Peter Richard Petersen
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Interview Summary:
Peter Richard Petersen was born on April 13, 1926, in Duluth, Minnesota. His father was a landscape contractor, and his mother was a housewife who raised Petersen and his six siblings. He was the second from the youngest child. Growing up in the era of the Great Depression, Petersen describes the difficult lifestyle and the hardships that people dealt with on a daily basis. Living arrangements were tight, and he says “there was always more than one [person] in each bed, so you kept each other warm.” He also describes nickel Saturdays at The Lake movie theater as a big deal.
Petersen did his part to help bring in income for the family by taking on a paper route for the Duluth Herald, and later he became a dishwasher at Bridgeman’s restaurant. Petersen’s mother suffered the brunt of these tough times and died at the age of 48. His father followed soon after and died at the age of 52, leaving Petersen and his siblings without parents before Petersen had graduated from high school.
As children, Petersen and his friends played sports, mostly football, to keep themselves entertained. He and his brothers were regulars at the fields around Duluth, including Wheeler Field and Leif Erikson Park, and were members of the Central High School football team. Later, in Junior College, his football team made it the National Championship, the Junior Rose Bowl.
His father, brothers, and uncles were also regular deer hunters and fishermen, but Petersen wasn’t an avid participator because he preferred golfing. He also joined a friend and traveled to Chicago, and then from Chicago to Texas, before their senior year in high school to look for jobs.
After he was discharged from the military, Petersen and the same friend made another road trip to Mexico, where they eventually stowed away on a ship bound for Norfolk, Virginia. Petersen enlisted in the Navy on April 1, 1944, before his 18th birthday. He completed basic training in Idaho, and was assigned to the USS Olmsted in Astoria, Oregon. Their first mission was in Lae, New Guinea. The ship was a troop transport ship, and Petersen was part of the 1st Division Deck Force. The ship took many trips across the Pacific, and Petersen eventually became a gunner, trained on a 20mm gun. He recalls one time when they were being “kamikazied” by Japanese planes. When the end of the war was declared in Europe,
Petersen was on leave in Duluth. He was obligated to serve until he was 21 because his parents were deceased, so after his leave, he went back to his station. When he was back aboard the Olmsted, Peterson witnessed the signing of the Japanese surrender on the USS Missouri. The Olmsted was anchored in Tokyo Bay, and everyone was at battle stations because there was a fear that this might be a trick. He watched the signing with binoculars and narrated what was happening to the rest of the gun crew. He knew it was a historic moment. After the Japanese surrendered, Petersen remained on the Olmsted, a ship paid for by the people of Olmsted County, Minnesota, for the remainder of his time in the Navy. Petersen was one of three men who saw the ship both commissioned and decommissioned. Petersen adds that the population of Olmsted County should be proud of their effort in WWII.
Source: Interview (below)
Veterans’ Memorial Hall Interview with Peter Richard Petersen
Date: August 11, 2008
Location: Duluth, MN
Interviewed by:
Daniel Hartman, Program Director of Veterans Memorial Hall
Transcribed by:
Karin Swor, Program Assistant of Veterans Memorial Hall,
on October 15, 2008
(Peter Petersen’s birth date: April 13, 1926)
D.H. Hi, this is Daniel Hartman doing an oral interview with Pete Petersen on August 11th of 2008, and if I could just have it said for the record, what day were you born?
P.P. April 13, 1926
D.H. Okay, could you say and spell out your last name?
P.P Petersen, P-E-T-E-R-S-E-N.
D.H. Okay, and I heard that right, you were born in 1926?
P.P. Yes.
D.H. Okay, you were a veteran of World War II, correct?
P.P. Yes.
D.H. Where did you grow up originally, and where were you born?
P.P. Born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota.
D.H. What part of Duluth were you born in?
P.P. Lakeside.
D.H. Okay, how did you like growing up in Lakeside?
P.P. Very good. I was there through fourth grade. We had a fire at our house, and we moved to 15th Avenue East and 1st Street, where I attended Endion Grade School and East Junior High School.
D.H. What were your parents’ background, ethnic background?
P.P. My father came over from Norway in 1889. My mother was from Wisconsin, and she was German.
D.H. OK, did her parents come over from Germany before that?
P.P. Must have, because they spoke very broken. She was from Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
D.H. Growing up, did your father speak pretty good English, being from Norway?
P.P. Oh yes, yes, he came over at three months old or something like that.
D.H. OK, so your father spent the majority of his life in the United States?
P.P. Yes.
D.H. Did he spend the majority of his time in Duluth, or did he travel all over the country?
P.P. He was Duluth all his life.
D.H. Now, growing up, was your parent’s ethnic background German and Norwegian, was that a very strong thing in your family?
P.P. Well—yes, my dad never wanted to be called a Swede. He died at a young age.
D.H. At what age did your parents die?
P.P. My mother died at age 48 and my dad died at 52, and we were a large family.
D.H. How many kids did your parents have?
P.P. We had seven kids.
D.H. Were you in the middle there, or were you the youngest?
P.P. Second youngest
D.H. Okay, can you name off your oldest family member to the youngest family member?
P.P. Yes, the oldest was John, Jim, Lorraine, Lois, Robert, Peter and I have a younger sister, Norma, that died as a baby. My youngest brother is Tom. Only Tom and I are left.
D.H. What were your parents’ names? What was your mother’s name?
P.P. My mother’s name, maiden name, was Lila Klinghouse, very German. D.H. Very much, and her first name was Lila?
P.P. Lila.
D.H. Your father’s name?
P.P. Gunder.
D.H. Also very Norwegian, okay, is there a certain religion that your parents were, or did they have separate religions?
P.P. First Lutheran.
D.H. Both of them?
P.P. Yes.
D.H. Was your mom originally Lutheran also?
P.P. I’m not sure. But I was confirmed at First Lutheran. The church moved. (Now, it is down on 1100 E. Superior Street.)
D.H. Where did it used to be?
P.P. First Avenue East and 3rd Street. My grandfather, who was also Peter, he was a landscape contractor, and he was one of the original members of that church, at 1st Avenue East and 3rd Street, across from Central, the old Central High School. It has changed a lot.
D.H. What did your parents do for work as they grew up, what was your father’s and mother’s occupations?
