Mr. Allen T. Hayes Jr.
[b. 3/09/21]
[Interview starts at 003 counter]
[010] Déjà Morton: I am Déjà Morton at 1139 W. Fall Creek Parkway East Drive, Indianapolis, Indiana. Interviewing Allen T. Hayes Jr. His birth date is 3-09-1921. Attending the interview is Allen T. Hayes and Déjà L. Morton…which war did you serve in?
Allen Hayes Jr.: World War Two.
DM: What branch of service were you?
AH: United States Army.
DM: Where did you serve?
AH: In the South Pacific.
DM: And what was your rank?
AH: Private.
DM: What was your education prior to the war?
AH: Eleventh grade, in high school.
DM: Where did you attend high school?
AH: Crispus Attucks.
DM: Were you married before the war?
AH: Nope.
DM: What were feelings towards war that you grew up with? [032]
AH: I didn’t like it.
DM: Was your father involved in war at all?
AH: No. He never served.
DM: Were you drafted or did you enlist?
AH: Drafted.
DM: How’d you feel about being drafted? [037]
AH: I didn’t like that either [laughs].
DM: Where were you living at the time?
AH: At 1554 North Arsenal Avenue.
DM: Why did you pick the branch of service that you were involved in? [046]
AH: Actually I didn’t. I was just issued into the Army and that was it. I mean, I didn’t have any priority--no choice of the matter, I was just inducted into the army.
DM: Did you have any friends who were also drafted?
AH: Oh yes, all of my friends in the neighborhood, some of the fellows that I formerly went to school with, quite a lot of us.
DM: Do you recall your first days in service? [064]
AH: First days? Yeah, I was drafted in February of 1942, what else?
DM: Was it scary? [071]
AH: Scary? No, but I was opposed to having to go, because I thought that even after I was discharged that…I didn’t have much choice in…So I feel that my venture in the Army was kind of a test I guess. Of one’s capability, one’s mental condition in order to take interest in what was being said and told to do, and how to do it. It was a great relief to finally be able to come home and get to look around and see that there was something else that I could do: to improve my own condition, my own mentality, and my will to achieve above all the problems that I had endured in the past.
DM: Can you tell me about your boot camp or training?
AH: Where? Where I received my boot camp? I received my boot training at Ft. McClellan, Alabama.
DM: Were there any [interrupted] experiences from that?
AH: Melrose, California, Fort Dix, Jefferson Barracks, we flew to California, San Francisco, we shipped out to New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Rose Island, back to Hebrides.
DM: What was boot camp like? [138]
AH: Basic training just was followed up by going to different camps to go for the training before we embarked for the South Pacific. Criss crossing the country twice [clears throat] after leaving basic training in Alabama, then north-to-south and south-to-west and west-to-east, and east-to-west, out to the South Pacific islands which was very interesting-taking about a month and a half to get to that area of the globe, crossing the Equator going through the Somoa and Fiji Islands area, and then on the way back shipping out to Hawaii, Honolulu and back to the United States to the area where we left which was San Francisco at the point of being discharged.
DM: Was boot camp physically enduring for you?
AH: Straining?
DM: Was it physically straining?
AH: Straining. Well, I guess to some extent it was. Of course, I don’t think it was any more straining than any other individual. You, know, we all were draftees, we had no knowledge or military background, so it was just one of those things that I was subjected to and that’s the most that I can say about it. It was really- I guess you can say it was hectic, but I was a survivor, I was able to maintain my…common sense, and be able to motivate my background and my thinking to a higher level. And that’s what I tried to do when I came back was to enhance my own thinking and try to motivate myself to do something useful, and make something of my life as an individual, although I think I can credit the military with giving me some feeling of how to control myself. Rather than to go off on the deep end, and I’m thankful that I was able to do this, through the way of God, [be]cause that’s the only thing that really preserved me and has given me the longest survival of today, its--it brings about the fullness of one’s ability to advance himself in this world as a human being. I find that very problematic when I look at the fact that I was drafted to do a job that I feel that was not gratified in a manner because we had to go through a tremendous ordeal to really gain some kind of respect and it’s still not being done. We had problems, with the politics of this country were-we’d been misused by one party and taken advantage of by another and I’m thinking that people, Americans, has an ungrateful attitude towards people that have given their lives and their time and in some cases, even their money that some of them didn’t really have but were supportive of the cause.
