George Johnson | Interview 2 | November 20, 2002

[Interview #2: November, 20, 2002]

Begin Tape II

DUNNING: Today is November 20, 2002 and David Washburn is on the camera, and we're interviewing Mr. George Johnson, who is a hundred and eight years old. And we're doing this for the Rosie the Riveter Project and my name is Judith Dunning. Well, thank you Mr. Johnson for having us back the second time. And today, I thought we would fast forward to some of your recollections of Richmond. That last time we talked a lot about your family, your childhood and growing up in Philadelphia and then your move to California--

JOHNSON: You'll have to talk a little louder because my--I'm a little hard of hearing.

DUNNING: Okay, let me move my chair up a little. Is that better?

JOHNSON: That's better.

DUNNING: Okay, great. What brought you to the Richmond Annex?

JOHNSON: What brought us to the Richmond area?

DUNNING: To the Richmond Annex.

JOHNSON: Right here, well, we were looking around for a house. We were living 00:01:00in Berkeley at that time, and we were looking around for a home and my wife did most of the--that was one thing about her, she did most of the business. She was very accurate, very wise. And we had a real estate agent, he took us over into the Orinda area, you know, thinking that--. Because there was a lot of land being sold there, you know for people to build homes on--and she thought that maybe if we could get some of the land we could get an agent to build us a house. After--but we--she showed us--he showed us a lot running down to a creek which was about an acre of land, a little over an acre of land altogether. And they wanted three hundred dollars for that acre of land in Orinda.

DUNNING: Oh boy!

JOHNSON: We didn't have the money to do--we were--you know, I was working on a job. In those days, you know, fifty, seventy-five years ago, you could work 00:02:00all day for nothing, practically, anyway. But finally, the agent brought us to this place. The lady was here--she had this place with a little boy--she had a--she didn't have a--she just had the lot, and she had a little garage, I mean a little garage built on the property over towards the west side here. Nothing but open land. And she wanted to sell it because she needed money. She had a little boy, and so we decided to buy the lot from her. And this is oh--Hurse, her name was. His name was George Hurse, her son. She was living alone. We bought the land from her, and we've been here--that was in 1935--and I've been here even since, on this land.

DUNNING: Do you recall what you paid for the lot?

JOHNSON: What I paid for the lot? [laughs] I hate to mention that. [laughs] 00:03:00It wasn't much, I'll tell you that.

DUNNING: Okay. It was under three hundred dollars.

JOHNSON: Oh yes!

DUNNING: [laughs] And how big a property was it?

JOHNSON: Well, was seventy-five foot front, which is {the same now?}. I didn't realize it, but it was practically equal to what they call three home building lots in Richmond. Three thirty-five foot lots. Seventy-five foot front, see? That's that they call it. Seventy-five foot and a hundred and fifty foot deep. And we bought the land from her with the title and everything--the title of the land. But the title of the land--I hate to say this--but the title--I don't know what the people can do with it--but I feel it was stolen, and I figure that I know the person who stole the title. The title had my wife and my name on the title and Mrs. Hurse's name on it, you know. Title to this 00:04:00particular property.

DUNNING: Someone stole it before you bought it or after? When was the title stolen?

JOHNSON: Stolen? It was stolen--let's see now--three--oh, I can't go back, time passes so fast. I would say about four or five years ago.

DUNNING: Oh recently!

JOHNSON: Recently, yes. I had some friends--I shouldn't say this--I won't mention their names--but anyway, they were so-called friends. I took them down to the Bank of America in Berkeley where I had the title and all my other papers stored, and I hadn't gone into that box in almost fifty years because I had no reason to go in it. Safe deposit box, you know? We took it down there and we were showing this lady, with her daughter, in the box and we saw the title there. Saw the title of the property, She took it up. She picked it out and looked at it. We put it back in the little box that goes into the vault, 00:05:00you know, and when we got up to go, her daughter says, "Oh, let mama"--we have--from the title room, in the desk where we was, it was a small partition. And the daughter said, "Oh, let mama go back there with-- to help to put the box away. We'll wait for her out here, George." See? To me, it was all right. Just absolutely ignorant of a thought of what terrible trouble had happened. So when they come back, we came out, we went to dinner, and then we went up--come up here to the cemetery, in El Cerrito, and made arrangements for my funeral up there in case anything happens to me.

DUNNING: That's at Sunset?

JOHNSON: At Sunset, there's a vault up there. My wife is up there in the vault. And the vault is shown with my wife's name on it with the date of her 00:06:00birth and death. It's the third tier up.

DUNNING: Oh, okay.

JOHNSON: And that's where I will go. It's all paid for. And so the very next day, Mrs. Demerel--she's the lady who's been looking out after me for a long time--they were from the Asian islands somewhere--and a friend of mine. A little boy--he was a little boy when we first knew him, but he's a young man now. He's a full-grown man now, he lives in Los Angeles now. But anyway, I took this lady and this man down to the bank because I wanted to show him the title. The very next day. We wandered through the vault there, all through the vault. The title was gone. The title--the very next day. Not a week, not a month, but 00:07:00the very next day, the title was gone. Nobody had been to see that title in fifty years, as far as I was concerned, because--the girl there said, "You haven't been down here to open this drawer, Mr. Johnson, for over fifty years."

DUNNING: And did you notify the bank?

JOHNSON: No, I didn't notify--yeah--no--well, I went down to the bank and then I asked the girl, the clerk that was there--she's not there anymore--but she was there then. And I was explaining to her about this lady that was with me that had helped to put the box away, the drawer away. With the clerk. The clerk and my wife--I mean the clerk and this lady went back into the vault room to put the, you know, the drawer away. And I asked her about it. She's not--unfortunately, this girl's not there--but I asked her a little while later did she see anything happen when that lady helped to put the box away? She said, "Yes." She said, "She picked something out of the box, out of the 00:08:00drawer, before we put it in"--you know--"in the vault" In the vault room. "She picked something out of the box and put it in her breast! And I said, "What did it look like?" She said, "It looked like a letter." That's what the clerk told me this lady did. And I noticed--then we--as I say, we left the bank, we came down to the cemetery, made arrangements for my internment--whenever it might be--that day. Then we came home, here. And we went--sitting in the room here, dining room, and--she and her daughter. She was with her daughter, you know. Daughter's name is Adrienne. And she got up a half a dozen times and went back to the bathroom, the mother. Half a dozen times, all within five minutes. Now 00:09:00I--in my own mind--after what happened, you know when I reasoned what had happened--I figured that she had gone back there so many times to rearrange this thing. Because she had on a kind of a blouse jacket, you know. To arrange that thing in her blouse. But now, this girl lives in--not north here but--

DUNNING: Vallejo?

JOHNSON: Up high, longer than that

Washburn

Vacaville?

JOHNSON: No further--a few hundred miles from here. Oh, what is it? Name of--we used to run up there. Chico. Chico.

DUNNING: Oh, Chico.

JOHNSON: Chico, yeah. Now this--and her daughter works in the bank up at Chico. Her daughter works in the bank at Chico. Which, I don't know what she's doing, but she and her husband--he was working down in San Jose, down in the Santa Clara Valley there, but he's retired now--he's up and he's pushing 00:10:00seventy. And she is, too, of course. But that's what happened on that particular occasion. The very next day--wasn't next week or next month--but the very next day when I go down to the bank the title was gone.

DUNNING: Did you notify the title company?

JOHNSON: No, I didn't. I told my cousin in Chicago about it. He said that they would see about it.

DUNNING: Oh, okay.

JOHNSON: But anyway this--

DUNNING: And have you seen that woman and her daughter since?

JOHNSON: Oh, yes! She was down here on my hundred and seventh birthday. That's been over a year ago, you know. Last--the birthday before this. My last birthday before this. I was a hundred and eight, this one. She was down here, I'm a hundred and six. She and her whole family were down here from Chico. Acting very social, but--

DUNNING: Did you ask her about it?

JOHNSON: No, no. I asked her a long time ago about it, but she denied she knew anything about it. And I know from the way she spoke to me that she was very--you know--you know how a person can act when they're trying to deny something?

DUNNING: Wow. That's a story.

JOHNSON: But I asked my cousin about it, my brother's boy in Chicago--he's the one who--he said, well they could straighten that out. They could straighten--

DUNNING: Oh, okay.

JOHNSON: --they could straighten it out, but she says--he says, he says, my cousin--just the other day, he said, well, you pay the taxes on the property ever since you bought it? I said, "Absolutely." "Oh," he says, "well"--

DUNNING: Right. So everything is in your name.

JOHNSON: Everything is in my name. Everything's in my name and nothing else--nobody--I've never had--never borrowed money on the property or nothing. The property right today is mine, solely.

DUNNING: Well, when you first moved here, what else was around?

JOHNSON: Nothing.

DUNNING: Nothing?

