We Were Treated Like Kings

From the World War two veterans we've been sitting with so far this season, it might be easy to assume that everyone struggles during the Great Depression. Have a good question. Everybody was the subwar was five cents local breadles cents five cents. We had a farmer's during depression, and appreciate we never were like from school. We ate a variety of fools that people nowadays never heard of, like chicken feet.

But would that assumption be true. Economists are comparing our current income disparity with that of the Great Depression era, and so that's what we're exploring today. How much poverty or plenty affected how people lived, served and eight during

World War two and beyond. Today you swift time that dropped down Tigre Frank from its song A Tale of the Ticker commented on the fragility of the stock market and its debut only one month before the crash in October, three of the American workforce was unemployed, and those at

the bottom who kept their jobs. Most of the families we've heard from the season saw their income dropped by an average of To offset the humility of breadlines, penny restaurants helped the hungriest with offerings like soup, bread, coffee, and pork and beans for a penny. Apiece at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, I meant Julip or

Tom Collins alone cost sixty five cents. Because this was also the era of the Vanderbilts and the Rockefeller's business magnets and demansion owners whose income dropped maybe four percent during this time, the Gilded Hotel reopened at its Central Park location in n throwing charity balls for thousands of socialites and hosting eight course dinners for insurance tycoons, with courses including sauteed artichokes, a scoffier style filet mignon, and

frozen chocolate bombs. On top of that, guests of means could basically customize any dinner party they wanted. I found one patron's letter to Chef Gabrielle to go politely, reflecting upon the difficulties of the uncivilized market in his request for caviare a piece to resistance of roast duck with figs and almonds, dry old sherry and the best of cigars. Today we spend time with a Navy lieutenant whose family

falls intriguingly in the middle of this income disparity, Robert Hansen. Now, Robert shared that food is not something he thinks much about, and so we're going to track his service story in line with the food narratives of his fellow service members. And what was happening on the greater stage. Robert's father progressed from a blue collar job to becoming a professor, and professors at prestigious universities kind of looked out during

this time. They barely saw a reduction in salary. Tenure had just started to have pole and colleges navigating student enrollment drops held on to top teachers to impress new recruits. Driven home by a huge drop in the cost of living, children like Robert grew up in relative comfort. This placed him in a fortunate position in late ninety one. But as we're learning about this period in history, nothing promises

smooth sailing when a country goes to war. And so now from his home in Wolfboro, New Hampshire, but slow and fit, and spend some time with Robert Hansen. My name is Robert Hansen, and I was born on a very famous day now eight fifteen, nineteen three, the day the Japanese surrender. My dad came from a family that come to the United States through Nova Scotia. He's a very brilliant guy. He went to have a business school that he started out in Cambridge, Bath. My mother was

born in Chicago. There were three boys and three years of those family. I saw both stirring the depression. Here was my dad a professor at the Harvard Business School and m I t at that time Harvard financially and everything said about it as wealthy as anybody comes. Mother was able to kind of sit back with two days. This was almost a fairy tale life. Dad was joy so well. And our neighbors, many of them work are

the edge of Banqueptcy had gone down. Crupp people come to the host and tried to figure out if there was some way Dad could help. So he devoted a lot of his spare time on this because he felt so strongly. Most people don't understand how horrible it was. As a result, he met a lot of people of all kinds coming out of Europe, and some of them came off to I was asleep when the explosion came.

The terrific force pitched me down on the floor. Immediately there was a complete black I couldn't see to collect anything, not even my life jacket. I just think they remember hearing two detonations almost simultaneously. On September three, nine, the British passenger ship Athenia left Liverpool heading to Montreal with dred passengers, including five hundred Jewish refugees, four hundred plus

Canadian citizens, and three hundred from the US. That same evening, German submarine Youth thirty fire two torpedoes at Athenia, and one exploded into her port side at m The following morning, Athenia sank Stern. First one hundred and twelve of those aboard perished. Britain had declared war on Germany only hours before Athenia was hit a response to Hitler's invasion of Poland two days before get At the Nurnberg Trials years later, the commander of that submarine would say hitting Athenia was

an honest mistake. Her port windows were dark and she was sailing in a suspicious zig zag pattern, and so he had thought her an armed auxiliary ship. But Athenia's cloaked sailing style was intentional, because aggression doesn't come out of nowhere. Right Jews were fleeing Europe ships had been warned not to sail, and stateside, those in the know had long been nervous about aggressive vessels treading near our eastern shores. Those of means could do something about it.

