>> This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Henry Ahola on Thursday,
March 23rd, 2017,
at the Sturgis Library at Kennesaw State University.
And Mr. Ahola, do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, I do agree. Yes.
>> Well, thank you so much for sitting down with me.
So could you tell me your full name?
>> Yes, sir. It's Henry Edwin Ahola.
>> And what's your birthday?
>> It's May 11, 1925.
>> And Mr. Ahola,
where were you born?
>> I'm born in West Wareham, Massachusetts.
>> Now, your parents were originally from Finland?
>> That's correct. Yes.
>> So I want to talk about how
your father first came here and
then later your mother came. Can you explain that?
>> My father had some brothers came here before him.
So it was just before World War one,
and they were going to
have to take in people into the military there.
And he was about 17 or so,
and he decided to come
here to be with his brothers. So he did.
And they were carpenters and he was a painter,
he decided to be a painter.
So they did a lot of construction work building homes,
and he did the painting.
And he went back to Finland in 1921 and met my mother,
and she came back with him,
and they were they were married then.
>> And where were they living at that point?
>> They were living in Massachusetts
toward the Cape Cod,
Johannesburg, which is
where the Kennedys have they placed.
It's the beginning of the cape.
>> So when he went back to Finland and met your mother,
can you describe how they met? Do you know?
>> They were both members of the Lutheran Church.
In fact, nearly all the Scandinavian area
tends to be Lutheran,
and they met at the church.
And I guess they just went from there,
just a meeting at the church.
>> Well, did he go back with
the purpose of finding a wife?
>> I would think so, yes.
I'm not certain, but I feel that was his idea because he
was in early 20s then.
>> So what do you know about
your parents' early lives in Finland?
Where did they live? Where did they grow up?
>> My mother lived in a small town
about 50 miles from Helsinki,
which is the capital of the country.
And my father lived East of there,
near the Russian border,
which is not too far from St. Petersburg.
They had a big farm,
and there were four boys in the family,
and I believe three girls.
So he was the third of the boys,
and the two older boys
had already come to the United States,
and that's why he followed them here later.
>> So can you tell me about your parents.
They've married, they're both
living in the United States in Massachusetts,
and how did they get by?
Did they make a comfortable living?
>> Oh, yes. The two older brothers
worked with a big construction company,
and they were building homes all up and
around the Cape Cod Massachusetts,
which is East of Boston toward Provincetown Way.
And he was worked with them as a painter for many years.
And the mother stayed at home.
Well, they were married two years
when my older sister was born.
And then two years later, I was born.
And my mother, she did some sewing for people.
She liked to sew a lot.
So people did a lot of sewing at home those days.
So she sewed a lot of clothes for me and for my sister,
and people liked it so well that
people asked her if she would
sew clothes for their children.
And they were, I don't
know if it was cheaper than from the store,
but they were probably fit better.
And so she did well and my father was painting.
So we made just average living.
He had a pick up truck and we had average house.
But we weren't well to do,
but we were the average income, at least.
>> And can you describe
the neighborhood that you lived in?
>> Oh, yes. The neighborhood was,
oh, about one third of the people
were of Finnish background,
and the rest were of English,
the bottom where ancestor of some
of the original people that had come here in the 1700s.
And they were real British. They're real.
>> Well, was there
any discrimination
against these Finnish people who had immigrated?
>> Well, the English
always felt that they were the world's
most reserved and most educated of all people.
But they get along good,
because my dad painted and build houses.
They had build houses for them.
So they were accepted.
I mean, they were of the same income level,
so it was a matter
of one being more wealthy than the others.
So there was cooperation,
and my mother sewed for some of
those folks and he painted their houses for them.
And then later when they started
building summer cottages for people rental stuff,
he painted a lot of those houses,
and he finally had a couple of people working with him.
So no, there was no discrimination.
They laughed a little about both my mother and
father spoke chopped up English,
but I mean, it was acceptable,
but it was there was an accent involved,
and they didn't have the vocabulary that the English who
had such a good control of
the language that they joked about it,
but people accepted that.
It was just people weren't sensitive
about people joking about
someone's language of the way they spoke.
>> What language was spoken in your home?
