, to represent him at the US Patent Office.

Because he was inventing vacuum cleaners at the time and making money, when everybody else was struggling. THOMPSON: This was your grandfather, who was inventing the vacuum cleaners?

HENDERSON: Yes. Yeah, the Replogle. My father was employed by him until the old man died, many years later. Actually, after World War II started. My father became his flunkey, co-inventor, chauffeur, gardener, errand runner, collect the 00:36:00rents from the apartment houses that he owned, and keep things in repair in those places. So I was brought up by a father who was fearless about doing whatever needed to be done.

THOMPSON: Your father started during the Depression, doing these jobs?

HENDERSON: Right.

THOMPSON: For your grandfather.

HENDERSON: My father was the first in his family to go to high school. He not only went to high school, he went to Cal. But his sympathies all his life were with people who didn't have a good job. Which is why he gave up mining engineering, because he was supposed to represent management, at a time when the 00:37:00miners were being shafted. They had no benefits whatsoever.

THOMPSON: Were you very much aware of the Depression, as you were younger?

HENDERSON: Very much. Very limited diet.

THOMPSON: Can you talk about that?

HENDERSON: Well, as I say, very limited diet. Mom bought canned vegetables by the case. The fact that I got a pair of shoes for Christmas. Other than my stocking, that was Christmas. I didn't have a bicycle as a child. I had roller skates, not very good ones. I didn't have girls' books. I read my brothers' books. Tom Swift. I remember getting Heidi as a Christmas present from my 00:38:00grandmother, and it was so wonderful to have a girls' book. I envied boys, because they got to do all the things that I couldn't do.

THOMPSON: Now, was that particularly because of your illnesses?

HENDERSON: I don't know.

THOMPSON: Or maybe was it athletics or other privileges that really stood out, that they had?

HENDERSON: There were just so many things that my brothers were allowed to do that I was not allowed to do. The answer always was that I was a girl.

THOMPSON: What types of things would those have been?

HENDERSON: Well, to go sledding. To go play softball in the vacant lot, in the days of vacant lots. Walking on stilts. I was not allowed to go on stilts. I 00:39:00don't think I was any more klutzy than the next person. I remember that I could walk fences. But I would never let on or say that I'd walked a fence, because that wouldn't be ladylike.

THOMPSON: Why do you think your parents raised you the way they did, by not giving you these privileges?

HENDERSON: I don't think that was uncommon. I think lots of my friends had the same experience.

THOMPSON: So you've heard various other stories--

HENDERSON: But by and large, my friends all had more money than we did. I never had an allowance. I remember when I could get my first babysitting, and I got a 00:40:00quarter for the two hours. I was so thrilled to have a quarter of my own. I didn't have to answer to anybody, how I spent that quarter.

THOMPSON: How old were you when you first babysat, do you remember?

HENDERSON: Probably twelve. Something like that.

THOMPSON: Did your mother work when you were younger?

HENDERSON: Not outside the home. My mother was the original community volunteer. She was a very capable and bubbly, outgoing woman. She did Girl Scouts; she was indefatigable at the church. I wonder what churches are going to be like when there are no more women to work as volunteers, which is about where the churches 00:41:00are now, almost. She ran a Sunday school class, a very large class of girls, because the girls were all so enthusiastic about the class that they brought their friends. My mother had them from the fourth grade through the twelfth grade, the same girls for that whole time. My mother had a very good third ear, and some of those girls had family troubles, and they were lucky to have my mother. I can remember being jealous of them because my mother gave them more attention than she gave to me. But I didn't need it.

That's, of course, the other half, the flip side.

THOMPSON: Not to be too intimate, but you mentioned family troubles of the other girls.

HENDERSON: Dysfunctional families. Child abuse. Divorce, which was almost unknown in my childhood. Kids who didn't know who their father was. I'm trying to think of specific kids. Children of alcoholics. Well, the same social problems that are still with us.

THOMPSON: But you remember these specifically when you were growing up, you remember seeing this around you.

HENDERSON: Well, I didn't see it, but I heard about it.

THOMPSON: You heard about it.

HENDERSON: Those girls were just a year older than I am, so I was included in a lot of my mother's class activities. For instance, my mother took her class to 00:43:00the Kings Daughters Home. King's Daughters Home was for unwed mothers, and they were mostly teenagers. We went. Wasn't talked about. We just went, and we observed. And we learned. My mother was very sharply reprimanded for taking her class to the King's Daughters Home. It had bearing on sex education, which in my church as I grew up was not condoned. It was not a subject that we were--I don't know where we were supposed to learn. But my mother saw to it that the girls 00:44:00could see what promiscuity or being taking advantage of was, where it could lead to motherhood and that that was an obvious end to childhood.

THOMPSON: Were subjects like contraception or--

HENDERSON: There was no such.

THOMPSON: --or birth control ever brought up?

HENDERSON: As a child, I didn't know it was possible.

THOMPSON: Later on, you started to learn more about it?

HENDERSON: Well, I didn't learn about it till I married. I was a virgin, and my husband was a virgin, because that was the way it was.

THOMPSON: I see. So sexual relations wouldn't necessarily happen until after marriage.

That was the norm?

HENDERSON: Well, we knew that others did, but we didn't. It was a matter of honor, personal honor. We used that funny old name.

THOMPSON: Is there anything else about the Depression that you'd really like to talk about, as it related to how--?

