Tape 1
Conklin: [silence] What changed 1997? My name is Sarah Conklin. I'm interviewing Amelia Schmidt. We're at her residence in San Francisco 1894, 41st Avenue. We're going to be talking about the history of her working at Fort Mason. To start the tape off, we'd like to get a little history from you, Amelia. Where were you born?
Amelia Schmidt: In San Francisco on Fifth Avenue, but affiliated colleges.
Conklin: When were you born?
Amelia: 1913. April, 5th.
Conklin: Who were your parents?
Amelia: My father was Victor Schmidt. My mother was, want her maiden name? Lilly Schwab and she was born in Minnesota.
Conklin: Schwab with sc?
Amelia: S-C-H-W-A-B.
Conklin: Were you raised by your parents?
Amelia: my father died in 1919, after World War I of that terrible flu that they had an influenza which left my mother, a widow, from the farms in Minnesota in the big city of San Francisco, all alone, a widow. She was like me, she wasn't gregarious and outgoing. There she was with four children. I don't know anything about welfare, but I'm quite sure she didn't get any because she had to go out and do housework and cooking, the only thing that she knew which left me home more or less, doing the housework and shelling peas and stuff like that though we don't do it anymore. You are looking at her.
Conklin: Do you have a clock?
Amelia: Yes.
Conklin: You have four siblings or three siblings? [crosstalk]
Amelia: Three. Two older brothers and one younger sister.
Conklin: Where did you go to school and what was the highest grade you've ever got?
Amelia: I went to Jefferson School here in the city, and then public schools. I will get a [unintelligible 00:02:23]. I went to several schools because my mother moved around. We lived on 17th Avenue. When my father died, that was in 1919. Then we lived there for a while and then her father left her a little money when he died. She bought a little house in the Richmond District. That's where she, [laughs] where she brought us kids, more or less. Then I went to Girls' High School and I graduated.
Conklin: Was that the formal name of the school, the Girls' High School?
Amelia: Yes. It was on the Stoner Street and Scott. Everything has changed so much. I go by there, I can't believe it. That was just a couple of blocks away from Fillmore Street, which was more or less black but it was wonderful. All the different like the Filipinos had their neighborhood. The Chinese had Chinatown naturally. The Italians were up on the hill there and out here was sand dunes. Nobody wanted to live out here for heaven's sakes. It really was just off sand more or less.
Conklin: Did you graduate from Girls' High School?
Amelia: I graduated from Girls' High School in 1931.
Conklin: Did you go further than that?
Amelia: Well, at that particular time where was I going to go? There was no possibility of ever going to any kind of school or anything like that. I had to stay home and keep house while my mother was working. When was it on the- when they started drafting young men, and they were thinking of taking my brother, my older brother who was not married. I don't know how old he was at that time. He had a temporary job off. Talk about things. They have rebuilt this both Beach Chalet and mint up there on the hill there. All of that was built by WPA labor. The men made I don't know maybe about $20 a week or something which was sent home to their parents, you know that?
Conklin: When did you start working for the army?
Amelia: Well, before I started to work for the army, I got a temporary job when they were taking the men off and sending them overseas, I got a temporary job up at the Legion of Honor. Now, this was very interesting as far as I'm concerned, and looking back because I got a job at the reception desk. At that particular time, no one could go into the building of the museum which was left by the Spreckels family. You couldn't go into the building with a camera because you could not take any pictures of any of those famous paintings unless you had particular permission from the city. Actually, I was sitting at the front desk and with the clicker counting how many people came in there and checking their cameras.
I was, I was amazed and interested with all the Asian people that were coming in with beautiful cameras. Never thought about anything until the war started and I thought that was damn japs, you'll have to excuse my language, but that's the way it was. They were taking pictures of all coastal installations and all the Coast. Who knew anything about that until they bombed Pearl Harbor? They knew where they were going.
Conklin: Interesting.
Amelia: That to me, it was very interesting because they had these all beautiful cameras, and actually I was sitting here looking at the oh, beautiful things and so forth and so on while they were going around in the building. The only reason they went there, you know the Legion of Honor it sits up there on a promontory, probably, or whatever, and wonderful views of the bay and the ocean and across the bay.
Conklin: Was it from that job that [crosstalk]-
Amelia: Across the ocean.
Conklin: -you started to work for the army?
Amelia: Oh, that's when they were releasing the men to go overseas and so forth, then I got a job up there because they needed some lady to take care of the ladies' restroom.
Conklin: At?
Amelia: At the Legion of Honor.
Conklin: Then after that, you left the Legion, [crosstalk] instead of that started working for the army?
Amelia: I left the Legion of Honor because a friend of mine told me why don't you get a job at Fort Mason because they are looking for people, and I just say, "I don't have any experience." I taught myself how to type and that's about the only thing I could do. I was a mediocre student I didn't graduate with any honors or anything like that. I said, "Well, I don't know anything," and she said to me, I don't know who she was, some girl that I knew. She says go to Fort Mason, go to the personnel department, and tell him what experience you've had.
Conklin: That's exactly what you did?
Amelia: That's exactly what I did. I went to Fort Mason, what experience did I have? I worked for a dentist, I worked here in there and I worked up at the Legion of Honor. The major, I forgot what his name was, he says, "Oh, you're interested in art and blah, blah." He thought, well, I was pretty good. I was all right. I was young and vigorous. He put me into dental clinic. He assigned me in the Fort Mason dispensary. There was a big building up there.
