Oral history interview of Henry Maslia

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Henry Maslia
Creator:: Goldfarb, Stephen
Maslia, Henry, 1925-
Date of Original:: 2003-09-17
Subject:: World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Sephardim
Ladino language
Dauntless (Dive bomber)
landing craft
Stump, Felix, 1894-1972
Maslia, Stella Cohen
Georgia Institute of Technology
Ommaney Bay (Aircraft carrier)
University of Oklahoma
Burns (Destroyer : DD-588)
New Mexico (Battleship : BB-40)
Admiralty Islands (Aircraft carrier : CVE-99)
Emory University
Point system
burial at sea
Smyrna (Turkey)
Location:: Mojave Desert, 35.1456319, -115.548963786646
Palau, Peleliu Island, 7.021, 134.259731025
Papua New Guinea, Manus Island, -5.558333, 154.619444
Philippines, Leyte Island, 10.95, 124.85
Philippines, Lingayen Gulf, 16.206166, 120.2323788
Philippines, Mindanao Island, 7.68980415, 125.236399692425
Philippines, Samar Island, 11.833333, 125.0
Solomon Islands, Tulaghi Island
Turkey, Izmir, 38.4147331, 27.1434119
United States, California, Alameda County, Oakland, 37.80437, -122.2708
United States, California, Monterey County, King City, 36.21274, -121.12603
United States, Florida, Duval County, Jacksonville, 30.33218, -81.65565
United States, Florida, Escambia County, Pensacola, 30.42131, -87.21691
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Hawaii, Honolulu County, Honolulu, 21.30694, -157.85833
United States, Washington, 47.50012, -120.50147
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Henry Maslia relates his experiences in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He volunteered to become an aviation ordnance man to get out of boot camp and he volunteered for sea duty to get more leave more quickly. He describes the functions of the ship and its crew as well as the biennial reunions he attends. He recounts several battles in which his ships participated in the Pacific. He recalls the end of the war, his trips bringing troops back to the United States, and his own journey home. He describes his post-war education and employment. He describes the impact the war had on him and on society in general.
Henry Maslia was in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
HENRY MASLIA WWII Oral Histories September 17, 2003 Atlanta History Center Interviewer: Stephen Goldfarb Transcriber: Joyce Dumas [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: [Today is] September 17th, two thousand three. We're in the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia. And my name is Stephen Goldfarb and I'm assisted by Frances Hopkins Westbrook. I'm a volunteer. Mrs. Westbrook is on the staff. We have today a visitor and I would like him to identify himself at this time. Maslia: My name is Henry Maslia, M-A-S-L-I-A. I was born September fifteen, nineteen twenty-five, in Izmir, Turkey. I'm a U.S. citizen and I served in the Navy during World War Two aboard an aircraft carrier, the USS Ommaney Bay. Interviewer: Tell us a little bit about your growing up, I understand, here in Atlanta; your parents, your brothers, sisters, that sort of thing. Maslia: I came to Atlanta when I was six months old. My father had been here before World War One. He had a little shoe shop in Little Five Points for forty-two years, Moreland Avenue Shoe Shop. And I grew up in a community of Sephardic Jews. We had a small congregation, Odvish [phonetic] Shalom. We had the house that we used as our house of worship on Central Avenue. And my whole world revolved around that community of immigrants. I did not know any person that was born and raised in America. All the people I knew, the grownups, were born in Turkey, the Isle of Rhodes and Greece. They were all Sephardics and they all spoke Ladino [phonetic], which was a fifteenth century Spanish with modifications along the way. We ate Sephardic foods. We didn't have steaks at home. We did not have hamburgers. We ate Sephardic food which was basically a lot of vegetables and very little meat. I went to public high schools and my parents spoke to me in Ladino. I understood them, but I returned their questions with…in English. I went to Georgia Avenue Elementary School. I enrolled in junior high school at Hoke Smith Junior High, but my parents transferred me to Bass Junior High in Little Five Points, because that's where my father's shoe shop was and my mama wanted to get me out from under foot. So I went to Bass Junior High and I finished there. Upon completion there, I went to Boys' High School on Parkway. We had schools in these portables and it never hurt us a bit. We had an excellent education. I finished high school in January of nineteen forty-three. The war was going on then. America was involved fully by that time and all the boys when they reached eighteen years old were gonna get drafted. Well, I delayed that. I was still seventeen when graduated. I went to Georgia Tech for one semester. And then in June of forty-three, I decided I might as well go ahead and get into this thing cause they're gonna get me in September, my birthday. So I didn't not like walking in mud, which I knew soldiers did that. So I volunteered to go into the Navy. Little did I know, I was gonna have a big swim later on. I went to Pensacola for my boot training. After I finished my boot training, boot camp training, there were several schools that were available. Interviewer: Let me stop you for just a moment. Tell us a little bit about what boot training, boot camp was like. Maslia: I don't remember an awful lot about it. I know we had to get up and go to eat at a certain time. We were required to do this, that and the other. And they taught us how to march in unison and what have you. It's been a long time. I don't remember exact…I remember I volunteered to box. I was not much of a sports person to start off with. But I got involved in boxing and I knocked this guy out. It scared the dickens out of me. I never knocked a person out in my life. But anyway, when I finished boot camp, there were several schools available and I went to this fella who was in charge of it and I said, “What's the first school that I can get into to get out of boot camp?” I wanted to get out because we did not have shore leave and liberty in boot camp. You were confined to the camp. And he said, “Well, I can send you to ordinance school. That'll get you there next week.” I