HENDERSON: I can remember being afraid of the single men who were living on the tracks, in the Hoovervilles. I remember the men coming to the back door and my mother would make an egg sandwich for them. They were perfectly okay guys, in retrospect, but they frightened me.

THOMPSON: You don't know why they frightened you, they just did?

HENDERSON: No, they just did. It was just a part of everyday life, that someone was likely to come to the--they never came to the front door; they always came to the back door.

THOMPSON: Why do you think that is?

HENDERSON: That was the custom.

THOMPSON: It was the custom?

HENDERSON: It was just the custom.

THOMPSON: Can you talk as little bit more about that?

HENDERSON: No. I don't know anything, really, except that that was the way things were done.

THOMPSON: So they wouldn't knock on the front door, but they would--

HENDERSON: No, no.

THOMPSON: --always go to the back door.

HENDERSON: Always go to the back door. Years later, I had a Berkeley police officer come to my house and say, "Mrs. Henderson, you left the back door unlocked yesterday. Don't do that." Can't do that anymore.

THOMPSON: I'm going to check the time. All right, we have about ten minutes on this tape.

I'd like to switch gears again. You've already mentioned his name a couple times, but did your parents ever speak of Herbert Hoover? And if so, what were their feelings toward Herbert Hoover?

HENDERSON: Well, my father was a Republican, and my mother was a Democrat, as was my grandfather. So we didn't talk much politics in our household. But everybody knew.

THOMPSON: They did?

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: Did your father ever speak of Herbert Hoover? What did he have to say about him, do you remember?

HENDERSON: Oh, well, he saw to it that we went down to the White House and shook his hand.

THOMPSON: Really?

HENDERSON: Sure!

THOMPSON: So you shook Herbert Hoover's hand?

HENDERSON: Oh, yes indeed.

THOMPSON: When you were younger.

HENDERSON: Yeah, I was either seven or eight.

THOMPSON: Can you tell me a little bit more about that experience?

HENDERSON: It was a very long line, and I got very tired.

THOMPSON: So when Herbert Hoover was in office, you had the opportunity to actually just line up and shake his hand?

HENDERSON: Well, I don't remember whether it was New Year's Day or what, but there was a day that traditionally, the public could go to the White House and line up and shake the President's hand, out on the front lawn. I remember going at Easter, with my Easter eggs, and rolling the eggs on the White House lawn, which was a tradition.

THOMPSON: So you did that, as well, when you were younger. Do you remember what type of person he seemed like?

HENDERSON: No.

THOMPSON: No. So your father was obviously a fan of Herbert Hoover.

HENDERSON: I don't think my father was very interested in politics.

THOMPSON: In politics.

HENDERSON: He was very much concerned about the veterans march on Washington, during Hoover's administration, and took us down to that parade to make sure we saw it. He wasn't going to march in it himself, because he didn't consider himself a veteran, because he hadn't gone to France.

THOMPSON: I see. How about President Roosevelt? What were you parents' feelings toward FDR? Did you ever listen to his fireside chats?

HENDERSON: Oh, we always listened to the President. No matter who was President, we were going to listen to him. My father, I think, basically thought, "He's the President." I think in my father's view, once the man was his President, it 00:50:00didn't matter what his political party was. As I say, my father wasn't very political.

THOMPSON: So your parents didn't speak much about FDR during the time when he took power, no?

HENDERSON: No. I remember that my grandmother thought he was the devil incarnate. She was married to a Democrat, who was probably more of a Socialist than a Democrat. I think that was partly because of his exceedingly hard farm-boy life. He had dropped out of high school, when his father deserted the family. 00:51:00Didn't go on with his education until his four younger siblings had been educated.

THOMPSON: This is your grandfather?

HENDERSON: My grandfather, yeah.

THOMPSON: This is the same grandfather that built vacuums?

HENDERSON: Yes.

THOMPSON: And his name again? I'm sorry.

HENDERSON: Replogle.

THOMPSON: Replogle.

HENDERSON: As I say, it's an American name. He went back to Germany, hoping to find relatives, and found there was no such name in Germany.

THOMPSON: Replogle.

HENDERSON: After that, he'd get to a new town or a new city and look in the phonebook. If there was a Replogle there, he wanted to know how they were related, because there were two boys that came. They never met each other again, after they were indentured, because they had no way to know where he was. They were illiterate. Couldn't write a note.

THOMPSON: I see. Around this time, President Roosevelt's New Deal programs would've been in full swing. Do you know if your family, or even yourself, took advantage of any of his New Deal initiatives? Or did you have friends or relatives that worked for the WPA [Works Progress Administration] or the National Youth Association or the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]?

HENDERSON: The CCC.

THOMPSON: Can you talk a little bit about that?

HENDERSON: They weren't anybody close, but I heard about.

THOMPSON: You did?

HENDERSON: Yeah. I remember my mother saying that going into the CCC had done someone a world of good. He'd grown up and become a responsible young man. Of course, we now know, in retrospect, it was terrific training before World War II.

THOMPSON: Very much so. You went on after high school. You graduated in 1941?

HENDERSON: Yes.

THOMPSON: From Berkeley High. You went and attended college, correct?

HENDERSON: Yeah. I lived at home.

THOMPSON: You lived at home, here in Berkeley, and then you went to Cal.

HENDERSON: Yeah. I walked, because I didn't have the money to take the streetcar.

