Lawrence "Larry" Lillard of Darby enlisted in 1942 and served three years as an aircraft mechanic at Victorville Air Force Base in California. But a vivid wartime memory came before he enlisted:

I was working in the oil fields at Elwood, 12 miles north of Santa Barbara, Calif. On Feb. 14, 1942 at 6 p.m., a Japanese submarine came in on the surface and fired from their deck gun about 30 rounds of 3-inch shells at the 80,000 barrel oil tanks. They were very poor marksmen because they didn't hit a single tank. The only damage was to an 18-foot-long wooden walking beam. We were told about $500 damage.

I was not working at the time but was there the next day. I have in my possession a piece of shrapnel from one of the 3-inch shells that was fired from the deck gun on the Japanese submarine. I was one of the few that didn't have to engage in hand-to-hand combat or endure the bombing or storm the coast of some island or the coast of France, or get shot down from a B-17. I believe my Lord Jesus had a hand in my life at that time.

Ruth Wigfield Phillip of Missoula recalls wartime romance:

I had graduated from the university in 1939. I was engaged to Milton Phillip, who was a year behind me in the university, so he graduated in 1940. He was in debt, and he wanted to pay these debts before getting married. Then Dec. 7th happened. I wondered if Milton and I would ever marry. My father bought me a brand new car with six-ply tires, as he knew I would be traveling.

Milton, by having a college degree, was accepted in the Naval School in Chicago. He graduated as an ensign, around with perhaps 800 other men, chosen to be there. Of these 800 men, around 600 were married on the same day. They graduated in the morning of May 14th. I was there in Chicago, and we were married in the afternoon of May 14th, 1942. We were married in a tiny new church as it was probably the only church available that day. Another couple (not married as yet that day), stood up for us. They married two hours later.

Then we went to Stockton, Calif., where mine-sweeping boats were being made. Until the boat was finished, we went back to the San Francisco area and Milton was given a job of training sailors at Treasure Island, until his wooden boat arrived. Milton's little boat, being wooden in make, didn't cause the metal mines to attack it. Milton ended up being in command of mine-sweeping those islands in the far west Pacific.

It wasn't long after that when I watched that boat go sailing away to the western seas. I came back to Montana and stayed until the war was over.

Wars tear people apart. We wrote each other every day. I still have a trunk full of his letters to me.

Ann Liszak's collection of wartime memories includes this shot of a plane crew getting ready for action in World War II.

Ann Liszak of Evaro followed her husband where she could until he was shipped overseas:

(In the spring of 1942), I met my future husband. In 1942, virginity was not taken as lightly as it is today, and even though he used the line that he "needed to know that I REALLY loved him, so he would have something to come home for" ... I insisted on a marriage license first, so we crossed the border into Kentucky and got married on a Monday morning, Aug. 10, 1942.

He was terrified of being drafted into the walking army, otherwise known as cannon fodder, so on Sept. 4, he enlisted at Patterson Field as an aviation cadet. He enrolled in a glider pilot training program at Dahio Airport, south of Dayton, where he got his license as a single engine pilot. This was a civilian pilot training program through the YMCA.

In February 1943, he was sent to Hunter Field, Hamilton, Texas with the 23rd Army Air Force Glider training detachment. I followed him there and rented a room just off the base. He got his glider wings in March 1943. After graduation they were sent to Kelly Field, San Antonio, Texas prior to being shipped overseas. I watched him board a troop train and took a Greyhound bus to San Antonio. The troop train did not arrive in San Antonio until two weeks later. They were sidetracked all that time while trains with more priority went by. A few weeks later, the glider program was discontinued, as gliders proved to be sitting ducks for enemy fire.

From there we were sent to Lake Charles, La. where it rained a lot, and whenever the flight line was closed due to rain, he could come home, hence, I got pregnant with our first son.

In March 1944, he was shipped from Lake Charles to Sardinia, Italy via Africa to join the 12th A.A.F. Marauder Group piloting a B-26, medium bomber with a crew of six. Aug. 15, 1944 (a day after our son was born at Wright Patterson Air Force Base), they invaded southern France. This was his 40th mission. He was then promoted to first lieutenant.

They were then moved to Dijon, France, where, when taking off on his 55th mission, his wing clipped a bulldozer that was sitting at the end of the not-quite-completed runway, causing the plane to spin around and slam into the bulldozer with a full bomb load. The entire plane exploded into flames. All of the crew members were blown out of the plane, and suffered severe burns on the face and hands.

The entire war was declared over on Aug. 14, 1945 ... our baby's first birthday. The streets of downtown Dayton were jammed with people celebrating. Jerry had an extremely tough time adapting to civilian life. His old job as a lathe operator was given to him, but he was used to being a hotshot pilot, so factory work was boring. He then went to Flint, Mich.'s General Motors Institute on his GI Bill and got a degree in engineering, but drafting was as boring to him as the factory work had been, so he went into sales, and found that he liked the freedom of being on the road all week. He died Dec. 7 (ironic) 1976.

Vivid memories: Getting a telegram from Jerry saying he was "alive and well, letter follows," just as two officers in uniform rang the doorbell to tell me that he had been wounded.

Giving birth to the second baby born in the new maternity ward at Wright Patterson Air Force base by a colonel, and feeling so terribly alone during visiting hours when the new fathers came, in full uniform to visit wives and babies. It was a barracks-type room with 20 beds and no privacy. Censored mail: Many letters from Jerry had whole paragraphs blacked out. The reason: "A slip of the lip could sink a ship."

Marie Elizabeth "Betty" Malahowski of Missoula recalls that her husband, Walter Frances Malahowski, stayed stateside during the war. He died March 19, 1988 in Missoula.

We were so fortunate. My husband was stateside throughout the war. We wives were informed (that) we must not ask our husbands what they were doing. It was a long time later we heard many people were questioned by the FBI about us. Since he had a very important job, obviously he passed.

Perhaps they were investigating us because we were first-generation Americans. His father was born in Russia and his mother in Poland. My parents were born in Denmark.

We were together for two years in Great Bend, Kan. Then he was transferred to Wendover, Utah (where he worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb). I went back to Illinois with our sons. Something to remember about the war: While the atomic bomb was a terrible thing, it saved many lives. The war could have gone on much longer. Other countries were working on the bomb - just think about the consequences had they beat us.

For Eunice Wesley of Victor, the war meant a series of moves along the West Coast. But by the time she turned 16, she was working at Paine Field Air Base preparing airplanes:

On Dec. 7, 1941, President Roosevelt told us we were at war. I was 14. We lived on Prescott in Portland, Ore. Then we moved to Vancouver, Wash., and my mother and father worked for Kaiser making warships. From there we moved to Los Gatos, Calif. Then we moved to Los Angeles. From there we moved to San Jose, Calif.

Don Micknak of Missoula spent more than four years on active duty and 22 years in the Reserves; his memories of the era begin when he was 11.