P.P. Well, my dad was also a landscape contractor and put in lawns. My grandfather was successful, and my dad worked for him. I know he put in some of the first greens at Northland Country Club golf course back in the ’20’s, I guess.
D.H. Okay, was your mother with the kids at home, I imagine?
P.P. Yes, mother. I think why she died young, was mostly overworked. She worked very hard, and I think she had heart trouble.
D.H. Is that what she died of, a heart attack?
P.P. No, it wasn’t an attack of any kind.
D.H. How about your father, what did he die of?
P.P. He was in good health but, after my mother died, it only took him a year of grief.
D.H. So your father was pretty heartbroken?
P.P. Yeah. The war had started, World War II had started, and he took a job up in Newfoundland. When he came back from there, he died shortly thereafter.
D.H. We will back up a little bit here. So, you grew up in Duluth in the 1920’s. You probably don’t remember much of it; do you remember anything of it?
P.P. Oh yeah, it was very cold, and we were very poor.
D.H. I mean, describe your living conditions a little bit.
P.P. Well, we rented a two-story house with a small heater downstairs, a potbellied stove that heated one or two rooms downstairs. The toilet upstairs froze several times that I can remember. But there was always more than one person in each bed, so you kept each other warm.
D.H. So you actually literally go end-to-end. You would actually have multiple people per bed?
P.P. Yeah.
D.H. Okay.
P.P. You know, the small kids, you would get three and four to a bed.
D.H. Did you feel that was kind of the norm back then with a lot of people? P.P. Yes, that was nothing out of the norm. People have asked me, “You really had it tough, didn’t you?” I would say, “No, I didn’t have it tough,” but when I think of it, maybe it was.
D.H. Growing up, you didn’t really think anything of it?
P.P. No, everybody was in the same boat; everybody had tough times.
D.H. What did you do for fun as a child, or what were some of the games you played?
P.P. Everything. Well, I mean, we were right next to a hockey rink, and I could skate pretty well with my older brother’s secondhand skates that were four sizes too big. I just put all the socks I could find on.
D.H. Yeah, did you play hockey a lot growing up?
P.P. Yes, but mostly football. My older brothers were football players, and I came back from World War II, and I went to Duluth Junior College. We had 35 straight wins, we were rated #1 Junior College team in the country, and 1948 we played in the Junior Rose Bowl in Pasadena, the Little Rose Bowl. You can’t get that confused with the big Rose Bowl, the one that the Big Ten played in.
D.H. Still, that is pretty impressive, and what position did you play?
P.P. I was quarterback on offense and cornerback on defense. We were a small school and a small squad, and when we went from offense to defense, three would leave the field and three would come on.
D.H. You guys were playing the whole game, pretty much.
P.P. Yeah, in that Rose Bowl I played the whole game except the last couple of plays, but I was also the punter. It was in our family. The Minnesota coach tried very hard to get my brother, Bob, that came out of the Marines. Bernie Berman was football coach at Minnesota then, and he just caught Bob at the wrong time: he came home and got married, so as much as he wanted to go to the U of M, he decided not to go.
D.H. So football is a very important thing in your family?
P.P. Yes.
D.H. Growing up, you played a lot of football, then. Where did you guys usually play at?
P.P. Where?
D.H. Yeah, where did you play? Was there a certain field that you would go to?
P.P. Well, we played our home games at Public School Stadium, and we practiced at Wheeler Field in the West End.
D.H. As a family like, when you just played as a kid before you really became enrolled at your high school, where did you play at?
P.P. Leif Erickson Park, which was a big field then—there were no flowers down there—and Lakeside and Grant Field.
D.H. I imagine that looks a little different to you today?
P.P. Yes, I have a lady friend that likes to go there, walk through there, and I show her where our field was, and she can’t believe that. Then I moved downtown, and we had a real tough bunch down there. We had six-man football, and we were undefeated, but these were all tougher kids.
D.H. Was the downtown kind of a tougher part of town?
P.P. Yeah.
D.H. How was Lakeside growing up?
P.P. Real good.
D.H. Was it a quiet neighborhood, were there a lot of kids, I mean?
P.P. Well, Lester Park and Lakeside were both very good, and we competed a lot. But I moved out of there when I was in the fourth grade, so I remember playing some games out there. The other football players were all twelve or thirteen years old; I was six or seven. “Geez, that little guy can really tackle” —I remember my brothers telling my dad that.
D.H. I imagine it’s kind of a problem, even as a kid, to hear that? When you describe the Lakeside neighborhood a little bit, was it a place that you could leave your house unlocked?
P.P. Yeah, I never heard of burglary out there at all. I remember I went by the old place that had burned—it didn’t burn down, but it burned up in the attic, and we couldn’t live there. This summer I went by there, and a guy was having a party out on the lawn, and boldly I walked up, and they looked at me, Who’s this guy? I said, “I was born here eighty-two years ago.” The owner said, “I didn’t think this place was that old.” (He was wondering if he got a bad deal or what.) I said, “We had to move out because of a fire,” and he said, “I didn’t know there was a fire in this place at one time.”
D.H. He didn’t know.
P.P. No, but I couldn’t tell him too much about it. It never had a basement; a basement had been put in later. But what I remember about that place mostly is my dad always had a deer hanging up in that back shed. I guess he went twenty-one years straight that he always got a deer.
D.H. Did you go deer hunting at all, later?
P.P. Did I what?
D.H. Did you become a deer hunter?
P.P. No, never did, but my dad took us in the better years stream fishing up at the west branch of the Manitou River, and it was such a grueling thing. My uncle would come with his son, and they would make one trip, and they would never go again.
D.H. Why?
P.P. Because it was so grueling. We would drive as far as we could on the old lumber road, and then we would hike for three hours through the brush to get to Dad’s spot at the west branch of the Manitou River.
D.H. Was it worth it, did you catch?
P.P. Yes, I caught a lot of fish, and I went when I was about twelve. It was nothing for me, it was a lot of fun. My dad put me on a spot once and he said, “Why don’t you stay by the pond there, try that,” and he went upstream. He didn’t get anything. He came back, and I had about twenty fish. He couldn’t believe it.
D.H. What type of fish were you catching?