>> We spoke Finnish at home.
But there was some some words that as,
vocabulary grew, they picked up more new English words.
So there was became a half Finnish,
half English a lot of the talk.
And then once we started school,
we started speaking more and more English at home,
and less and less Finnish.
And then by the time I was in, say,
middle school or high school there,
more than 75% of my speak talk was English.
It slowly evolved into less and less Finnish,
and more and more English.
>> Are you still bilingual today?
>> Oh, yes. I speak quite well,
because I was over there
with my wife just a year before she passed away,
and they heard me speaking they says,
"Oh, do you live here in Finland?"
I said, "No, I say I live in the United States."
And they said, "Well, you speak like a native here."
>> Could you sort of tell us your name in Finnish?
>> [FOREIGN]
>> Thank you. So what schools did you go to?
>> I went to the West Wareham Grammar School
that was first through the sixth grade.
Then the middle school was Pilgrim Memorial that was
named after some man
gave him the land and he had a pilgrim.
He had ancestry,
actually went back to 1620.
So he asked them if they would name
it Pilgrim Memorial and they
did and then the high school
was named Wareham High School.
>> What kind of a student were you?
>> Let's say, somewhere between A and a B.
Like if it's say B would be 80 and 90 would be 100.
So let's say 85,88.
>> And did you do extracurricular things?
>> I did a little.
We had a class there was optional where
you could take carpentry
doing that and learn building and
stuff like that and I built
a Cedar chest They
got us some cedar lumber
and they showed us how to make the chairs.
I made a pretty good one and my mother used it for years,
then we sold the house and after she passed away
and nobody in the family
wanted the chairs and I couldn't carry it back here,
so I let it go with the house.
>> So can you tell me when you became aware
of tensions in Europe and the
>> My parents used to always
talk about when my father was young,
they were under Russian control until
1917 when Finland became an independent free country.
And then in 1939,
Russia decided to invade
Finland because they were afraid that Germans
were going to have a military foothold
there in Finland because Finland and
Germany had a fairly close diplomatic relations
and business relations too.
So Russia invaded Finland and there was
the Winter war and it lasted until the summer of 1940,
and they signed a peace agreement and gave a portion of
the land Russia acquired a part of the land of Finland.
But then by then
the World War two had started with England
and France and other European countries.
So Russia the following year
was invaded by Germany so then there was friction again.
And then German sent troops in Finland in
about 1942 and the Russians and
the Germans were fighting each other and
the Finnish Army was supporting the German side.
>> Do you remember what your parents
opinions on the matter was?
>> Well, they were strongly anti communist,
but they were not pro Hitler.
But it was like we were pro Russian,
but we were not communists in World War two.
A strange situation that
your potential enemy might be
your friend at a given time.
>> And you had relatives in Finland?
>> Yes, I did.
>> Was there communication back and forth?
>> Yes, we would get letters from
them and one time somebody called from there.
Someone in the family had passed
away and there was a telephone call.
That was the only time there was
a telephone call between the two.
Long distance calls were very rare those days,
people would send telegrams,
but very seldom ever made a phone call.
>> And there was no travel
back to Finland during the war?
>> No, there was no.
In fact, the military had all the shipping tied
up and no one went to Europe at all during the war years.
>> Relatives of yours or members of
your family in Finland were they affected?
>> Very much. The food supply very limited in
the Russian troops anytime
they had something they needed,
they would want them to give it to them.
Like if they had wagons or something,
if they needed them, they would
felt that they had the right to take them.
So it was America's allies,
in this case, Russia was the Finnish enemy.
And Germany was America's enemy but Finland's ally,
not something that they chose but
just circumstances brought that about.
>> So what are
your memories of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?
>> I've talked to so many people and I feel
that they were negotiating with us at
the time when Pearl Harbor was struck.
But we had been warned by
Churchill and the British administration
that the Japanese are
going to attack somewhere and we knew that
the fleet had left Japan in the latter part of November.
But we didn't know whether they were going
to Australia, Philippines, China.
But we didn't have any track of them.
Apparently, CIA in those days
was OSS was not very effective,
that they didn't keep a track
on where was the Japanese fleet going.