said, “Okay, I'll take that.” I didn't even know what I was getting into, but wanted to get out. So I became an aviation ordnance man. Now aviation ordnance has to do with anything of the armament that a Navy airplane carries. I never had a gun in my life in my hand growing up and then I learned all about guns. First, I went to school in Jacksonville, very short time. Then they transferred me to Oklahoma to the University of Oklahoma. They had a big training school there, ordnance school. And so I learned how to disassemble a machine gun, how to disassemble and reassemble pistols. I knew nothing about arms, but I did learn. And then I went to Yakima…not Yakima, but…there's a little town in Washington, state of Washington, that was a Naval Reserve Station. I stayed there for a while. And then I was transferred to go to Pearl Harbor. So I went there. They trans…I went to Seattle, boarded a destroyer which stopped in San Francisco on our way to Honolulu and then they got to Honolulu and the first thing I got when I got to Honolulu, we had…it was about time to eat and we had pineapple for dessert. I'll never forget that. So I was stationed to a training…a squadron there in Pearl Harbor. Interviewer: Excuse me. Let me ask you. Could you…when you went to Pearl Harbor could you see what was left over from the previous two years' bombardment? Maslia: Very little. I was not there for sightseeing, so I didn't see an awful lot. I was actually stationed right there at Pearl Harbor on the little island, where a lot of the bombardment did happen. But all I had to do at that time, the way the rules went, you had to serve eighteen months overseas and then you could go back home for a leave. So all I had to do, if I had any sense, was just behave, stay at Pearl Harbor for eighteen months and then I could go home safe and sound and have me a leave. Well, I got into trouble. I'm a troublemaker. So I said, “I want to get out of here and I want some sea duty.” Well, they were happy to accommodate me on the first carrier that came along there at Pearl Harbor. They put me on that carrier and the name of that carrier was the USS Ommaney Bay, CVE-79. Ommaney Bay is a little bay in the Alaska area. It was named after that bay. From there we shipped out to the Pacific into the war area. And the first thing that I saw, we docked at the Solomon Islands, which had been finally secured and I saw these natives come out in these boats and they wanted to sell us trinkets and I thought that was sort of fascinating. Interviewer: Can you give us a date for that particular…do you remember the sequence of dates? Maslia: Yeah, I've got…hold one second. I've got it here. I've got a thing here, if you don't mind. Let me find it. Here it is. The ships…wait a minute now. All right. We left Pearl Harbor…am I on now? The ship left from Pearl Harbor and we sailed to Tulagi to rehearse for the invasion of the Palau Islands. [reading] “From September eleven,” that's nineteen forty-four, “until the beginning of October, Ommaney Bay stood off Palau and Angular Islands and provided air cover for the fleet and close support strikes for the forces above.” You want me to read? “The Ommaney Bay then sailed to Manus,” a little island there, “to renew her depleted stock of fuel and ammunition. Then joined Rear Admiral Stumps ‘Taffy Two' for the invasion of Layte. At the beginning of the Battle of Sumar [phonetic] on October twenty-five, the escort carriers began launching air strikes in an effort to cripple as many of the approaching enemy force as possible. In the ensuing battle, Ommaney Bay's planes contributed to the sinking of one Japanese cruise[ship] and helped to damage a number of other warships. Ommaney Bay launched some six strikes that day and helped to turn threatened defeat into victory. The carrier spent the month of November…” Interviewer: Let me stop you. Can you go ahead and now tell us your impressions of that battle. I assume you remember it vividly. Maslia: The invasion of Palau…as a sailor in the trenches on that ship, I didn't even see that island. We were so far away from it. And we did not see any enemy aircraft, enemy ships, nothing. It was just like taking a cruise in the Pacific, except we were on duty, launching our ships and getting them to go and soften up the shores for the landing. So that was just like a cruise in the Pacific almost, that particular one. Interviewer: And your duties were to arm the airplanes? Maslia: Right. Interviewer: When they came in you put…give us just a little bit about the kind of armament they had and… Maslia: Well, the planes that we had, they were SBDs. Interviewer: Which stands for? Maslia: Which is…I don't know. I forgot. [laughs] But it was a dive bomber type of thing. And they had…now my recollection's a little fuzzy but if I recall, they had fifty caliber guns on those planes and they also had the capability of loading bombs of different kinds. And that's what we did. Now as the ordnance men, our job was to get that plane fully loaded for its takeoff, make sure the guns were clean, had plenty of ammunition, the bombs…now they let the…I was just a lowly seaman first class, so I was not trained enough yet. They would not let me have that responsibility of putting the bombs and arming them. They did that with the senior ordnance men. And I did the grunt duties like somebody had to take those bullets out of the big cases and put them into these belts. You've seen these belts and that was one of the grunt duties that a lowly seaman first class ordnance man did. Then we had to keep the…we had our ordnance shack. Each particular division of the ship…there were different divisions. There were electricians. There were aviation electricians. There were machine…and you worked within your little group. And we had our ordnance shack and we had our joe in the morning. That's what they called coffee. And we'd have our meeting and what we got to do in our assignments and that's what we did. Interviewer: How many people were in your group? Maslia: Oh, I don't remember. I don't remember how many were… Interviewer: Anybody of the group stand out? Anybody you still keep contact with? Maslia: Yes. We have a reunion every two years from our little…Ommaney Bay, the whole Ommaney Bay. And I went to the first reunion which was in Wisconsin. And we have a reunion this year in Chicago, but I'm not going to that. I