Lydia Erickson
HIST 150-0002
Due: March 25, 2016
Women at the Center of World War Two

1. a. Category: General Social Change
b. Tags: WW2, Military, Women’s Roles

2. Alice Erickson, Interview, History 150 Spring 2016, Conducted by Lydia Erickson, Women at the Center of World War Two, 3/10/16.
3. Alice Matthews Erickson, my paternal grandmother, was born on September 20, 1935, and grew up in Hampton, Virginia. She lived right in the center of a naval base, army base, and air force base at the end of World War 2. She had two brothers, both of whom fought in the war, as well as two sisters. She was the youngest member of her family. Alice always loved to be outdoors and actively participated in the Girl Scouts of America as well as cheerleading and other recreational activities such as hiking, camping, and canoeing, many of which she still participates in today. She studied history at The College of William and Mary and currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. She also recently wrote her own book on Hampton, Virginia, during the Civil War. She is married to Wayne Douglas Erickson and has one son, John Carl Erickson, and one granddaughter- me!
4. a. My interview took place over the phone. I used a desk phone with high sound quality to perform the interview and kept the sound on speaker, and then used Voice Recorder on the iPhone to record the interview. I then uploaded the file to my computer as an MP3. I had previously contacted my interviewee to obtain permission to interview her and set up a good time for the interview. Additionally, in my actual interview itself I also obtained her permission to interview her and share the recording with the JMU community. My interview did not require too much editing and was able to be clearly heard for the entirety of the recording. I chose the title for my interview based on my grandmother literally living at the center of an active war preparation zone, and the dramatic and lasting impact this had on women’s roles both in the war and for the rest of time.
b. Interview Time Transcribed: 15 minutes, 55 seconds. (1,993 words)
c. Full interview transcribed below:

LE: Hi Granny, thank you so much for agreeing to interview with me, could you start out with giving your full name for anyone who is listening?

Mrs. Erickson: All right, my name is Alice Matthews Erickson.

LE: Great! I have a few questions for you before we begin in regards to your privacy and consent to where this interview will go. There are three options. I’ll be typing up a transcript of this recording so I can have it that just my teacher and I will see it, that all of the JMU community will be able to see it, or that anyone with the link can see it. Which is okay with you?

Mrs. Erickson: Probably just the JMU community, I don’t know why it would need to go elsewhere…

LE: Perfect, then I’ll do that. You’re okay with the JMU community having access to it?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes, that would be fine.

LE: Great! Okay, what I’m interested in talking to you about today is World War 2. [And how it affected women’s rights and gender roles]. Could you tell me how old you were when the war stopped?

Mrs. Erickson: Let me think. The war stopped in ‘45, I was not quite ten, I was nine and a half.

LE: What members of your family were fighting in the war?

Mrs. Erickson: Actually fighting? Both of my brothers. My father was in the Air Corps and away the whole time, but not fighting. He was what was called an air inspector. But my brother Jimmy was in field artillery and he was there as soon as they went to France after D-Day with the heavy artillery. My brother Bill after he graduated in high school went over to France in ‘44. They were both there.

LE: Could you tell me one more time what year you were born?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes, I was born in September 20, 1935.

LE: How did the men being away affect your family both economically and financially?

Mrs. Erickson: We didn’t really notice much about it because everyone was in the same boat. There were a few men in the neighborhood who worked at the shipyard building ships and who were helping build airplanes at NACA to fight in the war, but for the most part there weren’t many men around so the fact that our men were gone was not that different.

LE: But you definitely remember noticing that there were not a lot of men around?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes. And everybody had rationing, nobody had much gasoline, you didn’t go anywhere because transportation was reserved for military who had to be somewhere, and everybody experienced the same things so that was not particularly different for our family than anybody else’s.

LE: How often did you get to see the men during the war?

Mrs. Erickson: Daddy went early in the war because he had been in the Calvary earlier. My brother Jimmy went as soon as he graduated from VMI in 43, and my other brother Bill went as soon as he graduated high school in ’44. It’s a good thing I spent my early years working outside. I knew how to cut grass and prune things and bushes and we had to handle everything. In our family it was just mother, Mary Louise was in Madison College at the time, and Angeline and I were home. The three of us at home had to take care of everything.

LE: That actually leads into and answers my next question, which was did the women on the home front have a lot more responsibility? It seems like you had almost all of the responsibility. Was that true?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes, we did. All decisions, we never knew exactly where Daddy was so we had to make all decisions as well as taking care of the house and the yard. Mother was away a lot either helping with the USO because she knew how to drive. It may sound odd, but a lot of women in those days did not know how to drive, but she did. So she was emergency ambulance driver. Every time we had an air raid she had to go down to the school I went to and assemble with the other emergency people. So she was one of the people prepared to be an ambulance driver if there was a need.

LE: Wow, that’s really cool. Was a lot of the women’s work inside the home or was it frequently outside the home as well like you just mentioned?