P.P. Trout, brook trout. Just a great place, that’s why my dad went there, that’s why it was so hard to get there. That was the best place he knew.
D.H. How big were the brook trout back then?
P.P. Eight to 12 inches. Not big, but this was a good size.
D.H. Good eating, though?
P.P. Oh, the best I ever had, and we would cook out there. Part of that grueling was, when we got to the stream, they would wade right in with no waders, right up to their chests and fish. And this was ice water, this was spring. And then until it got dark, they would do this, and then a big bonfire and drying clothes and freezing. Everybody was trying to stay warm.
D.H. I understand why they did it once.
P.P. Nobody would go again. But when we came out of the service, my brother-in-law and my brother and I went up to find that spot, and we were lost for a whole day. We couldn’t find it, and my brother and brother-in-law were great woodsmen, more than me.
D.H. And they still couldn’t find it?
P.P. No.
D.H. Did you go fishing a lot growing up, say, on Lester River?
P.P. No, but I had plenty of chances.
D.H. Just not a fisherman?
P.P. No, very little, because I was golfing all the time.
D.H. So you golfed a lot. Where did you golf at? Did you golf at the country club?
P.P. Well, let’s see, my job took me out of Duluth in 1962.
D.H. What was your job?
P.P. With the government, grain inspection, and I went to Minneapolis. I left in ’62. I was transferred to Minneapolis, to Kansas City, to San Francisco, to Toledo, Ohio, where I retired in 1986.
D.H. Now I am going to try and bring you back again back to the 1930’s a little bit. When the Depression came in the early 1930’s, was your family already poor? Did they get poorer? Describe to me the Great Depression a little bit as you saw it through your eyes.
P.P. Well, I think the ’20’s were pretty good. I think my grandfather and my dad, who worked for him, did well. In the ’30’s—before I was ten and twelve—those were the hardest times. My dad was out of work a lot. I remember he took a sled from Lakeside and went downtown and got commodities. That was a pretty good hike, because we lived on 47th Avenue East.
D.H. Huge hike.
P.P. In the middle of winter, and the streetcar ran right by there, but he didn’t have the fare. We used to walk down. After my oldest brother got married we walked down, my brother Bob and I, to see him; he lived on 10th Avenue East, and then he would take us to the movie, which was a nickel on Saturdays.
D.H. What was the movie theater called?
P.P. The Lake Theater.
D.H. It was called the Lake?
P.P. Yeah.
D.H. Where was it located at?
P.P. Well, it was also known as the Bum’s Opera. It was a nuthouse on Saturday morning. It was a nickel, and there were cowboy movies and all the kids yelling, you know, “Get him, get him!”
D.H. Now, do you remember any certain movies in particular that you enjoyed there?
P.P. Yeah, they were all cowboys and Indians.
D.H. So pretty much all you guys watched were cowboy movies?
P.P. That’s about it then, yeah.
D.H. Okay.
P.P. That was the heroes.
D.H. The theater you went to was called the Lake, where was that theater at?
P.P. First Avenue East and Superior Street. It was about 30, on the lower side, 30 East Superior Street.
D.H. Now, when you were growing up and at a young age, did you have a little side job that you helped the family out with?
P.P. Not until I moved downtown, and then I had a paper route.
D.H. You had a paper route when you moved downtown, though?
P.P. Yeah.
D.H. Who did you deliver the paper for?
P.P. The Duluth News Tribune.
D.H. It wasn’t the Duluth Herald?
P.P. Yeah, it was the Herald that was the afternoon paper, yeah.
D.H. How was that, was it a fun job?
P.P. Well, it was an experience: it was pretty tough. It wasn’t the best place to have a route, because I had about sixty customers, I think, and about ten or twelve were lumberjacks. You couldn’t catch them; you couldn’t catch them to pay a bill.
D.H. So you were responsible for getting them to pay then?
P.P. Oh yes.
D.H. The lumberjacks were notoriously bad?
P.P. Well, no, they were very good, but their hours were bad, I guess—they would be out of town and up in the woods, but somebody would take their paper every day.
D.H. How far of a route was it, like where were your boundaries, I guess? P.P. Oh, 6th Avenue West to 2nd Avenue East.
D.H. Okay, so you got to know that area pretty good, though?
P.P. Yeah, and later on, before I went into the service—well, it was in high school—I washed dishes at Bridgeman’s Ice Cream. My sister was an older employee, and it was after the folks died, so I always worked with my sister so she could keep an eye on me.
D.H. When you were growing up in the late 1930’s, kind of your teen-ge years, what did you do as a teenager in the 1930’s? Did you take girls out on the town, I mean?
P.P. No, I was afraid of girls until I went into the service. All I knew were mean girls.
D.H. So what did you and your friends do in the 1930’s?
P.P. Well, mostly sports, we played all sports. Football and basketball and softball in the summer, and then turned that into golf later on.
D.H. So sports were a mainstay of what you did?
P.P. Sports, yeah, everybody I knew loved sports.
D.H. Was there anything unique about growing up in the Duluth area that you may want to have for the record that other people may forget about in the future? I mean, was it a very cold environment?
P.P. Well, we played football in the snow a lot, and then snowstorms. Of course, I played golf with people in snowstorms.
D.H. Do you feel that toughened you up at all?
P.P. Oh yeah, I think so. My older brothers were in real good shape, and they were healthy. They knew what to eat.
D.H. Do you feel very fortunate to have grown up with them and having that knowledge?
P.P. Yeah, yeah, because I was very lucky. I broke a hand and dislocated an elbow in football, but I never had a bad injury. I used to get hit so hard that I thought as I laid there, “I hope nothing is broke.” Just knock you out a little bit.
D.H. So, what year did you graduate from high school?
P.P. 1944.
D.H. 1944.
P.P. And they are having their reunion the day after I leave here, the 2007 Class Reunion.
D.H. That is Duluth Central?
P.P. Yeah.
D.H. You grew up near Central High School, which is near downtown, the old Central Building. Do you ever remember having the big canon out front?
P.P. Oh, yes.
D.H. Did you guys ever play on it?
P.P. Yeah, yeah, we used to. You could walk out on it and swing on it. One of my close friends, Dirty Ed Swanstrom, he put some explosives in the end of that thing once and blew it.
