Oral history interview of Joseph Wiley Reid

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Joseph Wiley Reid
Creator:: Jackson, Charles
Reid, Joseph Wiley, 1925-
Date of Original:: 2003-09-10
Subject:: World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Reid, Alice Bagley, 1926-1993
Reid, Emmett Cawood, Jr.
MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964
Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969
Highsmith, Norwood Habersham, 1921-1994
Watts, Gibbs
United States. Army. Quartermaster Corps
United States. Army. Quartermaster Depot Corps, 4168th
United States. Army. Quartermaster Service Corps, 362nd
United Service Organizations (U.S.)
University of Manila
Georgia Southwestern College
University of Georgia
Rockefeller Center
Prisoners of War
Liberty ship
Atomic bomb
Buck sergeant
DUKW
Hollandia (New Guinea)
United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944
Location:: Indonesia, Jayapura, -2.5387539, 140.7037389
Japan, Fukuoka-ken, 33.6251241, 130.6180016
Japan, Sasebo-shi, 33.1799965, 129.7152872
Japan, Tokyo, 35.709026, 139.731992
Panama, Panama Canal, 8.99797, -79.59269
Philippines, Manila, 14.5906216, 120.9799696
United States, California, Contra Costa County, Camp Stoneman, 38.00742, -121.92107
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, Chattahoochee County, Fort Benning, 32.35237, -84.96882
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Fort McPherson, 33.70733, -84.43354
United States, Georgia, Sumter County, Leslie, 31.95545, -84.08657
United States, Georgia, Sumter County, Plains, 32.03405, -84.39269
United States, Georgia, Whitfield County, Dalton, 34.7698, -84.97022
United States, Louisiana, Vernon Parish, Camp Polk, 31.0520965, -93.2169155124726
United States, New Jersey, 40.16706, -74.49987
United States, Ohio, Franklin County, Columbus, 39.96118, -82.99879
United States, Pennsylvania, Reading, 40.335345, -75.9279495
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Joseph "Toby" Reid recalls his history in the U.S. Army during World War II. He describes his entry into the Army and his training as well as other family members in the service. He recalls his trip to the Pacific, his duties and living conditions. He describes working with an African American unit in the Pacific. He relates filling a personnel carrier full of blankets to deliver to Nagasaki and describes what he saw there. He recalls his return home, his post-war education and career. He outlines his and his wife's family history. He gives his philosophy of war and American society.
Toby Reid was in the U.S. Army during World War II.
Joseph Wiley “Toby” Reid Veterans Oral History Project Atlanta History Center With Charles Jackson September 10, 2003 [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: Okay, Mr. Reid. Today is September the tenth, 2003. We are at the Atlanta History Center and the purpose of this interview is for you to describe to us your thoughts and words and actions of World War Two. We'll start off, if you will. Give us your full name, please. Reid: Joseph Wiley Reid. R-E-I-D. Interviewer: And your present address. Reid: Two oh seven Auburn Drive, A-U-B-U-R-N Drive, Dalton Georgia. Zip code three oh seven two oh. Interviewer: All right, sir. Where were you born? Reid: I was born five miles northeast of Plains, Georgia,in Sumter County on Muckaleak [phonetic] Creek. Interviewer: What date? Reid: November the eighteen, 1925. Interviewer: How long did you live in Sumter County? Reid: I lived there until I was eighteen years old and I joined the Army when I was seventeen and I had to have my mother sign the application for me. Interviewer: So you were enlisted. Reid: We had to get my mother's permission for me to go. And I really didn't have to go because I had a brother in the Army at the present time, overseas, and my mother had three son-in-laws in the Army. So I would have made the fifth one that my mother had in the Army. Interviewer: What date did you go into the Army? Reid: I enlisted when I was seventeen in September of 1943. But I didn't become eighteen until November the eighteenth of '43. And I went in January the fifteenth, 1944. Interviewer: At that time, where were you living? Reid: I was living in Leslie, Georgia, in the country. My father ran a small grocery store there and did farming on the side. Interviewer: Where did you get your basic training? Reid: The first basic training was in Camp Lee, Virginia. It was the big quartermaster training center and I went there. I came to Atlanta to MacPherson around January the fifteenth and we stayed there about ten days and they shipped us out to Camp Lee, Virginia. Interviewer: Why did you happen to pick the Army? Reid: Well, my brother was in the Army. I have a brother, Emmett David Reid, Jr., that was two years older than me. So…in the Army. And the reason I went to quartermaster, I wanted to get in the infantry like him but I have a bad right eye, what we call a slow eye. So I couldn't get into the infantry, so they put me in the quartermaster