Conklin: Now, what year was this?
Amelia: That was in the C43. I started in 1943.
Conklin: Do you remember how much you made?
Amelia: Well, golly, almost nothing but it was [unintelligible 00:08:35]. That's another thing you can't believe nowadays. When I'm retired I got this little booklet when I retired after 36 years. I retired and I got $90 a month.
Conklin: That's retirement?
Amelia: Retirement.
Conklin: That was what year?
Amelia: That was an annuity, that's not social security or anything. That was in 1978. That's when I retired. Can you imagine that? Now I get a little over $1,000.
Conklin: That's great.
Amelia: Cost of living increase but then of course, you could get about a quart of milk for 10 cents. Now you have to pay $2 for a quart of milk. [chuckles]
Conklin: After the depression and the war began, you were suddenly thrust into a frenetic work world, how did you cope with the increased demands physically and mentally? How did you actually become comfortable with the job?
Amelia: I had to take a physical examination and medical and, what do you call these? When they give you an examination, regular examination, how much you know?
Conklin: A test.
Amelia: Yes. They weren't easy. What my previous experience which was nothing, it was clerical work more or less and so they thought that I'd be fine in the dental clinic doing their admissions and so forth because it was really a crazy thing. There was as I mentioned before that these men would come through in long lines, boom, boom, boom, and have their examinations. As long as you were warm, you were in the Army. [laughs]. It was terrible but that's the way it was. I did the paperwork for it was. So that--
Conklin: Is there something that you did during the day that helped you make it through the day or you were young and strong and it wasn't a challenge? Was it a challenge?
Amelia: Not particularly because, yes it was because I was not used to working with all sorts of people. The dispensary when actually was run by Army Medical Personnel. There was the man that was in charge, a Feinstein, I don't remember, and Major Cornelia, regular Army man. He was in charge of the dental clinic and the people that were in charge were officers. The people that worked under them were all civilians. Mostly female civilians, because there's no such a thing as a male because they were all in the service.
Conklin: What was the work environment like? How was the office set up? What was the feeling in the office?
Amelia: It was business that's all. There was no fooling around. We could have a 10-minute coffee break and there was a hygienist there and the dental assistant, and I was the clerk. There was another assistant, there were four men, busy. There were four girls in there and myself, I was doing the clerical work at the desk, and making the records out for the men that were coming in and going out, and as the dentist would say what they needed, which in those days you could have a full mouth of cavities or something, and they'd fix them up in a hurry and that was it, they had that record. We could go out, we worked from 8:00 until 12:00. During that time we had a 10-minute coffee break.
Conklin: Okay. Pardon?
Amelia: Should I tell you this? I told you this before, 10-minute coffee break. The PX was at was about almost five minutes from the dispensary. Dispensary was up on the hill. We had to walk all the way down to the-- I had to walk, I didn't know anybody because we couldn't go out in pairs, we could only go out one at a time.[laughs] I went down to the PX and the coffee was hot. I would have him put a scoop of ice cream in it to cool it off so that I could drink it in a hurry and get back within 10 minutes because Major Cornelia was listening into his watch.
Conklin: Sounds like it was--
Amelia: Right there, no fun, no business.
Conklin: Was it an eight-hour day?
Amelia: Oh yes. Eight hours.
Conklin: Did you ever have to work extra overtime?
Amelia: I don't remember that. We weren't clock watchers in those times, because there was an entirely different attitude than there is today. Everybody was concerned with the war effort. Everybody was doing their best no matter what it was, I didn't care because I couldn't drink my coffee in 10 minutes. I knew that that's all that they could spare me. They had to have to get me back to my desk. That's the way we all were.
Conklin: That makes it a little different.
Amelia: There was no he and She-ing around because the officers had their families, they lived in the-- I don't know where they lived, but they lived on the post there, with their families. There was no, like I said no he and She-ing, because the guys were put on the ship right now.
Conklin: Did they actually fill everybody, all their cavities before they left for the war?
Amelia: You had to have a good set of teeth. I shouldn't say this, but I remember they had-- I don't know where the men lived, but they would come from here and there. I didn't know anything too much about them because I didn't get a chance to talk to anybody. I keep their records, Joe Blow and what's your serial number and what's your race? There were five races then, there was Caucasian, Negro whatever, they're brown, like the Filipinos and so forth and the Asians and the Red Indians, really Indians. Now, my God, you have a change of something and you're an entirely different race.
Conklin: Did you have a lot of Indians, American Indians that were in the war?
Amelia: I don't remember, but they came from everywhere. They came from the hills and they never had a pair of shoes on before. I don't know where they recruited them, but they got them under the bushes and the hills and everywhere, and they brought all these people in and how they got here, but they got them all. There was no fooling around. There was a very serious business, they got all these young men.
Conklin: I've heard stories of women, clerical, and some medical personnel at Fort Mason who were actively pursuing handsome, well-educated, moneyed men that looked like they would make appealing marriage candidates. Have you heard any stories like this?
Amelia: Certainly not during the war, no. Because they were all transients, they came here today and they were out the next day.
Conklin: So there wasn't a great group of them just sitting around for days.
Amelia: Oh. Like maybe the officers, I didn't know because I was not, I didn't--
Conklin: Okay.
Amelia: We didn't have television and the radio and all of that stuff there. It was in the days of [unintelligible 00:16:19]. One girl would fall in love with the man forever, [laughter]. That was it but later on there was a lot going on. When the men were coming back and forth with their different brides and stuff.