D.H. Is he one of the guys that broke the windows out across the street?! P.P. Yeah.
D.H. So you actually know the guy who actually used it?
P.P. Yeah.
D.H. Was it just him, or was there a bunch of guys that helped put it together?
P.P. Several.
D.H. Were you one of the guys?
P.P. No.
D.H. And he was called Dirty Ed Swanstrom.
P.P. Yeah. Deceased, three years ago, but not forgotten. I went on the bum with him, twice. Once, before we were seniors in high school, we drove cars down from Chicago to Texas.
D.H. When you say “went on the bum,” what do you mean?
P.P. Well, we didn’t have any money, we bummed it, pretty much bummed it, but we went to Chicago and worked, setting pins and loading boxcars, and then we got a job. When we got out of the service we tried that again, because so many things happened on that trip. This time we went to Mexico City, we drove down to Mexico City. We answered an ad in the paper when we were in Chicago. We were older then, and we had a couple of hundred bucks, so we thought we were working and making and not spending our money. We answered this ad, and it turned out to be young ladies. One is a dice girl, and one is a dancer at this club, and they have to get this Buick convertible down to Mexico City.
D.H. When you say a “dice girl,” what do you mean?
P.P. Well, at this club they shake dice at the bar, or something, I don’t know. D.H. So did you guys help give them a ride down?
P.P. We shared expenses, yeah. We got to Mexico City, and they had jobs. We looked at each other and said, “Let’s flip to see if we go to Acapulco or to Veracruz, west coast or east coast,” and we went to Veracruz on the east coast. That was a very good choice.
D.H. Why’s that?
P.P. Well, because we could get around the east coast, we got on a limey ship—a British ship—and went around Florida and up to Newport News, Virginia.
D.H. How was the city of Veracruz? Was it a fun place?
P.P. Yeah, very nice, very Spanish, and every night they would have a walk in the town, the men went one way, and the women went the other way. We thought that was something.
D.H. Why did they do that?
P.P. Tradition and, I suppose, to meet girls.
D.H. Did you guys meet some girls there, then?
P.P. Yup, yeah, and we were invited to an embassy party that we worried so much about, “Can we dress up enough?” you know, but we had a tie and stuff. I am trying to think how I got in trouble there. Oh, we had these two daughters of a doctor that was a personal friend of the President. Very nice party. I left her sitting to go to the bar to get a couple of drinks, and her dad chewed me out, “You never leave your date!” He was pretty serious about it, so that was the end of that. But we stowed away on a limey ship. We lived on the double-bottom for ten days, and the big drive shaft would go overhead, ker-plunk, ker-plunk, making noise, a lot of noise. We got to know the crew, the black crew, the “oilers” or whatever the guys in the engine room were called—they knew we were aboard. Nobody else knew we were on board. So they would fix us an old mattress, and the first five days we were sweating all the time. I remember Dirty Ed, he would sweat. He was kind of a spoiled kid. I never was. I thought, “I don’t know if we can do this,” but I would look at him, and he was sleeping, and the sweat was coming off of him. And I said, “If he can do this, I can, that’s for sure.” But the first five days were really hot, and then we rounded and got into the Atlantic, and then it was cold for five days. The crew would have us up about 9:00pm. We would go up that ladder—it comes out at the mess hall, their mess hall—and they would save something for us. So every night at 9:00 o’clock we would go up and have something, and wouldn’t let anybody see us, and we would go back down. This one night we heard, “Hey, Yanks, you are going to love it tonight, we got a dessert for you!” So we were looking forward to that. Well, it was cold Cream of Wheat. That’s how bad off they were on the ship. Yeah, that was some trip. We almost got thrown off of the fantail. This is where we came up the ladder in the back (aft). Dirty Ed would always get into it, heckling these guys, the sailors. Good natured, but they would take it wrong. I think he got into an argument about how England doesn’t have anything, and we have the heavyweight champion of the world. We almost got thrown off the side until I grabbed him and took him down into the hull: “Enough of that!” Every day there was something like that.
D H. It sounds like a great story, though, and this was after the war, correct?
P.P. Yeah, after the war. When we were in Veracruz we, of course, got kicked out of the place we had. This madam, we called her, she would ask every day for money and Dirty Ed would tell her (he could speak a little Spanish), and he would say, “Big check coming, big check coming in the mail.” That check never came. They caught us sneaking out.
D.H. Did they do anything?
P.P. No, no, but Ed caused a riot at that place. What did he do . . . ? There was a bucket of water, and there was a market below our window, just like in the movies, and he took that bucket and doused them out there. And they came up with knives, and we were holding the door closed. I am thinking, “Boy, we are going to get it!” but that madam came along and chased them all out and really saved our lives. They were really bitter.
D.H. This was the same woman that you guys didn’t pay the money to? P.P. Yeah, she was our friend. But everyday was like that.
D.H. This Ed guy sounds like quite the character. Okay, I will back you up a little bit again. When you were in high school was when World War II really started. Did you think in 1939 that the U.S. was going to get involved? You were fairly young at this point.
P.P. Yes, you could see it coming, and we were slowly building up and getting everybody registered, I think.
D.H. So you probably didn’t believe FDR when he said we would never go to war, the first time when he promised we wouldn’t?
P.P. Well, at the same time we already knew that he had a Lend-Lease Program already going. But back then, see, we had a lot of young people, my older brother was one of them, that was in the CCC. [Transcriber note: This was the Civilian Conservation Corps.] That was, they had a big group here. I know, because I remember some of the parades when he would come back. Just like coming back from the war, but he had been at camp for CCC. That really did a lot of good, I think, for this country, it gave them almost like boot camp training.
D.H. Do you think FDR did a good job as a president? Do you think he helped the country during the Depression?
P.P. Yeah, I think he did. I am not much of a Democrat but I think at that time he was a good man because he was experienced, and he could handle things, it seemed like that to me.
D.H. A lot of people were happy with the guy.
P.P. I remember we were in the South Pacific when they announced that he had died. Everybody was pretty solemn there until somebody yelled, “That’s all right, Eleanor will take over!” Funny how you remember these things.
D.H. What was your thought of Eleanor at the time?