don't want to go to Chicago; it's too busy. But yeah. Some of them have passed on, but we still have a reunion of the whole ship. I don't know how much longer we're gonna have them though [chuckles], cause they're fading away. Interviewer: [inaudible] So then, pick it up again with the battle [inaudible]. Maslia: So that was for the Palau Islands and we secured that. Then I'll have to read what we did after Palau. Interviewer: Go ahead. Maslia: All right. [reading] “The Ommaney Bay sailed to Manus to renew her depleted stock of fuel and ammunition.” By the way, let me stop there. When we'd go to Manus, we would have recreation and the ships would drop anchor way offshore. They did not have big, old piers to dock up to. And then they would take us in these little, small boats to Manus. And what they did, they had a place for playing baseball and you could…horseshoes. And they gave you two cans of beer. Now we weren't not allowed alcoholic beverages; only officers were allowed that. But they gave…they were very kind to us and they gave us two cans of beer when we went to Manus. At that particular point in time, I was not a beer drinker. I did not drink alcohol growing up in Atlanta in my house. So what I did, I sold each can for a dollar; that was big money. And so we just lounged around and relaxed. So going on, we went to Manus for refueling. We joined Rear Admiral Stumps' “Taffy Two” for the invasion of Layte. [reading] “At the beginning of the battle off of Sumar [phonetic] on October twenty-five, the escort carriers began launching air strikes in an effort to cripple as many of the approaching enemy forces possible.” I read all that. “The carrier spent the month of November at Manus and Cassault [phonetic] passage for availability and replenishment.” I'll never forget that November. Thanksgiving Day we were in dry dock at Manus. And they lifted that whole carrier out of the water. It was amazing how they do that. And we had Thanksgiving dinner in dry dock. I'll never forget that November Thanksgiving. It was a nice meal, too. Then from twelve to seventeen December, we operated in the Mindanao and Sulu [phonetic] Seas in support of operations on the island of Mindanao. We participated in that invasion. [reading] “On the fifteenth, a day of heavy enemy air attacks, she splashed an enemy bomber as it dived for the ship from the port bow.” Now, I'll never forget that one, too. I was standing above on the flight deck and we…anti-aircraft guns were going all around us and enemy airplanes. And I saw this plane approaching. I said, “Holy cow! That thing's gonna hit us.” But we were very lucky. We got it and hit it before he came and hit us. “On nineteenth of December, she returned to Cassault [phonetic] to prepare for the landings in Lingyan [phonetic] Gulf. The Ommaney Bay left on New Year's Day, nineteen forty-five, and transited Seragowa [phonetic] Strait two days later. The next afternoon while in the Sulu Sea, a twin-engine Japanese suicide plane penetrated the screen undetected and made for Ommaney Bay.” I learned later, subsequently, the way that plane was able to come in undetected. They would come in at very low level behind mountains and then all of a sudden they'd go over the mountain and the radar screens couldn't pick them up behind those mountains. That's how they were able to approach us. “The plane nicked her island, then crashed her starboard side. Two bombs were released. One of them penetrated the flight deck and detonated below, setting off a series of explosions from the fully gassed planes on the forward third of the hangar deck. The second bomb passed through the hangar deck, ruptured the fire main on the second deck and exploded near the starboard side.” Now, what happened that day, for me personally, I was off duty. That was January the fourth. So being an old chowhound, I was the first one in the chow line waiting for the line to open. The line finally did open at five o'clock that day. The mess deck was below the hangar deck and I went and got my…you had a tray that you got your food on and I remember what we had that night. We had spaghetti for dinner that night. And I had commenced eating and the next thing I know, I heard this big, tremendous crash. And it was loud. And I said, “Holy mackerel! Something's wrong.” So I ran back up to the flight…to the hangar deck and up forward, as this described, it was all aflame and smoke. So I said, “Whew! I'd better get my lifejacket.” Now you were supposed to wear your lifejacket all the time, but it was hot out there in the Pacific. So I had mine hanging on the bulkhead, that's what we call a wall, bulkhead. And it was the kind you'd snap around your waist and it had two little oxygen, or whatever, tanks and you would squeeze them and that would inflate it. So I put on my thing and I pushed…squeezed them and it didn't inflate. I said, “Holy mackerel! What am I gonna do now?” So I went back to the fantail, that's the aft end of the ship. It's a big area back there and the people were congregating back there and nobody knew what to do. We knew there was something wrong somewhere and we just stood around. And I remember this…he was a Mexican. And it got to him. He's was going around babbling to himself. He couldn't…he didn't handle it very well. So now, we were just standing around. Now, to continue what happened. [reading] “The water pressure forward was lost immediately along with power and bridge communications. Men struggling with the terrific blazes on the hangar deck soon had to abandon it because of the heavy black smoke from the burning planes and the ricocheting fifty caliber ammunition. Escorts could not lend their power to the fight because of the exploding ammunition and intense heat from the fires. By seventeen fifty,” that's five fifty in the afternoon, “the entire topside area had become untenable and the stored torpedo warheads threatened to go off at any time. The order to abandon ship was given.” Now, when I heard the abandon ship thing, I said, “Holy mackerel! I got get in that water and I ain't got a lifejacket.” Now the ship at that time was moving along very slowly. It wasn't just standing still. And men were jumping off all along that side there. I was on the port side. Interviewer: Was it listing at all? Maslia: No. No. Never did list. And so, I had to find something to hold on to, because I could