Conklin: What interaction did your female co-workers have with the Italian prisoners of war held at Fort Mason? You and I discussed that a little bit.
Amelia: Well, like I said, I knew they were there because when I was going from the dispensary up on top of the hill down to the PX, I could see these guys, it would say prisoner on their T-shirts or whatever they were wearing in those days. They were doing the gardening, and they were actually prisoners of war. They were Italian prisoners, because at that time, Italy was affiliated with Germany, wasn't it? I remember.
Conklin: Would the women that you worked with then go out with these men later?
Amelia: No, no, no, no, because the men were confined to the post. It was just like being in jail, they knew where you were every minute.
Conklin: Okay. So there wasn't--
Amelia: Not you, but the men.
Conklin: There wasn't any fraternization then?
Amelia: No, not at that time. Later on, when the things cooled down and the men were coming back to the post because those people would stay, they were like prisoners. They were glad they were here. They were damn glad they were here. They were put off in the quarters where the guys would live. The men would live in certain barracks, and that was it. Period. Later on in the war, they had the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, that was the WAAC. Later on, they decided that they better make it WAX. It was an official Women's Army Corps. They went to, I don't know where it was, but they started coming in.
Conklin: Did some of you, the women you worked with, go down and have coffee with the Italian prisoners?
Amelia: We didn't have time for any of that, no.
Conklin: You said later.
Amelia: No fraternization at all. Later maybe, I guess. I don't know.
Conklin: Okay. What about the-- Were there German? I thought you mentioned German prisoners of war.
Amelia: I'm not awfully sure, but I don't remember too much about the war. I don't think we brought many prisoners of war over this.
Conklin: Okay, so you don't remember German prisoners of war?
Amelia: I do know, because my father's name was Schmidt. He came from Austria and met my mother over here. Because of that, at that fact, that was the time that they were interning the Japanese people. A lot of people don't realize it, but they did the same thing with the Germans. Anybody that had anything to do with Germany and they came to my mother's house a couple of times. This was on Ancestry and they inquired about us because our name was Schmidt. Now nobody ever says anything about that, but they were people that lost their jobs here. Girls that I got to know later on and they were interned, they were moved in towards Colorado were off of the coast here.
Conklin: Because of their German surnames.
Amelia: Did you know that?
Conklin: No, I didn't.
Amelia: Yes, Germany suffered. I wasn't German, but I had a German name and Austria, Hitler marched right into Austria and took that over so that was part of German, then, what do you call it?
Conklin: Who were the people that came to talk to your mother.
Amelia: Some men, they came there very officially. Secret Service men. My mother was working, so I talked to them.
Conklin: The US Secret Service came? What were their questions?
Amelia: All. They wanted to know how long I lived here. Where was I born, where was my father? Anything that might incriminate me or associate me with anything German, just because of my name. I said, "Look, I was born here." Now I'm more brash, I'd say, "Get the hell out of here. I don't want to talk to you," but then, oh, no, I answered every question. Not only that but even after I worked at Fort Mason, it was the same thing with my name Schmidt, associated with Germany.
Conklin: Let's talk about the various medical clinics in which you worked. Let's discuss them one at a time and maybe talk about what the feeling was in these different offices and what some of your jobs were. Let's start with the medical clinic.
Amelia: The whole dispensary was medical. As they came in, I didn't even know what a dispensary was. Did you know what a dispensary or infirmary was?
Conklin: Yes. [laughs]
Amelia: I never even knew what a dispensary was, but a dispensary is where they go give them a physical and find out whether you just got a runny nose or an allergy and so forth and so on. If you have something more serious, they would send you to Letterman Hospital. The dispensary, at that particular time, they gave all the young men, they gave them a physical, and they were pretty strict physicals. They gave you blood tests. In those days they didn't have syphilis, and I'd have--
Oh, this was later on. This was one of my later ones. At first, I was in a dental clinic, but they gave them pretty strict examinations, even dental examinations before they even accepted them. They went through the whole gamut and all the laboratory, every kind of a medical examination. These were the young men in the beginning.
Conklin: After you left the dental clinic, where did you go?
Amelia: I still worked in the dispensary, but then they needed-- Girls would be leaving or something, and then I worked at the front desk, at the reception desk. In those days you kept files and drawers and drawing walls of files. It's not like now you push a button and immediately everything comes up. Anyway, then I worked in the lady's examination.
Conklin: What things were they looking for women for during exams? What were the women checked for?
Amelia: This is the women that were coming in for jobs in their different offices on the post. They would just give them a regular physical like you would go to the-- They'd check your eyes and they'd look up your nose and down your throat and, I think give you an x-ray just to make sure that you were warm.
Conklin: Tell me something about the eye clinic.
Amelia: The eye clinic was right across the hall from the dental clinic. They would check your eyes, see how you were, and so forth and so on. They were really ophthalmologists, I didn't know much about them. They had business then and optician, not opticians. They wouldn't give you any glasses or not, but they would check your eyes and make sure because one of the things that they were particular about was colorblindness. Did you know that? When you were on a ship or something and there would be a signal or something coming in, they were still using these, what do you call them?
Conklin: [inaudible 00:24:08] lanterns.
Amelia: Yes. If you had even the slightest bit of colorblindness, you would be out. That sounds silly, doesn't it? That was one of the things I had to do when I was working in the men's thing. They'd have these funny little things with all these little dots on them. If you could see, normally you could see that there was a star in the middle, but if you couldn't see the yellow or the red, you couldn't see that.