P.P. Not the prettiest. I saw a biography on her, and she was a nice-looking girl in her days and a very smart woman, and she never stepped out on him, but I think he stepped out on her. Eleanor, I liked her more as I got older, I think.
D.H. Okay, now as you saw the war approaching, when you turned eighteen, did you go and enlist, or were you going to wait to be drafted? What was your plan?
P.P. Well, when you were a senior in high school, before you turned eighteen you had to do something, or at eighteen you had to sign up, but I was in before I was eighteen. At that time, as hard as it may be to believe it, the biggest worry of any young guy was, “God, I hope I’m not 4F. What if I don’t pass? What if I don’t pass? What if there is something wrong that I don’t know about?” That was the biggest worry we had because everybody was going, almost everybody.
D.H. So you were worried that you wouldn’t pass the physical fitness test? P.P. No, no.
P.P. That’s when you’re rejected for a medical reason. All the young people, well, they just planned it, it was on their schedule. They weren’t going—well, some of them, I guess, started school and then got drafted out of school—but a lot of them, like me, quit before graduation. I came back from boot camp and thought, “None of my friends even know I am coming back.” And it was prom night, and here are about thirty of them and their dates all dressed up at the Depot. Then there were times I would come back, or I would come on leave, and then when I was discharged, too; I was discharged and wondering, hoping, or waiting to get out. (I had to stay until I was twenty-one, because I didn’t have parents.) I get to Duluth, and I am thinking, “Where am I going? I don’t have a house, a home.” I would come home on leave for a few days, and I would stay with my married sister, and that’s what I did, I stayed with both sisters. I worked for one whose husband had a garage and was a great mechanic. My sister was the bookkeeper.
D.H. Moving back a little bit further, to December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor took place. Do you remember where you were? Do you remember the day pretty well?
P.P. Sunday. I think we knew about it at noon or something like that. I think—it seems like it was around noon, and we were throwing the football around in the street in the front.
D.H. Who came and told you?
P.P. My dad, he was listening on the porch to the radio.
D.H. What did you think was going to happen, what were you thinking?
P.P. Well, they said, “Attacked Pearl Harbor,” and where’s Pearl Harbor? Well, I think, “My God, they’ll be sorry.”
D.H. How many of your family members actually were in the service? One of your brothers was a Marine.
P.P. Three sailors and one Marine.
D.H. Where did the other two sailors go? Do you know what ships they served on?
P.P. Jim—no, but I tried to look up my brother Jim out on an island, and it was where he was stationed; but he had left. They had him listed as a casualty, and they had that wrong. I mean, he was transferred.
D.H. That is a good correction, though.
P.P. Then the last landing we made was at Okinawa. My brother, the Marine, was wounded there. He got a grenade in the foxhole, with two other guys that were killed, and all he got was broken eardrums and shrapnel in the legs. So when I heard from him, he was in three other landings. He said he was really lucky, he says, because I am going back and it’s all over for me. Well, that was the last one. He didn’t miss anything. D.H. When did you enlist, or were you drafted? What year did you enter in service, and do you remember the date?
P.P. Yup: April 1, 1944.
D.H. You enlisted?
P.P. Yes.
D.H. You enlisted with the U.S. Navy, right?
P.P. Right.
D.H. Why did you pick the Navy over, say, the Marines?
P.P. I was going into the Marines and got into an argument with the Marine recruiting sergeant, who was having fun with me. He says, “What makes you think you can be a Marine?” He says, “You are not big enough, you’re not this and you are not that.” I told him to shove it and walked across the hall, where all my buddies were going, in the Navy. Most everybody was going in the Navy then, because of the Pacific war.
D.H. The Army never was much of an option for you?
P.P. No, no, Marines was where I wanted to be, like my brother.
D.H. So you joined the U.S. Navy, and how long did it take you? It sounds like you went through basic training?
P.P. Six weeks.
D.H. What happen after that, and where was your basic training at?
P.P. Farragut, Idaho.
D.H. Was this your first time being out of Minnesota? Well, no, because you took that trip with your buddy.
P.P. Yeah, yeah, we bummed a couple of times.
D.H. What did you think of Idaho?
P.P. It was real good. I think that they have one of the finest golf courses up there now. That was unheard of then. But there were 35,000 Navy being trained at that time, and when we ran cross-country, they had a cross-country course that was grueling, seven miles. Because I had just finished basketball I was in pretty good shape, but I never ran track or anything. There were two guys from Minneapolis—tall, and track guys—in our company, and they beat me. We ran it three times. They beat me the first two times, and then we ran the whole camp. Not the whole camp, because there was seven camps, and we were Camp Ward. We competed, and I came in and tied the record! —but I came in fifth. There were four guys ahead of me that beat me that broke the record. But I was leading that thing, and halfway through I was thinking of quitting because I was having a sideache, and I was running alongside of one of those guys I knew, and I said, “I’ll be dropping out, I think,” and he said, “Me, too, I am not feeling good today.” I saw an older bald-headed guy up ahead of me, and I said, “That guy can’t beat me,” and for fun I caught him. Then I got a second wind, evidently. We scrambled up a hill almost on all fours, and from there it was like a two- or three-block straightaway to the finish. I was the first one up and over that thing, but I didn’t have the extra speed, I didn’t save anything, so an Indian kid came by me like I was standing still. Just like he just got in the race. I thought that was pretty good, because I never run before, but I was in shape.
D.H. This was actually in Idaho, right?
P.P. Yeah.
D.H. So what happened after basic training? You said you went home for a little bit?
P.P. Then came back to the outgoing unit. That is where you wait for your assignment, or you already have your assignment. Some of our company was assigned to that U.S.S. Olmsted. It was good, I knew people, and we went to Bremerton, Washington. But it was in the Kaiser Shipyard, brand new.
D.H. So when you went on the ship, it was brand new?
P.P. Oh, yes, it was just, there were 450 of us, I think, commissioned that ship in Astoria, Oregon—that is what it was, Astoria. Three years later, there were three of the original crew that decommissioned it in Norfolk, Virginia, which included myself.
D.H. Tell me about the first voyage that the U.S.S. Olmsted went on.