swim a little bit, but I knew I might be in the water for hours and I need to hold onto something. So men up forward though, were dropping things over the side so they could land on those and get on them. So I was hoping I could get one of those big old floats that you could get up on top of and get out of the water, but I was not that fortunate. And there were these ropes with corks and they float. So as one came, I jumped and timed it right so I that I grabbed ahold of that. But I'm still in the water, but I'm not gonna sink. So now I'm thinking, “Holy mackerel, what if there are sharks?” Cause that's the first thing that came to my mind. The second thing came to my mind is “We need to get away,” there were some other guys hanging onto this net. And I said, “We need to paddle our way to get away from that ship because if she sinks now, we're gonna get sucked under.” So we sort of paddled our way away from the ship. I don't remember how many guys were on there. So finally…now, you have to remember, on our way to this invasion, this was the biggest armada of ships I'd ever seen in the time that I was out there. And we had…carriers always had an escort. They were there to pick up pilots who might have gone off the side of the ship. They'd pick up guys who might have fallen. We always had escorts along with us. So all the escorts start gathering up all the people out of the water and I was picked up by this little escort destroyer. Interviewer: Do you remember the name? Maslia: I think it was the Burns. I've got some history here. It might have been the Burns—I think it was—that I was picked up. And what they did, they picked me up. Now I'll have to give you my personal experience now. They picked me up and they put me aboard this destroyer. They gave us some clothing, fed us. And took care of us, having picked us up out of the water. Interviewer: How long were you in the water? Maslia: I don't remember, but it wasn't…I don't think it was a long time. Maybe thirty minutes. The only thing I had remaining from that is this dog tag [rattling]. I had that on my person at the time and I've still got this little dog tap. That was the only thing of my possessions, cause everything, of course, went down with the ship. So, we got aboard this destroyer. Now, a destroyer did not have enough room to provide space for these people that had been picked up out of the water. So what they did then, in the middle of the night, it was pitch black out there in that. In those days, you couldn't even light a cigarette. You couldn't light a match because an enemy could see that from miles away, even a match lit up. So you had total darkness and this destroyer pulled up alongside a battleship. It was the USS New Mexico. And they put planks between the two ships and we had to go across there to the New Mexico. And I was just a little kid. Interviewer: [inaudible, talking at same time] the ships are moving. Maslia: They're standing still, if I recall. Interviewer: Okay. Maslia: But still, you know, water makes you move. So, I'm looking at these two planks. And I can still remember what I was thinking. Say, “Holy mackerel! What if I fall off and get crushed between these two ships.” This was going through my nineteen-year-old mind, cause I've always been a sort of sensible person. So anyway, I made it across there to the New Mexico. There were several of us. And what they did, speaking of the whole crew, they got scattered. The whole crew got scattered and they were put into different ships along the way. But I was put aboard the USS New Mexico battleship. So coming aboard there now, they had to account for us, so they took roll call and then they assigned us to certain duties aboard, just to help. And then, since they didn't have enough bunks, the real bunks, I had to sleep in a hammock on that ship, which I had the experience of doing that. And then, that battleship, of course I guess they were sixteen-inch guns up forward and back. And then they had on the port side and the starboard side, they had three, what they call, casements. And these were five-inch guns, in addition to all the anti-aircraft guns. So they assigned me to the middle casement on the port side. There was the first, second, the third. I was in the middle there. And I would just sit back in the corner and if they wanted me to do something I was available. But the crew, they knew their duties when they were firing those guns. And so, the landings commenced. Now, you've seen in the movies how these battleships were lined up and they were shooting these big guns to soften up the shore. And that's what we were doing on the New Mexico. And when the big guns were in action, nobody could stand on the topside, the top deck, because the sound was deafening. So you didn't have anybody on topside when the big guns were going off. And then, I was in this thing. Now normally, there's a…not a door, but a port between each one of these three and I would sit in this corner and that door was usually open, even when they were firing. Now, I think it was either the second day I was on the New Mexico or maybe the third. The hatch, that's what they call them, not a door, was closed that day between the first and the second one. A kamikaze also hit the New Mexico and hit the bridge and the story was that it killed the captain of the ship. And there was a visiting admiral from the British navy who was killed in that kamikaze [sic]. But of course, that did not sink that big, old battleship. And I'll never forget this scene: I opened up the hatch up to that forward five-inch gun and it was like hamburger meat scattered all over that place, because that kamikaze had come down and hit that side of the ship, the port side. And I'll never forget it. That night, about midnight or so, I saw—and you've seen them in newsreels and movies and all—a burial at sea. And I witnessed that. I'd never seen that before. So I got scared by that time. [laughs] I hadn't really been up until that time. I said, “Man, I've got to get out from here [inaudible] plane hit.” So I decided to go down below that deck and man, that was big, thick steel and all. Well, during general quarters, I was down there alone and under a big, old meat-block table and scared as the devil, but I couldn't see or hear. All I could hear…noise up topside. “This ain't gonna do. I'm gonna take my chances. I'm going back