Conklin: Then you would actually do these tests?
Amelia: No, that I would. I would ask them all the questions, and in those days there were syphilis and gonorrhea, and they would treat them with the Lord knows what. Before I'd even let them go see the doctor, I'd say, "You have to have your papers with you." Some of them had, it was just like a roll of toilet paper and they'd have all treatment that they had. I would have to contact the Department of Public Health if they didn't have it, and make sure, "Did Joe Blow ever have any treatment there, and if so, what for?" That would come back to the men's physical examination. I'd have to do the clerical work.
Conklin: It sounds like men would come to you, you'd be asking them for some papers or asking them questions?
Amelia: Checking their eyes to see if they could read.
Conklin: It sounds like those men would have to come back in a day or two, that you couldn't process them immediately.
Amelia: If there was nothing wrong with them, I would see that their blood, or if somebody came up from the laboratory and checked their blood to make sure that it was a Kahn test they had in those days to make sure that they didn't have any blood tests, anything or--
Conklin: Was it contest?
Amelia: K-A-H-N. In the olden days when guys would have gonorrhea and syphilis would get in their blood, I guess it was, I don't know much about it, but that was it.
[laughter]
Conklin: A contest?
Amelia: Not a contest. C-O-N-T-E-S-T. No, no. K-A-H-N, I guess it was the doctor's name.
Conklin: I got it.
Amelia: If there was anything, if it came back, plus and other things too. The food handlers and stuff, they didn't want anybody to be giving any of their health to somebody.
Conklin: How experienced were these doctors and nurses? Were they right out of medical school?
Amelia: They were real doctors, army doctors. All of them were army doctors. They were regular nurses that were, of course, I didn't have too much contact with them because the only time I was away from my desk was to go to the bathroom and maybe have later on, have a cup of coffee up at the-- They'd have coffee instead of going out to the PX, and somebody would have a pot of coffee going in the back room.
They even had an annex to the-- It's sad when you go up there now and see all these things. I went there once after it became Golden Gate, whatever, and it's so different. They had another room, a small building, which was more or less two or three rooms and so forth and so on, where if I was sick and I had a headache and I didn't feel good, instead of going home and wasting the day, they would give me something and they'd tell you go lie down. They would check you.
Then there were other ladies from other places on the post that weren't feeling well or vomiting or diarrhea. Instead of wasting the whole day or the whole week, they would come up there and they would lie down. I didn't go there very often, but I do know they had, what they called the annex, the dispensary annex.
Conklin: Were there any office jokes or pranks? How did you relieve the tension?
Amelia: We just did what we had to do. Now, this was in the beginning, now, afterwards, it was altogether different. When the men came back, that's another story.
Conklin: How were the men attired while they were being processed? What would they be wearing? These large lines of men?
Amelia: In the beginning, it shocked me because I- Catholic little girl, and I didn't know anything about naked men, but these were not naked, they were just in the hallway and there was just a long line waiting for the box office for a popular theater. There was a long string of men, and all they had on was shoes and an overcoat. As they went from one place to the other, of course when they went to the dental things, there was nothing into the laboratory. When they meant to have a physical examination, you didn't have that business of waiting to be undressed or anything like you did later on.
Conklin: It was just a long line of men in raincoats?
Amelia: It was terrible. In the beginning, it was really fierce.
Conklin: Did they find that demeaning or were they all?
Amelia: No. No, no, no. Laughing. It was a usual thing, we were--
Conklin: Were they flirtatious with you?
Amelia: Oh, God no. They didn't have time for that. I guess they were more embarrassed than anything else. I was so busy writing up their charts and saying what their race was and so forth and their age.
Conklin: What was the racial mix of the people you worked with? The doctors and other civilians.
Amelia: Not the men, they were all white. Different religions. My boss was Jewish and that's about all I remembered. There were several other Jewish people and I thought, "Oh, they're all cliquey. They all stick together." [chuckles] The boss has got a good job in the dispensary so to keep from going overseas, he had his buddies for his relatives, which it was my opinion.
Conklin: That's fine. We're perilously close to the end of the tape. I think rather than start another question, I'll just turn it over.
[00:31:36] [END OF AUDIO]
Conklin: When the men were brought back on the ships from the war and the piers at Fort Mason were a hub of activity, what do you remember about the ship's arrival days? What performers come to mind and ceremonies or parties?
Amelia: Oh, I was not a part of them, but I'll remember when the first prisoners came back from the Philippines island, from the Bataan March, remember? Oh, brother, that was really something. Those were the first ones.
Conklin: What was--
Amelia: Like I told you, they would debark at Fort Mason. They had all kinds of piers there and big buildings, and they would debark. As you saw in that magazine and that book there, the whole bunch of us, all whole post came out and formed lines, the girls, the wax, and the soldiers and the civilians. My picture's probably in there too. It was really wonderful. Then they marched them to Letterman. I don't think they even came to the dispensary. They just went right to Letterman because they had suffered so much in the Philippines.
Conklin: What stories do you remember from the ambulance drivers that had to pick up some of the worst of them?
Amelia: You mean?
Conklin: Just--
Amelia: Oh, stories?
Conklin: Yes. Do you remember anything? Talking to the ambulance drivers.
