When the Rose Bowl Was Played in Durham, NC-- Part 1

From the Jan. 1, 2012, Go Duke Magazine "When the Rose Bowl Called Durham Home" by Barry Jacobs.

Duke had accepted its Rose Bowl bid for the second time in four years when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

At the time, Duke University in Durham, NC, was "an insular, regional university" that had been reshuffling coaches in football and basketball to be played in the recently built "new gymnasium" as the 1942 student yearbook referred to it.

Because of fear of a Japanese attack on the West Coast, the Rose Bowl was uprooted for the first time ever. Cities all over the United States offered to host it, but it ended up being played in Durham, NC. (I never knew the Rose Bowl was played there.)

There had been an appeal to proceed with the Jan. 1st game because, "the appearance of normalcy touted as good for the national morale."

More to Come. --GreGen

Minnesota's Last Surviving World War II Medal of Honor Recipient Dies

From the Dec. 30, 2011, Duluth (Mn) News Tribune.

Mike Colalillo died Dec. 30th at age 86. He was the son of Italian immigrants, born in Hibbing, Minnesota, but grew up in West Duluth where he was a lifelong resident. Not long after his 18t birthday, he found himself fighting across Germany.

On April 7, 1945, near Untergriesheim, Germany, his unit was pinned down by German fire. With thhe arrival of U.S. tanks, he shouted for his buddies to join him and charge. His handgun was wrecked by shrapnel.

He recalled, "That's when I jumped up on the tank and he (the tank commander) said, 'Use my machine gun up there.'"

Exposed to enemy fire, he destroyed a machine gun nest, silenced a dozen German soldiers and blasted away at three other positions until the enemy fled. When the tank's machine gun ran out of ammunition, he grabbed a submachine gun and kept fighting.

After the fight ended, he spotted a wounded friend and, "I put him on my shoulders and carried him back" several hundred yards over open terrain that was being hit by enemy artillery and mortars.

President Truman presented him with a Medal of Honor. Mike Colalillo Medal of Honor Park and Mike Colalillo Drive in West Duluth are named for him.

One More of the Greatest. --GreGen

Floating Drydocks Built at Wilmington-- Part 2

They were designated ARDC, Auxilisary Repair Dock, Concrete and assigned numbers. The first one took almost five months to build and was designated ARDC-1. Eight of these were built during World War II in Wilmington and another five at San Pedro, California.

Five of them were towed to bases in the Pacific and Pearl Harbor. There, they repaired many combat-damaged warships.

Navsource says the ARDC-1 was built in 1944 by the Tidewater Construction Co. of Norfolk, Virginia. Jones says the Tidewater Construction Co. got the contract after V.P. Loftis Co. gave it up.

Also, three of the Wilmington Liberty Ships were deliberately sunk off Omaha Beach after D-Day as components of an artificial port used to ferry supplies and reinforcements to the continent.

Still, Really, Concrete Ships. --GreGen

Floating Drydocks Built in Wilmington-- Part 1

From the Wilmington (NC) Star-News "Mr Reporter: Were floating drydocks built during World War II along the Northeast Cape Fear River?" by Ken Little.

According to Wilmington World War II historian Wilbur D. Jones, Jr., two concrete drydocks were built in a small shipyard along the Northeast Cape Fear between present day PPD and the Wilmington Convention Center.

They were built for the Navy in the spring of 1944. Each was self-contained and measured 389-feet long and 84-feet wide. They measured 40-feet deep with pontoons 14 -feet deep and wingwall tapering from 13-feet wide at the base to 10-feet at the top.

Floating Concrete? --GreGen

Some More On Wilmington's World War II Housing-- Part 4: A Black and White Thing

Two housing developments were started by the Wilmington Housing Authority before the war. One was the Nesbitt Courts completed in 1940, now called the South Front Apartments after being redeveloped.

These units were reserved for whites in the segregated Wilmington and named for Charles T. Nesbitt, a prominent Wilmington doctor and pioneering public health official from the early 1900s.

Also built were the New Brooklyn homes, designated for blacks. There were quite a few blacks working at the N.C. Shipbuilding Company and other war industries in the city and surrounding area.

They were renamed the Robert R. Taylor Homes in 1942. Taylor was a Wilmington native and prominent black architect. This got me to thinking about Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. Is it possible that there is a connection?

I'll check it out.

Back In a Segregated Wilmington. --GreGen

Some More on Wilmington's WWII Housing-- Part 3

Continued from Oct. 4th.

GREENFIELD TERRACE-- was a 150-unit cinderblock duplexes built along Greenfield Street. To serve the community, federal workers built a strip complex of stores along the 1000 block of Greenfield Street that was completed in 1942. It still stands and today is called Greenfield Plaza.

In 1947, 584 units of Lake Forest and Greenfield Terrace were sold to Veterans Homes, Inc, a non-profit cooperative, as housing for returning veterans.