THOMPSON: Do you remember where you lived in Berkeley?

HENDERSON: Oh, sure, because I later lived there myself, raised my family in the same house.

THOMPSON: Oh, you did? Where?

HENDERSON: Oh, on Mendocino Avenue, which is right off the Circle. Through to the backyard, were my grandparents' house on Arlington. As I say, my father worked for my grandfather, and he was at his beck and call seven days a week, twenty-four hours.

THOMPSON: Why did you decide to attend college?

HENDERSON: It was just expected. I always knew I was going to go to college.

THOMPSON: So do you feel like that expectation was set by your family--

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: --or do you think that was set by you?

HENDERSON: No. My grades were never discussed, because I always got good grades. It was just expected that I would go to college, as it was for my brothers.

THOMPSON: While you were at Cal, what did you study for those two years?

HENDERSON: Not a whole lot. Well, again, I liked the history, and a class that was called Social Institutions, which was essentially another history course. I liked the English, but I didn't take the English that was going to be taken for majors; I took the more fun classes. Same way with the science. I knew I wasn't going to go into science, so I took those bonehead, non-major introductory 00:55:00classes for geology and psychology. I guess that's all. Yeah, I never took any physics or chem at Cal, or biology or botany. No. I didn't. I wasn't interested.

THOMPSON: Well, with that, I'm going to go ahead and stop this tape, and then I'm going to put a new tape in.

THOMPSON: This is Travis Thompson, beginning our second tape with Shirley Henderson, April 3, 2012. We were just speaking about Shirley's memories of the New Deal policies and Franklin Roosevelt, and we were also talking about her 00:56:00graduation from Berkeley High, and her going to Cal, the University of California, Berkeley. What I'd like to do is just wrap up with your experiences at Cal and maybe have you talk to me a little bit about what the campus environment was like during that time, 1941 to, I guess, about 1943, and what you can tell us about that.

HENDERSON: When I was still in high school, deciding what I was going to do about college, I was offered two scholarships: one to Occidental College in Los Angeles, and Westminster Choir College, in Princeton. My father, being a very 00:57:00pragmatic man--he didn't have any money, and he had two older children still in school--suggested that I could take the scholarships, but I would have to go and I would have to stay. There was no money for transportation back and forth. So if I was going to go to Princeton for four years, "We'll see you when you come home." I couldn't face that. I also knew that I wasn't enough of a musician to be successful in a college of musicians. I enjoyed music and I took voice 00:58:00lessons forever, sang for a lot of weddings. But I knew I wasn't primo. So I enjoyed it, but I wasn't going to be at the top of a class. I'm very competitive, and I didn't relish being mediocre. So that took care of the other one.

Frankly, I didn't like Los Angeles. I had been to Occidental College for two summer sessions with a Westminster Choir connection, so that was all one connection. It was because I'd been there for summer school, that they offered 00:59:00me a scholarship at Occidental. My father rather quietly said, "In your college years, you're likely to meet your lifetime mate. If you go to either Occidental or to Westminster Choir College in Princeton, you are likely to marry a minister of music or a preacher." Because seminary for Presbyterians was also at Princeton. He knew my churchy orientation, and probably worried that

that's what his daughter was going to get stuck with for life, and he didn't think much of it, I don't think. He said, "On the other hand, if you stay home, and I don't have the expense of transportation or private college making up the 01:00:00difference, you can join a sorority, and you will have," "a banquet of men at the University of California."

THOMPSON: This is what your father told you.

HENDERSON: That was my very, very pragmatic father.

THOMPSON: So he's very much worried about you meeting the right man, it sounds like.

HENDERSON: Yeah. Indeed, I did meet my life mate, but he wasn't going to school anymore.

But he was living in Berkeley with his college roommate, who had come up from Orange County together, and both had become engineers. We met in my first cousin and his roommate's wedding party. It was one of those cases of it took about 01:01:00fifteen minutes to know this is the right guy.

THOMPSON: Why is that?

HENDERSON: I don't know. I just don't know.

THOMPSON: Did you approach him, or did he approach you?

HENDERSON: Well, we met in this wedding party, and actually, we were at a dining room table for a wedding rehearsal dinner at my aunt's house. He was at the other end of the table, and I kept looking over there, and he was always smiling at me. Before that wedding, which was imminent, we were walking home through the campus, from my church, where I had gone to show him off as my new boyfriend. We 01:02:00stopped underneath the Campanile, and he took my hand, my left hand, and he said, "Someday, that's going to twinkle." That's as much of a proposal as I ever had.

THOMPSON: What a perfect place to do it.

HENDERSON: We were married nine months later.

THOMPSON: That's a beautiful story. So that's obviously one very important memory to you when you were at Cal. Did you live in a sorority? No, you lived at home.

HENDERSON: I joined a sorority, which died nationally, during World War II, because it was girls who were planning to be teachers, and they had a maximum 01:03:00number of kids in the sorority. It was such a small number that, with girls dropping out of

college, the sorority died. Just didn't have the strength to keep on. It merged with another sorority, nationally. I wasn't interested in that sorority, so that wasn't a successful venture. Again, I was not sophisticated enough for the other sorority girls. I can remember going through rushing. In those days, Lucky Strike provided every sorority with little packets of two cigarettes so that when you sat down to dinner, during rushing, why, here were these two 01:04:00cigarettes. I didn't know how to smoke, and I wasn't about to make a fool of myself. When I did finally try smoking, I promptly burned a hole in a brand- new dress and said, "I can't afford to do this."