Because of the manpower shortage, many boys and girls worked on farms and ranches doing man's work. At 11 years old or so I worked after school, some weekends and all summer long doing general farm and ranch work. Most of us kids 11 or 12 years old knew how to shoot a rifle or drive a truck or a tractor.

In 1942 or 1943 I was cutting brush with a 16 year old boy, my uncle's brother. One day Bobbie was both sad and angry while relating a sad tale about his close cousin. The cousin was 17 years old and a new Marine. He was mowed down by the Japanese along with most of his platoon before they reached some little no name island in the Pacific. Well, Bobbie said to me, "I can't wait until I turn 17 so I can go over there and wipe out some Japs." When Bob reached 17 his parents signed the enlistment papers and Bob joined the Marines. Within a year Bobbie was killed along with many other Marines before they got to a beach on a small island called Tarawa.

This made such an impression on me, I couldn't wait until I turned 17 years old so I could join the military and even the score. As it turned out the war ended when I was almost 15. Six years later I joined the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War. This time the enemy was the Red Chinese and the North Koreans.

The two world wars should have taught Americans the importance of freedom, loyalty and patriotism.

Mavis McKelvey of Missoula has vivid memories of the homefront during World War II and pen pals from England.

World War II began for me in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and England declared war. I was 11 years old. My awareness of war came from three sources: the voice of Edward R. Murrow on the news every weekday evening, the photographs in Life Magazine, and newsreels shown in local movie theaters. Perhaps because newsreels were watched in darkened theaters, and Murrow's broadcasts were in the evening, my memories of those war years were dark. The voices from England had a distant sound; men spoke loudly over the static, but their voices conveyed urgency and fear. I'll never forget Murrow's broadcasts from the roof of the CBS Studio in London during the Blitz. In his words I saw the fires, as I heard the sirens and the bombs drop.

I spent the war years in high school in a suburb of Milwaukee. My class graduated in 1946, a year after the war ended, so we never were "called to action." Our upper classmates were. When they had leave, they always returned to the school in their uniforms. They looked much older, handsome, and romantic to us sophomores.

Generally we led fairly normal high school lives, except when we encountered food shortages, or didn't have enough stamps for a new pair of shoes or a new coat. However, rationing did not extend to yard goods, so we learned to sew, as we learned to walk and to take the bus, even to the prom.

It was in high school that we acquired English pen pals, and although we haven't been in contact for over 50 years, I still remember her name, Sheila McCormack from Southwest London. We sent her and her family many care packages over the years, filled with canned food, soap, shoe laces, toilet paper, thread, yarn, needles, writing paper, candy and gum. Care package postage was subsidized by the Post Office because sending food to Britain was part of the war effort. I remember that toward the end of the war a buzz bomb landed in the McCormack's back yard and destroyed the back of their house. Sheila suffered deep wounds on her legs from flying glass.

Perhaps the most subtle and significant impact on teen-agers in wartime was that the war made all of us grow up faster; not because we wanted to, but because the society of our elders was too busy, too preoccupied, to tolerate or indulge adolescent angst. This highly structured and unified society, with all its restrictions (curfews, dress codes, movie censorship), in an unexpected way set us free to concentrate on learning and on being creative. Our identities could not depend on new clothes, or a car, or the high drama of teen-age rebellion, so we were forced to do what all young people eventually do when they become adults, we had to pull those disparate parts of ourselves together and to form, at least the beginning of, our essential, individual selves. Without our really knowing, the war gave us an intellectual and emotional maturity that has seen us through our lives and made us, if not the greatest, a great generation.

Margie A. Gignac of Lolo was just 4 when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

I remember my parents being very upset. They were talking of moving to California where my father was going to work in a defense plant.

By the summer of 1942, my parents, my two sisters and I were on the road in our Plymouth sedan en route to Glendale, Calif. At first, we rented a small house. My father went to work at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank, California. He was a machinist and worked on parts for P-38s and B-17s.

My parents bought a house with a large lot and many fruit trees. We had a Victory Garden and my motherand grandmother canned many vegetables and preserves. I remember sugar, coffee, and meat being rationed. We had ration coupons and tokens to use at the store. Gasoline was also rationed, but my father was able to go back and forth to work as his job was necessary to the war effort. However we could not go on any "pleasure rides."

We saved scrap metal, tin cans and lard. All houses had to have blackout curtains and when the air-raid siren sounded, the curtains had to cover the windows and no lights were supposed to be seen. A block warden would patrol the area and if he saw any lights, he would knock on the door and tell you to cover up that space.

I remember taking nickels to school and buying saving stamps, which in turn could be used to buy war bonds. Sometimes, we would be able to go to a Saturday afternoon movie. The "Movietone News" would show warships in convoys, bombing runs and aerial fights. That made a big impression on me. It brought home the fighting.

My mother was a seamstress and she not only made our clothes, she did so for many neighbors, expertly and cheaply.

I remember the war as being a time when the united sacrifices of the American people - men and women in the service and citizens on the home front ñ came together for a singular purpose: to win the war.

Rosemarie Neuman of Stevensville recalls days of hard work on the farm:

I remember doing all the farm work as teen-agers because there was no help to be had. My brother and I, in our early teens,did the work of grown men. I also remember how exciting it was to wave to the troop trains, full to the brim. I was 16 and very impressed.

I will never forget the end of the war, we were all so relieved. A few years after the war, I married one of those brave men, and I'm still married to him today.

Jean Potts Haviland of Deer Lodge served as an Army nurse. During the war I finished nursing school with the last six months in the nurse cadet program. ...

During World War II, my most vivid memory was how hard my brother and mother worked on the cattle ranch. Help was impossible to find and farm equipment was scarce.

Rose Ellen Vasquez of Victor was 9 years old when word came that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

When I first heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor I was home with my parents and my five brothers and two sisters. We lived on the Southeast side of Milwaukee, Wisc. I was 9 years old. I got worried when my sister Mary, told me about the bombing and that the Japanese may soon be here!

I really didn't understand much about it. I do remember the newsboys yelling "Extra! Extra!" in the dark morning hours. I remember my mother looking worried. Very soon my oldest brother who was in the National Guard, joined the Navy and went to the Naval Station at Glenview, Ill. He worked with and taught at the radar school for the duration of the war. My brother Jim joined the Air Force. My father went to work at Nordberg Manufacturing, a defense plant. My oldest sister, Grace, went to work there too and later went into nurse's training in the Army Nurse Corps. My brother Tom later joined the Navy.

We younger children soon learned what it meant to be in a country at war. Rationing of food and gasoline was a real eye-opener. However, we had just experienced the Great Depression so we were used to not having a lot, but seemingly enough. I know it was very hard on my parents.

Maybe they are the Greatest Generation. They saw to it that we were clothed and fed during the Depression and then, those very sons and daughters they clothed and fed were sent to war. We children participated in bringing small amounts of money to school to buy War Bonds.