The hands and family moved to up and coming Wolfboro, New Hampshire during Robert's teen years, to avoid potential calamity in Boston. That's where he would meet those Europeans resettling in New England. He just mentioned. I loved athletes like Austrian skier Hun Schneider and Yucca mccola, a Finnish Olympic truck star who would then coach at Harvard with an

Ivy League father. And such connections Robert's future would seem to be open wide before him, we had a ski club in both pro I became quite a good scare wants a racist locally, and when I graduated, I applied to Darkness the boy. I was zipped right into Darkness. I went to dark with as a freshman in nineteen forty one. Everything was tense, but they dreamt of it. If he happening. People that did with my father. It's

all these older people. December seventh, nineteen forty one, it was a Sunday and a group of us decided that we'd like to go to the Wound. We were active the rich on the afternoon. I can't tell you now the name of it, but when I came out of the movie to town had erupted, especially with all the fellows in school, A lot of them right there in there practically packed up and left and listen. So here I was not knowing what was going on, but I

knew I was going to be going. I knew I wanted to go, but I knew I wanted to ski. Three weeks after, I was at a Cannon Mountain with the kids ski team and we had the bumpin all to ourselves. I feel you hey, that have the whole mountain to myself. I'm going to enjoy you. I enjoyed it quarter of the way down. My thought is nebs. Then I flew through the year fifty a t feet and he hit a pine tree. When they exported me, I had broken my patella in fibula. Here I was

with a broken leg, feeling sorry for myself. What's gonna happen? As far as the Service was concerned, along game an Army recruiter. He said, hey, we can help you out. We can get you in the Mountain Troops. Whether he is ski or not. We're gonna pick you own the University of Answered where they've got an our ow TC. So I started training for the Mountain Troops. We skied against our president. The team was undefeated and lo would behold. We beat present. We eat at the national championship. A

Navy recruiter shows up in New Hampshire. How would you like to go to schools some more and ski for the Navy. We send in your orders and you're going to Middlebury College. They had just established apeach Well Navy program. A lot of these college programs who were to save the colleges because they were losing all their men and some women going in the service. We were just like college student. We ate in the vessels and every except

we were an active duty in the morning. Re believe we have to get up to gown per informations, doing stuff like that between classes. I went through the season there and I was transferred to Columbia University Naval Midshipments School. Mid shipment that means you've qualified to train to be an office. I said, I want to go with the t keyboards and I got picked for pe keyboard training at Newport Rhode Island. All offices there. This was the

first third of untour. So now I get to San Francisco Courts with brand new transport strip to Southwest Pacific. We went across the equator and we landed in the island off Australia. I was put on the small freighter chugging up and down New Guineas coast through the islands. I got on a better ship to the tip of New Guinea and there was at boards quarter right away. I was assigned as an executive officer on board PT two, so we bet the skipper right away he had to

be running the boat. It was just like a dance. Those college programs Robert was recruited for often involved public relations like duties where the uniformed athletes would show their stuff at eventsment to inspire patriotism and progress. He was housed in brand new barracks on campus, stocked with amenities,

and overseen by two Chief Petty Officers. So what does the shift to p TEA boats really mean for bob our Coastguard gunners mate Frank Tavita left his attack transport ship, the Samuel Chase, to help mana Higgins boat on d Day, and Higgins boats were one of the two most common styles of pets the Navy and Coastguard would employ through

the war and that major European offensive. The massive fleet of flat bottomed boats like Frank's were thirty six ft long, made of plywood with a steel ramp, and could pack in around thirty six fully armed troops. Because they were small, the value of PTE boats were initially underestimated. Outside of these short, fast maneuvers, What could a tiny motorized torpedo

boat accomplish against massive destroyers and battleships? Right, It's exactly because they were small, vast, and cheap to make or I lose that PETS would become a mosquito like force in the Pacific. After the break, we follow Robert through some high speed combat. There you're listening to service veteran stories of hunger and war from my heart radio. I'm Jacqueline Proposo and we're here with Navy Lieutenant Robert Hansen

on PTO operating off of more Thai Island. More Thai is one of the Maluku Islands, also known as the Spice Islands, which we'll get into later, an archipelago of the Indonesian Islands, with Papua New Guinea to the south and the Philippines to the north. By our entry in late nineteen forty one, Japan had occupied the majority of these Central and Southeast Pacific islands, which threatened our ally British colonized Australia and our ability to transport troops and

materials for invasions in Japan. Around the time Bob was joining the fight, the Japanese had lost many battleships and the capture and recapture of dozens of these islands, and so they turned to transporting troops and supplies on barges low dark vessels that were slow but could easily camouflage when docked tight in shallow waters beside an island. They

weren't that big, but they could carry a lot. One nineteen forty four intelligence report estimates one barge could carry a day's rations for six thousand, two hundred Japanese soldiers, and they were armored, which gave the p TEA boats a run for their money the cousin contrast, Let's remember that the p TEA boats were made out of wood mahogany. Usually, their ability to act as radar was limited, and so crew basically patrolled open waters looking for targets with binoculars.