THOMPSON: So can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I've heard you mention it a couple times and I really want to try to understand it better. This idea of these sophisticated girls in high school and in college, versus yourself. Why

would you classify them, or why did you classify them, as being sophisticated? Other than smoking.

HENDERSON: Well, they were smooth. They dressed and acted with confidence. I wasn't shy, but I wasn't smooth. I didn't really want to be 01:05:00like those girls. I saw them, I observed them. In those days, we had the term to be "fast." That meant that you were sexually more experimental. I wasn't into that.

THOMPSON: So the term was to be "fast."

HENDERSON: Mm-hmm. But they were also the crowd that ran the school. They were the school officers. They were the school leaders. Not just athletically, but the class officers. They ran the little school paper.

THOMPSON: But they definitely stood out to you.

HENDERSON: Oh, my goodness, yes! You knew you were either in or out. They let you know.

THOMPSON: And during this time, there actually would've been an increase in soldiers on campus? I'm not understanding. Do you remember soldiers coming to campus and being on campus?

HENDERSON: You mean at college? THOMPSON: At Cal.

HENDERSON: Oh, my goodness, the Navy was there in force. And they were in the sorority when there was a sorority dance. I couldn't invite my boyfriend, because we had to invite the V-12s.

THOMPSON: Could you talk more about that? Could you talk about the military on campus?

HENDERSON: I hated it. Well, I wasn't interested in these other guys.

THOMPSON: Yeah. So you couldn't invite your boyfriend to the dance because you had to invite a Naval officer or a Naval enlisted man.

HENDERSON: Yeah. Naval candidate.

THOMPSON: Candidate.

HENDERSON: Oh, yeah. Well, of course, Cal campus always had the ROTC. All 01:07:00freshmen.Was it for one or two years that they were taking ROTC?

THOMPSON: I believe as a land grant college, they had to have the ROTC; I'm just not quite sure how long.

HENDERSON: Well, my older brother minored in military science, in order to graduate with a commission, Reserve commission. But that's partly because he changed his major in college, and he already had the preliminary courses. I think a lot of our generation knew we were going to get in this war; it was already going on in Europe. I just think it was the prudent thing to do.

THOMPSON: Do you know--and we're going to switch gears here now, because you just mentioned it--but do you know of any men that were drafted into the 01:08:00military before December 7, 1941?

HENDERSON: No. If there were any, I don't recall.

THOMPSON: Then can you describe for me the day you learned about the bombing of Pearl Harbor? And more importantly, did you know where Pearl Harbor was, when you first heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

HENDERSON: I can't back up to that, really. I think the term Pearl Harbor was new to me, but not Hawaii. So if they attacked Hawaii, I knew where that was. And I knew that the Sixth Fleet would be in Hawaii. I knew that much. What was 01:09:00the first part of the question?

THOMPSON: Do you remember how you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor?

HENDERSON: Oh. Well, of course, it happened on a Sunday. We heard of it on the radio. I was at home. So going down for the youth group, the college-aged youth group at the church, we all--Everybody came to that, that night. Whether they

usually went faithfully or not, everybody was there that night. It was a very somber time, because the fellows all knew what their future was, and the girls all knew what their brothers and their boyfriends and just anybody they knew: that people were going to be going into the service. There certainly was a 01:10:00reaction of anger and wanting to get involved. But it was partly a relief, from the standpoint that we'd known for two years we were going to get in this war.

THOMPSON: Because of the stories that were coming out of Europe?

HENDERSON: Well, for instance, my older brother was manufacturing munitions in Memphis, for a Lend-Lease plant, for England. So in high school chemistry, I did a demonstration of burning black powder, in my chemistry class, to show that if you burned it at normal pressure, it just burned quietly. You had to have it under pressure and restriction, for it to become an explosive. My chemistry teacher loved it.

THOMPSON: So this is in high school chemistry.

HENDERSON: Yeah, yeah.

THOMPSON: You were doing munitions experiments.

HENDERSON: Because my brother was working in a Lend-Lease plant.

THOMPSON: So Pearl Harbor happens, and that was December 7, 1941. So for you, what was your life like after the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

HENDERSON: Well, I knew that my brother who was in Memphis would be 4-F, because of his physical limitations, and that he could get a deferment if he wasn't, because he was in the defense industry. Not known as that in those days; they were war industries. We didn't have defense industries. We didn't have a Defense Department, we had a Secretary of War, thank you. The euphemism of defense came later. Much later.My brother, who was only three years older than I, was 01:12:00finishing Cal and would graduate as a second lieutenant in the Reserve, in the Coast Artillery. We knew he would immediately go on active service. So that was the expectation. Among my first cousins, they were all going to go. They were either waiting to be drafted or they were volunteering; there was both. Well, a fair number of inquiries, as to which branch of the service did you want to join up with. I think the fellows were much more knowledgeable than girls like me. 01:13:00The atmosphere on campus. I can remember that a political science professor said if the citizens of St. Petersburg could just last long enough, that the Nazis would be defeated and go home. And we couldn't hardly believe that that was

happening, that the Russians could resist the Nazis. I can remember that, the feeling in the class, and that we really cared whether the people-- I don't remember now, whether it was St. Petersburg or whether it was called Leningrad; but I remember very vividly, our sympathy with the Russians.