P.P. First, we had a shakedown on the West Coast. I was part of the shakedown crew: we took the new ship out to see what was wrong with it. We also trained up and down the Pacific coast, in and out of Seattle and San Diego. Then we got supplies in San Diego, and we took off for Lae, L-A-E is it? Lae, New Guinea.
D.H. Okay.
P.P. Everything was pretty smooth for a brand new crew, but there were some veterans on there that knew what they were doing. I remember the officer that was responsible for getting us there (to New Guinea) by the stars, and he was new, brand new. When we hit our destination, he was tickled, because he missed it by about a mile. I guess Lae, New Guinea, was right over there. First thing in the morning, here’s the island, and we are anchored. He was celebrating.
D.H. This was the first time you had been on a ship, correct, in the ocean? P.P. Pretty much, yeah.
D.H. What did you think of it your first time, did you get seasick at all?
P.P. Most did. I got queasy, but never got sick. But we had people that got sick when we pulled up the anchor to take off! Some people shouldn’t have been on, you know—they were sick every time we got under way, and we were under way a different place all the time. The best part of the Navy is, you are going someplace most of the time. Of course, we were taking troops and picking up troops.
D.H. How many troops would you fit on a boat, because you were a troop transport ship?
P.P. See, the troops slept five high, I don’t know. I have that information. This friend, you mentioned his name, Teynor. Teynor looked that all up and sent me everything. More than I knew myself, and how many miles, and each place we went, too, except the last trip or two. I think when the war ended, those records ended. But we made it. One trip we brought back, I think, it was the three-millionth man from the Pacific. I remember they picked this guy, and he was tickled that he was going to get something out of it. Well, he did, he got dressed up as Uncle Sam as we pulled into San Francisco.
D.H. Did he just go right back into his unit after that?
P.P. Yeah, yeah, but that was publicity, that was our celebration. Well, a big sign on the dock read, “Welcome, three millionth man!”
D.H. What was your job on the ship?
P.P. My first assignment on the ship was with my friend, KW Peterson. We worked the incinerator.
D.H. How did you get that gig? Was it just kind of random, or was it based on some skills?
P.P. Yeah, we were assigned there. I have an old friend now, his name is Peterson (but he’s “-son”), and I got to stop and see him. He’s not in good shape, he’s in north St. Paul. I’ll see him when I leave here. We had a lot of fun with it, because he was a little guy that was funny, and he was bitching all the time, he wanted out: “What am I doing in this outfit?” Every time—you always stood in line for something; it was always alphabetical. And “Petersen” is ahead of “Peterson.” And every time we got in line, he would let everybody know. KW was always mad, and one day as he threw garbage into the incinerator he said, “Yeah, let’s get this done.” But then the fire got away from us. We had to back away. The alarm went off. The PA system announced, “Fire in the incinerator! Fire in the incinerator!” Our second assignment: “You two ‘Petersons’ do latrine detail!” It was a new bathroom, with forty seats. We cleaned quickly and polished the brass spigots. The captain was very impressed when he made his inspection.
D.H. What was your next assignment?
P.P. First Division, Deck Force, responsibilities for the anchor detail and the bowlines.
D.H. Tell me about these voyages that you have across the Pacific Ocean transporting troops. I imagine there were some pretty hairy situations some time?
P.P. Well, we hit—we had some rough weather, but the Pacific would be a lot better than the Atlantic. We were in one of the worst ones, and we were in a convoy, and we were rolling, making record rolls. We knew how much we could roll. The captain was trying to get permission to break off and go into it, and they wouldn’t. We were in a convoy with them, there were two others, maybe a couple others. The captain said, “The hell with it!” and he went on his own and got away from it. The next morning there was a destroyer went by us upside down—a destroyer, you know, 250 men. But that was off the southern coast of Japan. I think they would remember, that one is probably in the history books. But mostly those long trips across were boring, chipping paint, and painting this, and fixing that. But some of the evenings were the most beautiful I have ever seen. The sky, reflections of the moon, and not a ripple in the ocean.
D.H. What did you guys do for fun on the ship? Did you guys play cards? Did you play dice? Did you play football?
P.P. A lot of cards, and when our holds were empty, we would play basketball. We decommissioned the ship, and we stayed aboard, a skeleton crew, on the East Coast. We had a basketball team. It was not many people, but we had a pretty good basketball team. We had a gym that was a warehouse there that they’d made into a gym during the war, evidently. We were parked right next to it, so we played the 16th Fleet All-Stars, and they beat us in overtime in that place. I had twenty-eight points or something like that. And the next day I’m on duty as the acting officer of the deck, watching people come aboard, permission to come aboard, and things like that. But the phone rings, and I’m answering the phone. The guy says, “This is the 16th Fleet All-Stars. You got a sailor there named Petersen? We want him over here.” I’m thinking, “What kind of a trick are our guys pulling on me?” “Well, I can’t make it.” I found out it was the Commander calling! They took me over there and gave me a job of dispatching automobiles. I was there, like, about four or five weeks, and then I was discharged, and I was going home.
D.H. Still, that was kind of a nice way to end it?
P.P. Yeah, but before I go home, this commander at the 16th Fleet All-Stars—the16th Fleet wants to take me to Annapolis.
D.H. To play?
P.P. No, for an all-afternoon interview with the athletic director, Tom Hamilton. So now I’m worried. I get nothing but grief for three years, and now, I am getting ready to go home, and things are breaking for me. This guy wants to put me in Annapolis! No, I don’t want that. I fly up there in a seaplane, never rode in one again, but there’s four officers and me going up to Annapolis. I found out later that our commander thought it would be a great idea. He had a son that was starting at Annapolis, and wouldn’t that be nice if there was a veteran older guy with him?
D.H. But you didn’t do it?
P.P. What?
D.H. You didn’t do it?
P.P. No, but they sure spent a lot of time. They had a commander—a three-striper—writing letters for me to all my congressmen and senators to get me appointed. And I am worried about that, up here in Duluth. But Pittenger, I guess, was one. Well, anyway, they all came back that they had already appointed their people.
D.H. So you lucked out?
P.P. I don’t know if I lucked out, but I hadn’t finished high school, and that’s what I am telling them, that was my excuse. They said, “Well, that’s all right, we can put you in Bainbridge, Maryland, for a year, preparatory school.” I said, “Geez.”