Amelia: Oh, yes. It was a terrible, bloody thing. They'd go out to the fields and they would pick them up and the dead and the dying. Mostly the dying. They'd bring to Fort Mason. Oh, well, first of all, the thing that struck me is funny, haha, the ambulance driver would have an aid with him. A lot of those men that were on the ships, they were young geezers that just really didn't know much about medicine.
One man told me that he did an appendectomy on the ship. I says, "How could you do that?" He said, "There was nothing to it." He says he just opened them up and you saw this inflamed thing, you cut it out and you sewed him up again.
It was the same thing with the dentists. Instead of electricity, they had foot pedals that they would use to drill your teeth. A lot of them just never did any of this before. They were just guys and they had something that had to be done. Now, this is what I didn't see, but what I was told, and some fellas told me about what they did as far as dental work reconstruction, filling and so forth and so on.
Like I said, they had this foot-- I says, "What'd you do with the foot pedal?" We'd go around-- A lot of them became aids or whatever you call it, ambulance drivers afterwards, because they were enamored of their job and was doing something. They had no training.
Anyway, this one guy was saying he was out in the field there, they picked up all these guys that had been shot, big abdominal wounds and everything else. They didn't have any, they just picked them up and they brought them to the closest place, like the dispensary or wherever it was. Not our dispensary, but wherever.
The guy was saying that this aid that was picking these people, he says, "They're howling back there and they're-- Can I give them something for their pain?" The driver says, "Yes" there's a handful of pills there. Just give them." He says, "Well, I don't know what they are." He says, "Doesn't make any difference, it's all APC." That's what they had in those days. I don't know what APC is now, Cedron or something like that. That's all they had.
As the guys came back and they were beginning to discover sulfa and penicillin, now that was really the turning point of medicine. I think, of course, I don't really know. I can't say that I'm not a medical person.
Conklin: What ailments did you see in the returning servicemen? Any kind of strange tropical diseases? Were men quarantined at Fort Mason?
Amelia: Well, they would do all that on the ship. They would have medical personnel on the ship, and they would segregate them. These were men coming from the Philippines and from the islands out there, Okinawa and whatever.
Conklin: What does these--
Amelia: They would take them-- I told you before that they had a-- and I don't know whether do they still have it or not, but they would have a train that would be at the foot of Aquatic Park.
Conklin: [unintelligible 00:04:59]
Amelia: It went right to Letterman.
Conklin: What sorts of ailments were commonly coming back from--
Amelia: Wounds? Nothing--
Conklin: No skin rashes? No intestinal parasites?
Amelia: Not that I know of. Maybe there was but that-- Then the ones that Letterman couldn't handle, they were flown to Travis Air Force Base. Where's that up? Around Fairfield?
Conklin: Yes. They did a lot of work up there.
Conklin: How did the Fort Mason port of embarkation change since you were there a long time from World War II to the Korean War? What was different? What was the feelings like?
Amelia: Well, now the girls were being replaced by military men. There were aids and so forth, and they knew a little about medicine. Then you would see more men there. There was all different kinds of people that were brought in. There was this business of the sick and the dying coming in from the Philippines. That was terrible.
Conklin: Then the Korean--
Amelia: Then it simmered down a little.
Conklin: That wasn't happening? There wasn't that sort of crisis feeling during the Korean War?
Amelia: No, after that crisis was over. Then in the Korean War-- Was it the Korean War? We sent military aids over. We didn't send men to fight, but we were showing them how to fight. I remember they had American uniforms and things like that. The dispensary was up on the hill there. When you can just look down, you can see these ships that were--
Conklin: How did your work change between those two wars?
Amelia: Like I said, these young soldiers would come over there and you almost didn't know them from the Americans because they wore American garments and hats and stuff. When you got closer to them, you could see it was Korean, something like that. It was an assistant group or something like that. Was Korean-- Was that pretty bad? I don't remember.
Conklin: Well--
Amelia: We got over that pretty quickly, didn't we?
Conklin: It seems like it. The tone of Fort Mason was very different.
Amelia: It changed completely, yes.
Conklin: How was--
Amelia: Then there was a-- I don't know, my brothers now went to Germany, and like you asked me before, what was I doing, I didn't have much time to fool around or do anything because my mother was crying and praying all the time for her two boys. I was the only one there that was there. I didn't have time to do any chasing around or anything like some of the others did.
Conklin: Since you talked a lot to the returning soldiers from World War II, what was happening with the Japanese war brides program?
Amelia: Oh, that was something else. Now, when the war was Japan, there was Okinawa and all of that. That was terrible because the Japanese had intended the world domination for many, many years. Even in the Hawaiian islands and in the Philippines.
Conklin: These war brides coming back to Fort Mason--
Amelia: Later on when things started simmer down and the soldiers, you were starting to fraternize with these pretty Japanese girls. There was no question about it. They would go over there. Then when their tour of duty was up, then the next wave of soldiers came over there, and everything was all set up already. These girls would do housekeeping for them.
Conklin: Then when they brought these women back, did they all come to Fort Mason?
Amelia: They didn't allow them. The army wouldn't allow that. The army officially didn't allow fraternization with the enemy.
Conklin: Then there wasn't a lot of Japanese war brides?
Amelia: Of course, no. Before that, there was a lot of fooling around back and forth. There were a lot of illegitimate Japanese American babies.
Conklin: Did you have to help them medically at Fort Mason?