My most vivid memory, it is still in my mind like a clear photograph, is of the evening the doorbell rang. We were gathered together, as we did each evening to say the family rosary in March 1945. It was the dreaded War Telegram to my parents, Robert and Frances Mueller: "Your son is missing in action. While on a bombing mission to Germany his plane crashed in France."

Jim had been stationed in England with the 8th Air Force. He was a B-17 bomber pilot and was on his 29th mission. Another plane in the squadron formation went out of control and crashed into his. I believe everyone was killed. He was due to return home after the 30th mission. The sadness in our home, as in so many others, was overwhelming. The comforts were found in the large size of our family and our extended family and our religious faith. It was the first time I saw my father cry and my parents cried off and on for many weeks.

On V-J Day, the end of the war in 1945, we were all relieved, but my Dad sat quite numbly as the sirens blared and my big sister took me out for a walk to give my parents privacy, I think.

A very strong memory that surrounds all the others is the feeling of togetherness. The little banners in the windows of homes where someone was in the service, the rationing, all the thousands at work in the defense factories, the ever-present prayers at home and at church. For us, our strong religious faith and close family were the keys to our lives. The consequences of not pulling together and winning the war would have left the world in terrible chaos. As so many have said, never take freedom for granted, especially religious freedom. Religious freedom holds the core of our spirit and faith.

Marion J. Leifer of Missoula had to deal with the challenges of rationing during her days teaching at a rural school.

I graduated from high school in 1943 and while I was in school I had a part-time job as a long distance telephone operator. In 1943 the telephone was almost the only form of communication and it was important to have operators around the clock.

After graduation I attended a Rural Normal School in Wisconsin that was training teachers for rural schools in a 20-month crash course. We also learned first aid and some terrain driving for the Red Cross.

In September of 1944 I started teaching in a rural one-room school with 40 students spread over eight grades. I was the only teacher. Gas rationing made driving impossible so I lived on a farm and walked to school. In cold weather our only source of heat was an oil-burner stove which we shut down every night to save fuel. This was in Waukesha County in Wisconsin.

My worst memory will always be losing my best male friend at Okinawa. The fellowship among people was at a high level. We were a united and sharing population. Young women in my age bracket were hostesses for dances and special events for the sailors who were brought into Milwaukee from the Naval Base at Waukegan, Illinois. We did volunteer work when needed, and we wrote many letters to our friends in the military.

Food rationing and the point system is also a memory. Besides the onset of Spam, many recipes were modified to make use of what materials were available.

I am amazed at how few younger people have any knowledge of the Second World War, and the people who gave their lives for us so we can continue to live in the free world that the U.S.A. represents. There still are many veterans alive and I hope they will share their memories with our youth.

Maureen Theiler of Polson recalls growing up in a Pennsylvania town that today reminds her of Butte.

I was 4 years old, living in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. This city in northeastern Pennsylvania was in the anthracite (hard coal) mining area and very much like Butte. The neighborhood was a mixture of professionals, blue-collar workers and stay-at-home moms. All during the war, many people gathered on their porches after the evening meal and visited back and forth while youngsters played kick-the-can or hide-and-seek in the alleys and street. Many women worked in factories while their sons or husbands were off to the war. My uncle, Frederick Beeman, spent his war time in France and while he was there, his mother, my grandmother, died. Our family moved in with my grandfather as he was disabled.

When the war was over, my uncle brought home bobby pins, needles, soap and boxes of chocolate bars. Everything was packed together in his duffel bag. Unfortunately, the chocolate was all together with the soap and every candy bar tasted like Sweetheart Soap! I recall opening every candy bar along with my sister, Ginny and some neighbor kids: Hershey's Grade A ñ a smooth light milk chocolate, a favorite of all children, inedible because of the soap. There were many packages of nylons (stockings) for all the women in the neighborhood. These, along with bobby pins, were rationed until after the war. Women wore anklets then, even with their high heels and the style caught on rapidly and became a fashion rage! The nylon used in making stockings, was used in the manufacture of parachutes.

My oldest sister, Peg, worked for J.B. Carr, a cookie-making company, and the day the war was over, along with all the church bells, fire sirens, train whistles the employees were throwing cookies out of the windows of the plant.

My uncle suffered shell shock and would just about jump out of his skin when a door was slammed. I think now it is called post-traumatic stress. My cousin, Eddie Metzger 18, died in the war and when we attended his funeral, my Aunt Bertha cried so hard with grief as she leaned on his flag-draped coffin.

Robert Schurr of Missoula recalls worrying in the war's early years that the United States was losing.

I grew up on a farm in northern South Dakota. A few weeks after Pearl Harbor my father and I were in the cattle yard behind the barn. I heard about the sinking of one of our aircraft carriers in the Pacific. I asked Dad how big an aircraft carrier was. He pointed to a large straw stack 200 yards from the barn and said it was at least that big. My 11-year-old mind could not comprehend a ship that large, and when I thought about that ship being sunk I was certain in my mind that we had lost the war.

Farm life was not affected very much by the war. We had enough gas and oil for our tractor. Much of the farm work was still done with horses, and we had to use the old machinery we had until the war was over. Our car blew an engine during the war years and Dad was very lucky to get a decent replacement to drive.

I remember the wonderful spirit of patriotism we felt during the war. My father sold savings bonds. The children brought pennies and nickels to our one-room school and we bought saving stamps for 10 cents each. $18.75 would buy a $25 savings bond. Mother recycled metal cans and saved used bacon grease which could be used in some way to make explosives.

We did not see the war except in magazines and on newsreels at the movie theater. We did not know how awful it was. We did not understand why returning service men would not talk about the war.

That was a time when our individual world did not go beyond the places we visited or where relatives lived. I did not get out of the state of South Dakota until I was 18 years old. The world was very large back then.

Theresa Woomer of Missoula worked as a telephone operator and volunteered during the war years.

I worked as a telephone operator in New Kensington, Pa., during the war. When any significant events occurred it affected the telephone traffic. I remember the way the switchboards lit up when D-Day began. The churches were open 24 hours a day so that people could stop in and pray for their loved ones.

During blackouts I volunteered as a bicycle messenger. They were uneventful practices but a precautionary exercise. Volunteering was the thing to do. When I wanted to donate blood to the Red Cross I had to have parental permission, being under 21.

Oddly, there wasn't much complaining about the rationing and shortages, people would shrug and say, "It's the war, you know."

My most vivid memory is when my family received news that my brother was missing in action. It was hard for me to understand what "missing" meant. So many friends and neighbors came to commiserate and offered suggestions on how to get more information. He was a crew chief on a B- 17 and shot down over Germany. It seemed a very long six weeks before we heard that he was alive in a prisoner of war camp. He would be there for 18 months until the end of the war in Europe.