corps. Interviewer: And where did you go after Virginia? Reid: I took basic training about four times in Camp Lee, Virginia, because they didn't need us at that time. But I did go to Fort Benning in 1944 for about three months, but then we went back to Camp Lee, Virginia. And then we left in October of 1944. We got on a troop train and we went to Columbus, Ohio. And then we came down to Texarkana, Arkansas, or Texarkana, Texas, and I went to Camp Polk, Louisiana. And we had more training at Camp Polk, Louisiana. Then we got on a train about December the fifteenth and we took the southern route to California, going through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California and we went to Camp Stoneman at San Francisco, California. Interviewer: Do you remember any of the instructors you had in all this various training? Did any of them stand out in your mind? Reid: No, it was…only one person. It was a sergeant. Because in basic training there, they change your cadre so much and everything. There's one sergeant, but I've forgotten his name. Interviewer: Did you learn anything in all this? Reid: Well, [laughs] mostly they got me in shape, you know. We had all the basic training that an infantryman would have. But we had mostly, we had the old World War One '03, what we call 1903 rifle that we trained with but they weren't used. When we went to the South Pacific we had a carbine, what we call a carbine. Interviewer: Where did you leave the States from? Reid: Camp Stoneman, California, on January the first, 1945. Interviewer: But Camp Stoneman is not a pier, a seaport. Reid: No, it's up the river there. Camp Stoneman is up the river and it's about ten miles, I think, down to the San Francisco bridge. Interviewer: So, again, where did you actually get onboard ship? Reid: At Camp Stoneman where the river went up. I think it was about ten miles up there? Interviewer: This was a troop ship? Reid: Yes, sir. I believe it was a liberty ship. Interviewer: Who was it operated by? Reid: I'd say the Navy personnel on the ship. Interviewer: Was it set up as a troop ship? Reid: Yes. Interviewer: How long were you on that ship? Reid: We were on that ship about over a month because we had to zigzag to New Guinea. We didn't go straight. We'd go north and then down and everything. They were scared of submarines and everything so we had to zigzag. Interviewer: Was New Guinea where you were headed? Reid: Yes. Interviewer: What part? Reid: Hilandia [phonetic]. Hilandia is on the…I believe it's on the east coast. Interviewer: And what did you do in New Guinea? Reid: There we had a base, a depot supply company there at New Guinea. We had everything. We had khakis. We didn't have [inaudible]. We had some ammunition but no rifles or anything like that. Mostly it was khakis, pants, shirts and underwear and things like that. Not even the food. But we had big warehouses out in the open that was covered up with canvas in the South Pacific and we stayed there about four months. Interviewer: Where did your food come from? Reid: It was there. We had refrigeration and at first, we just used the old, you know, canned goods of the Army. But later, we had cooked meals. Interviewer: So the meals were pretty good there. Reid: Yeah. Interviewer: Now during this four months, what were you doing? Issuing equipment? Reid: Mostly. Mostly issuing equipment on the trucks and they would take it and put in on ships to go maybe to the Philippines or places like that. Interviewer: And where did you go from New Guinea? Reid: We went to Manila. And we put our…our company was on at the end of Dewey Boulevard at Manila. And MacArthur had his headquarters there in the presidential suite of the main hotel there in Manila. So MacArthur was there when we got there. Interviewer: For the geographically challenged, where is Manila? Reid: I believe it's on the…it's sort of in the middle. It's on Luzon, in the middle of Luzon. Interviewer: [inaudible] country. Reid: The Philippines and the islands. I mean, which is…I guess they've got a thousand islands. Interviewer: Yes. All right. So, you went and stayed there how long? Reid: About…we stayed there until July, around the fifteenth of July. Interviewer: Were you there when it fell? Reid: The Philippines? Interviewer: Yes. Reid: No. We came in there later. I think the Philippines…MacArthur came back maybe the first of '45 and this was July of '45. Interviewer: So he was back there by then. Reid: Yes. He was there. He was there in the hotel and everything. Interviewer: During the time that you were there what were you doing? Reid: We had a supply there. Mostly we had a big stack of Coca-Colas and we also had our regular khakis and things like that. Interviewer: During the time, did you have any interaction with the civilians on the island? Reid: Yes. Interviewer: Did you…I don't know. We called it liberty in the Navy. What did you call it? Reid: Yeah, we were…after we left the end of our camp at the end of Dewey Boulevard, we went almost to the…between the center of Manila and the port