DM: What do you think the goal of World War two was? [313]
AH: I think it was a war that was a necessity because the country had been attacked and that gave reference to the fact that we had a war to fight. And we were able to win that war because we had Allies. We did not misuse the friendliness that we had among France and England and the other nations like Canada, and all the other nations that participated in that war because it was a war of reason and a war that head potential for establishing a world of understanding. Because of a man that was an insane idiot that wanted to conquer the world, and that wasn’t up to slup, this wasn’t going to work. And with that no one country can dominate another because of we stood for each other. War is not the answer. That’s one reason why Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the United Nations because of the fact that that included all of the nations around the planet where they can sit at the table and negotiate the problems of the world rather than escalating them to a full-blown war, which really proves nothing. I think that, with my thinking that, war provides nothing but hatred and death and destruction, I think problems can be solved if people sit down and can exchange and talk to one another, ‘than just to jump up and say “I’m this, you do this my way, and if it’s not my way I’m going to take you out.” Well that’s wrong. The U.N. was founded on the basis of people around the planet sitting down and discussing the problems that exist. People don’t realize, especially the younger people, do not realize that the UN was founded in 1947, in San Francisco, in what they call the old Opera House, which was used at that time to formulate the UN. Until the real building and party was established in New York. Harry Truman completed the UN because of the fact that he was president and he inherited the presidency when President Roosevelt died. So by being Vice President he became the President and that’s when pressed the UN, which is still in existence today. But there’s several folk that don’t want to see the UN survive, they want to break it down just like the League of Nations which was founded which was a European group of nations, they failed because everybody wanted to run over everybody else and it didn’t do any good because you have people that really did not participate as they should have. One group undermining the other, it never works. But the UN, the United Nations can work if people stop trying to exploit it, and undermine it and say it’s no good, because it’s really the only way the nations on this planet can sit down together and talk to each other at the table and be able to decide the problems that they have. War has never been and never will be, an answer to world problems. I think that Mrs. Roosevelt was a strong supporter of trying to bring this nation together. Under Mrs. Roosevelt who was President Roosevelt’s wife was not afraid to go down into the coalmines and into the areas where people were impoverished and what we say today, the have-nots, the people that are just rooted on a bad existence. I don’t see this country get back to the status of 1929 where you had people standing out in the street with lines waiting for a pot of soup and trying to fend for themselves because of no jobs, nobody really took a care, or had the compassion for their fellow man. If you look at the situation as it exists today no one is really trying to solve anything everybody’s thinking about enforcing their rules on other people and using the means of forcing something down somebody’s throat when it’s not acceptable. War is not the answer, and I feel that we’re going to have to do some research on America and really come to the conclusion that we’re not just gonna go and be the bully of the world and try to force people to accept our views. People in other countries have their own views, that’s why it’s necessary for us to have the UN so that we can sit down and discuss all these things that revoke other people. And bring it to the understanding where I can live, you can live, and we can exist even if I don’t believe what you believe and you don’t believe what I believe. We have to recognize that God made us all. That’s the only way that we’re going to exemplify a true meaning of what God means and what God hears. We can use all the glory, depictions of Jesus that we have, but we have the same problem everyday, Jesus was crucified but we have people crucifying each other everyday right here in America. I feel that you’ve got to straighten up your own house before you can go think about changing somebody else’s points of view. I believe that seeing is believing, if you believe in what you see, your preaching and teaching must be to respect your fellow man. Which I think God made that intention, you’ve got to respect the other individual as well as yourself and you’ve got to respect yourself first because if you t respect yourself and you don’t try to exploit someone else because you have compassion for that fellow man. That basically comes to the understanding that could be achieved if we all sit as that poor man that was beaten down in California. Can’t we all get along? I don’t know how much more that I can say on the subject but I still say that we’ve got to improve our so-called political system to make it true and believing to people that we’re trying to-who come interested in our affairs which it might become just