People kept in close touch with one another. The mailman was a very important person in our everyday lives. (Postage stamps were 3 cents.) Letter writing was important as a lifeline to servicemen. We wrote letters every day, and everyone shared news of their men in service.

The one thing I wish younger Americans would remember about the war is the sacrifices people made. The things we did without! Because of the gas shortage and rationing, we walked everywhere. Or, when necessary, used public transportation. You couldn't just go out and buy a chocolate bar, soap, sugar, nylon stockings, anytime you wanted. We didn't starve; there were a lot of other foods available, like potatoes, macaroni, peanut butter and Spam. We took all this in stride with the optimism of youth - that after the war was over, things would get better.

Shirley Hahn on the home front, waiting for news of her brothers in the war.

Shirley (Hahn) Bertin of Missoula was a younger sister during the war years, waiting for brothers to return from overseas.

When I first heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed I was spending the usual after-church, after Sunday-dinner, quiet afternoon at home with the family - my eight older siblings and parents. The memory is very muddled, but I have fragmentary images of my family huddled around the radio, Roosevelt's famous speech, and subdued conversation by the older members of the family. I finally grasped that war was certainly coming and that my oldest brother, Herb (Johnny to the family), would certainly be going. I crept outside to the bleak winter afternoon and tried to console myself in my backyard swing. I was 4 years old.

The thought that was uppermost in my mind as war swept its way into our cozy little world was that it was unthinkable that Uncle Sam could take my Johnny away from our family and put a gun into his hands: my Johnny who had fed me my bottle when he was home recovering from pneumonia his senior year in high school, who called me Kitty-Katt, and who was my hero. I was frightened of the recruiting posters and expected any day for uniformed men to call at the house and lead Johnny away.

At my age, I had little concept of what my friends and family thought about the war. My dad was a first generation German-American and had his own memories of his older brother being in World War I while my father stayed home to work the farm. My mother must have known Johnny, her firstborn, had no choice but to serve; but she made determined efforts to keep the next-younger brother, Bud (17 and still in high school) from enlisting until he graduated, probably hoping (like many others) that this war would be over in six months.

While it was a frightening time, it was also an exciting time. All of us left behind on the "home front" were caught up in the war movement at some level. My father's youngest sister went to California and found work in a defense plant. My oldest sister ("Sis" was 20, red-haired and green-eyed from my mother's Irish side of the family) joined Aunt Hattie in L.A., danced to the big bands, and married a bombardier who flew many missions from England over Europe. The next sister, "Beg," was 19 and entered nursing school to do her bit, but interrupted her schooling in marrying an Army sergeant and traveling to bases in Bakersfield, Calif., and in Texas with him. "Bud" turned 17 just two weeks before Pearl Harbor and champed at the bit until he graduated from high school in May of 1942 and could enlist in the Army. He served in the Pacific, building airstrips on little islands that the Marines had secured as the U.S. advanced in the Pacific. Jenny was 15, a tag-along to her idol Bud since childhood, and very frustrated to be left behind. She, too, graduated at 17 and a few months later married her sweetheart, a farmer, and put all her energy into producing cattle and grain for the war effort.

Pop did his part for the "home front" by delivering gas to local farmers, measuring carefully and keeping the ration-stamp records for the precious gas needed to fuel the tractors and combines that kept the food supplies rolling to feed the military. We four younger kids felt left out in many ways, but we patiently licked all those stamps and put them into the designated record books under our father's direction. My mother quietly prepared "care boxes" of warm clothing and little items to brighten the days for her soldier boys.

"Liz" was 11 at the time of Pearl Harbor and was always first in line to help with paper drives, scrap drives, or clothing drives organized by churches and other groups. She also worked on jingles to help sell War Bonds. We three youngest ñ "Hank," 9 years old, Francis, 7 years old, and I had our own schemes, definitely secret from the grown-ups. Francis organized the neighborhood kids into a commando squadron, which entailed a great deal of training in hand-to-hand combat and preparing for surprise attacks by jumping out of the haymow and off the shed. He was convinced, and convinced us, that the "Japs" would invade middle America and the adults would be unprepared, so it was up to us. Our imaginations were fired by newspaper cartoons and newsreels and B-movies that depicted the "Japs" as sadistic warriors, and while I willingly followed my brothers, my dreams were frightening during those war years.

Three memories from that time are the most vivid. We proudly displayed two blue stars in our living room window, showing the little world outside that two sons were serving in the military. Eventually, I spotted first a silver star and then a gold star in our little town, and my mother explained the silver represented a soldier who had been wounded and the gold a soldier killed in action. After that stunning revelation, I ran home from school every day in a state of anxiety until I could see our stars and be sure they were still safely blue.

A second, happier memory was running across the pasture with my brothers to greet troop trains as they passed by our pasture fence. We really believed that sooner or later Johnny or Buddy would be on one of those trains. We made the "V" sign and waved joyfully at the uniformed men as they hurtled past. Occasionally, a troop train waited a few hours at the siding by our fence, and we would climb on over and get acquainted with young soldiers and cooks, once exchanging Mom's homemade bread for a couple of pies a cook sent home with us.

The last memory stamped in my mind forever was when the sirens shrieked and bedlam took over the town on what must have been V-J Day ñ the end of the war. I was visiting in the country and insisted on packing up and going back home to be there when Johnny and Buddy arrived. My uncle tried to explain that there would be a delay, but we eventually piled into the Model T Ford and arrived in time to catch the local parade of the fire engine and a few elderly VFW men in a motley assortment of uniforms worn proudly in an earlier war. I searched the crowds of people for the faces of my brothers, confused as to why they weren't yet home. Uncle Sam took his own sweet time about sending them back to us!

The one thing I most wish younger Americans would remember about the war is that it was, in my mind, the end of an era of trust and belief that America was invincible and always right. During WWII the whole country was caught up in the fight to make the world free and safe ñ and we really believed it could be done by people of good will.

Herbert Hahn

Herbert Hahn of Mapleton, Iowa was one of Shirley's older brothers.

When I first heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, that Sunday afternoon I was at the local drug store, called Burson's at that time, generally to buy chewing gum, and planning a date for the Sunday night movie. I had registered for the draft some time before that, and always waited for the call. I was 22 years old, single, and felt somewhat in a state of limbo, not sure of what the war might lead me to, or to do.

When it became clear that the U.S. was into a war, feelings of patriotism, adventure, and fear came about. One thought was that the war would last maybe six months to one year.

I was drafted into the Army on July 1, 1942. I had until July 15 to get civilian things into order, and reported for active duty on July 15, 1942. My first taste of Army life was at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where I got my uniforms, shots of all kinds, and lucky ñ to get to go to a radio-training school in Los Angeles, Calif., for about three months. This alone was quite an experience for an Iowa, small-town person. This schooling led to the Signal Corps branch of the Army.