And once they got close to Pearl Harbor,
their planes were flying in American Navy.
Man on the radar says there's some planes coming
in and they were told him, don't worry about them.
They probably coming from
the United States, but they weren't.
So I've got mixed ideas
about that if we knew
Pearl Harbor was going to happen or not.
>> Do you remember how you learned of it?
>> Yes. It was Sunday afternoon.
This other boy and I stopped at a gas station.
The man that ran the station came out and says,
we just heard on news the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
And of course I was only going on 17 then.
I says, oh, well, we'll beat him in
a year that we won't have to go.
That's how naive we were.
Then we found that we had no military preparation at all.
So it was a complete shock to us that we thought we
were the big strong military power, but we were not.
But we came so in a year and a half.
>> Well, how did your high school change
after Pearl Harbor?
>> Well, out of my high school class,
we all registered in first part of 43.
We were all turning 18.
And we were all called up for for the draft during
the summer then and
everybody went in except there were three boys.
One had a problem with his leg.
It was one shorter than the other
so he was not taken in another one
had diabetes and one had very severe heart problem.
And all the rest of us went in the Army, Navy, Marines.
At that time, the Air Force was on part of the army.
We wore the regular brown uniform.
But in 1947, the Air Force split off
and became an independent group
and we changed to a blue uniform.
>> Well, for about a year there,
you were still at home while the war was going on.
>> Yes.
>> And how was your family affected during that time?
>> At that time, they became
tremendous shortages of everything.
I know my father had two tires blow out on his car and it
was on his pickup truck that
he used for his painting work.
And it was very difficult to get gas.
You had to get these little coupons to buy gas and you
could get three gallons a week on a stamp.
And then for his business,
he could get something like five gallons a week.
He was approved to get.
And he had sign up papers to get out to buy new tires.
They were very difficult to get.
And sugar supply became very limited
so grocery stores would only sell you.
They started putting sugar in
two pound bags and just sell you small amounts.
And everything else tightened up.
The army started buying up a great deal
of canned goods and buying meat.
So there's all sorts of
shortages on clothing and food in the grocery stores.
And of course, they
were painful shortage, there was still food,
but it was a lots of
food that was commonly seen was disappeared off and on.
>> So as the war
was going on and you registered for the draft,
did you expect to serve into 1942 and 1943,
as the war continued?
>> No. I thought we would win the war quickly.
I thought we had tremendous army and then as I got older,
we started hearing more of that no,
we don't have a trained army yet,
but we were training and we
had very small Air Force, but suddenly,
there was a tremendous transition and
the workforce women started
working in the aircraft plants and even
in the shipyards and we really came from
a big depression where we had
20% unemployed to no unemployment at all.
>> Were there any factories
or shipyards near where you live?
>> Yes. There was a big one.
Bethlehem steel that big shipyard and they
built battleships and destroyer escorts.
>> Did you know anyone who worked there?
>> Yes. There were quite a few of the men that were a bit
older than me that were married that
were not subject to the draft because they had children.
They worked at the shipyard.
And they were at that time,
sounded like tremendous money because they were
working seven days a week and getting
time and a half and double time on Sunday and making
pay that we had never
heard of during the depression years.
>> So tell me about being
called up, how did you get news?
>> Yes. Well, everyone was called as a group.
You had numbers.
Everyone was called as the numbers were drawn.
So just about all of
our high school class went to the induction center at
the same time for a physical
and everybody went
even the three people that were turned down,
they had to go and then you go through
a long line of medical people and each one
specializes in
a different different phase of your medical
and all of us one by one passed
except for the three that had these serious problems.
>> And how did you end up in the Air Corps?
>> Well, they had a test,
we call it standard aptitude test, SAT test.
And apparently, they took
the higher ones they felt that could be taught
something into the Air Force because the Air Force
was more technical than say the army.
The army was more ground troop
and the being part of someone else would be a leader,
whereas the Air Force people had to be independent in
whatever they were doing if they were radio man or if
they were a navigator or pilot or bombardier,
it was something that individual skill involved.
So the Air Force felt that they had to
have people who who could be taught.
So I guess they chose by the score on
the SAT who they put in the Air Force.
>> And where did you go for basic training?