THOMPSON: You remember that?

HENDERSON: Oh, yeah!

THOMPSON: That was talked about and that was kind of the feeling in the classroom.

HENDERSON: Oh, yeah! Very much so. The enemy was Nazi.

THOMPSON: So anybody who was fighting the Nazis at the time, you felt sympathy with the other.

HENDERSON: Mm-hmm. Very much.

THOMPSON: So then what was your life like during Pearl Harbor, your personal life?

HENDERSON: Well, of course, I was going to--

THOMPSON: Pardon me, during World War II.

HENDERSON: During World War II. Well, I was married in 1943, to a civilian, working in an oil refinery.

THOMPSON: What was your husband's name?

HENDERSON: My husband's name? John Nelson Henderson. He was from Santa Ana.

THOMPSON: And he worked in the--

HENDERSON: He worked at the Richmond refinery, for what then was Standard of California. At the time that he graduated from Cal, the Bureau of Occupations, which no longer exists, had potential employers interviewing candidates at the college. My husband interviewed with GE and some contractor, Foster Wheeler, I think it was. This is before I knew him. And Chevron, or Standard of California. And the woman who was in charge of the Bureau of Occupations said, "If you get a job offer from Standard Oil of California, that's the best job we've got to 01:16:00offer in the whole class." And he got the offer, so he took it. He said part of it was that it was in California, and the head

offices of the company were in San Francisco; where if you were successful at GE, you were going to end up in Schenectady. That didn't appeal to him at all.

THOMPSON: So you were married in 1943. He was at Standard Oil. Were you working, as well?

HENDERSON: I dropped out of school and was working for the US Farm Credit Administration, particularly on the appraisers' floor, who were working with the farmers, who were having an adjustment to the war themselves. A good many of them were Japanese farmers, of course. All I was was a messenger girl and then a 01:17:00file clerk, but I still got a flavor of the anxiety in the farmers' response to--

THOMPSON: Can you talk about what you learned about what the farmers were going through during that time?

HENDERSON: What I learned was that immediately all kinds of commodities were going to go for the war effort. Therefore, things like tractors and such were not going to be available for very long. "You'd better buy one now." "So I need a loan." Some were being almost requisitioned from the service, that all their 01:18:00produce would go to the service. So the civilian markets were going to be--. But I only knew about this in the most peripheral, eighteen-year-old girl way.

Nineteen, maybe. I was very much aware of the war effort, on that job. The whole building was speeding up and working hard and working longer hours, because it was a governmental agency and--it just changed things.

THOMPSON: Now, you spoke briefly of remembering Japanese farmers, in particular, 01:19:00coming to that administration. Do you remember any particular stories?

HENDERSON: No, they didn't come; the appraisers went to them.

THOMPSON: They went to them?

HENDERSON: Yes. They had traveling jobs. I got familiar with the Japanese names on the piece of paper that went in the file.

THOMPSON: So appraisers would visit farmers, which included Japanese farmers. Did they ever speak negatively toward Japanese farmers or treat Japanese farmers differently than other farmers?

HENDERSON: I got no feeling of any--no, I don't remember any negative.

THOMPSON: Because this would've been after Pearl Harbor; that's why I ask that.

HENDERSON: I don't think the hysteria about the Japanese was immediate. That 01:20:00came out of Washington.

THOMPSON: Did you have Japanese friends, growing up?

HENDERSON: As I say, I had Winberta, who was Chinese. I remember one Japanese girl that I thought was just fine. Years later, when I went to my college reunion--I guess it was my fiftieth--she came up to me, was throwing her arms around me, so glad to see me; I had saved her life. I didn't recognize her. And I didn't recognize her name. But evidently, I must've said something or done something that championed her in some way in high school, for her to be so effusive.

THOMPSON: Did she say what you had done?

HENDERSON: No. I had to pretend I knew all about it.

THOMPSON: But you do remember that moment of her coming to you?

HENDERSON: Yeah, at our reunion.

THOMPSON: This was your fiftieth reunion?

HENDERSON: Yeah. Well, it was one of those times when you say to yourself--I say to myself, "I don't remember doing anything, but I'm glad I did it." Because evidently, I either said something that was in some way comforting--I don't know what it was.

THOMPSON: Do you know or can you describe your whereabouts during the Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, and what the experience was like for you? You would've been in the Bay Area at the time? And if so, if you could talk about Victory Over Japan Day, as well. Do you remember those?

HENDERSON: Well, during the United Nations Charter conference in 1945, I was having a baby during that conference. I remember my labor went on, and my husband went out, and he got charmed by seeing a Saudi Arabian in his flowing robes, which we were not used to seeing in those days, and he didn't come back to see me for several hours. I chided him, and he said, "I'm sorry. I got so 01:23:00interested in that Arab."

THOMPSON: Where was this?

HENDERSON: This was in Berkeley, because the charter conference was over in the Opera House in San Francisco. The whole community was full of diplomats that were attending this event. I was busy having a baby, and not too interested.

THOMPSON: Was this your first?

HENDERSON: Yes.

THOMPSON: This was your first. So can you recall Victory in--okay.

HENDERSON: So I really don't remember Victory in--this is all at the same time as--. In my mind, it's all in a mush, because this is when FDR died.