up to that turret.” So when the “all clear” was sounded, I went back up to the turret. But after the…they had finally landed, the troops had done their job. Me, personally, then…they transferred me to an LST. This was one of those landing ships and they took us to an island somewhere. And at that place, I boarded a troop transport ship. And there were a lot of us on that ship from our ship and we went the southern route to get back to the States. And I'll never forget that troop transport. They only allowed you to have fresh water showers for one hour a day. The rest of it was saltwater. So, you become very creative when you have adverse situations. So what I did, somehow or another, I found a bucket and a chain and a lock. And where I was to sleep, I chained that to my bunk when the fresh water was on. And then I would do what they call a “Marine douche,” you know, just use that fresh water to clean myself. Now this is sort of not pleasant, what I'm gonna tell you, but it was an experience [laughs] that I'll never forget. Now what…on our ship, on the carrier, we had individual toilet stools. Very close by, but at least it was a toilet stool and you flushed it. But on this troop transport, they had two sides there and they had a long trough and you just sat there on that. And so I decided, “Well, I want to be sort of by myself, so I sat on the end there.” Well, that was a bad mistake. I should have sat in the middle, because as the ship swayed the water splashed [laughs] and I was on the end. I'll never forget that. That's a bad mistake. But anyway, we finally, finally arrived at San Francisco. Interviewer: If you would, give us an…at least an approximate date. Maslia: Well, if was in…well, my ship was sunk on January the fourth. Let's see. I could give you this date. I got thirty days survivor's leave is what they call that. And I was home in Atlanta on my survivor's leave when President Roosevelt died in April of that year [1945]. That's a time frame I remember. It took us a long time to come from that area back to San Francisco because it was a slow ship and they went that route to avoid meeting Japanese submarines. So it took us, I think, forty-five days to make that trip. I don't recall exactly. Interviewer: Let me just ask one question about the carrier. Do you have any idea of how much loss of life… Maslia: Yeah. Interviewer: Did you miss any… Maslia: Yeah. Interviewer: …any of your buddies… Maslia: Yeah. Interviewer: …close to… Maslia: [reading] “A total of ninety-five Navy men were lost, including two killed on a assisting destroyer when torpedo warheads on the carrier's hangar deck finally went off.” We lost approximately ten percent of our crew on that, because of the kamikaze. We had approximately nine hundred men on that ship. Interviewer: And that was April… Maslia: So now I'm home on leave and… Interviewer: President Roosevelt, of course, died seventy miles from where you were. Maslia: Yeah. Warm Springs. And I remember that part of it, too. You know, back then we didn't have television, of course, and you saw that on your newsreels and in pictures in the newspaper. So then, I went back. I was then assigned to a little naval training base in King City, California, right in the…I don't know what valley it's in. Interviewer: Let me stop you. Do want to just go ahead and elaborate any on Roosevelt's death and how people were affected by it? Maslia: Oh, yeah. Man. Everybody in America loved that man at that time. I don't care if he was a Democrat. Now, I'm political now, but he was our president. That's the only president I really knew growing up. And then you saw that fella that played the accordion. I forget his name. [Graham Jackson] And the tears were in his eyes. And that train going up… Interviewer: You didn't go down and look at the train, did you? Maslia: No. Frances: Graham Jackson. Maslia: Yeah, Graham Jackson was his name. And oh, yeah. Everybody in America was just sad and tears were…everybody. It might have been even more emotional than JFK's. I don't know. Both of them were very emotional to the American public. But they had…you could see it on the newsreel; that's about all you had back then. But going back to my assignment, I was stationed at King City and… Interviewer: King City…? Maslia: California. Interviewer: California. Maslia: That's approximately twenty miles south of Salinas, Monterey and that other exclusive…Carmel. In those days, servicemen in California, all you had to do is get on a highway and stick your thumb out and everybody would give you a ride. Nobody was afraid to give you a ride back then, as a serviceman. And I hitchhiked all over that place. I went to Sacramento. I went to Salinas and Monterey and Carmel. I was stationed at King City when Japan surrendered and I was in Carmel that day. I'll never forget. We had a big celebration in Carmel. So, I'm in King City and I got bored there, so I asked for sea duty. So I went back to sea on another carrier. It was called the USS Admiralty Bay, CVE-99, which had been converted to a troop transport. And on the hangar deck, they had constructed bunks to accommodate all these troops that we were bringing back from the Pacific. Now, I served a short term of duty on that carrier, bringing troops back to the States. And by that time, now, they were starting to discharge people from the services. But it was a point system that they had devised. The longer you'd been in and the longer you'd had combat duty, the more points you had. Well, I didn't have quite enough points, cause I only got in in nineteen forty-three. So, my time was not up until April of nineteen forty-six. So in the meantime, what they did with me, they parked me in the Mohave Desert. There was a Marine air station there and what did they do? They put me, assigned me to the fire department. And I didn't know what I would do if we had a fire. [laughs] But anyway, my number came up. So what I did, I used the system. What they would do back then is the service, the Navy would pay you your fare back to where you enlisted or were drafted, which was Atlanta. So what I did, I got discharged in California, Long Beach, California. And I got the money to go from Long Beach back to Atlanta, which was a nice, tidy sum. And then how I got back home, back then—I don't know if they still do it—you could hop a military plane that was going your way. So, I