JOHNSON: Just the lot. See, she had this garage, you know, with a little--like one room upstairs, you know? The garage was downstairs. So what I 00:12:00did--I had the garage walls lifted up and put in a little flat place under, in the basement part of it, and that's where we lived. We lived in that garage after we had lifted it up. We had a company to do that, you know. They lifted it up and underneath there, now I have my furnace and a I had a carpenter's shop and all that stuff under there. But anyway, we lived up top there for the whole time I built this property. I didn't start building this property here until about 1940, this house.

DUNNING: And did you build it in stages?

JOHNSON: I built it in stages--you know--well, I kept building it all--buying material, going, hauling material to this place, and cutting the material by hand. I didn't have a carpenter's, you know, regular automatic saw, and I cut and fit the lumber and nailed the lumber. Every nail in this house I 00:13:00nailed myself. Never had a single person to help me in that respect. And I cut the boards and all the boards, the flooring, and--now that's another thing--the outside walls are one-by-six inch boards on a forty-five degree angle. That was put there before I put the paper and the wire and the stucco on. Not just plywood. See, now they build a house with just plywood on the outside and plywood on the floors. It's one-by-six inch boards on a forty-five degree angle on all of these floors, and then the hardwood is put on top of that.

DUNNING: And where did you buy your materials?

JOHNSON: Different places. Different places. The fellows--two men that lived across the street at that time--Al and Joe, I think their name was--but anyway, they was interested in seeing me build this house by myself. This Al, 00:14:00he said--and I told him, I said, "Well, I don't know what I'm going to put on the floors, but," I said, "I'd like to put something nice on the floors." After he saw the boards on the floors, he says, "Those boards," he said, "would stand hardwood floors on there, George." He says, "Let me get you some hardwood." I said, "Well, where you going to get it at?" "Oh," he says, "I can get--you can't get hardwood around here now, but I can get you some from North Carolina." So he sent all the way to North Carolina and got enough wood to put on this floor and upstairs floor from North Carolina. Tongue and groove. Hardwood oak. Turn this carpet up and you can see that. Look at it.

DUNNING: I can see it--it's beautiful.

JOHNSON: And that's--and he nailed it. They were very, very friendly. He nailed it, and then he said--I said, "Well"--before he nailed it, I said to him, "Let me nail it." "Oh no," he says, "George. I'll nail it because I want 00:15:00to hide the nails." I said, "Where you going to hide the nails? What do you mean?" "Well," he says, "you'll see." So after he nailed down, two or three days later he come and he puttied up all of the nail heads. You know: sank the nails in about an eight of an inch, and then he got some putty and turned the putty so that it would match the color or the wood. And he put that putty over the holes where the nails was, then he varnished over the whole thing. And you can't tell today where those nails are.

DUNNING: Well, that's amazing!

JOHNSON: Oh! They were wonderful. There was two of them, you know, two friends. They lived over there across the street to the right.

DUNNING: Who else lived in the neighborhood?

JOHNSON: Neighbors? Directly across the street was Kirby, a man by the name 00:16:00of Kirby. They came--they built that house over there, as I remember--now there was nothing there at all when I came here, nothing--anyway--and he built that house, and I remember he said, "Sears Roebuck built the house for me."

DUNNING: Oh, the catalogue homes from Sears.

JOHNSON: I think it was. But he said, "Sears Roebuck built it,"see. But--

DUNNING: Those were excellent. Those were great homes.

JOHNSON: Oh, yes. And I think he sold it to the fellow that was in there, I think--I'm not sure, but I think he sold it for, he said, nine thousand dollars. Nine thousand. But I remember him saying Sears Roebuck charged him seven thousand dollars; can you imagine, a house like that for seven thousand?

DUNNING: Right, well wouldn't Sears--

JOHNSON: Anyway, the people that are living in it now, as I understand it--I don't know: I don't--I haven't been able to see them, but I heard they paid ninety six thousand dollars for it. You know? And the house was built for 00:17:00six thousand, six, seven thousand dollars. But that's the price, that's the change of the times. It's like me, here.

DUNNING: Well, this is called the Richmond Annex, but this is a little extension of it.

JOHNSON: This is an extension. Now, this area in here, from Central Avenue all the way up, you know, up here and over to bay--it was all called "no-man's-land." It wasn't in the city of Richmond at all. Wasn't incorporated. And that's another thing that--well, I can't squabble about it because for some reason it hasn't confronted me yet, but I cannot understand how and when and why this particular block of land in here became the city of Richmond. Because it was called "no-man's-land"--it was county land when we moved here, you know what I mean? And I'm under the idea that when a strip of 00:18:00land is taken into the city it had to be voted in, see? I don't remember ever voting this land into the city of Richmond.

DUNNING: Well, is it a little like north Richmond isn't a part of Richmond?

JOHNSON: No, this would be south Richmond. See, this is to the south. This is below the main road up here.

DUNNING: Right, but north Richmond isn't a part of the city, either. It's--they have--they're not under the government, same government as the city of Richmond.

JOHNSON: So, since it was such a small area--and then--I can't remember just exactly when it was--but anyway, the neighbors that were here, they kicked 00:19:00about going into Richmond, for some reason, I don't know. But anyway, it was voted on by the people who lived here at that time to have them pass a law whereby this area would be called--would come under a certain proposition. And it comes under Proposition 13, and that--see because--as the people--you see, when we moved here we were supposed to be more or less pick and shovel type, see what I mean? In a sense. We had more education than that, but anyway--as people was moving in, they was increasing the property and all so fast that we couldn't see how we was going to be able to keep up with the taxes. So they had to pass this rule and regulation called Proposition 13 so that all the land that was here at that time could stay under--I think that was about 19-- oh I 00:20:00don't know--I just can't remember how far it was back. It was way back. But anyway, all the land is under Proposition 13 until it is sold. See what I mean? And Proposition 13 was to protect the people who were living in it, because as people was moving in and building houses the property tax would go up more than the people could afford who were already living here, see what I mean? There were people who were just very poor. But anyway, Proposition 13 stays in existence to all houses until it's sold. If the house is sold, naturally that eliminates Proposition 13 and it comes up to the normal tax rate as the property next door. But now, this property on this house is still under Proposition 13, I'm still under the same proposition, way back to 1935, my property value stays back there. The property assessment, you know what I mean?

DUNNING: Oh, okay. So that hasn't changed.

JOHNSON: That's hasn't changed. And I still pay the tax that I paid back when it was 193--probably when it was 1935.

DUNNING: What are those taxes?

JOHNSON: Where are they?

DUNNING: What are they? How much do you have to pay?

JOHNSON: Well, I don't want to say that.

DUNNING: Okay. [laughing]

JOHNSON: It's not much, I'll tell you that. And if I had to pay them I wouldn't be able to stay here. You know, the natural taxes of today, that's what it would be today, know what I mean? But the only reason I stay here is because I'm on the Proposition 13. And see--and some of the neighbors when they moved in here a while back--I don't know whether you remember it or not, but you know they took--they tried to eliminate, have that Proposition 13 eliminated, see? Here, quite awhile back.

DUNNING: Now, have many of your neighbors--

JOHNSON: And they took it, and the complaint went all the way to the Supreme Court. United States Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court issued a 00:22:00notice to this particular property--Proposition 13--that it is non-negotiable. Nobody, unless--the only way it becomes eliminated is when this property is sold. If you sell your property, then that's the end of Proposition 13 on the property. This house still comes under Proposition 13. No way in the world can they dispute it, because the Supreme Court has said the issue itself is non-negotiable: don't try to argue it out, see what I mean?

DUNNING: Now, your neighbors. Now--

JOHNSON: They pay a high price. They pay the tax on the, the regular tax rate!

DUNNING: Have there been any neighbors that have--have most of your neighbors stayed, or have they left as--?

JOHNSON: No, they've all gone, they came--they stayed for eight, nine, ten, years but they finally--and their children grew up, you know. The fellow directly across the street, his name was Kirby, the next is [Rasson, they were roofers?]. I call her once in a while. She lives up--way up beyond Chico, and every once in a while I talk to her and I talk to Mrs. [Tula?] 00:23:00Kirby. But all the other neighbors, I don't know where they are. But the neighbor directly across the street, the two of them there, were Kirby and [Rasson?]. And the other boy--the next house--I forget his name, but he was a young boy, and I used to carry him around in my arms. He was, you know, seven, eight, nine in that sense---and I'd carry him sometimes. But he grew up and he got to running a great big dump truck of some kind. Not a dump truck but an excavation-type truck. And he was excavating some land for the company he was working for and dropped dead right on the property. Dropped dead while he was working. And I held him in my arms as a baby over here. But he grew up and, you know, young man--

DUNNING: Now did you see a lot of changes in the neighborhood when the 00:24:00freeways came? It seems like it cut the Richmond Annex in half.