THOMPSON: Can you talk about that? Do you remember much about that?

HENDERSON: That was a terrible thunderbolt. We all knew he wasn't well; he had looked awful for a long time. But we didn't know any of the details. It was like when Kennedy was shot. The President of the United States is dead! Of course, he'd been President for all my formative or self-conscious years. He'd always been my President.

THOMPSON: So he had definitely taken a special role.

HENDERSON: Oh, my goodness, yes! THOMPSON: In your own personal life.

HENDERSON: Oh, yeah.

THOMPSON: So you and many others were saddened.

HENDERSON: Oh, gosh, yes!

THOMPSON: Can you talk about any other experiences that you remember, 01:25:00surrounding his death?

HENDERSON: Well, so many things came out about him that had never been in the media before. I remember hearing details of his life that were less than complimentary. I guess it was one of the early recognitions of we aren't told everything. I was old enough to catch that message.

THOMPSON: I'm going to step back for a little bit and talk about one of the 01:26:00events that happened in the Bay Area, which would've been right before you graduated high school. It would've been the World's Fair.

HENDERSON: Oh, that was grand!

THOMPSON: On Treasure Island.

HENDERSON: My first date with a boy was to go to Treasure Island.

THOMPSON: Could you talk to me about your experience at the World's Fair on Treasure Island and what you saw?

HENDERSON: We had absolutely no money to spend. I was with a boy who was sixteen, and he didn't have any money, either. But I was thunderstruck that I was being allowed to go, that I had had permission.

THOMPSON: From your parents?

HENDERSON: From my parents, to go to the Fair. Of course, we went by public transportation. I remember being ice cold, because I didn't have enough clothes for that windy, cold day on Treasure Island. I remember being exposed to various 01:27:00countries' exhibits; that thought that was great.

THOMPSON: Do you remember any particular exhibits?

HENDERSON: Well, I remember one particular, which had nothing to do with the World's Fair, except in an opportunity for the California Narcotics--whatever it was called. They had an exhibit with a movie, and I saw what drug addiction could do to people. I came out of that saying, "I'll never take an illegal drug in my life, after seeing this."

THOMPSON: So you saw a video about drug addiction, and that really stood out in your--

HENDERSON: Yeah. It made a believer out of me, and I've never had a forbidden drug since.

I had no inclination at all to experiment with an illegal drug.

THOMPSON: So that was one exhibit. Do you remember any types of food or any 01:28:00types of other displays?

HENDERSON: I don't remember the food. Maybe I don't remember the food because we didn't have money to spend. We were just a couple of kids.

THOMPSON: So that was your first date, was the World's Fair.

HENDERSON: Well, not my first date, but it was the first one out of town.

THOMPSON: You said you took public transit to get there?

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: Could you tell me about that, how you got there?

HENDERSON: Well, they were the big, red trains.

THOMPSON: So you took the SP train system, okay. That went across the Bay Bridge?

HENDERSON: Yeah, there was a stop to get off at Treasure Island. There must've been a shuttle bus or something down to the exposition, but I don't remember. I can remember being dreadfully tired before the day was out. I remember hearing 01:29:00Count Basie's Orchestra playing outdoors at some amphitheater at the Fair. I remember the wonderful statuary of Pacifica.

THOMPSON: But a really grand experience for you.

HENDERSON: Oh, my, yes. Well, the fair was all new and shiny and bright, and the gardens were just immaculate. San Francisco was really putting on a party for anyone who wanted to come.

THOMPSON: Do you remember anything else about the fair?

HENDERSON: Well, one, it was crowded. Lots of people.

THOMPSON: Lots of people.

HENDERSON: Some things, you had to wait to get in to see. I really don't remember a whole lot. But it was just a great big day, and I had a great time.

THOMPSON: Did you go only once?

HENDERSON: Oh, no! We went many times. Well, my mother wrote a song about the World's Fair, to do with the high school kids that--she was putting on a drama night. She wrote a little song about the World's Fair, in our backyard.

THOMPSON: I want to step back now, or step forward a couple years, to something 01:31:00that you know very much about and that you've written about. But I'd first like to understand how you first learned of the order for the Japanese to be evacuated to assembly centers. We've already spoken about you having Japanese friends at the time, but talk to me a little bit about the experience, you learning first about the Japanese needing to be evacuated.

HENDERSON: Probably what I learned, which wasn't much, was in the Daily Cal. At that time, that was the student newspaper on campus, sponsored officially. I wasn't reading much of any other newspaper; I was reading textbooks and trying to keep up with my reading classes, which is the kind of classes I took. Never 01:32:00enough time to read the assignments. I didn't know the Japanese community. I did know a few. I knew a florist, an old lady that had the Sunrise Florist, on Telegraph Avenue, about Carleton or something like that. It was just a tiny, little square building that my mother went to when she had some reason to buy flowers, which was usually when somebody died. That was the days where if you went after a death it was a real funeral, and those were a lot of real flowers. 01:33:00I can remember being kind of appalled by--overwhelmed, I guess--by the fragrance, which I associated, as a young person, with death.

THOMPSON: Did you attend many funerals when you were younger?

HENDERSON: No, no. But I frequently was in the church where a funeral had just happened or was going to happen, and I can remember the overwhelming floral fragrance.

THOMPSON: Many flowers.