Amelia: No, we didn't have anything to do with that. Later on, like I said, there was a lot of babies that the Jacks wouldn't acknowledge and the Americans couldn't bring them over. They didn't want to, but there was a lot of-- What do you call them? Japanese-American babies. What was her name? Pearl Buck. She started a movement over there where she took care of all of these-- not all, but mostly these orphans. Then later on, the soldiers were allowed to bring their war brides over.
Conklin: Did you ever meet these women?
Amelia: No, I didn't.
Conklin: They didn't come to Fort Mason?
Amelia: No, except that the couple of the women that I had worked with, they hated the thing that their son were marrying Japanese girls. "What am I going to do? I'm going back to Iowa with a Japanese baby."
Conklin: What about the--
Amelia: That was in the beginning.
Conklin: What about the Australian war brides? Did you ever see any of them [unintelligible 00:10:44]?
Amelia: We didn't get to see them. I didn't think they came through our way, did they?
Conklin: Okay. Well, if you didn't see them-
Amelia: No.
Conklin: -I don't know. When the Hampton Young soldiers, some of them fresh from the hills, arrived in San Francisco, what role did the gay community play in--
Amelia: We had no gay-- We didn't know anything about that in those days. You mean lesbians and gays?
Conklin: Yes. I thought we had--
Amelia: Homosexuals?
Conklin: I thought we had discussed the fact that a lot of the men found the young servicemen very attractive.
Amelia: There was, but as later on as the soldiers were billeted at Fort Mason, they would stay there, and they'd go out on the town. Naturally, they'd go down to Drift Down to Polk Street, which was close by to Van Ness Avenue, and that's where the original homosexual men, never ladies, hung out, and guys would come back. At that time, men were working with me.
At that time, I had gone through these other departments, and I was back at the front desk, and so taking care of the charts and the files. There was a couple of guys working in there with me, and I would hear them talking together, because I was busy doing my work. Well, busy, busy all the time.
I could hear them, and they were talking about somebody went out last night because they were with somebody. Oh boy, what a wonderful time they had. They went down to Pinocchio's, which was the-- Well, Pinocchio was a different kind of a thing. It wasn't a homosexual thing, it was--
Conklin: No.
Amelia: It was female impersonators. Everybody [unintelligible 00:12:28] a couple of bucks to spend would go to Pinocchio, because it was a nice joint. Some of them would go home with these guys. Oh God, they were treated royally, and they thought it was wonderful. The guys weren't there long. They were just interim-- Whatever I'm trying to say.
Conklin: In transit?
Amelia: In transit, yes, before they went home.
Conklin: Okay.
Amelia: Now, gee, [laughs] you see that in television and everything. It's just a different world.
Conklin: A different world altogether. Can you describe your job and your part in shipping food to Korea? What happened to the surplus on the docks and all of that.
Amelia: Then I went from one job to the next. I worked in a dental clinic, and then I worked in a laboratory, and then in the X-ray department, and the men's physical section, that's where I learned about all of these social diseases, of course, of-- whatever. Then they would put me where they would need me, and the next thing I know, the girl and the veterinary, the clerk, she was gone. Well, we'll send [unintelligible 00:13:47] there. That's what I did, was just paperwork.
At that time, a lot of people were going back and forth. There were men that were sent overseas, and then they could take their families with them, and the families would have parakeets and dogs and cats and so forth, and they would have to go through the veterinarian's office. That's where I would have to tell them that you can't take your dog unless he's got shots and stuff, and you can't take him to the Hawaiian Islands. Because I think it was a six-month's quarantine. He might as well leave. Then it's the same thing when the animals came back, some would bring back little monkeys and things like that. They were not permissible to be--
Conklin: What happened to the monkeys?
Amelia: Oh, Lord, I don't know, but they would bring all kinds of crazy things, and they would smuggle them in more or less. Then the veterinarians, actually were the Department of Agriculture. That's where they got their education, was through the--
Dr. Peterson, I guess, is the one that referred you to me or whatever, me to you. When he got out of the service, he still was a veterinarian, but-- What was I going to say? Oh, and the boys would come and tell the different stories when I was still at the front desk there. They would talk about how the shifts they kept on sending food over their food, because it would be on the list. You send so many tons this day, and then next month you'd have to send that many tons, or else your funds were cut off, so they would just keep on shipping stuff over there.
Conklin: What was happening to that cruise?
Amelia: Somebody was saying they were just rotting on the docks there. Well, nobody knows about this, but I mean, what would happen? You'd get a ton of bananas that nobody wants. Avocados, they would send tomatoes crates.
Conklin: Then what about the return trip? You were telling me about the seagulls and--
Amelia: There were so many military men that came over, and then they would also-- they'd have extra food from the men when-- You never asked me this, but what was the situation here in the United States? We couldn't get any meat. We couldn't get any this, and you couldn't get any of that, couldn't get any--
Conklin: [crosstalk] in the Korean War not World War II.
Amelia: I don't know when that was. When did we have those food stamps?
Conklin: That was World War II.
Amelia: Yes, food stamps.
Conklin: That was World War II. During Korea, you actually had plenty of food, but there was a lot being wasted, is what I'm hearing.
Amelia: Yes, that's it. There was a lot being wasted, because the soldiers, the men on the ships would be given-- There had to be a certain amount of food and stuff for the men. Then when they would come back, they couldn't bring it back the ship with food on it, so they'd have to get rid of it.
Conklin: How would they do that?