where the ships came in and everything, which was just down from where we were at. We had mostly seven-men tents that seven men, soldiers stay in each tent we had there. And we go into Manila every night almost. I mean, it was mostly filled up with bars and everything. So we would go in there. Interviewer: Did you ever have any USO shows come to the Philippines? Reid: USO? Interviewer: USO. Reid: Yes. We had, “Oklahoma” came. But I think it was in New Guinea we had “Oklahoma”. It was a squad of the actors and actresses that came and put on, in New Guinea, “Oklahoma.” Interviewer: That was in New Guinea. Reid: I believe that was in New Guinea. There in Manila, I don't remember anything. But we might have been so busy downtown that we didn't have time to see it anyway. Interviewer: And where did you go from Manila? Reid: There's one thing about Manila. They kept the prisoners at the University of Manila. There was a big wall all the around it and everything and that was the place that a lot of the prisoners that the Japanese kept the American prisoners and other prisoners there was on the University of Manila grounds. So when I got there and everything, we used to…I mean we went there, you know, to see where the prisoners had stayed and everything. So we saw…it was all shot up and everything, but we saw the University of Manila there, which is on the outskirts of Manila there. Interviewer: And whenever you got through with whatever you were doing in the Philippines, where did you go? Reid: Well, around July the fifteenth, 1945, we got on another liberty ship and we were going to invade Japan. But what they did, I was in the Forty-one sixty-eight Quartermaster Depot Company and they took the Three sixty-second Quartermaster Service Company and they took all the older, I'd say above twenty-five to twenty-eight, they kept those in the Three sixty-second Quartermaster…I mean, quartermaster service company. But they took part of the Forty-one sixty-eighth and I was one of those, out of the Forty-one sixty-eighth and put us in the Three sixty-second Quartermaster Service Company and they attached us to the Marine division. So we were going to invade Japan. So we were already on the way. And when we got on the ship there, I remember seeing…we could see the lights on Okinawa. So we stayed there about three weeks. And then the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, I believe, on August the third. No, August the sixth. And three days later, on August the ninth, Nagasaki, they dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Interviewer: I want to back up just a second. You were in the South Pacific. Where were in you when the war in Europe ended. Reid: That was in June. So I must have been in Manila. That was in June, I believe, of 1945. Interviewer: So you all did hear about it? Reid: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we did. Interviewer: And where were you when President Roosevelt died? Reid: That was in '45? Was it '45? Now what month we talking? April of '45? Interviewer: [inaudible] Reid: I was still in New Guinea. I was in New Guinea. Interviewer: When he died. Reid: When he died. Right. Interviewer: Okay, so you're on the ship. This troop ship, was it operated by the Army? Reid: Navy. Interviewer: Navy. Reid: Yeah. Interviewer: Was the food pretty good? Reid: Yes. It was good. It wasn't bad. But most all of us stayed, as many as we could, we didn't stay down in the ship. We'd stay on topside as much as we could. Some of us slept up there on topside. [inaudible] Interviewer: You had a regular chow hall all set up? Reid: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Interviewer: So you stayed there about three weeks? Reid: Well, we stayed there until…we stayed on that ship for a couple months almost. September…let's say that we landed at Sasebo on September the tenth. That's what the war records say. But I remember being there September the first. So we got about ten days in there. But the Marines landed two days before the Three sixty-second, before we landed. And what we did when we landed, the Marines were already there in some…they had a ship built in a place there where the Marines stayed and we stayed in another one. And the Marines had been there two days. But what they wanted to do after two days, they marched us down the middle of Sasebo. And we had the rifles, the carbine, on our shoulder and we walked down the middle of Sasebo. At that time, we didn't know what was gonna happen. We didn't know whether they were gonna attack us or what. But no Japanese that I heard of ever attacked an American soldier. And the reason was that because when the emperor said that the war was over, the war was over. And we had no trouble at all with any Japanese person like they're having in Iraq today. Not a single person that I can remember. We had a few accidents that soldiers got killed. But I can't remember, the four or five months that I was there, I don't remember anything where an American and Japanese got in any kind of fight or nothing