JOHNSON: Oh, yes. This road here was only a two-lane road when we came here: one up, one down. One east, one west. But then they widened it and put four lanes on there, since we've been here. And there was this bridge across the freeway here, that's--this is a new one they put in here several years ago--but the old one was in here fifty years ago when they widened the freeway. It was just an iron-type thing. My wife and I were down there one day when they were building the bridge, building the road, and--. The kids--to go to school over here--what few there were, had to go all the way down to Central Avenue and go 00:25:00across and up the other side to go to school. And my wife complained about it, said, "Why?" We had no children, but she thought that was terrible because the mothers would have to take them all the way down to Central Avenue, which is four blocks down, and then back up on the other side to go to school. Why don't they put a bridge or a road across here, so they won't have to go so far? Which they did. But that road was fifty years ago, and it had rusted out. So here a few years ago when they re-widened this highway, they tore that bridge down and put this new one there and they got a new bridge across there now. But the original bridge, my wife had complained about the kids having to walk across--walk down to Central Avenue.

DUNNING: Well, did you feel isolated when the road went through? Isolated from the rest of El Cerrito and Richmond?

JOHNSON: No, we never felt--I can't say we did because we'd always go down to Central Avenue and go across. We never had any desire to go right directly across because, see the stores were down off of Central Avenue in San Pablo, right in that area. You know, they were down--that's where all the stores--and that's--we had to go down, and go--. In those days, we had to go across the road, you had to press a button. That was before they built 00:26:00the--re-widened the freeway. And when they re-widened it, then they put the tunnel underneath and put the freeway over it. But as we went across, we had to press a button in order to stop the traffic so we could walk across it.

DUNNING: And did you do most of your shopping in El Cerrito?

JOHNSON: Oh, yes. All of it. All of the shopping.

DUNNING: Okay. And how about--would you go to Richmond very often?

JOHNSON: No, never went to Richmond. Never went to Richmond. I haven't been up to Richmond--I guess--I shouldn't say it, although I live here--I haven't been up in Richmond five times since the Japanese war. I haven't been up there. I've no reason to go there. I had--my wife and I had no reason. We had no business up there. In fact, in what little city--I mean street, or block--I forget where it was now, but we paid our insurance, we had insurance, you know--

DUNNING: Macdonald Avenue?

JOHNSON: No, it wasn't Macdonald Avenue it was a street that runs north and south. Macdonald runs east and west. This street, as I remember, ran north and south. But anyway, it was for quite a number of years that I went up there 00:27:00to pay the insurance and the very street that I paid insurance at for eight, nine years that was all Japanese. They didn't understand me and I didn't understand them. Can you imagine that? Now what street that was, I cannot--

DUNNING: Twenty-third?

JOHNSON: I don't know--it was up in here somewhere. But I haven't been up in Richmond--for some unknown reason, I had no reason--. I didn't vote up there, you know? And my wife knew the mayor a long time ago. My wife said that--I forget her name, but it was a black mayor. Black mayor--do you remember the black mayor--first black mayor they had there? Oh I don't know it was twenty-five, thirty years ago, I guess. More than that, maybe more than that.

DUNNING: Well, I remember George Livingston, but that was more recent.

JOHNSON: I don't know, but anyway--

DUNNING: And what was your impression of Richmond? Did you have an image of what Richmond was like?

JOHNSON: No, no we didn't ever--. You see, as I was telling you, when the 00:28:00agent brought us here after looking at--we came here and looked at this property from--and we were living in Berkeley, and we came up and took the property and we were so involved in trying to make a living here. You know what I mean. Trying to establish a home, a house of some kind, that we never thought about Richmond. Never thought about Richmond. Because they called it "no-man's-land" then, see?

DUNNING: The whole Richmond?

JOHNSON: And there was nobody here. We were the only ones here. It was all open, you know. I could have bought the whole thing for practically nothing.

DUNNING: Well, do you have recollections of when--right at World War II--when the whole population changed in the Richmond and the Bay Area, and the population from Richmond went from 23,000 to 125,000?

JOHNSON: Well, up in the--it changed during the war, as I can remember it. 00:29:00I remember seeing--I worked up in the shipyard for a while, you know. Because I had done carpentry work before that. And I went up through there working as what they called a carpenter in metal--doing the same type of work in metal is called a flanging. See, I was a flanger. And I'd go to work and get on the bus and come on back home. Overnight, overnight, overnight, overnight, overnight. Never went anywheres in Richmond. And our voting precinct was right across the street here, see? When we'd vote, we'd go right across the street. That is a little to the right here. First houses down there and you come up the streets from the road on the other side.

DUNNING: Now, you mentioned the last time, that you only worked in the shipyards for a few months. Can you tell me why you got the job there?

JOHNSON: Why I got the job there?

DUNNING: And why you left.

JOHNSON: Well, I got the job there because they wanted help. At that 00:30:00time--now that's the Japanese war, you understand--they had about thirty-five thousand people working in these three ship ways--what they call ways. You know what I mean? They were building three ship ways--three ships at a time, you know? In three different docks, right there together. And they had thirty-five thousand people working there. And there was no trouble and anybody that come there looking for a job, got a job. And there were people from all over the country. And I often think of that now. If this country went to war--probably they would conscript the people in the same way that they did then when they were working up there in the shipyard. But those thirty-five thousand, you understand, when there was only maybe four or five thousand people around here--they came from all over the country. See what I mean? And they had a 00:31:00different--they had a place there where they would go, like the employment office, and in that employment office they had four or five booths. And over the booths they had the name written: German, French, Spanish--languages, you know. The people that come there to work--all nationalities come there to work in the shipyard--but they couldn't understand English and they had the English printed over the desk where they were. You know what I mean? That's the way they--and then they--I was working with a crew there, there were two Englishmen and a German and a Frenchman right in the nine crew, [laughs] you know, gang that we worked with. And that's the way they worked. You didn't--there was no change, no difference in nationality--all they wanted was men to work and build ships.

And they launched--all we'd build was the hull, you know--they'd launch a hull there about every week , every two weeks we'd launch a ship. That's called 00:32:00the hull--that was just the bottom part, you know? Then they would float it out into the bay--they had a place there in the bay where they'd float it over to a dock and that's where they equipped it and finished up the inside, all the top. All they wanted--all we did was put the--build a hull, you know, so you could float it. And then as long as that thing could float everyone--about every week or two they'd--they had enough floating steps to float that ship on out and then they'd float it on down and put it on the dock--what they call the dry dock, and that's where they equipped it all down. We never saw any equipment or anything like that. All we built was the hull. And that's why I say--I worked as a flanger, because I was putting all of this sheet metal in the hull and everything in the inside.

DUNNING: Now, I know the shipyard went twenty four hours a day.

JOHNSON: Oh my god, yes. Twenty-four hours, I should say so!

DUNNING: Which shift were you on?

JOHNSON: Which ship?

DUNNING: Shift. What was your schedule?

JOHNSON: Well, I was on the day shift. From eight o'clock in the morning to four thirty in the afternoon.

DUNNING: And did you make any friends in the shipyard, of people that came 00:33:00to this area from--

JOHNSON: No, you worked in gangs and you--I remember when the whistle would blow at four thirty, you know, and they would change the crews there, it was thousands of people leaving the ships going out to get on the buses, you know? And so forth and so you didn't--you was just working and you didn't pay any attention to anybody else, see what I mean? I was unpeculiar. You didn't form any friends; you didn't have time. Everybody was working, thinking, worrying about building ships and thinking about the war. All the people that were working--never heard no, you know, like organizations of any kind amongst the crews, you know what I mean? All the crews--oh , they had about at least thirty-five thousand people working there. But no organizational crew. No union, nothing like that. Nobody said anything about a union. All you were 00:34:00doing was working for the government making ships, building ships, you know?

DUNNING: Although, there were some unions then.

JOHNSON: Oh, there were unions: in town. But not unions on the ships. The ships--you see, that was all--that was all under the government. That was under the government, you know what I mean? The shipyard was controlled by the government. But in town, you know, private land in town, that was controlled by the union.

DUNNING: Now, did you work with any women in your gang?

JOHNSON: No. Oh, no.

DUNNING: Now you must have seen women working in the shipyards.

JOHNSON: Oh, yes. Had women doing everything, yes. I remember standing one day waiting for the bus and eight or ten women come up and they felt so happy because they were flangers--they were doing flanging--and welding and they were happy because they couldn't understand why men made so much fuss over their job when it was so easy to weld. [laughs] And they were happy. Oh they 00:35:00were so happy! Because they said, "We come to work, we go to work, and we go home!" [laughs]

DUNNING: Now, which year did you start?

JOHNSON: What year? Oh my god! That's hard for me to say.

DUNNING: Because it was really getting up and running in the--well, actually there was some ship building activities in the very early forties--

JOHNSON: That was in the fifties--I cannot tell--I cannot tell--

DUNNING: Probably the forties.