>> I came down here to Greensboro, North Carolina,
and we took all sorts of tests there
to decide whether you could be a pilot,
a navigator, bombardier,
or flight line mechanic or radio man or whatever,
that they were in need of at the time.
And I started in the cadet program,
but the program folded up,
so they switched me into radio.
But I was not going to be a pilot anyway.
I was going to be a bombardier.
And I learned math there.
It required a lot of math,
so I was in the program a while
and picked up a lot of math knowledge.
>> That was through the Air Force cadet program?
>> Yes.
>> So you completed basic training there in Greensboro?
>> Yes.
>> And where did you go from there?
>> Well, I came down here to Augusta, Georgia.
It was a replacement depot.
We just came there for approximately a month or so until
they found the opening at
a school when there were vacancies at that school.
They sent us to whatever we've been assigned to.
So we went from Augusta,
Georgia to a college,
which there was some good living there.
They had a state college in Springfield, Illinois.
And we were at the college
and the army had taken over the college.
And we were taught there.
>> Why was it such good living?
>> Oh, we lived in dormitories there.
And other soldiers usually were out in the infantry.
People were out there down here in Fort Benning,
out in the woods intense,
digging foxholes and stuff.
And we were class A uniforms
and went to class and ate the cafeteria,
which was much better than army cooking.
And it was like a college student,
rather than being a rough outdoor
or even being out on a ship in the Navy.
So it was a choice.
In fact, it was easier than what most people on
the outside were doing who were
working in heavy construction.
So it was a good city, it was a nice,
friendly city and there were few soldiers around.
So there are a lot of women in that town, of course,
I was only about 19 then,
so I got know a lot of girlfriends, but nothing serious.
But it was a very pleasant situation.
>> And you said you were learning math there?
>> Yes.
>> Through the Air Force cadet program.
So can you tell me about the courses you were in
and what they were preparing you for?
>> A bombardier is somewhat similar to a navigator,
but when you're bombing,
you have to know your airspeed,
you have to know your altitude,
the weight of your ammunition and the wind speed,
and you have to calculate
all that to know how much drift you have,
whatever speed you have.
Because it doesn't drop straight down.
It tends to drift like that from your speed.
So whatever bomb is used.
Is more of a now that is all used on the calculators,
which figured that all out for you immediately now.
But in those days, it was all done with a more or less,
let's say, called paper and pencil.
>> Well, did somebody tell you you were going to be a
bombardier or did you choose to be a bombardier?
>> No. They assigned me to it.
Because I would have been too tall to be a fighter pilot.
They didn't want anyone over six feet tall.
And the the program,
they already had enough people
who had been advanced far enough in
the pilot program that they didn't want
any more pilots being trained.
They felt that they had enough in what they
call the pipeline to take care.
They anticipated, they planned ahead,
and they felt they had enough for the end of the war.
>> I see. So I want to
backtrack just for a second to Augusta.
Do you remember the name of that replacement depot?
>> Daniel Field.
>> And this was your first time in Georgia?
>> No. I had come down here to visit
my uncle soon after he retired.
He took me down here though,
and it was in Jesup, Georgia.
It's a little town about 40 miles west of
Brunswick and that Pine Tree Country down there.
And he had bought
a house down there and he liked it down there.
He had lived in New York,
but they wanted to come South and they found that cost of
living was much cheaper than
anywhere up in New England area or New York.
So I came visit him then.
And then when I was in military I came down there and
I got a three-day pass and went visit him from Augusta.
I hijacked on Highway One.
They didn't have interstate then.
And came down to small town of Baxley and from Baxley,
got right into Jesup.
>> So Daniel Field.
>> Daniel Field.
>> And what did it look like, how big was it?
>> It was the city airport and it had a single runway,
and probably five or six airplanes a day,
except for some private planes that were
there, which were varied.
Of course, very few of them flew
during the wartime years, but later,
my daughter when she went
to work with the veterans administration,
lived about one mile from Daniel Field.
So I went to see the place and the barracks
where we had been were all torn down.
But the airport was a little bigger now and they
were having more commercial traffic.
>> You mentioned the barracks.
What were the accommodations like there?