else. Interviewer: During the time that you were on the ship, you were preparing to invade Japan. Reid: Yes. Interviewer: Had you ever fired that carbine rifle before? Reid: No. Except in practice. Never. Never. Interviewer: But you had in practice. They did give you some instructions on how to [inaudible]. Reid: Well, the only thing, as I've said, we took basic training almost a year back in Camp Lee, Virginia. So we would go through everything, you know, hand-to-hand combat and everything else, I mean. So, we were well versed with the…they didn't give us the carbine until we got to New Guinea. Interviewer: Did you get some training in it there? Reid: Yes, we got some training on the carbine. Interviewer: Okay, in Sasebo, how long did you stay there? Reid: We stayed there about…if we got there on September the first, we stayed at Sasebo about two weeks. Interviewer: What were you doing during that time? Reid: Just, round in this…where the ship building plant was. Just there. I mean, we didn't go out any more except that one time we did march down the center. There was about four hundred of us, I guess, that marched down the center of the… Interviewer: You just sat around all day? Reid: Yeah. Yeah. We wasn't doing anything. Interviewer: You mentioned a quartermaster company and then a quartermaster service company. What's the difference? Reid: Well, the Forty-one sixty-eighth is what we call a Quartermaster Depot, that actually ran the operations and everything. Cause we'd have trucks coming in, you know, pick up for the companies, you know, picking up everything. But then after about two weeks at Sasebo, we moved to Fukioka [phonetic], which is about, I guess, fifty miles from Sasebo. And we had there, we had a big warehouse of everything that we always had, the khakis and everything else except we didn't have any ammunition and guns and everything, but we had everything else that the soldier needed. Now we didn't have the refrigeration. That was with another company. But everything else that wasn't refrigerated, we had. Interviewer: During the time you were at Sasebo, did you have any contact with any civilians? Reid: Well, there were houses there close to us and we would go visit some of the Japanese and everything. Interviewer: So they treated you well. Reid: Oh, absolutely. Just like home people. But we couldn't understand what they said, but we got along with them, you know. And we visited. We'd go and eat with them. Interviewer: Now when you got to the next place, you were actually engaged then in distributing supplies? Reid: Yes. And the trucks would come in there and we'd load the trucks and everything. Interviewer: What was your rank by then? Reid: I was what we call a buck sergeant. A buck sergeant's three stripes. At that time, I wasn't twenty. I was almost twenty. Interviewer: Did you have to take any examination for rank change? Reid: No. No. It was all done, you know, with the captain and the first sergeant, you know. Interviewer: How long did you stay in [inaudible]? Reid: When I first got to Fukioka, that must have been around September the twelfth or fifteenth, something like that. We got in what we call a personnel carrier. It carries about six men. And we had blankets there in the warehouse and we loaded the personnel carriers down, and there was about four of us in there. We were gonna carry the blankets over there to the hospital at Nagasaki. So I went with them. They were going and they said, “Toby, you want to go with us?” I said, “Yep.” So I jumped in the back and I rode over there. When I got there, I didn't see [but] very few people, but we went in the middle of Nagasaki there and all I saw was that dust and [inaudible]. Interviewer: The bomb had already been dropped then when you got there. Reid: Yeah. See, this was around September the fifteenth and the bomb was dropped on August the ninth. But there wasn't anything there except a few bricks and you'd have a clump of bricks there. And so I said, I told them, I said, “Well just let me out here in the middle of this thing and y'all pick me up on the way back.” So I stayed there about 45 minutes by myself. There wasn't anybody else around there. A couple of Japanese walked down. And all it was…and I had on combat boots and I started kicking the dust, you know. And the only building I saw was up against the mountain on the left side there where there was about a half of building left, a brick building left. And everything else was flat. Interviewer: How long did you stay in Japan after that? Reid: That was around September the fifteenth. I left there in April. Interviewer: The following April. Reid: That's right, 1946. Interviewer: And where did you go from there? Reid: Well, they wanted me to…there were a lot of us coming home then and I was only nineteen, almost twenty and they wanted me to stay there. And they said, “Well, we'll make you a master sergeant. You can have master sergeant. We'll make you a master sergeant,” which is three stripes down and three up, which is the highest [enlisted] rank except sergeant major that you can be in the Army. And I said, “No, I'm going….