JOHNSON: Yeah, I remember that--I remember on a Sunday, it was on a Sunday morning my wife was back there asleep, and I hadn't built all the house--and she woke up and it was about oh six, seven o'clock, and she said, "George, we're at war." It was on a Sunday. I says, "War? What are you talking about, war?" She said, "I saw the bombs coming down, exploding." She says, "I don't know where they were, but I saw them." And I said, "You saw bombs in your sleep? You was asleep?" She says, "Yes, I was dreaming and I saw bombs coming 00:36:00down and there was ships of some kind. There was explosions and everything was flying up in the air." That was about six or seven o'clock in the morning. At nine o'clock, after we got up and was eating our breakfast and the telephone rang and the president was saying, "We're at war with Japan." Ships--Pearl--I said, "You saw it in your sleep."

DUNNING: She was psychic!

JOHNSON: She saw that in her sleep. That Sunday morning when the Japanese sank those ships in Pearl Harbor. But she was very--

DUNNING: Did your wife ever consider working in the shipyards?

JOHNSON: Oh, yes. No, she didn't work in the shipyard, but she worked over in Alameda where they had a lot of the ship work over there. In Alameda they had about oh, thirty-five, forty thousand people working over in Alameda navy shipyard [Naval Air Station]. And let me tell you about her! She 00:37:00went--now, she went--you know, when I think about it now, it makes me shiver to think how in the world could I allow her or seen her go all the way from here--she was--. I was growing--you know, in the yard I was growing all kinds of flowers and everything, just wild--and she was so amazed over the flowers that she would get a whole armful of flowers--six o'clock in the morning--and walk all the way; we had no car--walk all the way to San Pablo Avenue and get on the bus, and that bus would take her way down to Broadway and Fourteenth Street, City Hall in Oakland, and then take another bus to go all the way over to Alameda! With an armful of flowers, and she used to tell me a lot of time that the bus driver--bus by the crowd--the crowded--the bus would be loaded with ship workers, you know? Going to work. And she said, "Sometimes the driver would get out and help me up in the bus with all those flowers." Sometimes roses, great big long-stem roses she would carry all the way to Alameda where 00:38:00she worked.

Well, let me tell you about her and her job. She was working in one of the distribution centers, they called them, where a plane would be shot down over there, you know, and they wouldn't just discard it. They would gather up all the wreckage, all the crap, of that particular plane and send it back to America on any plane that was coming this way from one of the islands, you know? And it all would finally wind up in Alameda there, at the various stations there. And at her particular station there was about, she said about ten or twelve girls all working there, checking on this stuff that came--as it would come into Alameda. And they had certain bins there for certain parts of certain--you know, the good parts. A plane would be shot down, but all the planes wouldn't be--all of the parts wouldn't be wrecked. Some of the parts, you know, very good. But they sent them back. They'd just, you know, strip it 00:39:00down over there and send it back here on whatever plane was coming back, and at Alameda there was a plane going out of there every day to one of the islands over there. There was--it's like they say--there was eight or ten different islands over there and some of--and there was more than--maybe say fifty, sixty miles apart.

But now the manager of the particular house that she was working in--it was a large shop, she says it was about a hundred by a hundred and fifty, a bin-type place where they had all these different parts in different groups, at certain places. And she said--my wife, every time a plane would come by--I mean, one of the drivers would come by and say, "I'm going to Guam, I'm going to this place, I'm going to that place." They'd name the little islands alongside of the place where they was going to go. And she would have a box ready and put the parts in a box that was in an island--she knew all the little islands over there that were, you know, in the war with Japan. And she'd put 00:40:00them in a box and put it there so that the driver could take it and put it on his plane if he was going within a hundred miles of the island, you know, where that box was supposed to go. But the superintendent of the shop, he wanted to wait until the plane was going to any particular island with nothing but just parts for that particular island. Well, it might be a week, two weeks, or three weeks before they'd have enough stuff to go to any certain island. But my wife would always sneak it off and put it to a plane--put it in a box, they'd put it on a plane that was going to any island close to the one where it was needed, you know? And, oh, of course that was against the organization rules of the guy that was running that particular shop.

DUNNING: How long did she stay in her job?

JOHNSON: Oh she stayed in her job until pretty near after the war. But anyway--so he didn't like it, the manager of that particular shop didn't like it. He couldn't do nothing about it, but she'd put those things on the plane going near wherever it was supposed to go and the commander of the island, of the whole Alameda naval air base -- thirty-five or forty thousand people working over there at the island, at the Alameda naval air base--and he'd come around about every month, just taking a business tour around, you know, and this particular time he came around. That gave the boss of her shop a chance to give him a good idea of what Ida was doing disorganizing her routine. Taking stuff out and sending them over there to certain places when it was only two or three hundred miles from where it was supposed to go but there was a plane going in that direction and she'd put the stuff on the plane and he said he didn't know where the plane--whether the plane ever got there or not. Just 00:42:00disorganizing his whole routine and stuff.

DUNNING: Did she get into trouble?

JOHNSON: Oh. Let me tell you the trouble! Yeah, she got into trouble all right. When she got through telling the commander what she was doing and what the boss of that shop wanted to do--he wanted to wait 'til a plane was going to a certain island and take certain things to that particular island rather than sending it someplace near where it could be gotten ahold of and shipped over to, you know, within fifty, a hundred miles of where it was. When he got through telling the commander--I forget his name--but he was commander of the whole Alameda naval air base; thousands of people under him--he got through and he said to her--.

I had a fellow, a very close friend, worked in the shop right across the road, right across the yard, right across the wall, the hall, you know, and he heard every word and he said, "I heard the commander ask the boss: 'Did she do 00:43:00all of that? Did she do everything you're saying she's doin'?'" And he said, "Oh, he stomped his foot: 'Oh! She's disrupting this whole routine of mine. She's disrupting everything! Sending stuff over there and I don't know what's going and what isn't going. But she said, "We ought to get it over there, we've got to get it over there." She has no right to do that.'"

The commander--when he got through, the commander said--before he left, he said, "Well look: If this lady is doing all that you said she's doing, I want her in my office. I want her in my office. If she's seeing that those things get over there like you say she's seeing them get over, I want her in my office. Not somebody like you, wanting stuff to hang around here until you get a whole pile of it. Those men are over there are giving their life! They need this stuff! If she wants to--if it's here, and it can go over there, and if there's a plane going near the place where that part is wanted, send it near so it can be sent from that island over to where it is and get it. Get that list, keep that stuff moving! And if she thinks it's wise to keep it moving, I want 00:44:00her in my office!" And she went up and worked for him. That put her over him! And in two weeks, he quit.

DUNNING: Wow! That's quite a story!

JOHNSON: Yeah! Yeah! He quit.

DUNNING: And tell me why you left the Richmond shipyards.

JOHNSON: Why'd I go there?

DUNNING: Why did--well, I know why you went there--why did you quit?

JOHNSON: I quit because it just wasn't my life. It wasn't my life.

DUNNING: What about it you didn't like?

JOHNSON: I didn't like working in metal, that kind of metal, you know what I mean. I was used to working on finished product but not--and it was such a--I don't know. I just--I just somehow--I just didn't like the environment. I didn't like the atmosphere of the whole thing.

DUNNING: What was the atmosphere?

JOHNSON: Atmosphere, just a rough--rough. The gangs that you had to work with were so rough. People from all over the country who knew nothing at all about the work but just stumbling around, stumbling around, and acting as 00:45:00though they knew what they were doing and didn't, and I told the boss there, I said, "I can't take it. I'm getting a job I'm getting' a"--. And I got out of there. You know what I did? I went down, I went back to the post office. Back down to the Oakland Post Office and told them, "I'm going to go back to the post office!" They sent me back to the post office--Twelfth and Alice, I think it was. I went back to the post office at Twelfth and Alice and I worked there, then I went up to the main post office at the--that one's at the Twelfth, now. The old one was way down in West Oakland. I don't know what it was: some street down there. But anyway, they discarded that office down there and that was when I moved up to the main office at Twelfth and Alice. And I worked there at the Twelfth and Alice office for a while, then I finally--still--I thought to myself: "I'm just not equipped for this. I'm a machinist. I'm a machinist. I've studied mechanics ever since--." And I went and I said--

I heard that they wanted an engineer out at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital. I went to the office there at Twelfth and Alice--the government had a big employment office there and I told them what I wanted, and how I wanted it, and my equipment, and they sent me out there. They put me to work that day! And I stayed there for past--I think I was there about nineteen years. That was when I quit: up until I was seventy. You see, I was well up in age even in those days. Now they wouldn't [laughs]--Even if he's sixty--I don't know--people quitting work now forty, fifty-five, and sixty years old. My God! I worked until I was seventy! In the office--and they was laying me on the table the day I quit. First of May. They were laying me on the table there: five doctors. And examining me and all, and I couldn't understand what in the world they was talking about, what there were doing. And so I heard one--there 00:47:00was five of them in there--and one of them says, "I don't see how he's walking. I don't see how he walks." "Did you work today?" They kept asking me: "Did you work today?" Or: "When are you working last?" I said, "This is my last day. I'm seventy years old today. And I don't want to quit, but it's the law: I have to quit. The government don't want me to work over seventy." Now, you can work until you drop dead.