>> Well, there were two story barracks and they'd have
about 20 men on
the bottom floor and 20 men on the second floor.
And they were just typical army barracks.
>> And there was also an army Fort in Augusta?
>> Yes. Fort Gordon is nearby.
Fort Stewart is closer down toward Savannah way.
>> So was there any movement back and
forth between this airfield and this army base?
>> No. They had no contact, no.
The army base was completely infantry type people.
They were not Air Force at all.
And we weren't assigned to anything.
We were just there waiting to be reassigned.
So we didn't do anything,
we marched around a little and little exercising.
They'd have us sweep
the barracks out and just
anything to keep us doing something,
but it was just a matter of mocking time until
we were reassigned to a school.
>> Did you come in there by plane or by train?
>> It was completely train, yeah.
No GIS.
Everything was on train.
>> So you had gone to
bombardier school and you were in Springfield, Illinois?
>> Yes.
>> But then you went to communication school?
>> Yes.
>> And describe that change
in the recent the [OVERLAPPING] change?
>> Because they also felt that they no longer
needed to expand that program,
they cut out the bottom 50% and I'd stayed.
Then they had another cut and that's when they got me.
So they just kept about 10% or 20% of the class.
And so I was sent to a Scott Field, Illinois.
And that's Army Air Force Training Center for radio.
And we went to school there.
And from there, after we finished school,
we went to Tinker Field,
Oklahoma and then went overseas from Tinker field,
Oklahoma to Seattle and
took a boat from Seattle to Hawaii.
I thought, this would be a good deal,
but they didn't drop me off there,
and we went to midway and dropped off some people,
and then we went to Guam.
>> What time period is this?
>> This was right after Christmas of 1944.
>> So you were going over as a communication specialist?
>> Yes.
>> What was your title or radio?
>> I was a radio man second class.
They were different people.
First class were the ones who had
security clearance for all messages
coming in and I didn't have that.
I just worked there, there was a telephone office and
the communication center so I
worked more in the telephone than I did radio.
>> And what were your skills?
What had you been trained to do in communication school?
>> Well, I was going to be on radio,
but they had me working on
the strong telephone wires from the base headquarters to
all the small companies that were scattered
around this in the Guam
or wherever they were going to send us.
So we were going to maintain the telephone system.
>> Can you describe that as if I'm completely ignorant?
>> Yes. Well, the base headquarters would be
where the colonel or the general would
issue the orders of
the day to the companies and the call would go to
the company office and where a captain
or it might be a lieutenant
would be in charge of company and they would
be given any new information in regard
to what the problems of the day were and
just general information and just keep
the lines open between the base headquarters
and the companies outside of the base headquarters to
keep the lower ranking officers informed
of what decisions were made on higher level.
>> What did Guam look like at that point?
>> Guam is an island 25 miles long.
It's about five miles wide at its widest point.
It's slightly mountainous, but not high mountains.
Probably as high as
our Kennesaw Mountain like
that scattered all around the state.
But the shoreline was like our beaches here in Georgia.
And they were Natives were of oriental descent,
I'm sure they were originally Japanese.
But when the Spanish had the country,
they had everybody learned
Spanish and they brought Christian religion to them.
They were Roman Catholics
and those people did a lot of farming,
they grew rice, but the big crop was coconuts.
All the trees on the island were owned
by Colgate Palmolive company.
And any trees that were damaged during the war,
the US government paid when the war was over,
paid them $25 for each tree
that was damaged in the war in any way.
The coconut, I don't know if you see it
is quite big when it's on the tree,
has a shell on it,
and you have to get that shell off in the coconut,
then it's size of a of a softball,
a little smaller bigger than a baseball.
And the Colgate Palmolive of
people would want the oil from that and the palm oil is
used a lot in a different soaps
and different lotions, like that.
And then the white meat from that it's
used for just coconut products.
So it was a money making thing for the company.
>> Were there signs of
destruction from the fighting
that had taken place on Guam?
>> Yes. They brought in small cannon and they tore up
any concrete type buildings because that would have
been used for any defense.
But there was a the Navy force
was so small that they didn't put up much of a fight.