[choked up]. I'm going home.” Interviewer: So you came…where did you come into the States? Reid: They shipped us up to Tokyo and we got on the ship there, a small ship. And we started home. And we wound up in the Panama Canal. We came through the Panama Canal. And then we came up the East Coast. That was around April fifteenth and we came into New York Harbor. Interviewer: Is this a Navy or Army ship? Reid: It was Navy. It was all Navy personnel, you know. Interviewer: But it was some kind of a troop carrier? Reid: It was a troop liberty ship, which is a small, you know, ship. I believe Kaiser built most of them in California, you know. Interviewer: So you came into New York. Where did you go for discharge? Reid: Well, we went to a camp in New Jersey and we stayed there about five days. And then we got on a train and came to Fort MacPherson. Interviewer: So you were discharged at Fort Mac? Reid: I went into the Army at Fort Mac and I was discharged at Fort Mac. Interviewer: And when was that? Reid: That was about May the fifteenth, 1946. Interviewer: Did you go back to Lesley then? Reid: Yes, I went back home. Interviewer: And you said you went to school on the G.I. Bill. Reid: Well, when I got back…when I was fourteen years old, I started working at a grocery store in Americus. And I decided I didn't want to go back there, which I could have gone. It was a Colonial Store, is what it was. Well, first it was an Old Rogers Store, then Colonial Store. And then it became Big Star and Little Star. So I decided that I didn't know what I wanted to do. We had the G.I. Bill so I started going to Georgia Southwestern there at home and going, living at home and going back and forth, which wasn't…it was about twelve miles to Georgia Southwestern. So I went there for a couple of quarters. And then fall quarter I went to the university and I stayed there one quarter and then I went back home and went to Georgia Southwestern. Interviewer: Did you graduate from Georgia Southwestern? Reid: I graduated…yes. In 1947, I graduated from Georgia Southwestern. Interviewer: Did you ever go back to the University of Georgia? Reid: Yes, I went there and I majored in accounting. Interviewer: And you graduated from the University of Georgia? Reid: Graduated from [inaudible]. Interviewer: And where did you go from there? Reid: Well, I went back home. [laughs] And I got married July the ninth, 1949. Interviewer: How many children did you have? Reid: Well, we stayed at home with Mom and Daddy for eighteen months, me and my wife. And then I got a job with…you know Uniroyal, U.S. Rubber Company in Hogansville, Georgia. They have a [inaudible] in 1951 they had a big textile division. Had about fifteen, twenty mills all over the South. So I worked there at Hogansville for about three years in the costs department cause I had a degree in accounting. This gets you. [laughing] This gets you right here. Interviewer: Have you ever talked about this at this length before? Reid: No. No. No. I've talked about it, you know, plenty of times. Interviewer: But you never did tell me how many children you had. Reid: Well, the reason I didn't say because it took us eight years [laughing] to have our first child. We had two children. We had two children. I have a son that lives with me in Dalton. He's forty-five. I have a daughter, Maryann, and she lives in Cobb County. Interviewer: Were you married more than once? Reid: No. No. I started going with [inaudible] when…[long silence] this really gets rough. Interviewer: Take your time. Reid: This really gets rough. When she was fifteen and we went together for seven years before we got married. Interviewer: Where was she from? Reid: She was from Lesley. Desoto [County]. Her great-grandfather was one of the first doctors below Macon. They moved there in…he came there in 1843 from New Hampshire. We really think that the Methodist Church sent him down there as a missionary in 1843. So she had been there, her family had been there since 1843. The first ones in there in South Georgia, around [unclear] County, Sumter County, I think it was in 1836. [inaudible] up there. But her family, her great-grandfather was a doctor. Her father was a doctor. Her brother was a dentist. They were an educated family. They're English. Interviewer: Did you retire from Uniroyal? Reid: No. No. I stayed with Uniroyal for eleven years. Then I wound up at Rockefeller Center in New York. I stayed up there for eighteen months. Interviewer: With Uniroyal. Reid: Yes. At Rockefeller Center. But before then I went to Reading, Pennsylvania. And I sold yarn to the knitters up there, the carpet people, from our textile division. And I stayed six years in Reading, Pennsylvania. And then from Reading, Pennsylvania, I moved to Scotch Plains, New Jersey, and worked, took a bus every morning to Rockefeller Center for eighteen months. But I came to Dalton, Georgia, in 1960. So, I've been in Dalton forty-three years. Interviewer: Did you come to