Amelia: A lot of it was just thrown overboard. That's why their ships were being followed by the seagulls, and everybody wondered, "How come there's ships coming in?" Now that's all just talk. I don't know.
Conklin: Well, those are interesting stories.
Amelia: The government would think it was terrible for a person to say such a thing. That's a bunch of lies.
Conklin: Well, stories [crosstalk]--
Amelia: It would be just like if you had a boarding house, and you had 50 people, and so whoever you were getting the food, whoever was supplying you would send you enough food for 50 people, then all of a sudden you'd have 10 people. [laughs] What would you do? You wouldn't say, "I don't need this anymore."
Conklin: Could you tell me about the horses or the mules?
Amelia: Oh, yes, there was a lot of animals.
Conklin: That were kept under the bridge above Fort Point.
Amelia: Yes, they had a big--
Conklin: Tell me about that.
Amelia: I think they still have those brick stables, those four brick places. In fact, that's next to the last place that I worked. I was working for the veterinarians now, and they were all food inspection, but before that, in the early days--
Conklin: Oh, I see. I thought it was while you were there. That's okay. We know about--
Amelia: No, but while I was there, they were sending animals overseas.
Conklin: What kind of animals?
Amelia: Well, there were a lot of animals. There were a lot of animals. In fact, they used to train animals over there, because they had--
Conklin: [unintelligible 00:18:25]
Amelia: [crosstalk] They had three or four different kinds of animals. They were guard dogs. Now they have these dogs that sniff cocaine and so forth, and so on.
Conklin: What other kind of animals did you have [unintelligible 00:18:39]--
Amelia: They had dogs too there.
Conklin: Mostly dogs. There weren't horses or mules in the days you were there?
Amelia: I didn't come in contact with that, but I heard these stories about the mules that they sent, because the mules were surefooted, and they'd go like up in the Grand Canyon, where you couldn't hardly walk, and you certainly couldn't take any supplies.
These mules, smart animals, they put one foot in front of the other one, and they had a lot of mules there at the-- They even had ships. In fact, I thought you were going to ask me that, I would've showed you some pictures that they had, where they had to clean up after the animals, and so forth and so on.
Conklin: Onboard the ships.
Amelia: Onboard the ships.
Conklin: During World War II? Earlier?
Amelia: No, they weren't so worried about human lives then.
Conklin: At the end of World War II, and actually during the war, there were a lot of very large-scale events at Fort Mason. In June of '45, there was an open house for a hospital ship, The Ernest Hinds, and 24,000 people came. Did you go to those big events?
Amelia: No, I didn't. No.
Conklin: Your area was quiet pretty much--
Amelia: [crosstalk] I was just a little, old clerk. They had the Fort Mason-- In fact, Fort Mason's Officers mess is still open. They still have occasions. They still have parties and things there because it had a beautiful view and it was a lovely thing. I used to go there quite a lot. They used to do a lot of gambling too with the slot machines and things. You didn't know that?
Conklin: No. [unintelligible 00:20:28]
Amelia: In the enlisted men's clubs. I couldn't remember that. That was the first time I ever knew anything about that, but the nickels would all come down. I remember one time I got a bunch of nickels and I said to the guy next to me, "Give me your hand. Get hold all these nickels." [laughs]
Conklin: Was it common to go out after work for a drink with the people that you worked with? Did people socialize a lot together after work?
Amelia: You mean the employees or with the military?
Conklin: Well, just anybody that--
Amelia: Yes, I used to. We used to go out before dinner.
Conklin: Would you eat down at the Fisherman's Wharf area?
Amelia: Well, I was not that social because I couldn't very well-- Because my mother was crying about her boys coming home from Germany. What ended first? The Japanese war first? No, Germany. Wasn't it Germany, the one that was first? Yes.
Conklin: Do you remember that day? The V-J Day, Victory in Japan.
Amelia: Yes, and the VE day.
Conklin: What was the tone like?
Amelia: Which came first? The VE day, victory in Germany, Europe?
Conklin: What was the tone like at Fort Mason at VJ Day?
Amelia: I don't remember so much, but I do remember on the outside, oh God, everybody was jumping up and down on Marcus Street and hugging and kissing each other.
Conklin: There wasn't a huge celebration going on [crosstalk]--
Amelia: I'm sure there must have been, but I was not that social. There is a lot of celebrations down there.
Conklin: What was the closing ceremony like at Fort Mason? Were you there? Did you see the closing ceremony?
Amelia: No, I was working. I went from pillar to post. As the jobs closed down, I was glad that I was able to hold onto my job. I wanted to hang onto it until I at least retired. I don't even know what the date was when Fort Mason closed, but then I remember there was a little while there that I actually went over to the Oakland Army terminal, because that was a supply depot. Then all of our ships went over there, and that was the end of that. What else was I going to say? I forgot what I was saying.
Conklin: It's okay.
Amelia: Oh, about all the parties. Every time an officer or somebody of note, we'd always have a big to-do up at the officer’s club at the Fort Mason.
Conklin: When they left the service, or they got an award or a promotion?
Amelia: Yes, there was always somebody. We'd all take up a collection for the big wigs, more or less. [laughs]
Conklin: What sorts of presents would you get them?
Amelia: Oh, I don't know. We'd all put in for something and then would give them Lord knows what? I don't remember.
Conklin: You were never in charge of buying the--
Amelia: Oh, no, no, no. I was just a clerk.
Conklin: Did they open the somethings at these parties?
Amelia: Oh, yes.