But when we went back in 1944 to take the island back,
the Japanese had scattered barb wire all along
the beaches and even in
the water at low tide and so when it came higher,
a lot of Marines came in,
lot of them caught up with that barb wire
and you can get very serious problems,
especially in hot climates
like that when you get scratched
by rusty barbed wire fences.
And they were tough little soldiers,
those Japanese, they were small people,
but they were tough and they
got by and they didn't give up easily.
>> What places did you sleep there on Guam?
[OVERLAPPING]
>> First when we went there,
we had no housing at all.
We just had a little pup tent that's a small tent that is
only you lie on the ground and it's
only about 6.5-7 feet long.
And we used those for about two weeks and then by then,
the corps of engineers had put up some six man tents.
They were a little bigger and we used them for
about five or six months.
And then they had to come up and
build some plywood barracks,
which would hold up 40 men.
They were one level buildings
and they used them till we left the war.
>> Where was the men's hall?
>> It had adjoined the barracks so it was close by.
It was either six or eight barracks
would make up a company of men.
A company would have a lieutenant or
a captain in charge and
the first sergeant and a duty sergeant.
And then every barracks just had a scattering of men.
Everybody had different types of
classifications more of them were
flight line mechanics than anything else,
but then there were others that
were a couple of people in my barracks that
worked in the medical center there in the first aid
and then we had one fellow who was
a mailman for the company.
Another one was Chaplains
assistant so it was just a wide variety.
Then there were about three or four of
us were in the communications,
either the radio or the telephone.
And some were truck drivers and
some were just general laborer.
>> How much free time did you have?
>> We had some that we went
every day to the to the field.
It was seven day a week.
We went early in the morning,
they woke us up at 7:00,
we were through breakfast by 8:30 had to be down
the airport by 11:00 [inaudible] where planes were kept,
checked out by 8:30.
We'd have launch and we'd
leave 11:30 and be back around 1:00,
and we stayed till five o'clock
then came back to the barracks.
>> Was there entertainment of any kind?
>> The US show would come
about every two months and put on a show.
Bob Hope came one time.
He came to see us with Dorothy Lomo
and a fellow by the name of Eddie Barrack,
and he was quite a famous entertainer in those days.
Let's see, it was Gene Autry came.
He was on active duty, but he came.
He was part of the US show that's I guess that was
United Service Organization and he put on a show.
He had some cowboy singers
with those I don't remember any of them.
And a couple of fellows showed us
rope tricks and things like that
and then they put in a small radio station on the island.
And they played a different music and told
baseball and football scores and
just general information of
what things were in the state.
Nothing ever butterfly anything
was more just pleasant news.
And they never told of any casualties in Europe,
anything like that and it
was I guess you'd call it controlled news.
>> Well, about how long were you there in Guam?
>> Let's see. About 14 months.
A year and two months.
>> And did you expect to stay there?
Did you have any idea how long your assignment would be?
>> No. We were there until the war ended.
>> So I want to talk about a few big events.
Do you have any memories of President Roosevelt's death?
>> Yes. I remember someone coming morning said we
heard someone said Roosevelt had died.
We says, I don't think that's happened.
Someone just made a rumor.
But then we heard just a little later that
says President Roosevelt was living in Georgia and died.
>> How were you affected?
How are the members of,
>> We thought, well, who takes his place?
And someone said, a man by the name of Truman,
that he's somebody from the Middle West somewhere,
that he'll take over as president.
And I said, well,
maybe with this war we'll end.
But by the time it was
May of '45 and the war ended in Europe,
just about the same time as he passed away.
And then two months later,
the atomic bomb was brought
to Tinian and they dropped the bomb and
it was over then by
the middle of August and they
signed a peace agreement in September.
>> So you were still on Guam
when the atomic bombs were dropped?
>> Yeah.
>> And how did you and
the other guys react to the dropping of the bombs?
>> They told us that they just wiped the city
clean that it killed everybody.
We said, this ought to end it,
and sure enough, it did.
In about three days,
the Japanese did not surrender.
So they dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.
And that's when the Emperor decided,
well, got to hang it up.
So they decided to give it up.
But he was never prosecuted.
He was more of a political,
religious man, the emperor.