Dalton with Uniroyal? Reid: Yes. Yes. Yes. That was our biggest sales office, was in Dalton. We were selling to the bedspread people and the carpet people. Well, at that time, it was very little and when I got there in 1960, it was very little carpet. But we started the carpet in 1960. Before that, it was bedspread. We sold cotton to them. Interviewer: So who did you retire from? Reid: Well, after that I went to work with Bibb Manufacturing Company out of Macon. They had a big…they were all textiles, a hundred percent textiles. So I stayed with them three years and then I went into selling yarn and jute and everything for other people. We had a broker company. So I did that for about five years. And after I did that, I started a carpet business myself. I started three carpet mills up there in Dalton. But I found out that I liked to start them, but I didn't like to run them. So every time I'd buy one, I'd keep it two or three years and sell it. So I kept doing that. So that's what I retired from, selling the carpet mills in Dalton. Interviewer: So that's the reason you still live in Dalton. Reid: That's right. Yes. Interviewer: And you have one son living with you down there? Reid: Yes. Interviewer: You never did say where your daughter is? Reid: My daughter is in Cobb County, East Cobb County. She teaches second grade at Rocky Mountain Elementary and she's been there for twenty years. Interviewer: How did you get along with your officers and fellow soldiers? Have any problems? Reid: No. Never. Except one time. I went to…I got up one morning and I thought I was sick. But I come to find out I wasn't. So I went to the doctor, went on sick call and he gave me a couple of aspirin or something. I came back. I had a headache real bad, you know. And at night, that afternoon I started feeling better. So about every third, second night, we'd have a movie. So I thought I was well, you know, that I could go to the movie. And the first sergeant saw me at the movie. He said, “Toby, what are you doing here?” He said, “You're sick and when you get sick in the Army, you stay sick for twenty-four hours.” You know? [laughs] So after that he put me on company punishment for a week. Interviewer: What did they call you in the Army? Reid: Toby. Interviewer: Where did that come from? Reid: Well, I'm named for my two grandfathers, Joseph Reid and Wiley Carter, and my grandfather, Joseph Reid, he had a nickname, Joby. So, my mother and father and sisters and brothers, they called me Joby, after my grandfather. So when I went to the first grade, the teacher asked my, what my name was. I said, “My name's Joby.” And she thought I said, “Toby”. So it's been Toby ever since. So the nickname was Toby. Interviewer: Did you have any occasion or reason to pull any kind of practical jokes on your fellow troops or did you all do that? Reid: Very little, that I know of. I don't remember, you know. I'm sure we did, but nothing that stands out, you know. Interviewer: You were pretty serious about [inaudible]. Reid: Well, sometimes. Sometimes you'd be serious. But you can't be too serious for that long a time. You have to… Interviewer: What do you think of your experience in that Army? Did it change you? Reid: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Interviewer: In what way? Reid: Well, it gives you confidence that you can do anything. That's the reason, I think every eighteen-year-old son or daughter, if they wanted to, should go in the Army for two years. It matures you. Interviewer: So you feel better for the experience? Reid: Oh, yeah. No doubt about it. I think everybody should go. Interviewer: Would you have gotten a college education maybe if you had not gotten the G.I. Bill? Reid: No. There's no way. I wouldn't even have thought about. I didn't think about it until I got home. Interviewer: Did you take advantage of the VA loan assistance, buying a home? Reid: No. I never did because once I started working with U.S. Rubber Company I had enough, you know, credit where I didn't have to, you know, use it. I never did use it. Then, in the carpet business, I thought about using, you know, the small business loan and things like that but the banks in Dalton, they would loan me any amount of money I wanted on my signature, so it really didn't… But it was a good thing because a lot of people didn't have that backing. One of the reason I could borrow a lot of money up there in Dalton was the president of the First National Bank up there was Gibb Watts [phonetic]. That's when I got there in 1960. And I lived with Gibb Watts on Prince Avenue in Athens, Georgia, for about three years over there. He and his wife, he was in school but he finished. He's a CPA and he lived upstairs with us and his wife, Valerie. She was in law school there, so she finished law there at the Universtiy. And when I got in Dalton, there was Gibb Watts as president of the First National Bank. So, after that I didn't have much trouble. Interviewer: Have you got anything else you'd like to add about your visit to Nagasaki? Reid: No. That's