DUNNING: And here, you've been retired for almost forty years!

JOHNSON: I've been retired over thirty-five years.

DUNNING: Right, and what have you done in your retirement? How'd you keep yourself busy?

JOHNSON: How'd I keep myself busy? Just loafing along and growing things and growing things and helping other people. Just helping friends and so forth and so on. And then my--and my wife--see, I cooked for her for eight years, you know? And she didn't--I never let her cook--

DUNNING: After she had her stroke.

JOHNSON: Yeah, after she had her stroke. But up--the first of that--. We would help out our friends, because we had a lot of friends that were up 00:48:00against it, you know. And she would help them, I would help them and that was what we did. But the whole time I was working for the--that was my last job--at the Oak Knoll navy hospital. That was the last job I worked up until I was seventy. What startled me so was why I was so excited and so concerned that I was working, you know, at seventy, and--.

So when they got through, they give me the folder with all of the data in it and told me to take it over to the archives building, you know, where they kept all the records. And that was--Oak Knoll Naval Hospital, you know, it takes up a lot of place: almost a hundred acres of land. And buildings all over the place. When I take it over to the archive building I just--naturally, being 00:49:00[laughs] worried and anxious about what in the world they were worried about--well, not worried but concerned--and I opened it in there to one article and you wouldn't believe what I saw! And I saw in that book how they thought that I was crippling and wasn't able to work. That's been thirty five, almost forty years ago, and I'm still up. And they couldn't see how I was walking. And you know why? Because in the X-ray it showed that the fifth vertebra of my spine is completely out of place. The fifth vertebra of my spine. Now, look at me! I'm working every--I can't understand that. They can't understand it, either. How am I walking and working and not complaining under those conditions? I should have been retired five or six or ten years before I did, under the circumstances.

And that's why now--I hate to say this, I shouldn't say it I guess--but I 00:50:00don't have much faith in the medical profession. I don't have--I can't--I want to, but I can't. I had a fellow here--I told him I wanted a doctor, clean my ears out. Now I'd had my ears cleaned out many years ago when I first--oh--long time ago--fifty years ago, almost. Forty or fifty. And the doctors, they went into my ears, as I can remember, and treated me like I was a newborn baby. My ears, you know? Cleaning my ears. They put stuff in there and they squirmed around and everything--two nurses, along with the doctor, and they squirmed around as if I--made me feel as if I was a newborn baby. Now, here, this lady took me here--oh about a year or so--time goes so fast--and over here somewhere 00:51:00over here to a doctor to have my ears cleaned out.

Washburn

George?

JOHNSON: Yes.

Washburn

This is David.

JOHNSON: Hello?

Washburn

And I ask you a question?

JOHNSON: Sure!

Washburn

I've wanted to find out a little bit about how this neighborhood here changed during the war. Can I ask you--do you ever remember nightclubs?

JOHNSON: Nightclubs in the neighborhood?

Washburn

Yeah. Or bars popping up in the neighborhood? Maybe one called "The Wagon Wheel"?

JOHNSON: No. Wagon Wheel?

Washburn

The Wagon Wheel.

JOHNSON: I remember that name, but I can't remember where it was. I can't remember where it was.

DUNNING: There were a lot of clubs on San Pablo Ave.

JOHNSON: There wasn't--as I know, this neighborhood here--this side of the freeway, you know, just--I never paid much attention to it. My wife and I--when I think about it now, how close that my wife and I lived without 00:52:00worrying about what was going on around us, you know what I mean? You see, it's hard for anybody to think about that. Because we never--and she was--and it was always a lot of people who wanted us to join this and join that and join the other thing. Oh no. My father told me that. My father told me that when I was a little boy: "Boys, stay away from joining this, joining that. Don't join anything and you'll stay--" Now--I remember when they--years ago, years ago there was a bunch of lawyers--young lawyers back East--and they were signing this and signing that. They were young lawyers. I don't know whether you remember it or not, but it was all over the country. Come to find out when they were signing, they were signing up for the Communist Party. [laughs] But--

Washburn

Do you remember a man named Bones Remmer?

JOHNSON: Bones? No.

Washburn

Well, who were some of the more active people in this part of Richmond who 00:53:00you might recall?

JOHNSON: Nobody. Nobody. We never had anybody to represent us over here at all. No one. We'd go over across the street here and vote and that was all we ever did. The only communication we had with this area was voting. But never--I don't know a single person in the political area in Richmond.

DUNNING: And that's been the same since you arrived here? Has that been the case since you arrived here in the thirties?

JOHNSON: Since the time we were here. But I--all I've done--I get my tax papers every year and I send them up to Martinez. That's all. That's all. I don't know anything--I don't know anything about--Now, this is Columbia Avenue. I mean, Columbia Avenue runs to the west. This is Sacramento Street, but Columbia Avenue runs around, now. I don't know the people who live on the other 00:54:00side of Columbia Avenue. Although--oh it's been about a year--time goes so fast--but about a year or so ago I saw a lot of pornographic mail in my mailbox. And believe it or not--to show you how bold the people were who distributed that sort of thing, the name and the number of the house was on that mail. Now, if I had been that concerned and wanted to persecute and worried and wanted to spend time persecuting that type of a person I would have gone to call the police and had them taken care of.. But I simply put that junk in the garbage pail and forgot about it. And heard no more about it. I didn't figure it worth my time worrying about trying to prosecute somebody like that.

DUNNING: Well, if you had a problem--like I know Richmond Annex has had a lot of flooding--who would you go to? Would you go to the City of Richmond?

JOHNSON: I don't know. I don't know--here's the thing about it--My cousin in Chicago, he was out here one time, and my furnace--I got regulators on the furnace down there. I put them on. But it has--the location, you know, on the furnace--I put the big gauges on there. It shows the height of the land and the pressure of the, you know, the various pressures that change everyday, you know, the pressure, atmosphere changes and pressure everyday. Every four years. And now this land here is higher than any flooding that would be possible. This 00:56:00land here is thirty-five or forty feet above the highest high that they've ever had. This particular street, I'm talking about. See what I mean?

DUNNING: Sacramento.

JOHNSON: So we have never had to worry about anything like that. Not this street. Down here at Columbia they do. The lady--I remember we bought the property from--she had a house down there on Columbia right where it makes the turn and it was flooded out there for a while but then they put a--I don't know--they filled it in though. Then it didn't flood anymore. But up here, never flooded up here.

DUNNING: So you didn't have any problems up here.

JOHNSON: Oh, no we've never had no problems. The only thing we've had were earthquakes. Felt the earthquake, but the earthquake makes you feel dizzy, see what I mean? There's like builders, three of them--I think I told you the last time you were here--they went upstairs before I plastered it and he said, "The way you've got this house built and braced, it would take an awful 00:57:00powerful earthquake to bring it down." And that's--Angie was sitting right with me to prove what I'm sayin'--and she says, "What's that?" I said, "That's an earthquake." And the house was just shaking but it makes you have a kind of a dizzy feeling.

DUNNING: This is the one in '89? Is this the big one in '89?

JOHNSON: No, no this was since then; we've had several. And they claim they've only affected this El Cerrito area here. This earthquake, last couple of earthquakes they had and it was pretty severe. But inspectors saw this house before I plastered it and said, "They don't build them like this anymore." They don't build them and I know--now, I was--I was going to have the house painted and one painter told me, he says, "Well," he said, "It would take a lot of work on this house because," he says, "the way the shingles--." He 00:58:00thought the house was shingled underneath of the plaster on the outside, see what I mean? And he told me the way the house is shingled, those shingles have caused this house to buckle up and have all those bumps, all those high areas in it all over--that was caused by the shingles underneath swelling.

DUNNING: Mr. Johnson, we're going to change the tape now and just--I have just a few more questions. We're talking about your wife, Ida.

JOHNSON: Ida, yeah.

DUNNING: And you were saying that she was quite a social person.

JOHNSON: She went to church, the Episcopal Church--I think it's 00:59:00Thirty-first and--down in--I think it's Oakland.

DUNNING: Now, you were raised Episcopalian. Did you go to church with her?

JOHNSON: No. No. No--wife and I--. I never went to church but once in that whole sixty-eight years we were married. Never went to church.

DUNNING: Did she try to convince you?

JOHNSON: No, she didn't have to try. She would ask me if I wanted to go: "No." She'd never say--. But she was very close, you know, with Father Wallace. He was the deacon at the Episcopal Church in Oakland and she would go to church down there sometimes but he'd come up and get her--Episcopal Church--and take her to church but he never--he never--. But somehow or another, I know--I don't know--I guess I'm radical, in a sense, in this way. But I thought, when I 01:00:00listen to the radio now and I think about people going to church because they want to have someone to ask God to forgive them for doing this and doing that, I don't feel as though I have to have a single soul in this world to ask them--them to ask God to give anything. I ask God myself if there's anything I think that I've done that's wrong. I think it's up to me to ask him, not ask--not get a minister or somebody to do it, or pray for me to do right or pray over my soul, over my body. No! I do that myself. See, it's up to me to do that. My father told me that, "Take care of yourself, boys. No one else is going to take care of you."