went to a place. I don't remember where it was. You might have had to wait a day or two, but I finally caught a plane going somewhere in South Carolina. I don't remember where. And I went to South Carolina, then I hitchhiked back to Atlanta. And I got home. Interviewer: And everybody was happy to see you, no doubt. Maslia: Yeah, I was alive. [laughs] Unscathed. Interviewer: Let me ask you. Do you have brothers and sisters? Maslia: I have a half-brother and a half-sister. My mother died when I was three years old and my father remarried her sister. Back then, that's the way they did it. You've got to remember, he was an immigrant. He was used to his kind of cooking, his language and he just couldn't go out to a singles bar and find somebody to marry. So he went back to a family, apparently, that he knew and he married her sister, which was my stepmother. And both of them lived here in Atlanta. Interviewer: Did they serve in the military at all? Maslia: My brother was…later on he was in the Army cause he graduated, but he never saw combat. Interviewer: [inaudible] Maslia: Yeah, too young. Interviewer: Now, did you do the G.I. Bill? Maslia: Oh, yeah. Interviewer: Tell us a little [inaudible]. Maslia: I don't even know why I did it, but I'll tell you, I still think I had good common sense even when I was nineteen. I knew that was a great opportunity to get a free education. That's what it amounted to. And so, yep. I rode it all the way till I had no more time left. Interviewer: Where did you go to school and what did you study? Maslia: The first thing was…let's see now. When I came back in April, I went one more time in the fall to Georgia Tech. Interviewer: You already had some Tech… Maslia: I had one semester Tech. I went again back to Tech. And I just came to the conclusion, I just ain't no engineer material. So I transferred to the University of Georgia. Now at that time, there were so many veterans coming back, that the place was overflowing with veterans and didn't have a place to put them. So I didn't go to Athens. Didn't have any room for me. So they sent me to Savannah. They had taken over Hunter Air Force Base down there and made dormitories out of the barracks and had classrooms. So I went to Savannah and stayed there for three quarters. I was finally able to get back to Athens in September of that year. Interviewer: That year being… Maslia: Nineteen forty-seven. Now I'm back in Athens. And the football season was on. And I invited this young girl, who I grew up with and knew, I said, “Why don't you come up here for homecoming weekend?” She was working. She was a secretary. Her name was Stella Cohen. Interviewer: Spelled? Maslia: C-O-H-E-N. And she knew a girl from her office or friend or something. So the two of them came up, cause the girl had a boyfriend up here in Athens. So the two of them got a hotel room. And I lived somewhere then. I forgot where I lived when I was in Athens. So, I was glad to see her. We went to the football game and somewhere along that day, I said, “You know, I heard old Linney and what's her name,” I forget their names right now, “are gonna elope tonight. Why don't you and I elope?” She said, “That's a good idea.” So what I did, I went down to a local jewelry store and I bought a wedding band for five dollars. And we went to the justice of the peace down next to the bus station. We got married and I had two old buddies as witnesses and we got married. So we spent our wedding night in the hotel room, cause the girlfriend was with her boyfriend. And they both got on the bus and went back to Atlanta. Now, her aunt and her mama said, “This is not good. We must have a Jewish wedding.” “Okay.” Well, the first opportunity I had to do that was on Thanksgiving weekend. So we had a little, small, family wedding at her mama's apartment. And we got married like we're supposed to be. Interviewer: Who was the rabbi? Do you remember? Maslia: Rabbi Cohen. Joseph Cohen. He was the only rabbi that I really knew. He came to Atlanta in nineteen thirty-three. So I didn't know the ones before that. And he married us. So now, in January of the following year, I found a house for rent. A whole house for five hundred dollars. Couldn't have been a month. It must have been a hundred dollars a month. And so I didn't have the money, but Stella had saved that up so, we rented it for six months. And she had the six hundred, so we moved into that house and that's where we… Interviewer: That's in Athens? Maslia: In Athens. It was on…I had to get on Prince Avenue to get to my classes. And I forgot the name of that street. We lived on the corner there. And our first dinner guest was old Ralph Badnady [phonetic]. He's still around. He's a CPA. And we invited him over for a spaghetti dinner which we prepared and it was just nice. We had our first dinner guest. And then we were able…then I found a little…a little, little place right across on Ag Hill. And there's a building right across there where the Agricultural faculty and members and all, department. So she got a job. She had excellent references and she got a paying job where she could walk across the street to work and I was a student. What it was, this man had taken a house and he had divided it into three apartments upstairs and two of them downstairs and he had all these GIs in there and our rent was twenty-five dollars a month. And we had a bedroom, very small bedroom, a kitchen, that if you had more than one person that was all you could fit in there and we had a community bathroom and you kept the door locked. And I could tell who was in there by the sound, who was using it. [laughing] Interviewer: What were you studying? Maslia: All right. I started off…my daddy had…well, my daddy had his shoe shop. I wanted to learn how to fix shoes. And he refused to let me become a shoemaker. He says, “No, you've got to be an accountant. You need to be a bookkeeper.” Cause he had done that when he was a young man. So I said, “Okay, I'm gonna be an accountant.” So I took two quarters in the business school, Accounting one oh one, and the next course, oh two. By that time, I said, “I don't think I'm gonna like this.” So I just took the easy way out. I decided to major in Spanish, which I knew from home anyway. And that's what I did. I majored in Spanish. And I took a lot of different kind of courses. I remember taking Greek mythology. I