Mrs. Erickson: For us it was just once in a while outside in the home. Nobody in our family went to work in a factory or anything like that because we did have an income coming in from Daddy’s salary. But still we had to take care of everything going on in the home. Once in a while mother was called away to work in the USO.

LE: It sounds like you were all very busy. Later when the men came home did they notice how much more you all were doing?

Mrs. Erickson: Probably. I’ve got to tell you we did get to go see Daddy once. He was an air inspector which meant he traveled to air bases all around the country because people and equipment traveled so fast that somebody had to keep track of it all. One time he was going to be in North Carolina so we took the train to see him. The train was full of military personnel and of course one of them gave Mother her seat and Angeline and I sat in the aisle on top of our suitcases. So we went to North Carolina to see him but that was one of the only times we did.

LE: Did you typically know where he was?

Mrs. Erickson: No, that stuck out the most. Not knowing where people were I remember. Everybody had rationing or maybe one automobile to go somewhere on occasion. But that’s one thing that sticks out the most, not knowing where people were.

LE: Was that scary for you and your family?

Mrs. Erickson: Well I was young, so I didn’t know a whole lot, but one thing I remember was when we got notice that Bill had been captured in December of ’44. Mary Louise was having her first baby and had gotten married in Philadelphia so Mother was visiting her, and Angeline and I were home and had just put the heavy military blankets over the windows so we could do our homework when we got the telegram. And we just said “what shall we do? Should we tell Mother?”

LE: Do you remember exactly what the telegram said?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes, it just said he was missing in action.

LE: And they did find him, correct?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes they did. But that was the only communication we ever got. It was from the War Department which is now called the Defense Department. But the telegram came to the front door at night and said that William Paramore Matthews was missing in action.

LE: Did you end up telling your mother when she was away?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes we did, but I think we waited until morning. I’m not sure if we got a telegram from Mary Louise or not, but we probably had to send her one. Anyway, those are my memories.

LE: What was the general attitude towards the war, or the public opinion? Did you notice one?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes. Well we lived right by the shipyard and Fort Monroe the army headquarters and the air force base was right there, so we lived right in the middle of everything and the war happening.

LE: That was Hampton Virginia?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes. Everybody there was participating. So we did not hear a lot of mumbling and grumbling. The war was happening, and we had to get through it, we had to do the best we could. Some people did not like President Roosevelt, but they weren’t going to complain about our army and our young men fighting.

LE: That makes sense and somewhat my answers my next question, which was if life on the home front was pretty much completely centered around the war. I know where you were living had a lot of key elements in the war.

Mrs. Erickson: Yes it was. We were right smack in the middle and were actually one of the prime targets if the Nazis ever got close enough. It was us and Washington DC because had the shipyard, army base, and air corps all right there.

LE: Did you know at the time you were a target or did you only find that out later?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes, we knew. That’s why we took the air raids seriously. As the U-boats were right off the Chesapeake Bay. We knew they were fighting and keeping them away. There were submarine nets so nobody could go underwater and submarines had to surface to come through the water so the German U-Boats could not surprise us under the water.

LE: Wow, that’s hard to imagine. Okay, now shifting gears a little bit, I want to discuss what life was like for women during the war. What was expected of you as a young woman and what were your responsibilities?

Mrs. Erickson: Probably most expectations for young young women where we lived in Virginia was that they had to be well mannered, well spoken, help people, and if you went to work it would be as a nurse, teacher, and those were the only jobs open to women at a time. I went to William and Mary and you could graduate and go to school afterwards to be an RN or become a professional secretary. Additionally, young women who were good at math could become computers, they were literally called computers. They worked at the NACA and the shipyard and did what now was done by machines. A lot of girls were good at math (not me) and got very good jobs in that field.

LE: Those are very interesting, but it still seems that jobs were very limited for women during that time. Is that correct?

Mrs. Erickson: Yes, that’s exactly right.

LE: Have you seen that change over the years?

Mrs. Erickson: Oh yes. There’s very little that’s prohibited to women now unless your physical size or strength would eliminate some jobs. But women can and are allowed to do all sorts of things. There’s some complaining that they’re taking men’s jobs. There’s always been that. If women are going to work men are having a harder time finding jobs, and that’s always been a complaint. But yes, most jobs are certainly open to women now.

LE: During the course of the interview I was thinking about this, do you think it’s possible that maybe women having to have more of a role in the workplace during the war caused a change in our entire country for the following years?

Mrs. Erickson: I think so. We thought, “We can do this! We can. I’m good at this! And why should I not be paid for what I’m good at doing.”

LE: I think they probably proved to themselves they could do it, and then to the men when they came back from the war.

Mrs. Erickson: That’s exactly right. They proved it to themselves first, and then said “We can do this, and we’ll show you that we can.”

LE: Thank you so much. That’s actually all the questions I have for you today! Do you have anything else you want to add?

Mrs. Erickson: I don’t think so, I think that pretty much covers everything!

LE: I think so too! I’ll stop the recording now and we can keep talking on the phone!

Mrs. Erickson: Okay! Bye from me then to the recording.