Conklin: What were in the boxes?
Amelia: I don't remember.
Conklin: What were the parties like? Were they [crosstalk]--
Amelia: We weren't supposed to give the officers things, presents and gifts. That [00:24:00] was a no-no, but still they did, they took up a collection. Just like they do when some lady was going to have a baby, we'd take a book collection, [laughs] or a shower or something like that.
Conklin: What was the climate at these parties?
Amelia: Oh, it was fun. Everything was over, the war was over. I wasn't there. Then we moved to the old Letterman Hospital. You know those old wooden shacks they had there, before they built the-- I was working there for quite a while too.
Conklin: What were you doing there?
Amelia: Still clerical work. Looking at the food. The suppliers of the food that the army would consume, like ice cream and steaks and roast beef and stuff like that. All the food that the military would use was inspected by the-- There were a lot of people down on the pier there. They had big warehouses where they would-- right under the court tower. Of course, I would've to do all that paperwork.
Conklin: [laughs] What memorable people do you remember from your time working with the Army? Do any people come to mind that were just really memorable?
Amelia: Some were.
Conklin: Like who?
Amelia: I don't know. They used to invite me to the officers’ club, and to the NCO club right there. I worked right by the headquarters building here and the NCO club was right next door. I couldn't go there by [00:26:00] myself naturally, but I used to go over there and have drinkies and something to eat or something like that at lunchtime. At that time, everything was much more relaxed.
Conklin: What time period are we discussing?
Amelia: We're-- Golly, I don't know. [laughs] It all [crosstalk]
Conklin: '50s, late '50s, '60s?
Amelia: Probably in the '60s.
Conklin: You began?
Amelia: Then from there, the whole group, it became-- Instead of the Army transportation, it was under the area veterinarian and the post veterinarian. Then there was Stoneman-- What was the name of that place? They were the guys who were--
Conklin: Well, Stoneman?
Amelia: Yes, Stoneman, and all those other various places that we would serve things, serve food whatever it was. It had to be government-inspected. If it was government inspected, and if it I had anything to do with the military, naturally it would go through the veterinarians.
Conklin: Would you ever do any of the inspection--
Amelia: Oh, no.
Conklin: It's just paperwork?
Amelia: Just paperwork, yes.
Conklin: The people that were inspectors, what backgrounds did they have?
Amelia: Oh, they were veterinarians, officers. They came in as officers, the veterinarian.
Conklin: They actually just inspected food. They didn't inspect animals, it sounds like?
Amelia: Well, not--
Conklin: Interesting.
Amelia: I don't know what they did, but we had a lot of-- In those days, we had a big-- Down to South City there, we had a big, big, big, big corral there where they slaughtered animals. What was the name of that?
Conklin: I think it was the Armour Packing Plant.
Amelia: Yes, yes.
Conklin: It was a company plant.
Amelia: They had some gruesome stories about-- I didn't want to remember.
Conklin: You'd have to go down the--
Amelia: No, no, no. I could do the paperwork. So many millions of pounds of [crosstalk] tenderloin, so forth and so on.
Conklin: You'd get the meat for the army from South San Francisco?
Amelia: We'd never see them because our inspectors would go down there and look and see, and there was these liver and the heart and so forth. They had these flukes and things, and then they couldn't accept anything unless it was A1. That's where I finally wound up.
Conklin: Did you make any friends during your army years that you still stay in contact with?
Amelia: Well, no, because there were-- there were some, but they were from different-- not from the area here, they came-- Well, like the soldiers, Lord knows where they came from. They went back to where their roots were.
Conklin: In my mind, the situation was dire. You were working extremely quickly and hard. It was a time of strife.
Amelia: In the beginning.
Conklin: You were meeting people and then you'd never see them again. In my mind, that sets up a situation socially where you don't really get to have satisfying contact with people. It all sounded awfully quick. How did that affect you?
Amelia: Well, I don't know. There were men that would say, "Come on out and do this," and that and the other thing, but I wasn't that type. In those days, you either were a loose girl [laughs] or you weren't. I just wasn't. I was a good Catholic girl. [laughs]
Conklin: You couldn't go out with them at all?
Amelia: I would go out occasionally with different things, to go out to dinner or to their [00:30:00] parties and stuff like that, but no fooling around. I wasn't much of a one to fooling around. Were you?
[laughter]
Even when you were younger?
Conklin: The Conklin is now interviewing
Amelia: It's altogether different than it is now. Nowadays you say, "Hello, goodbye. Where did we sleep tonight?"
Conklin: What happened with the girls that were "a little looser" than you were? What happened to them and their-- Did the word get out what type of girls they were, let's say?
Amelia: Oh, sure.
Conklin: Did that affect their work?
Amelia: Not their work, no. They had their boyfriends and whatever waiting for them to pick them up. Well, it's going back to regular civilians again. Nurses were nurses, they were not army nurses. I wanted to tell you about the Army nurses that went on the ships and met the boys coming back overseas. [laughs]
Conklin: Well, we have a couple more minutes. Why don't you-
Amelia: Oh, no, this is all talk. This is the [unintelligible 00:31:05] You get these poor, lonely guys that had been away, and all they ever saw was these yellow girls. It was nice to see a white, purdy nurse who was available. They all had severance pay. They gave them their money right now. [laughs]
Conklin: Oh, and they ended up broke, huh?
Amelia: I guess so.
[00:31:37] [END OF AUDIO]