By January of 1943, we were on our way to Algiers, Algeria, Africa. With the help of engineers in the radio field, we built a communication system that was the forerunner of TV today. I was with a team of about 15 men that served in Africa, Malta, Sicily, Italy, France, and Germany. Just living through most any day was interesting, exciting, and very scary, to say the least.

There were any number of memories that are vivid today. Probably one of the most remembered was a day at the Anzio beach head. A partner and I were busy erecting an antenna on a small building. He was on the roof, and I was inside. A nearby explosion caught our attention, but when a second one came closer, we ran for cover.

The third explosion, an incoming shell, blew the side out of the building and most certainly could have been bad for both of us.

Going across the Atlantic Ocean during the winter was also dangerous, particularly to a ship that was designed to navigate only near coastal waters. With waves 40 to 60 feet high, we truly bobbed along like a cork. We were told that we tilted to as much as 48 degrees. And the Germans were often sinking at least one ship a day.

I believe the one thing I would wish that all Americans would remember about World War II is the awful toll of men and materials - it is truly an enormous waste!

Janet Dunham of Hamilton, 6 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed, watched a parade of uncles join the military.

When I first heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, I was one week shy of being 7 years old, but I do remember it very well. I was frightened because all of my relatives were talking about it. Six of my uncles immediately joined the service, two to the Marines and four to the Navy.

I remember feeling sure that we would win and so did my family. We talked about it at almost every meal. We also discussed it at school, with the nuns telling us that we all should pray for all the servicemen.

I was attending St. Mary's School in Rhinelander, Wis. I remember being so proud when I took my pennies and bought Savings Stamps and put them into my Savings Book. I felt as though I was doing my part to help win the war. We were all issued Ration Books and each time you bought rationed supplies, the clerk would tear out the required number of ration Stamps. I remember standing in line at Penney's to buy mother rayon stockings. Nylon stockings were not available, I don't believe.

One of my most vivid memories is of marching around my backyard with a round oatmeal box with a string through it, which I placed around my neck. I beat on my "drum" with a wooden spoon and sang: "Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini is a weinie, Tojo's in the dirt!" I don't know to this day whether I made that up or if it was a little tune going around the neighborhood. I just know I loved to sing it.

I also remember the "blackouts" and sitting on our front porch during them. We would look for airplanes in the sky just in case the "enemy" had managed to sneak into Wisconsin! I also remember all the Uncle Sam posters everywhere reminding us that "Loose lips sink ships!" and "Uncle Sam wants YOU!" I also remember going to the Saturday matinees and cheering wildly when the newsreel would show an Allied victory in some far-off place. I remember "Victory Gardens," some in the shape of a V, in which we planted our own food so that more could be sent overseas.

I also remember truck loads of German prisoners of war coming through our town and we exchanged pennies with them. Most looked no older than my teen-age brother.

Julia Prescott Ekstrand of Missoula spent some of her war years teaching at a relocation camp for Japanese Americans.

I was at the Amache Camp in southeastern Colorado. It was a great experience. Those people never complained when those hot sandy winds blew through the camp, or when the food trucks didn't get there on time. The parents were very appreciative that there were teachers there to teach their children. We had few supplies but managed to keep the classes busy. I made some very good friends there and we learned to laugh at the news reports that came out regularly from the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post about the luxuries we were supposed to be enjoying in that dusty camp

I think we were all amazed to hear of Doolittle's flight over Tokyo, and the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I was in Denver when the news of Japan's surrender came and I'll never forget the noise and commotion. It took three hours to get out of downtown Denver - traffic was at a total standstill.

John E. Rehder of Missoula was 3 years old and living on a Missoula farm when the war broke out.

I grew up, and helped on the farm. My brother organized all the teen-agers of the neighborhood to pick and dry arnica blossoms for medicine for the troops. We saved cans, bottles, and paper. My Dad and the other farmers raised sugar beets, field peas, and potatoes.

The memory most vivid is of the Japanese field workers that the War Department sent to work in our fields. My mother and our neighbor, Mrs. Dore, were drivers, and they would report to Fort Missoula every morning at 7:30 to pick up the "prisoners" and take them to the various farms around the valley, where they were under armed guard, but while they were with my mom or Mrs. Dore, there were no guards.

I wish the young people would remember that the reason they can yell and protest, and raise Cain, is because of what their fathers and grandfathers, fought for in WWII.

Nancy Barton of Libby was 3 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

My father was an air raid warden. He wore a white hard hat with some sort of symbol on the front and he and several older men in town would have air-raid practices. We would draw the window shades and turn out the lights when the siren rang. Mother would keep my sister and I in a safe place till the "all clear" rang.

Ration books for shoes, sugar, and other items were needed. as was rationed so there was little travel. There were no Fourth of July fireworks until the war ended. My sister and I wanted to be an Army or Navy nurse. We would act out the heroine parts of war movies.

Charles F. Hill was my Uncle Bud. He served in the Army Air Corps as radioman/gunner on a B-29 in the Philippines. He was one of the fortunate few to come through the war with no physical scars but with mental scars because of the loss of flying buddies. His arrival home was near Christmas. The war was over but his wasn't. I have the memory of sadness on his face at our family celebration. It remained for months. With love and understanding from his wife and our family he became my Uncle Bud again.

Jack Darlow of Stevensville grew up during the war years.

During the war I became a teen-ager and grew up pretty much during the war years. We moved to Butte in 1944 where my dad was a government meat grader, the first in Montana. He traveled to Great Falls twice a week grading beef in packing houses on the way. At 15 years of age I helped drive that summer and learned the roads very well. Our car was a 1936 Hudson straight eight. (That car is another story). Later we were able to purchase a 1939 Chrysler. During the war there were no new cars to be had. Later his route was changed to Missoula and Hamilton twice a week. Gas rationing was in full effect but as a government worker dad had plenty of gas for the car.

Jobs were plentiful for teen-agers in those days. I worked at J.C. Penney's as a stock boy after school and on Saturdays. I clerked on the floor. I received 25 cents an hour and had plenty of spending money. I bought my first suit for $28, complete with vest.

Rationing was in full effect during the war: gasoline, meat, groceries. I stil1 have my ration book and some tokens that were issued as ration tokens.

There were many memories of the war but probably the most vivid was the time that my buddy and I met a friend in uptown Butte one night to go to a movie. Our friend was all bummed out; his brother had been killed in action in Germany. That was probably our first realization that someone we knew was directly affected by the war. Our friend wanted to enlist right then and go kill Germans, but he wasn't yet of militaryage.

The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945 deeply shocked many Americans. The following letter was sent to Frank Schmidt of Arcata, Ca. (formerly of Trout Creek) by his father upon hearing of Roosevelt's death. The letter was forwarded to the Missoulian by Schmidt's cousin Peter Lupsha of Trout Creek. Here's an excerpt:

I was in the kitchen on that Thursday evening warming a cup of coffee. I had just come home when the radio flashed "President Roosevelt is dead." I was so startled I just could not believe it, and thought any moment his cheery voice would come over and say "My friends, this is a mistake," when the radio again flashed a moment later, "President Roosevelt died in the Little White House in Warm Springs, Ga."

