An Interview with George Moses

The following interview took place at George Moses’s house in May 2003. George Moses was drafted and served the United States during World War II, as a technician fourth grade. His job was to repair radars if anything went wrong. He served in Australia and surrounding areas for three and a half years. We learned a lot from Mr. Moses and used his experiences to form a vignette.

Eric: Can you tell us your name?

George Moses: Hmm, let me think about that… [laughs] George Moses.

Nicole: Your branch of service was the army, correct?

George Moses: Yes, but… we had the air force insignia on here [indicates his shoulder] because we were concerned with the air force. You know this radar optic we were in… I showed you the air force insignia, that’s it right there [indicates an insignia on wall], you know?

Eric: What was your rank?

George Moses: I was a…well I got the same money as a buck sergeant, about $96 bucks a month, about that. I was called a tech-four, I think, you know, technician fourth grade.

Nicole: So you were a tech force sergeant?

George Moses: Yes.

Nicole: OK, were you drafted or did you enlist?

George Moses: Alright, look it, I got a draft notice see, and the [Japanese] bombed Pearl Harbor so I phoned the lady at the draft board in Unionville and I explained to her I’m going to enlist, I can’t hang around and wait to be drafted. And she said, “Oh, I sent your paper’s in. Why don’t you wait a while?” so I went skiing at Pico Peak in Vermont for a week, and Andrea Mead was there, her mother ran the ski tow. Her mother used to give me a nice smile. So anyway, picked up a couple of Gold medals at the Winter Olympics, I think it was. You could see right away that she was going to be a champion, you know, she really had it…not me.

Eric: Where were you living when you were drafted?

George Moses: Where was I living?

Eric: Yeah.

George Moses: In Unionville.

Nicole: How old were you when you went to fight, when you were drafted?

George Moses: About 20 or 21, something like that. You know it was about 50 years ago, it’s pretty hard to recall.

Nicole: When we write our vignette, we have to write a paragraph about [historical facts], and do you want us to write that you were drafted, that you enlisted, or would you like us to tell the story?

George Moses: It doesn’t matter, you won’t make me feel bad. We were all mixed together, the draftees and the volunteers, you know?

Nicole: Did you have any feeling when you left for the war, like, were you scared?

George Moses: No, during the first bombing raid I was wide awake. But after that, nothing bothered me, you know you get used to things…

Eric: How long did you serve for?

George Moses: Three and a half years.

Eric: What was your duty as a soldier? What did you have to do around the time of the bombing when you were watching the movie?

George Moses: Gee, I forget whether I was a radar mechanic, or a Morse code man, or a message center operator. You know coding and decoding messages, that kind of a job. But I had all different duties while I was in the service.

Nicole: Did you have any nicknames?

George Moses: Do I have to tell you this? [laughs] One guy used to call me Gargoyle. You know what a gargoyle is?

Nicole: Yeah.

George Moses: What is it?

Eric: It’s like a statue…

George Moses: Where?

Nicole: On top of a building.

George Moses: The Notre Dam Cathedral in Paris right? [laughs]

Nicole: Why did he call you that?

George Moses: Well, his name was Gorman. He was in the regular army, and I was a draftee, you know? He was quite a guy though. He used to take his machete, walking through the grass like this, looking for souvenirs, and there was a bunch of [Japanese] dead there, but one of them was still alive, and he went and go the marines, you know? The [soldier] has been shot in the flesh right here [points near knee], so he couldn’t walk, but he had been there for two or three days.

Nicole: Did you have any other nicknames?

George Moses: Some people used to kid me, and call me Gorgeous George. Well Gorgeous George was a wrestler, he had a funny shaped head. His head was elongated, and the sports writers loved him because he was so funny looking.

***

Eric: What did you do to pass time with the other soldiers? Did you play cards?

George Moses: I never was a card player. My father was. The guys I knew played cards, and we were on a landing barge approaching an island when we didn’t know if there were [Japanese] on it, and the guys wouldn’t stop playing cards until we within 100 yards. They were on a landing barge playing cards. It was comical. We were supposed to be nervous and worried, but no one was nervous and worried.

Nicole: So, then, what did you do to pass the time? Did you read or…?

George Moses: Yes, I used to read. I used to try to trade with the natives…

Nicole: For what?

George Moses: Well, I, you would die of laughing. I don’t know if I was stripped naked or if I had shorts, but I would… they came about 100 yards in their ships. The little 16 foot ships with the uh…I think it was a French flag on it. And they couldn’t speak English, and I couldn’t speak their language. I used to swim with two packs of cigarettes and climb aboard their ship, and we would trade cigarettes for pretty shells and all of that, you know? Sea shells.

Eric: Did you ever have a furlough?

George Moses: A furlough? Oh, yeah. We flew down to um…McKay, Queensland. We flew down to McKay, and we could eat and drink and go down to the service club, you know?

[Brief, off topic conversion about Australia]

Nicole: So what did you do besides dance on the furlough?

George Moses: Chase girls. [laughs] Well, it [McKay, Queensland] had sightseeing. There was a building that a bomb came through. It had a big hole about 30 feet in diameter through all 10 floors, don’t ask me why the building didn’t collapse. But, this big hole, it scared me. I went about four stories up and I looked down and thought “Oh boy, I don’t want to live in this place.”

Eric: What did you live in?

George Moses: In tents.

Nicole: Were the living conditions good?