DUNNING: Now will you do me a favor? The last time we were here, you told a very beautiful story about your father that said, "Keep flying like that bird."

JOHNSON: Yeah?

DUNNING: Remember the story your father told you about flying like a bird? Would you repeat that for us, because it didn't make it on the tape, not the whole story.

JOHNSON: Repeat it? I don't know what was--I don't know what was being said before that, but my father was saying about the birds, he said--

DUNNING: Well, you were talking about freedom and also nothing to hide.

JOHNSON: Nothing to fear--I was saying when you've got--if you--if you do things according to the rule and regulations, as you get older you never have to worry about anything. You feel free. "You don't feel it now, boys, when you're young, but," he says, "you stay within the law, within the rules and regulations, you don't have to worry any way at all about what is right or what is wrong. You don't have to worry about that. The only way you can think about it is the things that are right or wrong or things that you wouldn't want anybody to do to you. And naturally, don't you do anything to them. The things you do to them that you don't want done to you is wrong. That's the only way 01:02:00you can think of it. And the freest thing on the face of this earth is a bird. You see them flying in the air. Flying around and around and around and around and zig-zagging and you figure you don't know where they're going. They know where they're going, they know how to go, when to go, what to do when they get there." And he said, "They are the freest things on the face of this earth: that bird."

We had some down in the yard, you know, and I was telling you that we took them way down to Fremont and those birds flew back home when they'd never been out of their stall in their life. They'd never been out of the house in their life--up here in Berkeley. Down--we took them down there and that evening those birds flied around in a circle, around in a circle, and when we got home those birds were home back here in Berkeley. How did they get here? Who brought them here? Free. They were free. They could do things on their own and they did them 01:03:00on their own. You look, always--.

And don't think from--. And I worked--. Back east there in those days sometimes, even I think of people--some of the men that worked in the place--you would think they were dumb. You'd think, you know, they act dumb and all. But some of those people could put a machine together, all that sort of thing. Put delicate instruments together but to watch them work, and what there actions are, you'd think they were dumb! They'd act as though they were dumb. Never consider what a man knows and what he don't know. [phone rings] He might know more than you know, but he don't have to express it.

Washburn

Would you like me to answer that, George?

DUNNING: We're going to put this on pause for a moment.

JOHNSON: Now. I don't give away nothing. I don't accept any and I don't give away any. Like my nephew was here, you know, from back east in Chicago--my brothers boy, he's the oldest boy--he came out here about two or three months ago. He told Angie, and Angie told me. He went up to--we took him 01:04:00up to Martinez, this, that, and the other thing, and he wanted Angie to take him all over the house to look at the house to see the house, to see the house. And Angie was telling me after he went. He told Angie, he said, "He's got a very strong house." And he works for an insurance company--that is this boy, my cousin's--my brother's boy's boy. He works for an insurance company. And he told Angie, he said, "He had a very strong house, there. Built very strong." He went downstairs. I know this; he asked me. He said, "The way you've got this built--I was down in the basement, in the garage." he said, "I was looking at it." He says, "All the bracing in this house between the studs, all two-by-four, all on a forty-five degree angle. Every wall is braced on a 01:05:00forty-five degree angle from top to bottom. And all that foundation down," he says, "Who put that concrete down?" He says, "Down in the garage, there? That foundation is three feet above the surface." And he says, "And it's a foot thick!" He says, "Six and eight inches thick is all they do now for concrete for a foundation of a home." "But," he says, "Some of that foundation down there is over a foot thick! How did you do that?" I said, "Well, I just did it. I had time to do it. I put in the forms and had a guy to come and put the soup in there, as we call it."

DUNNING: Now, you've lived longer than most people in the whole world.

JOHNSON: You think so?

DUNNING: A hundred and eight years. Yes! [laughs] Now, one big accomplishment is this house that you built and then you had a very long and successful marriage with your wife. Are there other things you're proud of?

JOHNSON: I think I had successful health! You know what I mean? I haven't been sick or sickly and that sort of thing. You know? And I don't know what impression that my cousin got from my house, but he told Angie, Angie told me that they told him that I was better off than they thought I was. Now, I don't know what they thought I was! [laughs] Do you know what I mean? I don't know how bad off they thought I was, but as I told Angie, I says, "Well, I'm as bad off in a way as anybody in the world could be." I said, "Because I have lost my sight. That's 99 percent of your life. You can't see anybody, you can't see anything, you can't remember names, nothing in this world can you say, "I remember that because I saw it." You don't see nothing. All I see is this black, ignorant space. Nothing. Can't--not even--and I don't understand it. With all of my brothers and sisters, why did I get, you know, become blind? I 01:07:00don't know. I never did anything--never drank, never smoked, never did anything extraordinary that would create a strain.

DUNNING: You just lived a hundred and eight years. You just lived a very long time.

JOHNSON: I lived a hundred and eight years, and just kept quiet.

DUNNING: I'm curious as to how old your siblings lived and your parents. Has anyone lived over a hundred besides you?

JOHNSON: No. My brothers? All of my brothers--there's Ed, Charles, Walter, Herbert, and Harry. All of them lived over ninety.

DUNNING: That's really significant. For men, especially.

JOHNSON: My mother lived to be ninety-eight, ninety-four, and my father lived to be ninety-eight. My father was on that one job from the time he was a young man until he was--he quit at ninety-eight years old. See what I mean?

DUNNING: And your sisters--

JOHNSON: Over ninety-eight years my father worked for that job. When people--see what I mean? Constant work, constant work. No--. I never saw my 01:08:00father take a drink, and he didn't smoke. Straight as a dime! You know, walked straight, fast. I remember him coming down the street, and the neighbors--in the summertime, some of the neighbors would be sitting out and he just--never stopped to say "hello." He'd just shake his hand, "How do? How do? How do?" Because he was part Indian.

DUNNING: And were you at all in touch with your Indian background? Your Native American background?

JOHNSON: No. No. We didn't know anything about them.

DUNNING: How about your dad?

JOHNSON: You see, my Indian background people, they were all down below in Maryland. You know? In the Maryland area. In North Carolina. All my father's people were in Maryland, North--my father came--you see, my father said--. He had him to come north because, he said, for some unknown--he didn't know he was too young--but he said, "He didn't want him to be raised below the 01:09:00Mason and Dixon Line." Whatever that was at that time. And he said--because below that they had all slaves down there, but he says, "But they couldn't make slaves out of the Indian people because they couldn't control them." You know what I mean? Control the people.

Those Indian peoples, they'd go out and try to work but they'd get tired and quit. They didn't--they wasn't under the American rules and regulations. They'd just get tired and quit and go to their wigwam or whatever it was they lived in. And sometimes--he said he remembers his mother carrying him on his back and she'd be out there trying to pick cotton, and he couldn't keep quiet--and sit down and then just take the cotton bag off the back and sit down on the ground, and get up with him on--he'd be on her back--and go on to home to their little cabin. That's they way they worked, and they couldn't do nothing about it. But he said, "Well, all those other people, if they tried to stop," he said, "They'd whip the life out of them" [chuckles] You know what I mean? And that was the way they lived. And he says--but then he says his father--

When he grew up, his father said, he didn't want him because--"And I didn't know it," he says, "the southern boundary of Pennsylvania was what they called 01:10:00the Mason and Dixon Line." And below that--and it was unbelievable because I remember you asking me the other day, "How did they treat the people? The various organizations there?" And I never noticed any different treatment, but I realized since you had told me--and here you've got--it's hard to realize that you got just a ordinary boundary, not a wall, not anything. But here, over here, you've got what you might call say "slave people" and over here they're treated like man and wife, man and human. Why? Why would that one line, why does that one line separate the mind of men? It's hard for me to realize that! But it does! And I remember--oh I was thinking about you telling me about how did they treat the people? And I remember now--because I was very young, didn't realize anything--I didn't realize anything that they had them in such a thing as what they called as "slavery" in the world--.

But I remember my father and some other people was talking about they were 01:11:00going to employ--they were talking about not having any policemen. Any foreign policemen on the force. And this man, his name was Blankenberg, and he was campaigning for mayor of Philadelphia. And I remember as a young boy, and I was selling newspapers, and I was selling the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Telegraph, and I was standing there outside of this big club called the Union League club. It had a great big stone porch in the front. This man was campaigning to be mayor of Philadelphia. And his campaign speech--I remember standing there with papers in my hand to sell and I remember him saying, "If I'm elected mayor, every man, woman, and child will have a square deal." And I thought to myself, "What kind of a deal do you think they're 01:12:00getting now?"