I wanted to get away, out of the sunlight. I went into the cellar and just sat and listened to the radio until it became official, then I went upstairs, the coffee was gone and the pot was burned black. Who can forget in March 1933 when a nation faced a black future: banks failing in every county in the nation, veterans of 1918 selling apples, 13 million unemployed, and a new Moses coming to the radio and in a strong pleasant voice telling us that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Lorraine Conwell McKay of Missoula enclosed several letters written by her grandmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Conwell of Anaconda, to her future daughter-in-law, Lolly Zamostny, in Illinois. Here's an excerpt from a letter dated Feb. 21, 1944, in which Conwell wrote about two of her sons:

John has not been getting my letters so he must have gone overseas. I sure hope he doesn't have to go back over there. Bill was somewhere in England the last I heard of him. ... I hope you will come to see us on your next vacation. I am sure you will like Montana and its people. They are a friendly lot.

Here's an excerpt from another letter, postmarked June 23, 1944:

I have 4 sons and 2 sons-in-law in the service (another son had been killed in 1942). Sure is terrible to rear boys to send into battle. Wars have always been and always will be I guess. So there is not much we mothers can do about it.

Two days after the surrender of Germany she wrote: Things stayed the same here (in Anaconda) on VE Day, no excitement whatsoever. I wish the other half (the war in the Pacific) was finished. I bet it would be quite a different story.

Barbara Millhouse of Missoula was growing up in Minnesota during the years of the war.

School went on, as did life in general, except the radio was on most of the time to keep abreast of news flashes, the St. Paul Dispatch was read from front to back and the adult conversation were solely talk about the war. I had many cousins and as I was at the tail end, the family knew that most of the males would be in the service, as they were. Some were drafted but most volunteered and though I did not comprehend what they would be doing, I knew they would be going very far away and that their coming back alive was dubious. I was very much aware of the turmoil which surrounded me and the effect it had on family, friends and neighbors. Life suddenly became uncertain; adults everywhere were deeply serious. Laughter and fun were replaced with grave and solemn expressions.

Everyone participated in projects such as bringing items to be packed in the Red Cross boxes as kits for those in the Armed Forces. They contained toiletries and items that would not be available readily but would be a ray of sunshine for our troops. Each class had a contest to put more of these boxes together than the others. While adults bought war bonds, we kids brought our pennies and nickels to donate, though I don't remember the name of that program.

We walked to school and had our shoes resoled or wore hand-me-downs from other kids who had outgrown theirs. Rationing had a direct effect on us as much as adults. When bicycle tires and tubes wore out and had patch upon patch, there were no new ones to be bought.

Our eating habits changed because of food rationing. Mom always baked her own bread but treats were rare as sugar was limited and when she could she would bake treats and send to family or friends in the services. It would take weeks and sometime months for these packages to reach the intended and then weeks for a return letter saying thanks but nothing of where the package found the recipient, that was usually confidential. And their postage was free. I would wonder where those letters came from - no postmark to identify ñ and I guessed it was zillions of miles away.

I vividly remember the end of the war. An aunt and uncle lived on a farm 60 miles from us. Their Victory Garden helped us survive. ... So when the war ended and the news reached St. Paul, we hopped in the '38 Plymouth and used what gas we had to drive up to the farm to celebrate. Highway 65 was bumper-to-bumper with cars, trucks, people; honking horns, shouting, cheering, smiles galore. It was a gala affair of more happiness and noise than I'd ever experienced. The little towns along the way were alive with excitement and dancing and singing. Aunt and Uncle were ecstatic as well, as their own son was in the Marines and right in the thick of it. He would be coming home with horrendous war stories and malaria, but he was coming home. The adults, my girl cousins, and I sat on a hillside 'til the wee hours of the morning, watching and listening to the continued celebration going up and down the highway.

Juanita Putzker of Plains was a member of the first group of women who were trained and sent out as relief Air Craft Communicators at stations throughout the Northwest during World War II.

When I first began teaching sixth grade in my home town on Livingston, social studies was an important subject because of world tensions. Often what we studied was about current events. Though there was no declared war at the time, all the nations were involved in the tensions of the East and Europe. Although there were some signs that our country was making preparations for the possibility of entering a war, life seemed pretty normal in Montana, so at the end of my first teaching year I decided to attend the University of California at Berkeley for a summer semester to further my training as a teacher. At that time, I was in my mid-20s.

There were more indications that the nation was on alert as we approached the city of Vallejo. Barrage balloons were floating, about building-high, as a deterrent to possible bomber attacks by the Japanese. The balloons were thick enough that supposedly they would entangle low-flying hostile airplanes.

My cousins drove from Berkeley to Vallejo to pick me up and take me to my Aunt Frieda's apartment, where I was to stay for that summer school session. The possibility of an air attack was a real concern, especially at night, when the lights of the city could guide enemy airplanes in. To avoid this, everyone in cities close to the West Coast had to close blackout curtains over the windows at sunset.

A full moon increased the likelihood of an attack, as the planes then could use moonlight to find their way to the U.S. coast. One night as Aunt Frieda pulled the curtains, she shook her fist at the moon and said, "You darn Jap." It was as if she felt that by providing extra light at night, the moon was some sort of traitor.

Gradually, the war became a reality to us as young men we knew "went to join the service." At first, it was mainly the Army, but soon we began to hear about boys joining the Navy or the Marines. Soon our friends and classmates were volunteering or being drafted for service.

I returned to teaching sixth grade at Lincoln School. My class included my brother and many of his friends who were all 12 years younger than I. It was an adventure and I did enjoy teaching but when I saw posters at the Post Office asking for applicants for a job called aircraft communicator, I picked up an application and filled it out. Within a short time I received a letter notifying me that I had been accepted for training with the Civil Aeronautics Administration in Seattle (the CAA has since become the FAA, the Federal Aeronautics Administration). The school board released me from my contract to do the war work.

Another Livingston girl, Arleda Guthrie, was also selected. Her family knew some people in Seattle and arranged for us to room with them. When we took the train from Livingston to Seattle, it was crowded with soldiers going to Fort Lewis. The train was a morning train and some of my students were at the depot to see me off. I made the comment that I had a convoy to take me to the train. One of the soldiers heard that remark and after the train pulled out of town, he came back to get acquainted and ask about my "convoy." The training to be an aircraft communicator included such skills as sending and receiving messages on a teletype machine, all in Morse code. We were taught Morse code by having a headset on while the instructor sent the various letter codes and then repeated the letter that had been sent to us. Each time, we translated the code into letters or words on the typewriter. I became so dependent on the typewriter that when I head the code I had to type it or make believe I was typing to translate it into letters. Eventually I had to retrain myself so the message would go to my brain instead of just directly from the ears to my fingers.