HENDERSON: I got a little morbid about the whole thing. Funny about that, because now you go to a memorial service and the family provides a little flowers, and maybe one or two potted plants come, but it's not that overwhelming.

THOMPSON: So we had talked about, earlier, when you were a freshman at Cal, you seeing a bus with Japanese people on it.

HENDERSON: What I saw was the actual evacuation day. I had an errand just across the street, at my own church, and I saw that the buses lined up on Dana Street, in front of the Congregational Church. They occupied from Durant Avenue to Channing Way. There were soldiers with fixed bayonets. I remember that very vividly. Because I was curious enough, when I came out the door from my church after doing my errand, to walk down to the corner and stand there and watch what was going on across the way. I didn't do that except for a very

few minutes, because I had a class, probably, that I had to get back to. But I

saw a lot of baggage lined up on the sidewalk. I saw people hoisting the baggage into those buses and into some trucks.

THOMPSON: This was in front of the church?

HENDERSON: Yeah, alongside the whole side of the church there. The long dimension of the--obviously commandeered for the purpose, because otherwise, it would've been student parking. I don't remember seeing any Japanese people. 01:36:00Well, I do too. I remember seeing a group of girls talking to one of these soldiers, with his fixed bayonet. I think they thought he was kind of cute, myself. They were just a bunch of teenage girls, and they were engaging him in conversation.

THOMPSON: These were Caucasian girls or Japanese girls?

HENDERSON: No, these were Japanese girls.

THOMPSON: Japanese girls were talking to the soldier with the fixed bayonet?

HENDERSON: Yeah.

THOMPSON: They were having a conversation?

HENDERSON: They were just standing around waiting.

THOMPSON: So what were your initial perceptions of that, as a freshman at Cal, seeing the Japanese having to sign up at civil control centers?

HENDERSON: Well, I hadn't been aware of the registration, and I really didn't 01:37:00imagine the enormity of it, what this meant to these people. As I say, I was an egocentric freshman, and this was happening to somebody else.

THOMPSON: To switch gears real quick, what was your life like after World War II? You said you had a child in 1945. I was wondering if you could tell me just a little bit about how you spent your life after World War II.

HENDERSON: After the war was over, I had a four-month-old baby. I was pretty 01:38:00occupied with that. We were living in an apartment north of the campus, and we were the managers of the apartment house that my grandfather owned, that we were living in. Grandpa did take care of his own. Then after he died--I believe it was January of 1945. No, 1943. He died in 1943. Because we changed our wedding 01:39:00date to be a little later, after he died, just a few months. But after '45, we moved back to my family's home. My parents had moved into my

grandparents' home, because it was too much work to go through all my grandfather's business papers, for my father to face going through the files and moving out of that house. Besides, it was a nice house, and they were familiar with it. It just seemed like a natural thing for them to take that house and invite us to come to live in the house that I'd been in from the time I was

twelve on, which was our first real house that we felt we had any ownership of. I'd say that was important, that I grew up in rented spaces and it meant a lot to have a house that was going to be in our name. Over a period of years, my parents gave me that house. So I always teased my husband that he didn't marry a rich girl. I didn't have any money, but I brought a house. Because he didn't have to buy a house, which was hugely important, because he wasn't a veteran, who could get a GI loan. That made a big difference.

What was my life like after the war? My husband had worked exceedingly hard at the refinery. Hard to describe how hard, and how overworked the engineers were. They were short-handed. There were never enough engineers. The services needed new fuels, new lubricants. The shortages. It's just hard to back up to how many things were not available during the war, and how people had to improvise in industry. Or in an ordinary office. Maybe you might not be able to get a new 01:42:00typewriter. I don't remember people being resentful about the shortage of things. It was just that it was always on your mind. Making do.

THOMPSON: Do you remember rationing?

HENDERSON: Oh, goodness, yes.

THOMPSON: Rationing coupons?

HENDERSON: Yes. I remember a butcher who took me under his wing to teach me how to, not only buy economical cuts of meat, but how to make my red stamps come out even, my red buttons come out even. It was pretty fundamental. He said, "Allow twenty-five cents a day for your protein." Twenty-five cents a day.Twenty-five 01:43:00cents would buy two pork chops or two lamb chops or some hamburger. But if you wanted to have a steak, then you had to have a meatless day, so that you'd have enough money to buy the steak. [laughs]

THOMPSON: That's funny.

HENDERSON: It is funny. He was known as being very grouchy. Well, if I'd had to be a butcher during World War II, I'd have been a grouch, too. But for some reason, he took a shine to me, and when he had time and I was in there alone, he undertook to teach me how to shop.

THOMPSON: That's a good story, though.

HENDERSON: This is in the days before packaged meat. You talked to the butcher, asked for that one and that one.

THOMPSON: I'm going to go ahead and check the time. There's a couple minutes left. More than a couple, about ten. I'd like to talk to you about something very dear to you, as you've already mentioned, but what the church has been like for you

in your life; not only growing up, but now. I was hoping you could describe for me a little bit more about the denomination you belonged to and how that came to be, and then what that meant in your life, growing up.