He was elected mayor and so I remember the Philadelphia papers said the first thing he did when he was elected mayor was to organize a new police regiment. See? In those--and that police regiment was all of colored people. All, the whole thing was made up of--which had never had any colored policemen in Philadelphia at that time. And when he organized this whole police battalion or regiment or whatever you want to call it, and the newspaper, the Philadelphia--I was just about, oh, five, six, seven years old. And I remember the Philadelphia newspaper called the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Telegraph, they were against him hiring all these people to put on 01:13:00the force. These Asian--not Asian people, but black people. And every newspaper after he appointed this colored battalion--scattered them all over the city in places where they didn't want them. Oh, they'd fight them--the different people would fight them, you know. Wanted them out of there! For a while, until they got used to them being around. But the newspapers, they condemned it. They made a--and every newspaper, every newspaper that would come out would have it in title at the top: "We're against Blankenberg's"--they called them "Blankenberg's Brownies." The police--he called them--they called them "Blankenberg's Brownie's" that's what they called them, these black people that the mayor had appointed in the police department. There was about twenty-five to thirty of them. And I remember you asking me the other time you was here if there was any prejudice. That's the only thing I remember them saying about 01:14:00those policemen.

DUNNING: Did you ever feel prejudice youself? Did you experience it?

JOHNSON: No. Oh, no. No I went all the way--primary school, all the way up to high school, right on through college. Now, in high school I went to was mostly in a Jewish neighborhood. But there were more--in the class, I remember--in the class--I was thinking about that the other day, you was asking me did I have any prejudice of that kind? No. We were all seated, as I remember, in alphabetical order. And all on the right there were Jews, mostly Jews. German. Goldstein, Goldberg, Ginberg, Gimble--all those were Jews. And on the right, when it got down to me, I was Johnson, all of those with G, H, J--and then I was Johnson--and then it got down to J, K and there was two Irish fellows on my right. They were seated alongside of me, there was Kane and Kats, 01:15:00but they spelt their name K-A-T-S and K-A-N-E--not C-A-T- S or C. Now, they were two Irish boys and we were all friendly. Noontime, we'd all go to lunch together.

Washburn

But George? David. You told me the first time we met. I asked you, I said that your name appeared in a book about the African-American community, the black community in Richmond and you told me that people have at times in your life thought that you were of some black blood. Some black ancestry. What can you tell me about that?

JOHNSON: Well, I don't know that I have--I don't remember telling him that I have any black blood, because I don't remember. I know I haven't got any black blood. My father was half-Indian. See? My father was half-Indian. His mother was a pure-blood Indian called--oh--the name of the tribe--in those--but 01:16:00they were from Kentucky. Down from Kentucky--Lomai, Loma tribe in Kentucky, see? And my father married this lady in Baltimore. She's a--my father's--my mother was a Swede. Her name was Corona. Corona--and her name was Corona Louise Burgess. She was a Swede. My father married this--he married her in Baltimore, Maryland.

But my father was the offspring of president--he wasn't president when he was born, you understand--he became president--and he wasn't voted president, either. He was president because he was--became president on account of Lincoln being shot--but my father, I remember my father saying--when Abraham Lincoln gave his address, "Four score and seven years." I remember my father saying, "Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this 01:17:00continent." And he said that was in Pennsylvania on a platform during the Civil War, and he said his father was on one side of the platform and he was on the other side before Abraham Lincoln. See what I mean? A lot of people don't know. You see, there wasn't photography and all those people in those days to take pictures and all that stuff down. And all that kind of stuff has died off with history and everything else and there's nobody to record it.

DUNNING: Well, since you're one of the oldest people in the country--are there stories that you would like recorded? Really important events or experiences you've had in your life that you would like to have remembered?

JOHNSON: No, I don't think of anything very important.

DUNNING: Is there any advice you would like to give to the younger generation?

JOHNSON: Oh, I would like just the younger generation to don't get any prejudice in their mind, heart, and soul. Go along and look at everybody as 01:18:00human beings. They all have to--we all come in this world in the same manner and we all leave in the same manner: we die. But while we're here, for God's sake, try to make it comfortable, because we don't believe it will ever be back. That's all.

Washburn

George, I'm looking at this picture here of you and your wife. And--what can you tell me about your wife's ancestry?

JOHNSON: My wife? My wife's ancestry I couldn't tell you a thing. I couldn't tell you a thing about--my wife never said any thing at all about her ancestry, although we lived in Philadelphia in the same neighborhood. That's where I accumulated--that's where I become acquainted with my wife--going to school together as--you know, in the kindergarten right on up. But so far as--and I never--and her father never mentioned anything about her ancestry. Her mother and her father, you know what I mean? She was--I think they were 01:19:00from one of the islands somewhere. I don't know which one. I'm not sure. But her father--and that was another thing about her father. Her father and I never sat down and talked in mutual conversation together. For some reason. Not that we despised or hated each other, but we never had any reasons to. He had his own organization and club and one thing or another and I had mine and we just all knew that way. We never associated with one another. Her mother and I, you know , we were more social than her father. But her father, he never--I don't know--he associated here in California. As I can remember, he associated--he 01:20:00lived more down around, oh--I don't know how to explain it--but he associated more with the Chinese. He associated more with those Chinese more than he did anybody else! Because he, you know, he had his business and everything right in Chinatown there. He associated with Chinese. A lot of them. But my wife--boy, she was something.

DUNNING: Well, is there anything else you'd like to add?

JOHNSON: There's nothing that I can think about right now. If I think about it I'll call you.

DUNNING: That would be terrific. It seems like you worked your whole life. You're a real hard-working person.

JOHNSON: I have. I never was--I hear people--like I say these people here out of work--I was never out of work. Any length of time, you know. It looked like--well, as I can remember, honest to God, as far back as I can remember, I would go from one job to another. Never was out two or three months 01:21:00or a year, that kind of thing. Oh no! Nothing like that!

DUNNING: Well, it seemed like it really helped you that you had that good education and graduated from Drexel.

JOHNSON: You see, if--when I was doing like carpentry work, and I was doing carpentry work for a while--and I finished one job, and I wouldn't bring my carpentry tools home and sit down and wait for somebody and go to the--never went to an employment office in my life to get a job. Never! But I was working all the time. But what I would do, I'd take my box, my box, and put it on my shoulder and put it in my car and go all through the hills. Drive, ride around. And wherever I saw them building, go in and ask them if they needed any help. And never have I been disappointed. Every time: "Yes, yes, sure!" There's a lot of people, you know, builders, they want help but they 01:22:00just don't take the time to call the employment office for them, you know what I mean. They just don't do that. And I--you go in and: "Yes, we want somebody." And you work, maybe work there for two or three months, finish the job up, finish the whole job up, go to another job. Never. I don't know--and I can't--my brother Herbert, he was--my brother now he has a very peculiar life. [laughs] My youngest brother, Herbert.

DUNNING: Do you have any brothers? Is Herbert still living?

JOHNSON: Living? Oh no. He died.

DUNNING: Okay, so are you the surviving sibling?

JOHNSON: Now, he was in the navy. He quit--he joined--when I went in, the time I went in the army, during the First World War, he went in the navy, see? Now, here--maybe this will interest you, I don't know. But when he went in the navy, see now he was very light. He looked like he was Caucasian. All my--all 01:23:00of my--my mother and father couldn't understand how it was that I took so much brown as my father. My father was brown; he took the brown Indian. But anyway--alright. Now my brother goes to enlist in the navy. Now, here's what he said. He got down to nationality, he said he was part Indian. Alright. Now here he is, he looked like he was a Caucasian. See what I mean? Now, he's part Indian. Now here was the dilemma that they went under and I--you wouldn't dream that they went under this kind of position. This thought. Now, here's an Indian; he looks like he's white. We can't put him down on the deck, because down there there's all Caucasian fellows, you know, sailors, scrubbing the deck. All of them. They didn't have no blacks on the deck at that time. They can't put him with them because he's Indian. They can't put him in the galley, 01:24:00now the galley is where they had most of the black people. You know what I mean? Now, here he is: he looks white, he says he's Indian, you can't put him in the galley. Where can we put his fellow? He--now he's joining the armed forces to fight in the war, but here they are arguing about his nationality and where they can put him to work in there. Alright. So finally they decided since they can't put him on the deck, they can't put him in a galley, what do they do with him? They said that--and he said he's Indian--what they would do was use him as a valet for the high officers on the ship. See what I mean? And that's like he said, "George," he said, I remember him saying, "Many a day I'd look down on the ship, on the deck and see all those men down there working and thought, wished I could get down and work with them. Here I am, up here, just like in a cabin." He had to live up there amongst the four officers and a captain. Five, altogether. That's where he spent his years--four years in the 01:25:00navy. Four years on the ship up in the officers quarters, living--had his own room and everything up there. Took care of them as valet, see what I mean? Keep their clothes and their rooms and everything cleaned up, and he was there valet. Now, they put him there because he didn't seem to--they didn't seem to want to mix him in with the other two races of people on the ship. Now, that was during the First World War.

DUNNING: Well, thanks--that was a great story thank you. That story told quite a bit.