enjoyed things like that, the arts and sciences. I took two courses in Greek history. Took a class in music appreciation. My major was Spanish, however, and I had to minor in French. Upon graduation, now we moved back to Atlanta and moved in with her mother in her apartment on Boulevard. Interviewer: Her father? Maslia: Her mother. Interviewer: Her father was deceased? Maslia: Yeah, he was gone long time ago also. Interviewer: You never knew him. Maslia: No, never knew him. So we moved to that apartment and we had…we bought a car. We didn't have a car at Athens. We'd hitchhike everywhere in Athens and if we went to Atlanta, we'd hitch a ride with somebody going to Atlanta that day. And we got back to Atlanta and I enrolled in Emory University. And I spent two years there earning my master's degree. Interviewer: Still on the G.I. Bill. Maslia: Still on the G.I. Bill, but by the end of that time, it ran out or otherwise I probably would have gone for my PhD [laughs] if I had more free time. And as my project, my master's project…usually people going for a master's degree will pick some obscure thing and write about it or research it and I thought that was just stupid. So I asked my advisor, cause you always had an advisor, your…and I said, “Can I do this?” I said, “I'd like to translate a Spanish novel into English.” So he got the approval or he approved it. I don't know who approved it. But I was approved. So what I did for my master's project, I translated Miguel de Una Muno [phonetic], was the author of a philosophical novel called Able Sanchez [phonetic]. And I translated that from Spanish to English. Interviewer: What would your translation of the title be? Maslia: Able Sanchez. Interviewer: Oh, it's a name. Maslia: That's the title of the novel. And it's still at Emory Library, I guess. I've got my copy at home. And so that was project. And I took courses, you know, Old Spanish syntax. I took some bibliography English and what have you. Got my master's degree. So now here I am, no job. My wife was working. She found a job right away with a lumber company called, Addison, Rudisom [phonetic] Lumber Company. It was over there off of Bankhead Highway. Paid her very well. She was an excellent secretary. Interviewer: And what year is it now? Maslia: This is…I finished Emory in nineteen fifty-one. I graduated Georgia in forty-nine. Took two years, of course, to finish. And as a graduate assistant, by the way, I was awarded a graduate assistant and I taught three classes of Spanish during that time. So now here I am a graduate and no job. So what do I do? No more free education and no more monthly income. Cause you got a little monthly income when you were on the G.I. Bill. So at that time, I had sold shoes when I was in high school down in Atlanta on Whitehall Street. So I was pretty good at selling shoes and at that particular time, I was selling shoes at Davison's downtown, Davison Paxon in the women's shoe department earning some money until I could locate myself. And while I was there, I thought I would like to be a part of the State Department and they would give a test if you wanted to be a member of that. So I took that test and I would really liked to have been a part of the State Department and I would have enjoyed living in foreign countries, languages and different cultures. Well, I didn't pass that test. That's the most difficult test I ever took in my life. So while I'm thinking of what to do next, one day they call me from the shoe department to an office there and they said, “How would you like to be an assistant buyer in the men's sportswear department?” and I said, “Yeah.” I grabbed it. It was a job. Eighty-five dollars a week and I took it. So I stayed at Davison's for two years as an assistant buyer in the men's department and in that interim we lived…we bought us a house and we're living on Lively Ridge Road at Briarcliff and LaVista. And I'd walk up to Aunt Rachel's house which was right up the street and my cousin [inaudible] and his brother-in-law. We'd be there on Sunday, family get-together at Aunt Rachel's and I hear them talking about all this big money they were making. “What do you all do?” “Oh, we remodel houses.” “Oh, can I join you all? Can I be a part…” “Yeah, come on.” Well, after about a month, we hadn't made a sale and I didn't like not having money. So I got me another job. I got…I became a city salesman for Ivan Allen Company. And I knew Ivan Allen Senior and Ivan Allen Junior when he was operating that before he became mayor. And I stayed there two years and then, while I'm circulating around the city, I would drop in every once in a while on Spring Street on a friend I knew from the synagogue and he was operating something called a motor exchange. And there was a lot of hubbub on Spring Street back then. The dealerships were there and the garages. And I walked in one day and he said, “Henry, how'd you like to go into the muffler business?” Cause I had expressed to him how I'd love to be doing something on my own. And I said, “Sure”. So I didn't have any money. So we pitched in fifteen hundred dollars a piece. My daddy went down to C&S Bank in Little Five Points. He knew the manager down there. Managers stayed around a while back then. They don't do that any more. They shift them around like dirty diapers in these banks nowadays, you know. And he co-signed that loan for fifteen hundred and so I'll never forget it. He had found a location, he found me a mechanic and he'd found a source of supply for the mufflers. And it was down there Piedmont Avenue and Cain in an abandoned service station. We got the signs up, painted all the walls and we opened up the doors for business. And Will was the mechanic's name. And I said, “Will, I want you to do something. Take my car and lift it up.” We worked on jacks then and creepers. I said, “Lift up my car now and let's get underneath this and show me where's the muffler on a car.” Cause I don't know anything about a car. I am not mechanically inclined. So he showed me where the muffler and the tail pipe were and I just start selling muffler service. So then one day, after about a year, he said, “Henry, old [inaudible] wants to sell his motor exchange across the street from here on Spring Street. Let's buy it and you run it.” “Okay.” So we put a manager in at the muffler shop. I went to Spring Street and I went into