SUDDEN LIFE CHANGES Kate’s Journal

Episode 10

Torrance, 1940-1941

It’s strange to look back and realize that such a short amount of time–a mere three months actually, can bring such change in a life. Torrance High School brought me a mild amount of recognition, a great deal of embarrassment, a group of friends which I had never enjoyed before, and a sense of belonging.

The tennis player roomer brought about changes for my aunt and mother as well. Suddenly one evening I came upon them, along with my grandmother, dressed in full length fur coats. As I rippled my hands through the late squirrel’s fur, I was made aware that they had discovered a second hand store–today more commonly known as Thrift Stores. Though it was a humiliation to them to admit they could not afford to buy the same coats at the local department store, they wore them proudly. We seemed to be moving up in the world my grandmother had left behind.

My Grandpa Jim, active in the Masonic Lodge, encouraged me to join Job’s Daughter’s, which under threat of having to ride a goat, I did. I found that the circle of girl friends I already had were also members.

I remember those girls fondly, and can easily bring their faces to mind. Barbara Locke, Pat Rojo, another Barbara with long red curly hair we dubbed “Fuzzy” and Nadine Paour, who was tall, dark and beautiful. We were all at the training bra stage of our lives, which makes me laugh now to think we had to be in training to wear such a simple piece of clothing. None of us had much if anything to put into them, so I purchased a pair of rubber falsies.

After bringing them to an overnight slumber party, we all tried them on to see the effect, when our hostess’s little brother burst into the room. Trying to cover our embarrassment, we told him they were soup bowls. Now even a six year old knows you can’t keep soup in a rubber bowl. We took turns wearing our new chests to school till we tired of fishing them up from having slipped down to our waists.

It was a beautiful sunny morning in Southern California, and I was wearing the new red wool plaid suit which was supposed to be my Christmas present bought from money my Dad had sent, but even though it was only December 7, I had wanted to wear it before the holidays. I loved it so much I wore it all the way through high school.

My Dad had been gone for most of that year, the longest cruise yet, though we had no idea where he was. He could not tell us where his ship was and according to his censored V-mail letters he was “somewhere in the Pacific’, but we didn’t know where. It was apparent that there might be trouble sometime soon.

I remember the house smelling all warm and delicious from the cake my grandmother had just taken from the oven for Sunday dinner. We had two girls who boarded with us and they were hurrying to get away to the beach for the day; I had just fed our dog Wimpy and put him outside, when I heard the crackle of the big Philco radio change from music to the voice of President Roosevelt saying that “this day will go down in infamy.” I had no idea what the word infamy meant.

Everyone gathered around the radio in the bright sun room to hear the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I stupidly asked “where the heck is Pearl Harbor?” but no one else knew either, so we got out the large atlas and saw that it was “somewhere in the Pacific”, in the Hawaiian Islands.

We did not get the news until much later, that my Dad’s ship had been in Pearl Harbor, and was moored across the channel from the disastrous bombing of the USS Arizona. The majority of America’s major fleet, including the main battlewagons, were destroyed or badly damaged during the sneak attack.

USS Bagley at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

It killed America’s isolationism, and made the American population determined to go to war and soon after, we joined Britain in fighting in Europe.

Having been out at sea for such a long time, they had come into the harbor to take on much needed food and water, but the attack happened before that could occur, and the ship was immediately sent back out to sea.

He would be at sea for another four years. Yes, I remember Pearl Harbor, and now I know where it is.

MY COUSIN RAIMA, WORLD WAR 2 HERO

Raima was an Army nurse in the second World War, and as such, she was my idol, and I joined the R.O.T.C. thinking I was following in her footsteps, but as it turned out, her footsteps were far too big.

Raima did not have an easy childhood, her mother died when she was only six, leaving her and two brothers. Her father took her oldest brother, leaving Raima and one brother to stay with various families until he got things figured out. After several years of moving from one family to another, our Aunt Helen, a kind, comfortable and pragmatic woman, collected both children and took them home to raise with her own two children, in Alameda, CA, in the big old house our great-grandfather had built.

After graduating from, Alameda High School, where I would also graduate in another decade, Raima became a nurse, and when the War began for us in December, 1941, she joined the Army as a nurse.

She was my father’s favorite cousin, and he, being a Navy man, was initially disappointed that she did not choose the Navy, but years later, the two old warriors met many times over a fishing stream, along with her husband Charlie, whom she had met while stationed in France during the War.

In 1942 she was sent to Casablanca, North Africa where she stayed until the fighting broke out in Italy, and we prepared to invade Italy via Anzio. Raima was part of a portable hospital unit, following General George Patton’s 3rd Army, and was at Anzio during the tough fighting.

Thanks to the movie M.A.S.H., we are all familiar with the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital which actually came about in 1945, but were deployed as such in the Korean war. They were preceded by the portable surgical hospitals in the first and second Wars.

In 1944 the 3rd Army moved into France where it remained until D-Day. From France they went to Germany, where Raima remained to nurse the survivors of the Holocaust as they were released from the Death and Concentration camps.

Raima died at the age of 98, and yesterday she was memorialized with an honor guard and the mournful sound of Taps, as we said goodbye to a Hero. She was always my Hero.

A SOLITARY MAN

I’m sure I would never have made the acquaintence of Percy Shelley, William Butler Yeats or any of the English poets if it hadn’t been for Mr. Lorimer’s second period English class. I was assigned to a front row seat, not because of any favoritism, but because of my nearsigtedness, for which I refused to wear my glasses.

We memorized and read aloud, then memorized some more, thus giving Mr. Lorimer spare time to correct papers, read, or play the stock market, while keeping at least part of the class occupied.

Franklin Lorimer was a small, grey, self-contained man, whose general detachment made you feel that perhaps he had not had enough sleep the night before. He dressed soberly and properly, in what I assumed was a rather English manner. You could pass him in the hall, or on the street, and never be sure you had seen him, he blended so well with the crowd.

If anyone gave him a thought outside of school hours, you never imagined that he had another life except for English class. But, in actuality, he lived in our house.

We lived in my family home, built by my Great-Grandfather, and owned then by my Great-Aunt Helen. The house had been converted into apartments, with Aunt Helen living on the ground floor, the second floor made into two apartments, and the third floor attic converted into a snug three room apartment. My mother and I occupied the third floor while my father was gone during the War, and my husband and I continued to live there for three more years after we married. For this we paid a walloping $30 per month.

My father’s cousin Raima and her husband lived in one second floor apartment, and Franklin Lorimer in the other. He had been the college roommate of another cousin, which might have made you think he may have shown me special interest when making out his report cards. However well I did, I had to do it on my own, since I don’t remember ever having a conversation with him or seeing him at any place outside of school. He was a quiet tenant, and I don’t think I ever passed him in the hallway while climbing the stairway into our attic. I never saw him go out, nor anyone visit in the five years I lived there.

His sole discretion came at precisely 10:30 each school day, when I was instructed to get him a paper cup of water, which he took to the open window and carefully poured out, hoping to hit the janitor, whose daily route took him under our window at just that time. I don’t know if he ever hit his target, or what he had against the poor janitor, but at least he had the possibility each day.

I pass the old house, now in other hands, and I frequently pass the school. I look up at the second floor window, and wonder what ever happened to Mr. Lorimer, and if he ever hit his target.