So he was not held really responsible for the war
like Tojo and Souther who
were the head military men of the country.
>> Right. So how long before you got
word that you'd be going somewhere else?
>> Oh, then the oldest men first,
the married men who had been in the
longer were the first ones
to start coming back to the States to be.
They started coming back in October.
>> And that was through the point system?
>> Yes. Point system. That's right.
>> Okay.
>> And a married man had extra points by
being married and anyone who had
been the service longer had
one extra point for each month and being in combat area,
gave you one extra point.
But I was single and had been,
let's see 14, at that time about 11 months there.
So the younger one
of us were kind of bottom of the barrel about leaving.
But they got smaller and
smaller and we were doing less and less.
I'd go to the telephone office but they were
shutting down based companies.
So they were just leaving.
So we did less and less and we were just taking
the telephones out and just phasing things down.
>> How eager were you to get out of there?
>> Okay. Oh, I was
waiting that was the most ordeal waiting
thing I'd ever been in because one by one,
everybody I was leaving,
the older fellas, and It was just kind of a waiting game.
And we knew that
our time was coming but it didn't know when.
>> Do you remember any of those guys?
Did you keep in touch with any of them?
>> Well, I did for the first two or three years.
And then when I came South,
I just kept up with
one fellow in Pennsylvania but he's passed away.
So Father Time has pretty well-taken everybody I knew.
Out of my high school class that's
only two boys left anymore.
They're all gone to see
George Washington or wherever you go when you leave here.
>> Well, you said you were stationed briefly on Sipan.
>> Oh, yes. We went there.
We went from Guam and they were sending everybody to
Sipan to get on troop ships to come back home.
So people were coming there from Okinawa,
Tin and the ones are Sipan and the ones from Guam.
And they were get
these big troop ships and they
could carry 2000 men at a time.
So I think we were there about three weeks.
And there were new people coming in and others leaving.
So it was complete in and out all the time.
But there was always more people to leave than there
were room on the troop ship to leave.
Okay.
And it was about a 12-13 day trip
from Sipan to San Francisco.
>> Describe the return there.
>> Oh, it's when you get
about 30 miles out from San Francisco,
you can see the Golden Gate Bridge.
And that is really something.
That was a sight to see
and once you get into a close to the Golden Gate Bridge,
there was a big sign still there
saying something about thanking
the veterans for the war service.
I don't remember exactly the wording.
First thing they had for us was a big steak dinner,
really first-class big thick steak,
because we hadn't had that kind of meals at
all for the whole 14 months.
So then we were there just
two or three days and we took a Pullman train from
there all across the country to
Massachusetts and that's when we got discharged.
>> Tell me what you did after the war.
>> I went to an electronic school.
It was an associate degree.
It was supposed to be two years,
but it took about 18 months, electronic school.
And the telephone companies were switching from
manual switchboards to dial
telephoning where you dial
the number like this, what you wanted.
So I went with they hired me and I
worked four hours a
day installing those telephone equipment.
And then when I got through that school,
they had work down south down here.
I says, I think I'll come south,
and then I got a full time job with them and
worked in a number of small towns.
Then the Korean War came on and I said, "God grief.
I'm still single. They're going to draft me back in."
So I went and worked with the Army Signal Corps,
which is a civilian job
and paid quite well.
But I only stayed there until Lockheed came in.
After a while, it
looked like Lockheed was going to be permanent.
At the beginning, Lockheed came here just to modify
the B-29s and make them
acceptable for combat in the Korean War.
But then when it
looked like they're going to be permanent,
they started getting contracts for other work,
like they designed the C-130 plane,
and that became a permanent operation.
And they shifted more and more of
their work from California to Georgia.
So I decided, well,
I think it's a
little permanent better than working for the government.
>> So you had worked installing these new telephones?
>> Yes.
>> And that's what brought you south?
>> Yes, that's right.
>> You then went to work for the Army Signal Corps?
>> Yes.
>> And where were you working for the Signal Corps?
>> It was Atlanta General Depot.
It was an army maintenance base repair
where they brought in
their equipment that had been damaged
in training and we repaired it.
>> So there was continuous government work
after coming out of service?
>> Yeah, that's right. Yes.