the only thing. Looking back and everything. At the time, we were glad that we didn't have to go into Japan. No doubt about it. But looking back on it, we should have never dropped that bomb on Hiroshima because we had them beat and all that MacArthur had to do was get in touch with the Emperor, could have stopped that war. We were lucky that the Japanese had an emperor. He was almost like a god to them, you know. And when he said something, everybody, you know, didn't do anything except what he said do, you know. Interviewer: So you have a pretty high opinion of Eisenhower? Reid: Eisenhower? Interviewer: Yes. Reid: Well… Interviewer: I mean, MacArthur. Reid: Well, MacArthur. Well, yes. But see, MacArthur [was] over there twenty, thirty years. He was…after he left the Army, he went to Manila as viceroy or something. You know, as the main person from the United States to the Philippines [military advisor to President Manuel Quezon]. And at that time, we didn't…I guess that we didn't own them but we were always friendly with the Filipinos there, you know. Back long before…and before that, MacArthur's father [General Arthur MacArthur] was there. So MacArthur grew up in the South Pacific before he went to West Point. Interviewer: In your contacts with the people of the Philippines, what was your impression of them? Reid: Well, it was almost like stateside. Most of them spoke English, so we didn't have a bit of trouble. Interviewer: Did they seem to be industrious, hard-working? Reid: Yes. I saw some of the, you know, what they call the Filipino Rangers, you know, that MacArthur had before we left the Philippines. They were real educated, what we saw of them. Interviewer: So you weren't involved in the Bataan March? Reid: No. No, that was before. Interviewer: Is there anything else you'd like to add about your whole experience? Anything. Reid: Well, when the Iraqi war started, I wrote all the congressmen. I was against it. We should have never gone over there. We could have gotten rid of Saddam a different way or something. Bought him off. Hell, we're spending a hundred and fifty billion dollars. We could have bought him off for fifty billion and we wouldn't have had the war, you know? But you get the war mania running, you know? Mania running and you can't stop it, you know. It's just a…when you have President Bush and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney wanting to go back, you know, that his father didn't finish the war before. I mean, it's crazy. We started another hundred year war. And now, all the money that should be used for education, housing, roads, hospitals in the United States, there we're spending all this money, you know, overseas. It's crazy. But we Americans, sometimes we do crazy things, you know, and this is one of them. Interviewer: The idea never has been presented, but do you think if it was, would you be willing to go back into service in a non-combat role in order to do some paperwork or something? Reid: No. Interviewer: Relieve somebody for combat? Reid: No. No. I had enough war, you know. After I saw Nagasaki, I've had enough of it. If we can't get the…and then we say that, you know, Saddam had the weapons of mass destruction. There's two countries in the world that's got the most weapons of mass destruction. We'll start with the United States. And the second is Russia. So why in the world should other countries not have weapons of mass destruction if we've got them and we're gonna blow them to hell like we did in Afghanistan, threw them back to the Stone Age and we did the same thing to Iraq. I mean, it's crazy, you know. We distort a little gas and everything over at [inaudible] Alabama. They burn it… [Tape 1, Side B] Reid: That's been sitting there for fifty years, forty years, you know. But it's the same thing that Eisenhower said when he left office. He said, “One thing we got to watch is the military-industrial complex.” Because they're gonna rob you blind and everything that Eisenhower said has come to be true in 2000, 2003. He knew exactly what they were gonna do. You've got big corporations that're running everything and the officers, chairmen of the boards, the directors and everything, they stealing [sic] all the money. That blows the stock market to hell. Nobody can trust the stock market. I mean, it's crazy. I mean and then we have Enron, Kenny Lay, the head of it. As Bush calls him, Kenny Boy, a friend. He hasn't gone to jail yet, you know. I mean, the American people, we have lost our country to the military-industrial complex and there's no way in the world, I see, how we're gonna get it back. We have people in this country trying to live off of minimum wage. Then we got people trying to be billionaires in this country. It's crazy. Interviewer: [inaudible, very low volume] Reid: No. No. Interviewer: [inaudible, very low volume] Reid: Well, no. Except when I was coming home, I ran into a couple of them coming home on the train from New Jersey. But they had been the other way. I think it was one guy that I might have