by Stephanie Johnson Dixon, 2007
Introduction
This project started as a result of watching too much public television. In early October of 2007 PBS ran a series by the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. This series, “The War," (or as pronounced by an old witness from Alabama who both looked and sounded like our dear Mammy, “the Waw") ran for about eight days and chronicled people who actually lived through and fought during World War II. That is not so unusual. We’ve all seen war footage and heard veteran’s commentaries since the end of that war. What made it different was that for the first time we followed the same people throughout the war. Plus, we saw how it affected whole communities and the affects of the war on people’s entire lives.
Watching this series, my husband, Bill, and I had a couple of reactions. (1) This is fascinating stuff; (2) We can do that. What Ken Burns did was the same thing he does in all his films…take archival pictures and footage, get either eyewitness interviews or have people read actual accounts from the times he covering, and drag it out beyond belief. We were inspired.
Fortunately, at the end of each night’s episode there was a sort of a call to action. It seems that with all of the World War II veterans nearly gone, someone finally decided that it was a good idea to get the oral histories of the remaining vets and others who aided in the war effort. The Library of Congress started what became known as The Veterans History Project. Volunteers were needed to find remaining veterans and get their memories on tape. Right up our alley.
So Bill and I started making plans to do this. We decided to start in Marianna, my hometown and resting place of my father, Bob Johnson, a veteran of World War II and with years of service in the Aleutians. We went over one day, looked up the current American Legion Post Commander, Jim Davis, and asked if we could use the Legion Hut to conduct interviews. We picked his brain for possible survivors that we might interview. We put an article in the The Courier-Index explaining what we were up to and asked for interested people to call and set up interview times. We were on our way to becoming documentarians for the Library of Congress.
Somewhere early in this process, it occurred to me that although I thought I had a pretty good understanding of where my own parents fit into the World War II era and what their roles were, there were definite gaps in my knowledge. Neither Mother nor Daddy talked much about those days. When they did, it had to be pried out of them. So I decided that if I was going to participate in this oral history project on other veterans, I would try to piece together my parents’ oral histories, as well.
This is not as easy as it sounds. When parents are gone and neither of them were great record-keepers, one has to rely on one’s own memory. Memory fades, your own as well as others. People, such as aunts, uncles, old friends of your parents have less reliable memories, move away, or die. The whole process was made more difficult because 80% of the Army veteran’s records from 1912 to l960 were destroyed in a 1973 fire of the building in St. Louis that housed all those records.
Try to imagine what kind of grief this fire and that oversight caused. For this small project it meant that there was no central records place to go to in order to track Bob Johnson’s military service. There was no paper record that I could lay my hands on at the time of this writing that made it simple to say “Okay, here I see that he was in Ft. Bliss in l941 starting in January" or “Yes, he did win the Purple Heart for frost-bitten feet." This would have to be done the hard way.
Thankfully, Daddy left a treasure trove of photographs that were taken during his military service. As far as I know, he never looked at the pictures after they were initially taken. They were preserved in an old scrapbook that his mother, Beadie Johnson, or my mother probably put together. The scrapbook contained valuable clues to his war years. This scrapbook wound up in my possession as one of my first choices when we divided up our inheritance. Mother left many pictures too, and I have her scrapbook. I decided that all of us should have copies of these pictures, at least on CD.
Later, I felt that the pictures and the information had to be put into some kind of context and labeled, if possible. But how could I accomplish that? The answer came in two incredible pieces of luck. One was a book, the other a phone call from Heaven. The book, The Williwaw War: The Arkansas National Guard in the Aleutians in World War II by Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon, is THE definitive book on the campaign in the Aleutians, where Daddy served. Sandy Beauchamp told me about and praised this book as the top source to go to for facts on the subject. I located it at the Laman Library in North Little Rock, but was not allowed to check it out. Ultimately, I located a copy of the book to purchase online. It came from a used book store in, of all places, Russellville, Arkansas. This is not so surprising when you learn that a good portion of the 206th Coast Artillery, Daddy’s unit, came straight out of Arkansas Tech University at Russellville. So this book gave me everything I needed to know about the history of the 206th from Marianna during the war.
The aforementioned phone call, as far as I am concerned, fits into the category of “Miracles." About 8:00 p.m. December 4 one Tuesday evening, about two weeks after the article on the Veterans History Project appeared in the Marianna paper, I received a call from a Dr. Bob Boon of Huntsville, Alabama. He identified himself and stated that he was “your father’s hut mate all through the war and best man at your parents’ wedding." I nearly fainted from shock. Although I had not heard that name in many years, the thought that ran my head was “Jackpot!" Who better to fill in those pesky gaps in history and provide color commentary for that portion of Daddy’s life than one who knew him better than anyone else at that time? Also, from their time as pups in the Arkansas National Guard Band in Marianna to the time that they were on their way home at war’s end Dad and Dr. Boon marched together in lockstep.
I kept Dr. Boon on the phone for more than an hour peppering him with questions which he untiringly answered. Since he was 86 years old at the time and his wife is a few years younger, Dr. Boon told me that he would be unable to make any of the interviews in Marianna anytime soon. I stated then that I hoped we could get together sometime in the future so that I could get his story for the Veterans Project. The future was on that Friday, which coincidentally was December 7, the 66th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombing. Bill and I decided that we could not let this opportunity pass by, so we packed and headed toward Huntsville.
On Friday morning December 7, 2007 Dr. Boon, his wife Eloise, and their daughter Hannah met with us and graciously allowed us to take over their lovely home and monopolize their day, although they seemed to enjoy it as much as we did. Both Hannah and Mrs. Boon sat right with us as we interviewed Dr. Boon, rapt with attention the whole time.
After we finished with the formal interview, Dr. Boon brought out his own scrapbooks and let us all look at them. He possessed many of the same photos that Dad had in his scrapbooks, but there was enough variation in them to make it interesting. These served as a springboard to more memories and stories of the 206th Band. He also identified many of the people and places in the pictures that I had. Later, the Boons took us out for a lovely lunch. With everyone more relaxed, Dr. Boon gave us information that made me wish the camera was still rolling. Dr. Boon seemed to possess total recall about that era. Although he is a very different man than my own father, Bob Johnson, in terms of personality, I came away from our meeting feeling as if I had spent the morning with Daddy.
The general facts of the Marianna boys entry into the war and other insights were confirmed by Roy V. Williams, also of Huntsville and former Marianna resident and veteran. After spending the morning with the Boons, we spent another wonderful time that afternoon with Roy and his delightful wife, Madeline, an old friend and classmate of Mother’s.
Armed with all of this sudden new knowledge, I felt compelled to get it all down on paper in some sort of coherent narrative, for all of us and for future generations. They will study World War II in school and we all should know what a vital part both of our parents played in that war, the outcome of which meant so much to civilization.
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