Lake Village was sold to a private interest in 1955. In 1974, the units were renting for $54 a month and the whole complex was deteriorating. In 1983, it was redeveloped and is now called Garden Lake Estates.

They Had to Live Somewhere. --GreGen

Follow Up on Holocaust Survivor Eva Kor

Mrs. Kor travels around the country and world promoting peace. She also answers dozens of e-mails daily from concentration camp survivors.

Through her CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Indiana, she hopes to encourage everyone who's willing to listen to forgive and heal for peace. Her website is at www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org.

Right now, her organization is taking deposits for a 2014 trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp which will be led by her. In addition, there will be a tour of her home village in Transylvania, Romania. When she is not out of town, she speaks Wednesdays and Saturdays at the museum at 1 PM.

Taking a trip to Aushwitz with a survivor like Mrs. Kor would be something.

Like I Said, Quite the Woman. Quite the Survivor.  --GreGen

Holocaust Survivor Shares Horrific Stories-- Part 4

Eva Kor continued, "We were just Dr. Mengele's guinea pigs. It made me feel like I was nothing and a nobody; a piece of meat." She said she had to develop an unbelievable will to survive and she still has the tattoo A-7063 on her arm. Her sister was given A-7064.

She, her sister and other children were rescued by the Soviet Army on January 27, 1945.

Her sister Miriam died June 6, 1993, after giving birth to three children. Kor believes that her sister's kidneys were diagnosed as the size of a child's due to the experiments Mengele carried out on her.

Kor has chosen to forgive Dr. Mengele and the Nazis, though most of the other children he experimented on haven't. A documentary was made on Eva Kor's life called "Forgiving Dr. Mengele."

An Amazing Woman. --GreGen

Holocaust Survivor Shares Horrific Stories-- Part 3

"On their first night in the camp, Eva Kor saw the corpses of three children when she went to the latrine. That's when she knew she could die there. 'I made a silent pledge that night to do everything in my power to not end up in the latrine floor like that,' " she said.

The experiments were at times mild. They would strip her naked and for six to eight hours measure her in every part of her body and compare it with her twin. Other times the experiments were painful.

She and her twin were injected with fluids that she to this day are unknown to her.

A Brave One Who Overcame. --GreGen

Holocaust Survivor Shares Horrific Stories-- Part 2

Eva Kor continued with her story: "My mom was pulled in one direction and we were pulled in another. Her arms outstretched for us. I never got to say goodbye to her."

Eva continued with the story of her nightmare she endured with her sister. The first day at Auschwitz she was stripped naked and then got her clothes back with a black mark on the back and how she was thankful she didn't get her head shaved like some of the other children did, but within days caught lice and got her head shaved anyway.

She said she was hungry most of the time but quickly learned that if she saved the piece of bread they gave her at night that the barracks rats would eat it.

--RoadDog

War Bomber Flight Sparks Memories-- Part 4

Continued from September 28th.

After his 32nd mission, knowing he was done, Scott Welch, a former B-17 pilot, said, "I was very happy to be done with combat. I wasn't foolish enough to want to spend my life in combat because it was so risky."

His wife of 69 years, Phyllis, accompanied him on the flight. It was the first time the couple from Silver Lake, Wisconsin, had been on a B-17 together.

"I enjoyed [Phyllis] being there, said Welch. They held hands during the flight as they stood behind the co-pilot's seat, where he would have sat in 1943. "It was exciting for me and brought back memories."

Too bad Scott Welch didn't get a chance to actually fly the plane.

A Great Experience. --GreGen

Some More on Wilmington's WWII Housing-- Part 2

The Wilmington Housing Authority had been founded in 1938, just before the federal government embarked on on a local building boom.

LAKE FOREST was built with federal funds in 1942 with 475 units reserved for defense workers. They were what is called demountable housing "wooden structures easy to disassemble and rebuilt elsewhere. Many of the units, however, are still there.

LAKE VILLAGE was a development of 472 prefabricated units, each 720 square feet. They were shipped to Wilmington by rail and assembled on fifty acres of land north and south of Greenfield Street.

--GreGen

Holocaust Survivor Shares Horrific Stories-- Part 1

From the April 11-17, 2013, Lake County (Ill) Journal by Yadira Sanchez Olson.

Eva Kor, 79, spoke about her experiences April 4th at Carmel High School in Mundelein, Illinois. She is the founder of CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Indiana and travels the world speaking about her story in concentration camps and the time she and her twin sister, Miriam Mozes, were taken to the death camp where Josef Mengele held and experimented on 3,000 Jewish twins.

"Anger is the seed of war. Forgiveness is a seed of peace."

It was dawn of an early spring day she said in her thick Romanian accent. That was the day in 1944 that a group of Nazis stopped her parents' car and pulled her apart from her father, mother, two older sisters and took her and Miriam to the Auschwitz death camp. They were 10 years old.

--GreGen

Some More on Wilmington WWII Housing-- Part 1

From the Feb. 9, 2010, Wilmington (NC) Star-News "My Reporter: What is the history of housing developments put in at Greenfield Lake? Were they once military housing?" by Ben Steelman.

Housing developments named Lake Village, Lake Forest and Greenfield Terrace were built around Wilmington, North Carolina's Greenfield Lake. (The first two developments reminded me of Chicago suburbs.) They were built for civilian defense workers, mostly working at the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, present day site of the NC State Port facility.

During World War II, Wilmington, as did many military equipment ports, faced a severe housing shortage as workers and military personnel flocked into the city. From a prewar population of 33,000 in 1941, the city grew to 120,000 at the height of the war.

That's Called Real Fast Growth. --GreGen

Wilmington's Riverside Apartments: WWII Housing-- Part 2

They rented for $41.85 and $43.85 a month depending if they were on a corner or not. After the war, it later was named Dove Meadows and started deteriorating and became an embarrasment to the city.

A New Jersey construction company bought it from HUD in 1983 to convert the complex into 474 one and two bedroom townhomes, but HUD ended up foreclosing on them.

Later, the Wilmington Housing Authority acquired it and in 2002 demolished it for a new neighborhood. 

Today it is called Sunset South.

--GreGen

Wilmington's Riverside Apartments: WWII Housing Complex-- Part 1

From the June 29, 2011, Wilmington (NC) Star-News "My Reporter "Whatever happened to Riverside Apartments?" by Ben Steelman.

During World War II, Wilmington grew from a sleepy town of 10,000 to over 100,000 with all the war industries and military personnel. Riverside Apartments was a World War II housing complex of 500 red brick units located near the State Port (old NC Shipbuilding Co.) during the war).

They were likely built in 1943 to help solve the huge housing problem in wartime Wilmington, North Carolina.

One hundred four-room units were also opened in 1945 for armed forces members and their families. The earlier units were opened to house essential war workers and their families. Each one consisted of a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms.

Got to Live Somewhere. --GreGen

Remembering Pearl Harbor: Don't Wear Blue

From the Dec. 29, 2011, NBC 9 News, Colorado's News Leader "Remembering Pearl Harbor: The survivors."

Fred Mack remembers running for a hangar right in front of another man. "I felt a concussion and then looked back and he was no longer there."

Charles Boswell can't shake the image of severely burned man treading water in the harbor,  "He was saying 'Don't touch me! Don't touch me!' They reached down and pulled him up by the arm, and all they came up with was burnt muscle."

George Blake remembers that night of the attack, "We had orders to go back to the barracks one at a time and to change our clothes. It was the Japanese wore blue uniforms and [our] infantry had orders to shoot on sight anyone in a blue uniform. Well, we had blue fatigues on at the time."

Two other Pearl Harbor survivors: Charles Boswell, mess cook, USS Tennessee and George Richard, USS Tennessee.

Interesting Stories. --GreGen

Cloquet's Last Pearl Harbor Survivor Dies

From the September 19, 2013 Pine (Minnesota) Journal by Wendy Johnson and Jane Peterson.

Gordon "Gordy" Caza made his last public appearance at Cloquet's 4th of July parade this past summer. He died Sunday, September 15th.

Mr. Caza enlisted in the Army at age 17 and was sworn in at Fort Snelling and shipped to California then to Hawaii where he was assigned to a truck company.

In September 1941, he was stationed at Fort Armstrong in downtown Honolulu, about five miles from Pearl Harbor.

He was going to breakfast when an alert went off. He thought it was part of a routine maneuver. Once they knew it was an attack, they grabbed rifles and ammunition and headed for the parade ground.

Two Japanese planes flew over them strafing as they went.

The next day, he went to the Punch Bowl, site of an ammunition depot and hauled ammunition to Pearl Harbor where he saw the incredible damage and destruction.

--GreGen

Small World: Aviators' Paths Crossed in WWII-- Part 4

Near the end of the war, on two missions over Berlin, Paul Tuck encountered the Luftwaffe's secret weapon, jet planes. "We didn't even know they existed," he said.

On one other mission, escort was provided by the famous Red Tails, the Tuskegee Airmen, who said, "Don't you worry white boy, we're up here."

Tuck also remembers suiting up for missions ten times, only to have them called off because of weather or for other reasons.

The article did not, however, say which mission Tuck and Bill Hogan shared an experience.

--GreGen

Small World: Aviators' Paths Crossed in WWII-- Part 3

Continued from August 31st.

Paul Tuck received a Purple Heart while operating a still camera to record bombing missions when a piece of German shrapnel hit him in the "rear end" over Augsburg, Germany. Quite a few American flyers were wounded that way. Some even killed.

On another mission, his plane was "shot up pretty bad" and had to land in Yugoslavia. The ball turret gunner on the underside of the plane was stuck inside when they couldn't crank the turret up into the plane so they had to land nose first to save the gunner, not a pleasant option.

They were rescued and sent back to Italy to fly another day.

--GreGen