the motor exchange business. And I'm telling you, I'm the least mechanical man in the whole world and there I was operating a garage. And I'll never forget it. I'd get a mechanic out there in the shop. I said, “Now what is that right there?” “Oh, that's the so and so.” “Oh. Well what is this here?” And so that's how I learned the parts of an automobile engine. Just asking the mechanics. And the valve job and all that and the pistons and tire rods and blah, blah, blah. I didn't know any of that stuff and I still don't, in a way. So I was self-employed for many, many years. I've only had four jobs in my life. I had that job at Davison's, Ivan Allen…now, I had a motor exchange on Whitehall Street for about nine years and I just got tired of it. It was a very grueling business. Tough, mechanics were hard to find. And I said…I became disillusioned and I wanted to do something. So I'd sit there. I said, “Man, you've got an education. Surely you can do something besides messing with these garages.” So I heard there was a…through the grapevine, that there was a stockbrokerage just opening up an office in Atlanta and it was called Payne, Webber, Jackson and Curtis. So, I went down there and applied for a job as a stockbroker, cause another buddy of mine had done that and he'd gone with somebody else. And in that interview, I'll never forget it. I think what really clinched it for me [laughs]…I filled out an application. Back then you didn't have resumés. You just filled out an application, you had an interview and you either got the job or you didn't. So in the interview, by that time, I was making enough money to become a member of the Progressive Club, which was a private club. And they had a poker room and, of course, I was an old poker player back then when I had the money. And we had a lot of guys playing poker up there that were big-time people. The Altman brothers. I don't know if you know that name in Atlanta, but they played poker up there. There were lots of…London Iron and Works, he used to play there. They had a big…and so I'm sitting at the interview and I was telling him I belong to the Progressive Club and I play poker with all these guys, I think… Frances: Five more minutes. Maslia: And I told him. I think that's what clinched the job. But I never…I stayed there two years and I just…by that time I got a house, I got a mother-in-law, I'm widowed and I got three children to support. Yes, she passed away after nineteen years, Stella did. So, I couldn't generate enough commissions. So after about two years I quit that and went back to fixing cars. Interviewer: And retired when? Maslia: I ain't retired yet! And from there…what did I do? I decided just to concentrate on transmissions rather than motors and I went…got a location on Buford Highway. I had nine wonderful productive years there. Made lots of money. Some money. And left that location. And then, the last fifteen years, I have just been…I call myself a peanut peddler. Snacks and I go from business to the other. I only go to automobile dealerships selling these things. Interviewer: Let me go ahead and go back. Maslia: Ask me some questions, yeah. Interviewer: Yes, let me go ahead. We don't have too much time left. Maslia: Right. Interviewer: Tell us your memories of Pearl Harbor. Maslia: Oh, Pearl Harbor. All you had were the newspapers and the newsreels that you saw at the movies and we saw that in the newsreels and I was just a little kid in high school. I was sixteen years old then. It didn't hit me like it would today. I just don't remember it traumatizing me as it might do today. As the Twin Towers would do today. Yes, we saw those newsreels and the people scurrying around and the wounded and all that. And the Day of Infamy speech. But that's all I remember about Pearl Harbor. Interviewer: You mentioned an assembly at school. Maslia: That day was Sunday, of course, Pearl Harbor. And Monday, we were called…we had a general assembly in our auditorium there at Boys' High and we heard that speech that President Roosevelt gave, the Day of Infamy speech. And again, it didn't traumatize me. We just knew we're at war now. But we had been building up. I had sense enough to know and anybody with good sense knew in those days that we're eventually gonna get in that war. We were trying to stay out of it, but we weren't doing a good job. America had that lend-lease program. But once the war started, I remember the darken your windows, put shades up. We had air raid wardens assigned to the block. Then there were shortages of this, that and the other. And by the time I got in the service, I forgot all that. I had good food every day. Interviewer: So did you have any military training in high school before… Maslia: I was in the ROTC a short while. A short while, yeah. Interviewer: One final question. What…tell us a little bit about writing home and the…you know, the island people's reactions to you being there. Maslia: Well, I didn't have a lot of people to correspond with. I had two girls that I corresponded with. One was Stella, my future wife, and across the street was a girl named Lenora Getty. I corresponded with her periodically. And then I would write home to my daddy. He was the one that corresponded with me rather than my mother. And if I had a little extra cash, I'd send it home so he'd save it for me. Of course, I called for it occasionally [laughs] when I needed some money. But that's the only corresponding that I did. I did not keep up with the local news and all. We didn't have newspapers aboard ship. We did have printed sheets and they would have some little, small items about what was happening in Italy and Germany, but that was all the news we knew. We were just out there. Interviewer: Do you remember the atomic bomb? Was much made of it? Maslia: I remember it being dropped, yes, on Nagasaki and what have you and that ended the war. But that was all I remember, man. I said, “Man, that's good.” Ended the war. Interviewer: Well, thank you very much for your time. Maslia: It was my pleasure. Interviewer: We enjoyed it. We'll take a look at your pictures in just a minute. Maslia: All right. [end of tape]
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/257
Additional Rights Information:: This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Extent:: 59:53
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
Rights: