Oral History Transcript

John Carlisle Interview, History 150 Spring 2016, Conducted by Jillian Carlisle.  WWII and Immigration, March 25, 2016.

a. This interview was conducted in person at John Carlisle’s home. We sat on his couch and had my iPhone in the middle of us. We talked for about 10 minutes and I did not have to edit any of the audio recording. However, I had to convert the file from a m4a to a mp3 which I did through GarageBand.

b. John Carlisle was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in February of 1929. He then moved from Ireland to Canada and then later the United States in order to acquire a better job and a better life for his 3 children and wife.

c. The Belfast Blitz was four strategic attacks that took place on Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1941. These air raids were carried out my German bombers who attacked manufacturing and military targets. Thousands of people were injured and hundreds died as a result of these attacks.

d.

JC: This is Jillian Carlisle interviewing John Carlisle. First, I would like to thank you for joining with me for this interview and I will need your verbal consent that I can use this interview for my history project.

Mr. Carlisle: Yes.

JC: Can you describe World War II?

Mr. Carlisle: I was about twelve years old then and the Germans were fighting.

JC: What year were you born?

Mr. Carlisle: 1929

JC: And where were you born?

Mr. Carlisle: Belfast, Northern Ireland. See, one part of Ireland was in the war and the other part wasn’t. Up in the North, where I lived, that was a part of England called Northern Ireland. That part was bombed but the southern part was never bombed because they weren’t in the war.

JC: Who were you being bombed by?

Mr. Carlisle: The Germans!

JC: Do you know why?

Mr. Carlisle: It was World War II! We were fighting everybody.

JC: But why did they choose your city?

Mr. Carlisle: Because we made ships, airplanes, and all sorts of things for the war. The ammunition and all that. We were helping Britain with the fighting.

JC: How did the war affect your life?

Mr. Carlisle: Well, everybody was worried about it and all excited. People, thousands of people, were being killed in Belfast.

JC: What would happen when the bombs were dropped? Was there a signal? Did you stay in your house?

Mr. Carlisle: Well, the first night everybody was trapped in their houses. We never though the Germans were gonna come and bomb. They tested the sirens during a Saturday morning and nobody thought the Germans would come that far but they did. They flew over from France because the Germans had taken over France and then the bombers would come over and the sirens would go [off] about 11:00 at night and the Germans would drop these big flares that would light up the whole city pink and that’s how they could see where to drop their bombs. Four or five hundred German planes came over that night, they said, and they dropped the flares and then the next bunch [of airplanes] would come over and they would drop their firebombs which set everything on fire, and then the next bunch [of airplanes] that flew over would drop their bombs and land mines and they killed a lot of people.

JC: So, what would you do when a bomb would be dropped? Did the siren go off? Where did you go?

Mr. Carlisle: The sirens go off, the first night, everyone was caught in their houses and some were at the movies. But, the next night everybody was ready for it and as soon as the sirens went, everybody would grab anything valuable and put it in their pockets and everybody would walk two or three miles to get outside the city into the big parks and they would hide under the trees. And whenever they were finished bombing the sirens would go off again, all clear, and then everybody would come back. Maybe your house was gone. The smell of the city all bombed and the whole city burning. It was awful, the smell of it.

JC: Did you know anyone who was hurt or that died?

Mr. Carlisle: Oh yes, I knew a whole lot of people that was killed. The people that lived beside me. Lucky enough, our house didn’t get blew up. They dropped a fire bomb on it and the front of the house was all cracked and we had to get it replaced.

JC: So now, I am going to ask you about moving to America. What year did you move to America?

Mr. Carlisle: First of all, I came to Canada in 1964 and then I worked in Canada for five years and then I found out they were getting more money in America than what I was getting in Canada. See, I worked for a union, an international union, so the union in Ireland would cover in Canada and America and everywhere.

JC: What year did you move to America from Canada?

Mr. Carlisle: 1969

JC: What was difficult about moving here to America?

Mr. Carlisle: Well, there wasn’t anything difficult but we had to get VISA’s and all that. It was very hard to get into America. They asked you if you had any friends that lived in America and did you have a job to go to? And every week they would send you loads and loads of papers to fill in which asked you [things like] where did your grandmother come from? What your grandmother died with. I don’t know what she died with! And then I would have to write back to Northern Ireland to the cops and get a clearance to say that I was never in trouble and your grandma [my grandma] had to do the same thing too. So it was very hard to get into America and then we went to the immigration office and applied for a VISA. It was very hard to fill in all these papers. All these papers kept coming and coming and they would ask me the same questions that they had asked me a couple of weeks before. And you forget what you wrote down. Like what my grandmother died with, I don’t know what she died with! But you might put down old age and then when you get more papers you might wonder what did I put down? Was it old age? So, you don’t remember, ya know. [laughter] So, we did all that, ya know and it was hard for me to get work at the start because I went to Pittsburg and then I went to Detroit, and Cleveland, Ohio but I couldn’t get work because I worked for the Boilermakers, I was a welder, and we didn’t have work just then when I went there. So, they would tell me come back in two weeks but I couldn’t do that because I had to get a job. I would just come out of the office and drive to the next state and stopped at a phone box and look where the Boilermakers were and then go there and go up the stairs and ask them. So, I kept doing that and then when I got to Pittsburg, they said stick around for 2 weeks and I’ll give you work. And I said no I can’t do that, I need a job right away. So, I got my road map out and drove all the way to Philadelphia which I didn’t know where Philadelphia was! I just kept going up the turnpike. And I got work in Philadelphia, if I hadn’t got work in Philadelphia I don’t know where I would’ve ended up. I would’ve gone to New York and just keep going and going, I didn’t know where I was going.

JC: Was it hard to move with a wife and family?

Mr. Carlisle: No, we had a station wagon and a trailer I made. And we put most of the things we owned in the trailer and just kept looking for work. It was hard to get a place to live when you have kids, nobody wanted to rent us a house or apartment because we had kids and nobody wanted kids around.

JC: What were some of the biggest differences between Ireland and Canada compared to America?

Mr. Carlisle: Well, people voices were different from mine. Some things that said were the same but we had a different name from them than over here, ya know? Like they say a truck of here would be a larry over in Ireland. Things like that, they were the same things but we had different names for them and then we had to drive on the different side of the road than what you do in America and Canada. It was hard to get used to that, ya know?

JC: What do you miss the most about Ireland?

Mr. Carlisle: Well, all my friends lived there and the places I used to go, I missed all that. There’s some things different in Ireland than there is here. You could go to the, its hard to describe it, a lot of things are different over here. You could go to the dance hall at night. Well, there’s not many dance halls in Canada or America, it’s all clubs. In Ireland, they had all these dance halls and you and your wife could go and dance every night, ya know? You couldn’t do that over here. So, there’s a lot of things different. Night life, ya know?

JC: Thank you for letting me interview you and thank you for your time.

e. Overall, the interview went very well. At times, it was hard to stay on script because I wanted to clarify what he was saying before he finished his response. However, we were both very comfortable and the interview flowed nicely.