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Larry, before you get very far, can we go way back?
Okay.
What we'd like to start with is just hearing a little bit about when you were growing up, where you were born, your family life with your parents and your siblings, where you to school, things like that.
I was born in Chicago, although I also went to elementary school in Knoxville, Tennessee and Muskegon, Michigan. My dad moved around. But most of my early education was in Chicago schools. We had a wonderful family, my mother and father, I had a younger brother and a younger sister. We were very close. I had a lot of family in Illinois. My father's family originally came from Vilna in Lithuania. He was born in the states in Braddock, PA. They moved to Chicago. My mother's family came from the Austria-Hungary area. My mother was born in Braddock, PA, my father was born in Dekalb, Illinois. I had a great family life. No complaints at all. I loved school as a kid. I loved moving around to different schools, it was something new all the time. I don't think I suffered from it.
Whenever you were growing up, and the war began, what was your life like as a teenager?
I moved from Chicago to Cleveland when I was fourteen and had a very good life. You know, junior high, where I met my wife in the tenth grade, and went to John Adams High School. I had a good life, good family life, a lot of friends, that sort of thing. As I said, I met my wife in the tenth grade in Cleveland. I got married on a furlough at age nineteen.
But when the war broke out, when things started happening, where were you? What were you doing with your life?
I belonged to a youth organization at the time. We were playing basketball games in a tournament at an large Jewish orphanage in the suburbs of Cleveland. After the game our counselor was driving home, because none of us were old enough to drive, and he had the car radio on, and it was there that we heard that Pearl Harbor was attacked.
And how old were you?
Seventeen. So that's when we found out what was going on. When I graduated high school, I was drafted very shortly afterwards into the Army Air Corps, actually, at that time the Air Corps was part of the Army.
When you heard on the radio about Pearl Harbor and then you got home, what was going on at home with your folks, your mom and your dad?
Everybody was obviously very worried and very concerned as to what was happening and what was going to happen to everybody else.
Did you still have relatives in Europe?
Yes, my wife had relatives—most of her family died in the Warsaw Ghetto, her parents were in this country, of course. Some of the family escaped and got to Sweden. She had two cousins who got to Sweden as young children—one of them became PhD head of the Chemistry Department at the University of Uppsala and became the chairman of the Nobel Chemistry Selection Committee. Wonderful guy, he used to come to the States frequently to stay with us.
When the war first broke out, and you were home, and you said that you were drafted, how old were you then?
Eighteen.
So it was just maybe a year or less from the time...
Less than that because we got married at nineteen and I was already in the Service, I got married on a furlough.
When you were drafted, were you expecting to be drafted? Were you wanting to serve?
I knew I was going to be drafted and I was trying to get in some education in the meantime, and I finished a couple of courses at night before I was drafted to get a start, at Western Reserve University.
As a mother myself, I just have to ask you, how was it at home, with your mom and dad and your siblings, knowing that you were going to be leaving for this war?
They were upset obviously and worried, but there was nothing we could do certainly. I got drafted. I had a younger brother who was nineteen months younger than I—he died a couple of years ago—he went into the service shortly after I did. My sister was five years younger so she was still in school. Everybody was worried but you did your part, you did what you had to do.
Prior to Pearl Harbor, how aware were you and your friends of what was going on in Europe?
We were very interested, obviously, and particularly, I must say, my circle included a large number of Jewish fellows like myself, and I think many of them had family going way back who were still in Europe and many of them ended up in concentration camps. So I think there was, obviously, a particularly strong interest in what was going on because of that.
But, as a young person, did you at that time realize that depth?
The newspapers did not have all the information of what was going on, and I think a lot of it was really kept quiet. They didn't want to disturb what was going on. It was a long time before I think the American public realized fully what was happening at that time during the war. But, everybody was interested obviously, but everybody felt that they had to do their part, whatever it was.
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