HENDERSON: From the time I was ten, my parents were back in my mother's home church, a Bible Evangelical Presbyterian church. By that it means somewhat different

from the run-of-the-mill Presbyterian church. They were more fundamentalist, more conservative. The result of that conservatism was that another Presbyterian church in town had splintered off, to be a more modern-thinking church. They took pride in old-time religion, let's put it. They sang that song, (Give Me That) Old-Time Religion. When my husband met me, he had been brought up in a very strict evangelical church; but he'd gotten over that by the time he was twelve years old, even though he still had to go. When he came up to Cal, he didn't go to church at all because he was working on weekends. When he was a 01:46:00senior he and his roommate knew they were going to graduate. So now they have the luxury of going and looking for girls. Well, where do you go looking for girls? You go to the church that you know has the reputation of having a great dance every Friday night. So they went to the First Congregational church that had this party every Friday night, and my cousin met his roommate. So there was the wedding party, and I met my husband in that wedding party. Then we both decided that we would attend that church.

THOMPSON: The First Congregational church?

HENDERSON: The First Congregational church. Which instead of being dark wood and kind of gloomy, it was bright and light, Georgian architecture. Not very 01:47:00faithful, but we didn't know that. The hymns were different, the prayers were different, the choir was even better. A contrast between dark and light. It was just a matter of a bit of paint, as far as--and of course, some larger windows that let the sun shine in. But I just remember the First Congregational church, my first exposure to it, this bright light, comfortable, although the seats weren't comfortable. They were more comfortable back at the Presbyterian church, where you kind of lounged. These were more New England sit-up-straight pews. But 01:48:00I just liked it, from the day I walked in. Like going into the house that you decide, "Oh, I want to live here." I had that feeling about that church, and still do. Been in that church since 1943.

THOMPSON: And you're still there. And you now do what for that church?

HENDERSON: I work in the thrift shop, which is now in the basement, and I price household goods, pots and pans and knicky-knackies and vases and junk, and toys. Do that every Tuesday morning. It's a hilarious job, because you pick up something and say, "What is this?" Well, nobody can tell what it is. Put a 01:49:00dollar on it; somebody will recognize what it is and take it away. This makes an awful lot of money for the church. Last week and the week before, it was a thousand dollars, and we're only open ten hours a week.

THOMPSON: That's pretty incredible.

HENDERSON: You've got that one right! It's pretty incredible. And it is, as I say, a hilarious thing to do. We laugh and laugh. It's just a good time. Everybody's having fun.

THOMPSON: I think I told you my grandmother does the same thing in New York.

HENDERSON: Of course, I now can't bear to pay first price for anything.

THOMPSON: I'm going to step back for a second. It relates to the First Congregational church, and it's something we've highlighted on, but how did you come to write about the events that took place between the First Congregational 01:50:00Church of Berkeley and the Japanese evacuees? Could you tell that story a little bit more?

HENDERSON: I'd always known, when I joined the church in 1943, that the evacuation of the Japanese had happened there, because it was a watershed event for the church. It transformed the church at that time, from being something of a town-and- gown-society church to being more socially conscious. They'd had social action before, but it was in such a gentlemanly way. They didn't get dirty, didn't get their hands dirty with other people's affairs. They sent them money or something like that. We always heard about--during the evacuation, 01:51:00which happened in a big hurry and had to be organized and executed with no warning, people got awful tired, working through the registration and evacuation, serving these people tea and sandwiches and cookies and such, because they were under such stress; they weren't eating right at home. One of the women that I interviewed when I wrote the paper about it later said, "You fed us breakfast," and that it had meant so much to her. Indeed, it wasn't just 01:52:00the women of the First Congregational Church, but at that time, there was a lot of interaction between the various churches, the women's groups in the community, and they took their time. People would come for a half day, and the Presbyterian and the Baptist ladies took their turn helping in the registration time, because people had to come with their babies, and somebody had to hold the baby. I can't relive that experience, because I didn't have it; but I talked to people that did do that and it was--as I say, it was

getting their hands dirty with somebody else's need, which was not the usual teacup-with-raised-finger kind of women's activity, being gentlewomen. They were in their aprons and scrubbing little kids' dirty faces.

THOMPSON: So the church is volunteering to become a civilian control center for Japanese evacuees, after Executive Order 9066, from President Roosevelt. You're saying that that transformed the church, in a way, from a church that was a 01:54:00great church, to something that was more socially conscious, this event.

HENDERSON: Yes. Yeah. I think so. I think that the pastor thought that was true.

THOMPSON: The pastor's name was Doctor--

HENDERSON: Vere V. Loper. Good Dutch name. He had been an officer in World War I. Was more sympathetic to some clergymen, to the military. During World War II, every Sunday morning, all the sons of the church who were on military duty, 01:55:00there was his name and his APO address, encouraging the members of the church to write to the boys that were serving.

THOMPSON: That's incredible.

HENDERSON: I remember that very vividly. When it came to the later wars, Korea and Vietnam, we didn't do that. But I think it was because the pastor had been in France during World War I.

THOMPSON: You received these letters while doing research for writing this paper?

HENDERSON: Well, some of the letters that are in the paper were letters to Dr. Loper, while people were in camp.

THOMPSON: Now, the letters to Eleanor Breed--

HENDERSON: Yeah, well, she was the church secretary, and she was also the part-time secretary at International House. So she got the Japanese student 01:56:00concerns, because there were a good many Japanese on campus. They weren't allowed to finish the semester. She was very busy running interference on campus, to the professors, for the professors to give these guys credit for not being able to finish the semester, but still get credit for the course.

THOMPSON: With that, Shirley, I'm going to stop this tape right here.

[End of interview]