JOHNSON: At one time, as I say, they stopped where they could--you could get off--. And it's like he said, he had all the freedom in the world that you'd want, as long as he kept their rooms cleaned and everything. When they stopped at different places he'd get in one of the tugboats and go to shore and visit the little towns in France--I remember him saying in France--and he had--I was telling you--he had these two bottles of wine this guy gave him and 01:26:00said he had them fifty years. My wife and I, we had it almost fifty years and it was stolen from us. The cork was put in and the lid covering over the top and then wrapped with wire--copper wire all around. Two great big bottles. About a quart, fifth in size, you know. And I had it in this kitchen down in the closet there. Brought them all the way to California. I'd had them at least--oh, it would be at least almost fifty years at that time. And he--the fellow--that Frenchman that gave them to him said he'd had them fifty years. So those two bottles of wine were almost a hundred years old, at least. Ninety, a hundred. Stolen! Stolen by people that we thought had come here to take care of the house for us.

DUNNING: Now, Mr. Johnson--I would think being a hundred and eight you'd be kind of famous. I would think you'd be a kind of a famous person, you know, being a hundred and eight years old.

JOHNSON: Famous in what way?

DUNNING: Well, people wanting to interview you on TV, and radio.

JOHNSON: Yeah, but--

DUNNING: Did you want that, ever?

JOHNSON: Oh, I wouldn't want that, no. I don't know what I would say, talk about. You know what I mean? I had--you know what I mean? I just don't know what I would have--what I could tell them that would be interesting to the average person.

DUNNING: Well, do you mind of if we show your tape to other people?

JOHNSON: No, of course not.

DUNNING: And let them listen to your story?

JOHNSON: If you think they'd be interested in it.

DUNNING: Oh, absolutely.

JOHNSON: I'm wondering whether I would be interested in listening to it.

DUNNING: Well, I think what we're going to try to do is to--do you have a cassette recorder? A tape recorder? That maybe we can make you some tapes, so you can listen to it.

JOHNSON: Okay.

DUNNING: Now, is there anything else you'd like to add?

JOHNSON: I don't know there's anything right now. The only thing--the newspaper man from one of the--Oakland Tribune, I think it was, was here quite 01:28:00a while ago. And he was asking me do I remember where I was born, what city. I said, "Yeah. I was born in Philadelphia." He said, "Do you know the place where you lived?" I said, "Yeah, I live"--I have three places in Philadelphia that I lived in.

DUNNING: Right, you described them to me.

JOHNSON: 1511 Kater Street.

DUNNING: Fifteenth Street, also.

JOHNSON: 1511 Kater, and then--. 1511 Kater was the house I was born in. Then we moved to 1815 Montrose Street. Then we moved from there to 923 S. Fifteenth Street. Then we moved from there to 1336 S, Forty-sixth Street. And that's where I was--when I went to war, that's where I went to war from: 1336 S. Forty-sixth. And all those houses from childhood. And my mother had Dr. 01:29:00Morris--he was the doctor for my mother--and I was born in Philadelphia, there. And Dr. Morris, he stayed with the family, oh, up until I was seven, eight years old. But my father: never, never heard of him being sick. Never saw him--you know, complain--never complain! Never saw where him wearing any bandages or anything like plasters or anything and always straight and coming and going, coming and going, coming and going. He never--you see, in those days--. He wore--and he rode a bicycle, too. And he'd ride a bicycle to work and back from work, and here he was up in his eighties and he was riding a bicycle.

DUNNING: I think this proves that you have really good genes! It's amazing. Well, we want to thank you very much for taking this time

JOHNSON: Yeah, well I thank you. Well, I'm going to tell you: you're not taking my time. My time is my own, you know what I mean? I appreciate somebody coming, at least talking to me.

DUNNING: Well, we've really enjoyed it.

JOHNSON: Because it's a very lonesome thing sitting here, not--like I say, I often tell Angie, my cousin here said--I told her I wasn't as bad off as he thought I was. I tell her: "How bad off did he think I was? What did he think I was?" [laughing] You know what I mean? I say, "Outside of me living, if I was in prison now." I guess I shouldn't say this, "If I was in prison, what would I be--what would be--what would be--I can't understand what I would be 01:30:00denied of." I'm denied of everything in the world sitting right here. See what I mean? When you have to feel your way when you get up. Just to go from one room to the other. What kind of freedom have you got? It's a terrible thing. You don't think about it until it happens. But it's there. And I used to tell Angie and Ida, many times and all the different people and different complaints that she would have. I didn't realize it until. And I didn't realize that she was as sick as she was, not being able to talk. But I remember many, many times she would get so despondent and so terrible. I could see she was just worried--she'd try to explain, try to say something to me. I remember: [laughs] Oh, I remember one time, she was lying in the bed and she was there just complaining about--and pointing down to her feet, you know? And I couldn't--all 01:31:00I thought was her feet--that she wanted her feet covered up, you know? Most people that go to bed, they want their feet covered. But no: I put the cover up over her feet and she tried to say what was wrong and she finally couldn't say it and she just reached and pulled the covers off of her feet and pointed down to her feet, where she had a little callus on her foot that she wanted taken off. [laughs]

DUNNING: So she communicated--

JOHNSON: I thought to myself, there she was trying her best to tell me what and couldn't do it and finally she had to just point to it and show me. She tried her best to do it, but she couldn't. Oh boy, I tell you. My God, I think to myself, all the different places--.

DUNNING: Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?

JOHNSON: No! Anything you ask me is--

DUNNING: Okay. Now this is a question I'm just kind of interested in. Do you believe in an afterlife?

JOHNSON: Do I believe in what?

DUNNING: In an afterlife.

JOHNSON: Afterlife? I can't say that I do. I often think about that. You know what I mean? If we have an afterlife--think of the--where would we be? Where would we go? What would we do? When we think of it this way: think of all the--now, here we are: millions of people in the world today. They won't be here a hundred years ago. Now, where's all the millions and millions and millions of people who have been here before us? Where are they? Where are they if they have an afterlife? In another world? I don't know. But I--here's one thing I do believe, though. I can't--I believe this: that--now I was on--I was telling, I think, on the ship at nighttime. And--on the ocean. Quiet, 01:33:00everything just was quiet and the ship was going along slowly. Nobody there but you and the ship and all the lights--. You had to put all the lights out because we were afraid the Germans would see us and attack us, you know? And to look up and see all of the stars. All of the stars! Thousands! And all lit up! Lit up! You know, you wouldn't be able to see them if they wasn't lit up. And the one sun that we have, is lighting those stars. What are they?

And I believe this: there's people--there's something--living on some of those stars. We're not the only one. We are not the only one in the universe that has life. Of course, we went to the moon, there was no life on the moon. But still, look at the--honest to God! When I looked up and saw all those--as far as you could see and as close together as you could see them without 01:34:00bumping into one another--. It didn't look like they were more than two or three inches apart--all lit up! Made me--it makes you feel--it makes you feel afraid. Scared. And there was so much light in them that they were lighting the--you could walk around on the deck of the ship by the light of the stars. Not the light of the moon, but the light of those stars. Now, you say, "Is there life after? Where do we go?" You know what I mean? Where are we going to go? And how many is going to be there? Millions! Something to think about, you know? I can't see it. But now and then--

DUNNING: Well, I appreciate your answering, because it's a question many of us think about.

JOHNSON: Well, why do most people go to church? They go to church praying 01:35:00that they will be taken care of. Ninety-nine percent of them. After this life, you know? Don't you think that?

DUNNING: I think you're right.

JOHNSON: And then when they stop to think: where are we going to go? Where are we going to go? Where are we going to go? I can't--if we go somewhere--. And right now, of course, what parts of this earth is inhabited? Most of it is almost overpopulated now. See what I mean? With life, and if most of them are overpopulated, they're not--most of them are overpopulated in those who have living conditions. Now, if all of the people on this Earth go somewhere after they're gone, how about all of those that's been here before us and all 01:36:00that will come along after we're gone? It's hard to realize. Hard to think--it's something to think about!

DUNNING: [laughs] Well, I'd like to thank you. I think maybe David had--did you have a couple things or are you all set?

Washburn

No.

DUNNING: It was a great ending, I think.

JOHNSON: The most thing I think about is like my father said: "Don't worry about what is wrong. Everything is wrong that you wouldn't want the other fellow to do to you. Don't do it to him. That's all. If you do that, you'll be doing the right thing." [laughs]

DUNNING: Well, it's been a real pleasure meeting you.

JOHNSON: Well, I'm glad you came and I appreciate you coming once in a while and having a little talk with me.

DUNNING: That would be great.

JOHNSON: Because I'm--you see me. I'm here alone in my own environment and I can't understand why I was put into this position. And of course I can't say that my oldest--the rest of my family didn't go blind but none of them 01:37:00have lived this long.

DUNNING: Right. Well, I think that's it.

JOHNSON: So that's--I can't condemn that. But why, why--

[End of interview]