like the people in Central and South America, what you call the Banana Republic kind of political system where if you don’t believe what I believe well I’ll shoot you out. That is not gonna do anything but create more problems and you can’t achieve anything by just trying to annihilate everybody that doesn’t believe in your cause. Because everybody can’t be right and everybody can’t be wrong. So let’s be a common ground where we sit down and talk these things over, as I’ve said before and I repeat it over and over again, if there’s no congenial concept, to sit down and discuss the matter, we’re always gonna have turmoil, we’re always gonna have confusion, we’re always gonna have the situations that we have. Now, I don’t wanna get to deep into those political things but, our so-called president, did not use the right example for trying to help those people over there in that country. He went to the UN and defied them, instead of let them do their work, he tried the dragon “Well, if you don’t do what I say, I’ll do it myself.” And what has it accounted for? Body bags by the number, and the continuation of slaughter and misuse and exploitation of people in the rest of that area. It’s not going to decide anything if you just shoot your way in, it’s not going to work and has proved so by the extent of the casualties that we have endured, are bringing back home everyday, people that are mutilated and not only lost their lives but lost their arms, eyesight, hearing, legs, you name it. You’ve got a full agenda and who’s going to take care of all these people and the jobs being outsourced to other areas of the world. You have people standing’ out on the streets with no money, you have crime increasing as a result of people not behaving to the best of themselves.
DM: You said you served in the South Pacific, do you remember arriving there, and what it was like? [768]
AH: Well, I arrived there in South Pacific in the daytime, it was oh, I guess three in the morning when we disembarked from the ship, we flew into New Caledonia first and we camped on the side of the gigantic hill, then we went down to the ground level of the hill and looked back and you could see just hundreds and hundreds of little campsites camped on the slope of the hill. New Caledonia is a French island-territory, and as I said before, earlier, the French were involved in World War two. We were there for about a month then we shipped out to Scro Santos which is an island right off of New Caledonia, and we transferred from Scro Santos to Rose Island, and the war part was out there, we saw some of the troops move up to the Solomans. [door bell]
DM: What was your job assignment?
AH: We were a battalion, we were engineers, what we done was very unique, I don’t know how they done it but they got a gigantic solemn wheel over there on that island and I drove a tractor, we had just a regular solemn wheel and they were cutting trees and they were making lumber out of the trees that they chopped down, and my job was to help the person who would hook up and a chain to the tractor and I would drive the tractor to the solemn wheel that they had set up and the lumber that they received from the solemn wheel was used to build barracks. We were moving from tents to barracks and that establishment, and after we got our barracks built my friend was…submarines, the Japanese submarines that finally surfaced and fired on the island. That was my next assignment.
I patrolled the beach area, I was on the night watch from, I say, four o’clock, that was when the tide was coming in and I used to walk along the beach and I would have to move up higher because the tide coming in. But by that time, the water had reached its mark and I was at a higher level, where I could see much better, because on the beach the sight of a ship could barely be seen from a distance, but the higher up you get the better you could focus and see what was out there. I recall one night we had a air raid, and I never will forget the situation I was put in, we were all required to dig our own fox holes, it was pretty difficult after you got down so far because the very surface of those islands was a growth of what do you call it? A growth of fossils and I can’t think of the terminology right now, whatever it was, the dirt went so far. We had a air raid and I was scrambling for my fox hole and when I got there another soldier in it, it seems as though he had dug a fox hole for himself, but he used mine, so I had to fall in a ditch, fortunately, I survived because the ditch was deeper than the fox hole and sulfur that was flying around went over me, because I kept my head down. And the next morning we surveyed the island and we found that, by the way cows are sacred over there, they are allowed to roam anywhere, we had, actually we had cows over on there, and the only open ones was a cow, bats, and a owl. Everybody else was secure so, we had no problem protecting the island because we the help of the New Zealand air force and the navy and the army also, we had several outfits and submarines, and they were the navy construction, they were the actual engineers of the navy, we built docks and things like that for the ships to come in and lay down the anchor. So I did most of those things until the end of my time out there. It was kind of difficult sometimes, but I’m here to sit and talk with you, I can be assured that being a survivor through God’s will, that I was able to return