Our reports had to follow a definite order. However, for security reasons, each day we received a different set of instructions as to the sequence of information to be sent. All this information was communicated to pilots on their flight plans for the day. Our information was to be transmitted by teletype every hour on the hour. Stations transmitted in specific sequence and the information was sent to a central location which in Montana was the air base in Great Falls. Next, the local weather report was broadcast for aircraft flying over. Pilots made radio contact with the local CAA stations to give their positions, including altitude, direction of flight and any other pertinent information.

My first assignment was to Whitehall, Montana, where the station was located several miles from the town. At Whitehall, living accommodations for the staff were in the same building as the communications office, with sleeping rooms and a kitchen adjacent to the office, and a sleeping room with bunk beds in the basement. I was among three of the first women to go to that field, but since there was a young man living there, we girls had to stay in a hotel in Whitehall for a time. At some point it was decided that we could occupy the upstairs bedrooms and Chuck could be in the basement. We would share the kitchen.

This worked quite well and prepared me for a later transfer to Strevell, Idaho, located in the desert near Burley, Idaho. This station, too, had living quarters associated with the office. The chief and his wife, and two other women were there when I arrived. This place had electric lights which were powered by a generator, but no teletype or telephone so communication was strictly by radio.

The highway past the station wasn't particularly well-traveled, but transport trucks went by fairly frequently, so it wasn't much of a surprise when a driver who was having some engine trouble stopped and wanted to use our phone. Since we did not have a telephone, I don't remember how or if we helped him, but we did learn later that he spread the word that a group of women was working at the station. Soon we had a driver stop by every now and then to see how we were and to ask if we needed anything. Occasionally the produce driver would leave off extra fruit or vegetables for us, and sometimes the drivers would relay messages for us.

Since we had only radio communication, weather and position reports and occasionally personal matters were transmitted that way. These transactions could be monitored by anyone tuned to the same frequency. When one of the operators at Strevell, by the name of Mary Beth, needed to have some dental work, she had to contact the Burley, Idaho station by radio and have them make an appointment for her. A few days later, the pilot of an aircraft flying over called the station and asked, "How is Mary Beth's tooth?" After my assignment at Strevell, I returned to Whitehall for a few days. It was midwinter and I was on the evening shift when I got a message from the Air Force base at Mountain Home, Idaho. They had lost contact with a training flight so we were asked to broadcast the aircraft's call letters and our location and ask that the flight call us if they could. No one had received contact from the missing flight by the end of my shift. The girl on the midnight shift lived at the station too, so she was aware of what was going on. When she came in, she commented that the snowstorm, which had complicated flying, had eased somewhat, though snow was still falling.

A few minutes later we heard the sound of an airplane motor low over the field. It was so low and loud that she yelled, "They're going to land here!" I shouted back, "They can't! The runway's too short," to which she answered: "Then YOU stop them!" At the same time, the sound of the motor changed, as the aircraft approached for a landing. I ran outside to watch. The landing was good, and the snow on the field acted as a brake to slow the plane down so that it came to a stop at the very end of the runway.

The crew came to the station. They were all tired and scared. Their radio had failed. They were lost and were low on fuel when they saw our airport lights. One fellow seemed close to tears as he said, "I didn't want to jump, but we got our parachutes ready in case we had to. We were sure glad to see your lights!" Besides being tired and scared, the crew was hungry, so we phoned the grocery store in Whitehall, explained the situation, and the owners opened the store in the middle of the night so we could get some canned soup and other items needed for a quick supper.

I don't remember where the crew spent the night but the next morning, a plane from Mountain Home Air Base landed, bringing a major who was an experienced pilot to fly the plane back to Mountain Home. Despite the weather and the too-short runway, he took off smoothly. Later we received a thank-you note and a box of chocolates from the crew.

Because of the war, women were taking on new roles and responsibilities and not everyone approved of the change. We had heard that several of the station chiefs had said, "They'd better not send me any women." However, they had no choice. At least one of the chiefs later admitted that the girls did a pretty good job.

Another station where I spent time was at the base in Lewistown, Mont. By this time, we were fully involved in the war and many precautions were taken to keep information confidential. Letters from servicemen overseas had to be censored. One of the young men from Lewistown was a fighter pilot and before he left home he had made special arrangements to get news of his activities to his family. He told his father that if he got a letter telling him to paint a stripe around the house, it would indicate that he had shot down an enemy aircraft. I decided I wanted to take a picture of the house. The same day I went to the house another person was there also. It turned out that I took a picture of a Life magazine photographer taking a photograph of the house with two complete stripes and one yet to be completed.

During this time many essential items such as butter, sugar, tires and gasoline were rationed to people in the States so that there would be enough supplies for the troops and so that scarce items could be distributed fairly and not be hoarded by a few. Most people had a book of "A" ration tickets which had to be torn out and given to the vendor at the time of purchase. He in turn had to have the tickets balance with the amount of gasoline or other products sold.

Because travel was necessary in my job, I could apply for a "C" book for extra gasoline rations when the miles I drove called for it. Once I had to make a trip on short notice, to the Navy base near Klamath Falls, Ore., and I forgot to get my additional ration book. Nearing my destination, I realized that the gas gauge was nearly on empty, so whenever I came to a downhill stretch of road, I shut the motor off and coasted. Thus I coasted into a Klamath Falls gas station.

These were the days before self-serve pumps so when the attendant came over, I explained my predicament and asked if I could get a tank full of gas, in exchange for leaving my "A" ration book with him so that the number of coupons he had would balance with the amount of gas he had sold. He looked at my license plate, smiled and said, "You must be all right. You're from Park County!" It turned out he was from Sweetgrass County, which was the neighboring county to Park, and we knew some of the same people.

While in Seattle for our initial training for the CAA job, Arleda and I had become quite homesick and when we saw two German shepherd puppies in the pet store window, we got permission from the people we were staying with to buy them. I named mine Stormy Weather, since weather reporting was to be a good part of our job and the name seemed appropriate. Stormy was a good traveler and I felt safer, less lonely and more secure with her riding in the car. While I was in Klamath Falls, I went to the air base using a CAA ID card. I did not know that I needed an official pass for that base so I used the CAA card for several days until the guards at the gate told me the MPs were looking for a woman coming in and out of the base with improper ID. They said the woman was traveling with a big dog in her car. The guards had already figured out that I was the person the MPs were looking for, and told me to go to the proper office next day to get official identification.

My final assignment was back at Whitehall. I had been there just a few days when the people who were on duty at the time came to tell us that there was news coming over the teletype about some kind of big bomb that had been dropped over Hiroshima, Japan. We did not understand all of the information but the whole station crew gathered around as letter by letter, the words came through. We all knew it was important and dramatic but did not realize that the news signified an end to the war.

Joseph S. Rice of Missoula was too young to serve in the war, so when he enlisted, he was assigned what they called "separation duty."