seen in Manila that was from Lesley. But that's the only one that I ran into. Interviewer: So there was never any central area where [inaudible]. Reid: No. No. It was…most of our people…in the quartermaster corps, we got a lot of the boys in the Air Force because at the end of the war, they didn't need any more pilots or anything so they put…we got about two hundred of the boys out of the Air Force, that they let out of the Air Force and they put them in the Army, in the quartermaster corps with us. Interviewer: [inaudible, very low volume] Reid: Yeah, mostly. But in New Guinea we had a black, I believe it was the Ninety-first or Ninety-second, a black division, and they did most all the work for me. I had about twenty-five or thirty working for me and I was a corporal in New Guinea. But they unloaded…the only thing in Manila, they would be unloading ships on ducks. A duck is that truck that can go, you know, in the ocean, water. Then it comes out and hits the ground and keeps going with the load and everything. They would load a duck with white T-shirts and khakis. And the duck never would show up at our depot. I mean, they would steal between the ship and our depot. The truck driver and everything would drive it out in the country and they'd find the truck out there, the duck, two or three weeks later. They were empty and everything else. But most all the Filipinos, they wear white shirts just like me and you got on right now, and khaki pants. That's…a white T-shirt and khaki pants, for the Filipinos, that was dress to go to church with. Interviewer: Did you stay in the reserves? Reid: No. I came back home. Interviewer: So you didn't come back into Korea? Reid: This Norwood Highsmith, he was a captain, a friend of mine in Dalton. He died in '93. But I saw where he went back in. But he was a captain in the engineers and he was in World War Two. He first went to Australia. And then he went to New Guinea. And then they were fighting on a couple of the islands there and he wound up in the Philippines. His record says Southern Philippines. So it must have been on some of those smaller islands south of Luzon that was in there and everything. Interviewer: Did you feel that World War Two [inaudible]? Reid: Well, you know, it had always been rumored, you know. And I believe it. That we had broken the Japanese code and we knew they were coming and everything. But to get the American people, sometimes the president will do crazy things to get the American people ready for war. But it's just like the…the twin towers in New York. We had thirty-one hundred people killed and because of that we killed two hundred thousand in Afghanistan and Iraq. The numbers don't add up, you know. It's crazy. Interviewer: But as far as World War Two is concerned [inaudible]. Reid: Well, I don't know. I think if we had…see the reason the Japanese wanted to fight us, we were shipping them iron over there to make the ships and everything for the war machine. And we cut the iron off, you know. And we stood around and let them get so big, you know, that they thought they were gonna take on us, you know. I don't think…I think any war can be stopped if you have the right people at the right place at the right time. Even in Hitler. Even the Jewish people, the Jewish bankers in Germany backed Hitler. He was borrowing money from them. They furnished the money, the Jewish bankers. It's not Lowenstein, but the big Jewish bankers in Europe over there. So it's… Interviewer: [inaudible, very low volume] Reid: I don't think we had the right leaders at the right time because when Hitler first started over there, you don't go over there, you know, you don't…the bankers shouldn't have loaned him money to do it, you know. And another thing, where did it start from? From the unemployment? From the German people? Low jobs. So that's what Bush is doing to us today. He's scaring us, you know. Every day, you know, we got to do this, we got to do that. He's scaring us. You know, Saddam is coming, you know. The Taliban is coming. Bin Laden is coming, you know. So what they do, they scare you to death. They don't scare me, but the normal person, they scare them to death, you know. Then we give them forty-seven billion dollars. Then we give them eighty-seven billion. It's gonna be more than that. Next year it's gonna be more cause we're not gonna…we've got people unemployed here in the United States. We could use that eighty-seven billion dollars hiring somebody to go to work. Interviewer: Okay. Now we've got about five minutes left. You've got anything else [inaudible]? Reid: I don't think so. Maybe I've said too much already. [laughing] Interviewer: [inaudible, very low volume] Reid: [laughs] Interviewer: Okay then. I guess that's the end. Thank you. [end of tape] Notable Pages: p. 10—landing in Sasebo, Japan, occupation p. 13—description of post-bomb Nagasaki
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Extent:: 54:55
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
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