home. So the experience was you might say, evasive for me being able to focus more on the future, and being able to sort out things as I came into them. The thing is the disappointment in me thinking that that war was going to solve all the problems, but it seemed to be good then, And as I said before, getting people to sit down and get order in the world, people need to get order, with themselves before they can start talking about all order of the world. If this planet is going to survive we need to do that. President Bush seems to think that you can point a finger at somebody and tell them to shut up, you don’t have a positive background of yourself, being stressed out in the barren wind. Its very difficult for people to say that they know the pain and suffering, no body knows that but the person that has gone through it. I just fell so sorry that America has come to a point where we are divided, me versus you, you versus me, and we are not a country of “We the People” we have become a separate, an idealistic and materialistic country geared to thinking of oneself, and not thinking of the other fellow that you see on the street, the fellow that you see everyday driving a bus or a cab, a train, or airplane, whatever the standards is, we should respect that person for doing what they doing, because it��s a relief and…that we have to have, especially since we have an advanced world and we have to be able to look around and I guess, and do to our fellow man as we do ourselves, I can’t do anymore than lean on that as a principle for people that seem to think that this world is only made for them, and that they have to have everything and no one else has anything, and that’s stupid.
DM: What did you do after the war? [775]
AH: I did several things, I got a job that was as a matter of fact- the first time I could utilize what background and what intelligence I had was that was before I get to forget the fact that before I went over seas I was a clerk and I issued clothing from the stock room which was shoes, blankets, uniforms, and I was in charge of keeping records. So when I came home I got this job working for a company that used clerks to handle their functions they were a catalogue type of business, my job was to keep record of the stock and in some cases deliver stock to drug stores which included mailing forms, cartons to put the stock in and keeping a record of what type of boxes we had to use and mail out the different products that was being handled at the shop. And I went further on and worked for a company that produced walkie-talkies. They used walkie-talkies in advanced time like how we use cell phones, after that we had other advanced technology produced, they were battery operated used predominately in the army and whatever service we had. I did different jobs, whatever I could get because most jobs we got were at the low end of the totem pole [be] cause we the last to get hired and the first fired. Which has been one of the basic problems that we face in this country, we still don’t have and get respect for what we are and who we are and for what we’ve done. That’s one problem that we have and it’s a pain and a burden when we are asked to do all of these things that we are asked to do yet we’re getting no respect because individuals can gain and most of them are being used to sway other people to accept the brain wash that we usually get. And we sometimes in a position that we are brain damaged and we don’t have the compassion that other people have because we are exploited…Is there something else you want me to say?
DM: Did you receive any medals or citations?
AH: No, I should have, but I didn’t, I didn’t go for it because I felt that I’m in the league before they recognize me, not only, they were not for the people who were doing all the work. And it was fruitless to try to do anything about it, well I just felt like it wasn’t. Some people say, “Well you shouldn’t have been reluctant to speak out.” Well, back in those days what could you really do? Because we still hadn’t had the civil rights movement, which brought a lot of things to the front that we still are a little short on that. And that’s respect and we’re still a little short on that.
DM: Lastly, if there was a draft for the current war in Iraq what advice would you those who were drafted? [897]
AH: Well, I would say, is worth it? Is it worth it? Especially in the situation that it is right now, the cycle of war that we’re in right now that we’re in right now. We’re not defending our country we’re defending somebody else’s country and we’re stressing the part that they need to be free, well I look at it like this: We haven’t received our freedom, we’re still at eh point where we still have to strive and escalate our pilgrimage to get America to understand that America’s got to take care of its own problems before going over seas, telling those people how they should act and react, we are still at that point with all the so-called departments and associations. I still think we need to keep hope alive and the only way to do that is to keep protesting and challenging the refines of liberty for all. It’s not a selfish thing, we are not a selfish people, all we want is respect. I would tell them [draftees] to refuse and my question is “What’s in it for me?” Is it worth it for me to lose my life and I don’t gain any respect for it? You can’t eat medals, and medals don’t get you no job. [end]
DM: Thank you.
