Japanese Americans travel between housing barracks with Heart Mountain on the horizon.  Public Domain, Department of the Interior. War Relocation Authority. Day of Remembrance February 19, 2022, marked 80 years of racial reckoning since the signing of Executive Order 9066 that led to the wrongful incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. On that date in 1942, community leaders were imprisoned without arrest or trial. Families, the majority of them naturalized or US born citizens, were moved to relocation centers before final settlement in ten internment camps throughout the United States. From November, 1942, until early 1945, Heart Mountain Internment Center housed approximately 10,000 people on a bleak high plain in Wyoming. That treeless plain suffers the extremes of weather--hot in the summer and buffeted by wind, snow and cold in winter. When the camp was abandoned in 1945, it was the property of the U S government. Homesteading was encouraged and...

Do you have a relative’s Dog Tags in your possession? Can you read the story they tell? Four U.S. Army Dog Tag types were issued during World War II. This set belonged to my father Alex Hacker. They were found in the house of his mother Maude Mayton Hacker in Harriman, TN after she died, by Cousin Sandra “Cookie” Giles Pride. Cookie gave them to me, Alex’s daughter Alexis. Originally this second iteration of WWII U.S. Army tags carried this information: The soldier’s name Soldier’s service/serial number Soldier’s emergency contact information, usually next of kin’s name Street Address  City and state 1941 Heralded New Medical Technology & a Dog Tag Update In November of 1941, tags began including medical information. The set shown above is of this time frame. November 1941 revision tags added space after the service number to include (a) the year of the wearer’s tetanus shot plus (b) their blood type. In 2021, it’s hard for us to appreciate how innovative the inclusion of medic...

A shovel, an ax and a saw My Mother, Margueritte Howell Boye carried a shovel, an ax, and a saw in the trunk of her car from the time she started driving at about 15 years of age until she had to give it up. You never know when you will come upon a tree across the road. Shortly after Margueritte was born, her Father joined the U.S. Forest Service as Supervisor of the Selway National Forest in Idaho. The family lived in the small town of Kooskia, Idaho during the winter months. In the summer months, they took a pack train into the forest and lived in a camp with forest workers. Mother grew up learning to be responsible and take care of herself. Mother and her parents moved to Spokane sometime before she finished elementary school and my Grandparents went into the hardware business. I suspect that my Grandparents wanted a better education for their daughter than was available in the tiny town of Kooskia. Margueritte, Charles and Ica Howell Pharmacist in the 1920s By the time Mother ...

(Continued from SKCGS Blog, December 7, 2020 ) Then I heard our inadequate anti-aircraft go into action. A figure leaped over the edge of the depression and slid down almost against me. In the split second that I glimpsed him against the sky, I recognized him as one of the kids of our outfit. I called my name and he answered, giving his own. “Listen, Hearn,” I said, “Doctor Land was on that Higgins boat with us coming in. I talked to him a little. You’ve got to get him and bring him here or this person will die.” “The Hell I will,” growled Hearn: “I’m gonna stay right here in this hole.” I was about to curse him but I stopped myself before the words came. I hit him from another angle. “Hearn,” I said, “I have often heard that this business of war was quick to separate the men from the boys. Your mother back in Kansas still thinks of you as her little boy, but deep down inside her heart she knows that she has a man out here fighting for her. If you are not too scar...

  Image from Facebook Last February, what seems like eons ago, a weekly blog started with the following: Year of Anniversaries 2020--Have you noticed that there are some momentous anniversaries this year?  The  Mayflower landed at Plymouth in 1620--400 years ago !  Do you have Mayflower ancestors?  Are you planning to attend any Mayflower celebrations? A bit closer to present day is the  100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment--Women's Suffrage .  Did you have an ancestor involved with that struggle for equality? There are many other anniversaries this year-- 75 years from the end of World War II ,  40 years after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens,   You can probably name many more and please do! Opportunity Knocks There followed a challenge, an opportunity for people to write stories. A few weeks later the world that we knew came to a screeching halt due to Covid 19. Fortunately, we learned how to have virtual meetings and in early April we w...

by Winona I. Hahn Laird The year was 1944 and our country was in the middle of World War II.  I was eight years old and lived in Denver, Colorado with my mother, father, sister and two brothers.  I remember the day my father went in to sign up for the Army.  My mother cried all day until he got home and she found out he was 4F.  They wouldn’t take him into the service because he had a heart murmur.  In those days a heart murmur was very serious.  They really wanted him in the Army because he was a doctor. Since my father couldn’t serve his country in the Army, he bought a Doctor’s practice in Casper, Wyoming.  Many things had to be taken care of in preparation for the move.  To purchase gas there were gas stamps, so they had to save up enough gas stamps to make the trip.  The move could only take one day while pulling a trailer behind the car with all of our belongings.  Many household items had to be sold; and yes, my desk had...

Year of Anniversaries 2020--Have you noticed that there are some momentous anniversaries this year?  The Mayflower landed at Plymouth in 1620--400 years ago !  Do you have Mayflower ancestors?  Are you planning to attend any Mayflower celebrations? A bit closer to present day is the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment--Women's Suffrage .  Did you have an ancestor involved with that struggle for equality? There are many other anniversaries this year-- 75 years from the end of World War II , 40 years after the eruption of Mt. St. Helens,   You can probably name many more and please do! Do you have a hero, of either gender, someone you admire for his or her contribution to an eventful struggle? Or did an event impact you or your family?  Here is a challenge and an opportunity to honor a person or relate an event--write a paragraph or two and submit it here for publication. Here is an example of my hero connected to the Women's Suffrage Movement a...

By Kathleen MacLeod Hanzeli On 23 April 1991, my father in law, Victor E. L. Hanzeli, died.  He was 65.  He was born in Budapest, Hungary on 21 October 1925, an only child.  He lived through the Nazi occupation and the siege of Budapest, which was the second longest of World War II (102 days.)  He had been a seminary student in Vienna, but due to the war he wasn’t able to complete his studies there.  Instead, he returned to Budapest, met my mother in law, escaped (with accompanying stories the likes of which movies are made!) with her and her parents and sister to the West in 1947, moved to New York City via Salzburg and Paris and eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana, where my husband and his sister were born.  Later they came to Seattle, where they contributed three more children to the good of society.  Victor completed his studies, earning his Ph.D in Romance Languages and Linguistics at Indiana University in Bloomington and became a pr...