I was 18 on March 6, 1945. I graduated from high school in late May of that year. Several of my classmates left school a year earlier to join the military but my parents did not want me to get in any sooner than I had to. I already had two older brothers in the service, one in the Navy in the Pacific and one in the Army Air Corps. I was called for my pre-induction physical examination in July and was sworn into the Army on Oct. 4, 1945. Since the fighting was over by that time, I was sent to Fort Knox, Ken., and assigned to separation center duty.

We had trainloads of GIs coming in from both Europe and the Pacific every day. I was there from mid-October 1945 to mid-February 1946. During that time, we discharged about 2,200 men every day, 24 hours a day. They got off the train with everything they had brought back with them. They immediately crossed the street and into "shakedown." In "shakedown" they had to leave everything they had brought back except what they could legally take home. They were assigned to a barracks where they left their barracks bags and were each placed on a roster consisting of about 70 men. Each roster marched single file from station to station and finished up on the second day with their discharge, travel money to get home and $100 of their mustering-out pay in their hands. At the various stations, they had a physical examination, a dental exam, a records check and went to the finance office.

If anyone had any service-connected injury or illness, a dental problem or incomplete service records, he was immediately pulled from his roster and everyone else kept moving. His paperwork was pulled and sent to the "Suspense" office. I worked in Suspense. We picked up the paperwork every hour or more often, and got on to resolving the cause of the delay. Sometimes if his problem wasn't serious, we could resolve it and get him in the next roster coming through so he might be delayed only an hour.

Sometimes a mental or dental problem could be taken care of in a few hours. In more serious cases, we had to delay their discharge for a few or several days. Records sometimes had not been completed for days or even weeks because in battle there was no one in a position to keep records. Sometimes officers who may have already been discharged or might still be overseas had to be contacted to provide information to bring the records up to date. Any wounds or other injuries or illnesses had to be recorded. All ribbons, medals or other citations had to be recorded so they could be verified many years later if questions arose.

We had a very small number of men whose discharge was delayed a month or more. Any delay in getting home was excruciatingly painful for our soldiers. Some had been away from home for up to four years. They had become accustomed to being away and accepted it as the way it had to be while the war was going on. Then when they at last learned they were going home, every day seemed endless. It took several days on the ship to get back to the United States, then sometimes two more days by train to get to the separation center. Two more days of processing were frustrating. Then any delay at the separation center, when they knew they were only a few hours from home, became almost unbearable. I was glad that I had the opportunity to help them.

Bill Bogart

Pat Bogart of Arlee wrote this account on Sept. 5, 2001:

Today Bill and I are celebrating our 53 years of marriage. I have been thinking of our time together and also of the memories of the time we spent during the Pearl Harbor attack and World War II.

We both grew up in southeastern Colorado, a small community called Lamar. My mom took care of a small neighborhood grocery in the front room of our home. Dad helped when he could. He did electrical work and was a postman. He walked a regular delivery route, and later, a rural delivery route, by van car.

I'm now 72 and Bill is 75. I was 13, and in junior high, when war was declared. So many young men had gone into service and there were very few farm workers. It was fall, and the sugar beets needed harvesting. Our junior high students were released from school to harvest the beets. We descended into the fields with a machete-like knife. The tool had a curved pointed hook on the top, a curved blade below the hook and a wooden handle. We pulled the beets with the hook, put the beet in the other hand and cut the leafy top off with the blade. The beet was thrown on a pile. We all felt we did our very best for the war effort.

Perhaps some of you remember "Defense Stamp" sales? My grandfather "Will" would have me do chores and would pay me in defense stamps at 10 cents each. He purchased them at the post office. When a folder of the 10-cent stamps was filled, it added up to $18 and could be turned in for a $25 bond certificate to be redeemed at a later date. He also bought me an ice cream cone so I didn't feel badly about not receiving money as payment.

I had a younger brother and sister. I do remember my father telling my mother that he'd probably be called to service. Also, I remember her reply: "With a wife, three kids, false teeth and glasses?" Well, I guess these obstacles didn't make any difference, as my dad joined the Navy and went by train to Farragut, Idaho for basic training. He had to stay at basic training for two sessions, because he got sick, probably the flu, as it was so cold.

We moved to Sunnyvale, Calif., where my dad was assigned to the post office on Mare Island. We moved to Berkeley, and I went to Berkeley High as a sophomore. In order to get housing, my mom had to work at a day-care center. While we were gone from Lamar, my future husband, Bill, joined the Navy and went to basic training in Farragut, Idaho. Bill complained about the cold and said that when the young recruits went to sick bay with a cough or fever, the corpsman in charge just gave them nasal spray and throat pills. The patient was sent back to regular duty. This irritated most of the men, so they had to think of some health problem that, perhaps, would entail some "bed rest." One recruit revealed that he came to the corpsman with an earache.

He got the "royal" treatment (bed rest), so Bill decided to try that ploy. He complained to the corpsman about his earache. The doctor was called and a syringe with warm water was squirted into Bill's ear, and much to Bill's surprise, out came a wheat seed. The doctor said, "Well, no wonder you had an earache!" Bill had worked in the wheat harvest just before enlisting. Bill and I met after he came back after four years in the Navy, which was spent in the Pacific area, as a gunner on a PBY, a rescue airplane.

Evelyn Hawkins of Missoula was on Oahu when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

We worked in the cane fields and made bandages, also knitted socks and mittens for the serviceman. I lived on Oahu, seven miles from Pearl Harbor...Vivid memories include carrying our gas masks wherever we went. We had ID cards also to prove we lived there.

For younger Americans, I hope they will remember those who gave their lives. Many were just teen-agers themselves.

Lorraine Weber of Missoula was 25 and living in Grand Rapids, Minn., when Pearl Harbor was bombed.

My husband and I were just married and he had a new beverage distributorship. Because of the war effort, people used ration books for sugar, coffee, butter, meat and gas. Although the ration books were adequate for us, salesmen and people using cars had a hard time with the gas rationing. Folks with families were distressed.

Down the block from where we lived, war bonds were being sold at the men's clothing store. Patriotic music was playing all day long there. Although I have neither pictures nor memorabilia, we had a lot of war bonds. We bought war bonds every month in a variety of denominations. Several years ago, we cashed them in at the bank in Missoula, where we have lived for the past 36 years.

I had two brothers and a brother-in-law who went to war. It was sad to see them leave because we didn't know their future. We were also proud that they were going to fight for their country. My brother-in-law was helping on his parents' ranch. When he went to war, my husband had to leave his job in Grand Rapids and go home to his parents' ranch to help. Those were hard years for everyone and we were happy when the war was finally over.

When we visited Hawaii, we went to Pearl Harbor by boat and saw the memorial to those who died for this country. They had what looked white boxcars with the names of the boats that sank and how many died in that boat. One ship could never be brought up. The harbor was devastated and it was a sad sight to see.