And while the eighty foot el Co PTE two was equipped with two torpedo launching racks of forty millimeter deck gun and two anti aircraft guns. When they found a barge, they would have to get really close to the enemy to spray and then speed away, and they'd splinter if they took on enemy fire. The crew under Navy Lieutenant John F. Kennedy would notoriously swim eleven hours to safety after their PT one O nine was shredded around the

Solomon Islands. So here we are with our lieutenant Hansen, one of fourteen men on PTE two in Squadron eleven, part of the Mosquito fleet, right across from Japanese occupied Halmahara Island as four slips into nineteen forty five. At that point they were six see thousands Japs further across from us, and they were constantly trying to get over in sabotage. Atnything of our stuff? Was it d at night? You were busy running into these damn barges, and heaven

shoot them. You'd make a run because we could go fat and they could not go fat. We were out of this night patrol. We're making a run in the dark like the Japanese that cloth to make us silhouetted. So the tip and we've found a bard who were making one's trying to stop the kill of whatever severer was that the weird I was standing right next year all of us are there, is said, have hit down, and I grabbed form. He was bleak, and I was as ship. I had to step in and I pushed

the problems right to see what had happened. We stopped with the far off away. A couple of other guys have been here. We didn't have doctors. We didn't have anything on these small boats. And he said, the hell of it. I'm going to give him back, but maybe he'll live. I told the great iron man, give me a course straight back to the base. How the boy, the sun came up every We're going like hell, and in the excitement you forgot to reach that was out there.

And I happened to look over the side nice and holy shot, we haven't going forty five miles an hour. Oh my god, we've been are here and the only thing that saved us is the boat had gone from fever flat. A little water to raise up. We need to hit a m fing. We pulled into the base, the dambulus everything and they flew about. Boats came over and he says, we just had one fade jelly, it's free of flour wounded. Congratulations, you are now the skipper

pt What did you do? As skipper? Bob would make nightly strafing like runs on the barges for the remaining months of the war. During the day, he'd play a little on top of nailing wooden boards together to teach

men how to water ski. He'd get to know the locals food wise, the tropical Molucas Islands are known for their abundance of local fish, obviously, and they're growing of cocoa, coconuts, canary nuts, and sego, the starchy pulp of a particular palm trunk that dries into a flower or tapioca like per rolls. This region of Indonesia was also dubbed the Spice Islands for their wealth of nutmeg, so prized in earlier centuries for its medicinal properties that wars were repeatedly

waged against the native islanders by Portuguese, English, and Dutch colonizers. Notoriously, the British gave up neighboring Banda Island to the Dutch in trade for Manhattan. That's how much nutmeg was worth

in sixteen seventy seven. But this doesn't exactly mean the almost one point four million Navy personnel in the Pacific at this time we're feasting on local delicacies, as we heard in our episode with Chief Petty Officer William Walker, who was overseeing supply holds onboard ship in the Pacific. At the same time, bugs often infested flour during transport

the powdered eggs. All of our veterans remember hating extended to the powdered potatoes sailors eight on Island cleverly renamed as snow flaked potatoes on holiday menus milk was dehydrated to the canned foods, which we've heard kept in rooving over the course of the war would often arrive glazed with an odor that didn't exactly inspire an appetite. Sea.

Russian innovation was not so progressed that it could guarantee flavor and freshness against the Pacific's heat and humidity, and so spam became a sailor's major meat staple, and eating it sometimes three times a day meant a total one million cans of the stuff circulated there through the war, passed with those powdered eggs for breakfast, fried into sandwiches stewed with tomato sauce. This is why, as everywhere anything

fresh or flash frozen was prized. While Navy ships had freezers, pte boats barely had a galley kitchen, only enough space to make the crew sandwiches and coffee. Really, and base camps relied on what ships like Williams could barrel through the dangerous waters to them. As we heard from our Coastguard Gunner's mate Frank Tavita. If anyone was getting the fresh stuff, it was the officers, and William remembers fresh eggs and beer as special actions for when those with

particular brass came aboard. What does this all mean for Lieutenant Hansen? The food I was getting, we were offsites. We were eating like kids. None of us were starting the opposite, and none of the enlisted windows. All right, anything not frozen. We were getting a good, better and different unfrozen can dates by the barrel road. We were so used to it. Everybody else was eating it. The