D.H. Okay, I have to bring you back to the Olmsted. Tell me a little bit about the ship itself, what was it like to be on it? What was unique about the Olmsted?
P.P. Well, when we went aboard we were pretty happy. We said, “Where did they get the name Olmsted?” The guy says that is after a county that raised this money back in southern Minnesota. We said, “What the hell!” It was very good, because we had several guys from Minnesota. They said it took thirty-five days to build. I think they mean from the keel up, the shell or something. Then, of course, after launching, we called it the “Kaiser coffin.” When we stepped it up, we could go 21 knots, I think, at high speed; if we went port—I think it was port—our crow’s nest would be swaying pretty good.
D.H. Swayed pretty heavily?
P.P. Yeah, swayed pretty good. And then some of those storms, you would hear bang! bang! and the whole thing would shudder when we were not heavy loaded. The bow would come out of the water on each wave and hit hard and shudder. See, that is where they get the name “Kaiser coffin,” and it better hold together. We had an old boatswain’s mate that was in charge of our 1st Division and he, of course, he loved to tell us some stories. He would point up to the bulkhead and say, “See this? This is the water line, right here. If we get a fish [torpedo], we are going to get it right here.” Just before you go to sleep at night, you know? But we had to, we made that landing up at Hollandia, in the Philippines, at Lingayen Gulf, north of Manila, and as we passed by, the Japanese held Manila. Why, we got kamikazes coming! And the officers on the bridge were saying to us, “Hold your fire! Friendly, friendly!” And ssssssss BANG! it hits the one ship next to us. Wilbur Baker, a guy from Texas, he was an old-timer, he was about forty years old and had been in the Army. Boy, he took his helmet off and swore at the bridge, “’Friendly, friendly,’ eh?”
P.P. The barber aboard got an appendix or something, and they shipped him out. We didn’t have a barber; and I had a rate, boatswain’s mate 3rd class (my rank was too high), so I couldn’t be the barber, ’cause I cut hair, that was handed down through our family. I cut lots of hair, neighbors’ and everybody. So I am telling K.W. Peterson, “You be the barber.” He said, “I can’t cut hair,” and I said, “I will show you.” He said, “How are you going to do that?” and I said, “Byron Grasser, right here, our old buddy Byron.” He had a nice big head of hair, and he needed a haircut. We bribed him. So we took him in that barber shop, and I showed him, K.W., how to trim a side and level it off, and, boy, did he get good. He was just the handiest guy. After discharge, he became a plumber. I visited him last summer down in north St. Paul, and he had moved into an assisted living home. They finally got him out of his house and into this. But there is a woman there in charge, or owned it, running the place, and she paid a lot of attention to him. I said, “Hey, that gal has her eye on you,” and he says, “Yeah, she has a lot of plumbing problems.” So he is real popular around there, and he is going to get something done.
D.H. So obviously you keep in contact with these guys?
P.P. No, just him.
D.H. Is there a U.S.S. Olmsted group that gets together?
P.P. No, not that we ever knew of. See, we always referred to each other. I was “P.R.”, the initials, and he was K.W., that’s all we called each other. But it is because everything you own has got a stencil, K.W. Peterson, so everybody is known by their initials. There are lots of guys that I knew that I got no idea what their name was, but I remember their initials.
D.H. Part of this interview is to talk about the Olmsted as a ship. Is there anything else about the ship that you want to make sure is said for future record with the county?
P.P. Oh, I will tell you. We were, I think, the closest ship to the U.S.S. Missouri when it signed the surrender in Tokyo Bay, because I watched the whole thing with binoculars. We were at battle stations, because we thought this might still be a trick. But it was amazing to me that I couldn’t get the attention of the other guys; I thought, “This was really something,” and I am sitting there with these glasses on and narrating to these people, and they are not paying any attention. They are playing dice, they have a card game going. You know, this is all afternoon, or whatever it was, and I am watching it, you know. And I said, “There is a boat coming along there now, and they are going up the ladder. That little short guy is talking to a tall guy.” Well, that is MacArthur, General MacArthur. I could see that so well, and I can’t remember any ships being any closer than we were. But for all the time we were in—and I didn’t know it until toward the end—we were always a lead ship, and I wondered why. Well, we had the commodore aboard, and every one of our landings we made, we were the head ship. But he is a four-striper, a captain, but he is the senior captain; that is what a commodore is. But I thought that was pretty historical, and these guys couldn’t care less.
D.H. You actually witnessed the signing, the surrender of the Japanese on the U.S.S. Missouri?
P.P. Yes, and narrated it.
D.H. That still is an incredible story. Anything else you want to say about that, anything you thought was interesting watching the signing? I imagine you knew it was a historic moment?
P.P. Yeah, yeah, but I guess it didn’t take too long, it seemed like. I guess we waited a long time for this to get started, and then it didn’t take long. Then they walked down and got in the boat and left, and this was it. But one thing I think about a lot was where I come pretty close to getting it when we were in Tokyo Bay, the next trip we went right back to Tokyo (or we came to take some troops out of Tokyo). It was in during a snowstorm in the bay. They don’t have a lot of snow, hardly ever, I guess. But this was a good storm, and we were dragging anchor; the anchor wouldn’t hold us. So here it is, 3:00 o’clock in the morning, and they get the 1st Division up to put out the other anchor. So the anchor won’t go out, it is stuck in the hawespipe too tight, and it won’t release. And this young officer that we didn’t know well—he was new aboard, I think—but he says, “One of you will have to go over the side in a boatswain’s chair and jack it out. Put it on the fluke, it will pop out.” So they look around for a dumb Swede. They picked me because I was the smallest. I wasn’t that small, but these guys were all big, and I would fit in the chair, the rope chair, better. So they put me over the side of the boat, and I was talking to that officer. I said, “Now, you’re sure that you’ve got the slack out of the chain?” Because I am down there, underneath this anchor. The officer assured me that the slack was out. I had to run the line aft. When I couldn’t jack it any more, then they pulled that line back, see, and it went click, and then, here that thing comes rushing down toward me, about 6 feet! My rope must have stretched, whoosh! And this—4,000 lb., two-ton, I think—it was on my lap! But the rope holding the chair didn’t break, it held. But this officer didn’t take any precautions there. And I came out of there, they pulled me back up, and I see that officer, and I said, “You son of a _____!” And I walked away, and I thought, “Now I am in trouble.” But nothing was ever said. Those little bits I think about once in a while.