>> Installing telephones, moving south,
Army Signal Corps during the Korea?
>> Yes.
>> And then you went to work for Lockheed?
>> Yes.
>> So you made the choice for Lockheed?
>> Yes, that's right.
>> And that was no longer government affiliated work?
>> No. It was government contracts,
but it was a totally civilian-owned company.
>> And what did you do for Lockheed?
>> I was in electronic engineering.
We kept up the public address system,
we kept up the time clocks,
all the electronic testing equipment.
And then numerical machines came in where
they used tape and items like that.
It was the first of automation in
machine shop work where you could repeat
the same work over and over by
using milling machines with a tape control.
So they sent us to factory schools in Chicago,
Cincinnati, Ohio, and some other place.
Somewhere, a little Town in Wisconsin,
I can't remember the name now.
So they sent us to the factory where they made
these numerical control machines.
So we maintained those machines.
>> Did you work at the facility in Marietta?
>> Yes.
>> You had your office there?
>> Yes.
>> And this was the period when
you said they transitioned from the B-29 to the C-130?
>> Yes. And then they came up with a plane they
called plane that was a,
let's see it was a 141.
It was a big cargo transport.
And then then they later made the C-5A,
which was the largest transport plane of that type.
>> And how long did you work at Lockheed?
>> Thirty one years.
>> Until retirement?
>> Yes.
>> So can you tell me
about meeting your wife and then your family?
>> Well, when I came to work at Atlanta General Depot,
I lived in Atlanta and I
started going to First Methodist Church,
it was right in downtown Atlanta,
and my wife was a member there.
And she was working with the railroad office
where they kept track of
the box cars and all the freight and stuff.
And we got going together.
And I thought she owned the railroad and
she thought that I owned a big government job,
and so we got married.
Neither one of us owned.
No, I'm just kidding about that.
But we got along good.
We lived in Atlanta till '55 when
we moved to Smyrna and been in Cobb County since '55.
>> Well, Mr. Ahola, I want to finish up with a question
about sort of remembering World War II and your service.
Can you tell me why you think or why
you feel it's significant
to share these memories with younger generations?
>> Well, I think people really need to
know that war is not a pleasant thing.
It's a mean cruel thing that I saw
things and heard about things
that it's not good for 18-year-olds to see.
When you see a flame thrower going into
a cave, that's not pleasant.
If anyone's in there, they burned up like toast.
And if all the oxygen is used up,
they just choked to death.
And the next thing,
someone has a bulldozer
and they close up the cave and you're in there.
And there's other cruel young men
that were captured on Guam.
The young Navy men were taken as prisoners of war.
They were almost starved to death,
and that stays with you for the rest of your life.
You never really recover from those things.
And war is a cruel thing,
and I think people need to not glorify
war because I've seen too many of them in my life.
I think that we
are a peaceful country, and I think we are.
But through some circumstance,
we've been sort of police of
the world and when I was only seven years old,
World War I had ended.
Next thing we had the depression,
and then we had World War II started,
and I thought surely we had enough war.
In a little while, we were in Korean War. That got over.
In a little while, we were in Vietnam.
We got through in Vietnam.
We had a little island down here
in the Caribbean we were in conflict.
The next thing we were over there in Iraq and
Afghanistan and we're still there.
We declare the end of these wars,
but we still have men in combat today
in a silent war in Iraq.
So wars are not pleasant things.
I know if you just visit over here
at the veterans hospitals,
the fighting might stop,
but the pain of the war does not end when
men have mental and physical problems caused by the war.
I don't know, maybe
war is just a part of life, I don't know.
I've been to Europe and I've seen they've had
just endless numbers of
wars from Napoleon's time and before his time.
So there's something in nature to decide to have wars,
and I've never really understood why.
But for some reason,
it must be in our genes or something
that causes us to get involved.
But I think we have never had a wars of aggression,
as far as the United States is concerned.
I think every one of our wars have been
defensive wars with the exception of our civil war,
which was certainly a cruel war
and absolutely should not have ever come about,
where human beings were used as slaves.
But these other wars have all
been defensive as far as we were concerned.
>> Well, thank you very much.
And we'll conclude there.
>> Well, thank you very much.