food didn't bother me. But through this I'd love to ride that page every time we got a chance to get out and think the crew because they enjoyed it and they loved the wall and try and beg from the ship looking for the fresh stop. We were trying to help the datives that were helping us, and they were helping us all the time. Extra foods that we would scrown, we'd give it away. In truth, most of the time the guys who not give them frozen food, they'd give them damned food. And the datas were typl

to get anything. Every time we were giving it to the datas. I would get a chance to talk with them, most of to speak a word of English. But what fascinated me was all the mahogany card stuff. They always had statues, alligators, the most beautiful carving. You couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. These guys also were diving, and they dove to depths. We couldn't think of diving too. The dive for pearls. Who dive for food, They spearfish. They did everything. I'd ate a couple of times just

to please them, and they knew it. They just plut cocoa. That's what we drink, cocad and milk. We would treat it at like kings. I tried to teach them the same way, because they had no reason not to. Then, one night of this nineteen forty fun we were in patrol. O kid that goes out of the radio, Mr Hanson, there's a broadcast. Are now right now? Effort issued in a conditional surrender, so the war is over. I said, you gotta be kidding. Get every god day, have a

piece of ammunition out. You've gotta fire everything we got's never seen the fourth in your life the war is over. Robert lingered after v J Day while they figured out what to do with all of those pt boats. Then a mischievous e wall escapade landed him on a out home to the Pearl Harbor base. You can hear the full clip of that caper on his page at Service podcast dot org. From that point forward, his life was

filled with more serendipitous opportunities. While at the naval base in Pearl Harbor, he got an interview with Vice Admiral Charles Wellborn, who was looking for a new aid. Despite wanting to get back to civilian freedom, Bob recognized the opportunity, took the position, and spent the following year's shuttling government personnel to Asia, participating in the Korean War and then the Cuban Missile Crisis, which qualified him for service in Vietnam.

With a family of three children, he officially retired from the Navy in n Throughout all of this, Who remembers the keeping people down he witnessed in various social and economic spheres. He says it would tick him off that black men like William could only get positions of manual labor in the Navy, and he spoken loudly about that disparity whenever his service story has been and requested. Since you can hear a little about that in part two

of our episode, Dad, I can't talk about it. While at General Motors outside of Detroit, who remembers pointing out to skeptical white people that the black men who made up two thirds of the workforce there largely drove Cadillacs because they made good money but couldn't buy homes or land in that part of Michigan. Volunteering with the Red Cross both in the Pacific and in Michigan, he fought to get a black doctor on the all white board

of directors back in Wolfborow. Years later, he took a local argument all the way to Washington to get their town hall updated to code. With the Americans with the Disabilities Act. Now ninety six years old, he's fighting for elder care rights. Our two interviews were peppered with examples of his challenging authority to uphold equal rights and his speaking up angrily when such things were tossed in the rubbish bin. This is also why Bob, like William, doesn't

care to talk that much about food. He's seen the highbrow and the rancid and eats to live. A common refrain from our greatest generation veterans is that they were grateful to have food at all, and it's funny to hear how their memories of military cuisine might be a bit rose colored by time and such appreciation because Hormel took a lot of backlash from g I's after their

overeating of spam. Evidently, the recipe packed into six pound cans for the military was slightly different than the pork shoulder and ham combo vacuum sealed into the twelve pounds commercial version, and it didn't taste as good. Troops used the grease from it to oil down weapons and shine their hair. Consumption dropped significantly on the home front. Post war, spam ceilings had long been hit and as well here

in upcoming seasons. The military would soon start working with one hundred and sixty six private companies within a year after the war ended to both better combat cuisine and innovate convenience foods for the American kitchen. In our next episode, Ray Boutwell, a Navy cook stationed in New Jersey, we'll guide us through some of the progress already being tested at Base Camp Stateside towards the end of the war.

Until then, you can find more about all the nerdy stuff behind this episode at Bob's page at Service podcast dot org, plus extra audio clips and photos on our Instagram and Facebook. We are at Service podcast Service as a production from My Heart Radio, where Gabrielle Collins is our supervising producer and Christopher hasiotis our executive producer. I produced and engineered this episode with help from historian, novelist and former past Guard officer Mike Coal on the PT

Combat Sequences. Listen up from Mike returning to us later this season. Thank you to Bob's daughter Debbie for her help and Bill Walker Williams son for connecting us with Bob for this episode. Check out Williams episode Service within the Service for another gripping perspective on Navy life. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, drop us a review, come say hi on social or leave our veterans a message at Service podcast dot org. We

love to pass on your thoughts and good wishes. Most of all, thank you to those serving and those who have served. H