D.H. Now, you were probably overseas when the Germans surrendered? P.P. No, I was home for a ten-day leave visiting my brothers and sisters. I hitchhiked from San Francisco to Duluth.
D.H. How did you feel about VE Day?
P.P. It wasn’t my war. The war in Europe had been winding down for some time.
D.H. Did you go out and celebrate?
P.P. Yeah, another buddy was home, and he was a paratrooper. I remember seeing him, but of course, I don’t remember much celebrating here. But the next time, when Japan surrendered, we were celebrating. The day Japan surrendered, I was on a ten-day leave. I asked one of my buddies where he was going. “I’m going to go catch a plane,” he said. I didn’t know about this, so I said I would, too. At the airport, I asked if there was a military plane going to Olathe, Kansas. “You see that plane warming up out there?” a guy at the airport told me, “that’s going there, so get on.” I was going to see my brother, who had been injured in the last battle on Okinawa. I was going to go to Olathe because I had heard my brother was there. Later, I heard he wasn’t, that he was in Washington—Seattle, Washington. But Olathe, Kansas, is where the plane was going, so I thought, “What the hell, that’s halfway home, and I will take it, and I will catch it back.” It was all officers in the plane and me. When I arrived in Olathe, I learned that my brother had already been discharged and was not in Kansas. I took a bus to Duluth, saw my family, and then took a bus back to Kansas. I’d planned to take a plane back from Kansas; but the flight was full or cancelled, so I was stuck. I knew I was running out of time—I was supposed to back in San Francisco the next day —and I knew enough to turn myself in as AWOL. I went to Kansas with money and came back to it broke; I didn’t have enough money to get back to San Francisco. I said this to a bunch of Navy guys. One of them gave me fifty bucks, and they put me on a train. (I took the guy’s name, and he was surprised when, not long after, he received the fifty bucks back.) I arrived by train in San Francisco two days late. When I got there, the streets near the port were full of people celebrating. I had my duffel bag, which showed that I was on leave (which I wasn’t supposed to be anymore), so I tried to lose myself in the crowd so no officer would see me and ask me to show him my orders. I did stop, however, to have a couple of beers at a corner bar. When I got back, I told the second-in-command what had happened. The guy understood. He said he thought it’d be okay. But I still had to face the captain. When I did, the captain stripped me of my rank. He reduced me to seaman and tore off my stripe for being late. (The second-in-command was surprised, and admitted to the captain, “I told him I thought it would be okay.”) So I could’ve been the barber, after all.
D.H. But when the Japanese actually signed the form, you were on the ship?
P.P. Yes.
D.H. Did you guys celebrate on the ship?
P.P. No, the guys were just in a better mood: “When do we leave for home?”
D.H. So people were just pretty much excited to go back? Was there a fear that you guys were going to go?
P.P. I was different, see; I knew I had another year-and-a-half to do.
D.H. So it didn’t matter to you either way?
P.P. No, no, but these guys, their time was numbered. Yeah, we got replacements for them, and these replacements were kids that just graduated, just like we did.
D.H. So what did you do for that year-and-a-half afterward?
P.P. Well, we made a couple of trips and then went through the Panama Canal and then laid it up on the East Coast. I never could get off that ship! Early on I put in for underwater demolition, they were asking for them. I was a first-class swimmer, so I could do that and get off the ship. The Division Officer took me aside and said, “Do you know how many of those guys survive?” So I left that alone. He talked me into it.
D.H. I imagine it wasn’t too hard, though, either. It is a pretty unsafe job. (Pause.) I think you are the only person that saw a ship commissioned and saw it decommissioned.
P.P. Yeah, it was something. I think there was only three, might have been five, but I think it was three.
D.H. Still, that is still pretty unique, and the fact that you were actually from Minnesota and it was a ship named after a Minnesota county, I think, is pretty substantial.
P.P. Yeah, that made me pretty proud when they first told me. This county raised that money, and that is why the ship is called the Olmsted.
D.H. Pretty impressive. Have you ever visited the Olmsted County Historical Society?
P.P. I don’t think so, no, I don’t know if I have been there. Is that Rochester, I wonder?
D.H. Yeah.
P.P. Well, we played high school football in Rochester.
D.H. I will say you have had quite an amazing career, sounds like—in football, especially—and then also in the military.
P.P. Yeah, and I am still around.
D.H. That’s good.
P.P. Everybody I see now is having physical problems, especially the legs. My younger brother now is having a lot of problems.
D.H. You are still doing good, still walk okay?
P.P. Yeah, I try to hike everyday, and I ride a bike out in Arizona, and I play golf.
D.H. Do you hike around here a little bit?
P.P. Yeah, I go right up there, in those woods there.
D.H. In Hartley Nature Center?
P.P. Yeah, I walk over by the pond and walk around the pond. I did today, I thought I don’t have much time, but I’ll take a short one. I’ll go right around that pond and come back on that same track. But the first time I went up, I grabbed a left there, see, and then I got lost. I’m walking and walking and I’m thinking, “Holy ____!”, you know? I didn’t see anybody, not even any runners, nothing coming back. And then I could hear some cars, and I get out, and I wonder where this is. Well, it is Arrowhead Road, and so I walked Arrowhead down to Four Corners and came back the other way. It was a good hike.
D.H. Well, I want to say I enjoyed doing the oral interview with you today, and if there is anything else you want to add about your experience on the U.S.S. Olmsted, let me know. Otherwise, this is the end of the interview.
P.P. While I was growing up at 211 E. 5th Street, we would wave at this old gentleman across the street chopping wood. He would wave and was very friendly to children. Little did I know this was a Civil War veteran of the North. After World War II, I saw him again in parades in Duluth. I realized it was our friendly neighbor, Albert Woolson. When he reached 100 years old, he was invited to Washington, D.C., to be in parades for as long as he was able to make the trip. He was the last surviving veteran from the North and died at 109 years old. That’s it.