George Moses: Yeah, but I don’t remember that the food was very good, I can’t seem to remember that. But when we ate with the Navy, when we were aboard ship, the Navy ate better than we did.

Nicole: Did you ever get scared at night when you when you were sleeping, or…. what did you think about?

George Moses: I was only scared during the first bombing raid. After that, you say, “To hell with it.” You don’t have to worry, you know? I know how the movies portray the guys. They’re supposed to be scared, but movies aren’t always realistic, you know?

Eric: What was the name of your commanding officer?

George Moses: [Pause] Well, McCoy was the radar officer, he was the second in command. The second was…I can’t think off hand, but listen, the commanding officer, he spent most of the day on his cot, like this [George puts feet up and hands behind head]. He was supposed to be an electrical engineer. If he was, I couldn’t tell because he never asked any questions about the radars, or what would I do if this went wrong or that went wrong. But the second in command, he really knew his stuff.

Eric: When you were transported between places, what kinds of transportation did you use?

George Moses: Sometimes we used a transport plane, sometimes we were in a LST, you know what an LST is?

Nicole: What is a LST?

George Moses: It’s a ship. You can run it right over the shore. It only draws about four feet of water. Landing Ship Tank, that’s what it means. There’s a picture in the photo album I gave you, do you remember it? On the last page.

[Conversation about a ship in Paris and Casablanca, that the Italian submarines sank]

Nicole: When you were watching the movie [referring to the incident in the vignette], when the bombing raid came by, where were you stationed at that time?

George Moses: I think it was Biak. That’s a little island, and that raid was totally unexpected.

Nicole: How did your radar work? Did it monitor the planes that were flying by or…?

George Moses: A radar? Have you had this in high school yet?

Eric: No.

George Moses: Well, radio waves are very fast, faster than sound waves. With sound waves, sometimes if you yell at a cliff, the sound will come back, you know? Well, it’s the same with radio waves. They and be reflected, but they travel much faster than sound waves. Well the radar set measures the distance, and you can tell by that.

Eric: Did the radar go off during the movie?

George Moses: No, you were supposed to sit right there and watch the movie. I wasn’t operating it. I was a mechanic. But if you were operating it, then you would keep running the radar.

Eric: Do you know when that unexpected bombing raid took place? The year?

George Moses: Well, it was late in the year, because it wasn’t expected. We didn’t expect it.

Nicole: Do you remember how old you were then?

George Moses: Oh you know, 21, 22, or 23.

Eric: What was your daily routine at that time?

George Moses: Get up in the morning, splash some water on your face, have some breakfast. You’d walk to the radar set and see if everything was working OK, you know? Then you’d have some lunch, then it was supper time...well one guy had a guitar, that kept us entertained, you know? We were kind of tense, you know? We were about a hundred yards away from the radar set, so it was right there.

Nicole: How many times a day do you think you checked the radar? Did you just check in the morning, or did you do it a few times a day, or…

George Moses: Well, it’s like a radio set. You can tell what channel you’re on by checking the dial. Well on a radar you could see if it was working right by checking different dials, and you would see if it was functioning right.

[More conversation on how a radar functions]

Nicole: What time of day did the raid happen?

George Moses: That one that I told you about? Well, it was after dark, and we sitting on the fender of a jeep, so it was dark… Well look, raids can occur, air raids can occur in the day or night, you never know. Washing Machine Charley, that was a [Japanese] plan that used to have an irregular sound, do you remember the TV show MASH?

Eric: No…

George Moses: You don’t remember MASH? Well, they used to show the [Japanese] bomb flying over, and he would take a bomb in his hand and drop it out. It didn’t happen like that you know? [laughs] It was a comic strip, on TV.

Eric: What was the weather like?

George Moses: Well, we were close to the equator, so it’s going to be a lot hotter than here. In that photograph I showed you, we were in a coconut plantation, and you could see the coconut trees in rows like apples in this country. And there’s pictures of us with all of our dogs and kittens and all that kind of stuff, and when the [Japanese] abandoned an island later on, they left chickens. Of course our guys would chase the chickens. If you don’t think a chicken can fly, they can if they’re about to get their head chopped off. They’ll fly above the trees, you know. They can’t sustain it, but they’ll come down and fly up again. There was a picture of a pig, and we kept it as a pet; and when it grew up, we butchered it, it grew up from about 6 inches to 2 feet. Cool, huh?

[Conversation about other pets]

Nicole: That night when the bombs were dropped, do you remember saying anything to anyone or thinking anything?

George Moses: Before they were dropped?

Nicole: Yes.

George Moses: I was to busy watching the movie…

[Brief conversation about Judy Garland]

Eric: What about after they were dropped?

George Moses: I was thinking about when the fifth bomb would be dropped. The projectionist turned off the projectors; and after about a half an hour, we didn’t think they would drop any more bombs, so he turned on the projector. We got set up and watched the movie. The next morning we went up to where the bombs had hit. It killed 19. They dropped four bombs, 19 people were killed… the bombs were called daisy cutters, they weren’t meant to make a big hole. Parts of the bomb flew out in all directions and they burned up two P-38’s. Do you know what a P-38 is?

Eric: No…

George Moses: It’s a plane with two engines, and any way, it burned up two of those and damaged those three transports. You just can’t imagine how they ripped through those, and that was only four bombs. Think of it in Germany or London, you know? Where they really get heavy bombs.