Student: So Eugene, When and Where Were You Born?

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Intro:

Student: I’m Kayla Golonka and I’m interviewing Eugene Golonka. We are here at his house and its February 6, 2016. So the following questions are based on World War II, in the eyes of a young teenager in New York, after the U.S joined the war in 1942.

Student: So Eugene, when and where were you born?

Interviewee: I was born in New York, actually New York City Proper, in December 13, 1927.

Student: And what city in New York did you say you lived in?

Interviewee: Actually it was what they called Queens County, which is across the river from Manhattan.

Student: And how old were you when World War II began in 1939?

Interviewee: I was actually 14.

Student: And how old were you when World War II ended in 1945?

Interviewee: I actually was 17 years old when World War II ended and I wasn’t called in a draft to serve in the military.

Student: Okay.

Interviewee: So I graduated high school.

Student:And what were the names of your parents and siblings?

Interviewee: My parents’ names were my mom was named Anna Bertha Golonka and my dad was Stanley Golonka. And I had seven brothers and three sisters and we all lived at home. And at that time, during the war, my four oldest brothers went into the military service and they came back after the war was ended and stayed at the home for a short time until they were able to secure employment and to move on their own and rent an apartment. That’s what I remember seeing them leave after the war and they found their jobs and did their own life from that day on.

Student: And what…what were they…what position did they get when they went into the war?

Interviewee: Well… my oldest brother, Amel Golonka, he became a cook. My next oldest brother, Henry, he became an office clerk and worked a photo copy machine. My next brother, Raymond, joined the navy and became a navy cook and he went out sailing into the Caribbean. They were looking for German submarines at the time, but his destroyer didn’t find any enemy boats anywhere off the coast of the United States. And my other brother, Leo, he got drafted in the U.S. army and he became a…excuse me…a jeep driver for an army officer. He would be called upon to drive his officer and captain wherever the captain needed to go.

Student: And what were all your siblings’ names, so including you, where were you in that order?So what are all your siblings’ names?

Interviewee: Which…what?

Student: From all of them…you said there was…

Interviewee: I named all my brothers.

Student: Okay and then your sisters?

Interviewee: And I had three sisters. And my oldest sister was named Stella and she got married shortly after that. And my second sister after high school, she went to a dental lab/worker. And my third sister, after she graduated high school, went into Manhattan and worked in an insurance company.

Student: We’re doing an interview for my…start

Interviewee: What else?

Student: Go head, start it again.

Camera Girl, Hannah: I did.

Student: Okay so how far apart was like their age rangefrom?

Interviewee: Oh generally, I would guess about three to five year difference.

Student: Okay between all of them?

Interviewee: Average, only average.

Student: Okay andwhere did you live…did you live in a house, an apartment?

Interviewee: No we lived in a house that my dad built before World War II and it had three levels and we were able to squeeze everybody in at bedtime and until they went into the military and then we had plenty of room. My older sister got married at that time, so we just had my two sisters and then there was a younger brother named Norman. And he was home with my two sisters left in the house. And the war ended and my brothers came home and like I said they looked for jobs and were able to find one because the economy wasn’t really building up at that time, except that they were building cars now, new cars instead of military equipment, tanks, and planes,military planes.

Student: And could you describe your home for us, like was it a brick house?

Interviewee: The house my dad built before World War II, was a frame house and there were three stories including a basement. The first floor was a kitchen, dining room, and living room. Second level was three bedrooms and a bath and then the attic was only half finished by my dad and my younger brother and I were able to sleep up there on sort of cots. And when we were able to get a bed, after the older brothers moved out, we moved to the second level in the bedrooms. We had a bedroom with two bunk beds more or less and we continued there.

I finished high school during the war, the war was actually over. So I didn’t have to go in the military, but I got a job working in an insurance company in Manhattan like my sister and that was about 1947. And then 1950, I got married. I met a nice, young lady in the insurance company and we dated for three years and we got married in 1950. And she worked in the same insurance company and continued to work. In 1952, when the Korean War started, no I’m sorry the Korean War started in June of 1950 and I was married about six months then. And then March of ’52, the government started to draft married men with no children or no pregnant wife. So I was drafted into the Marine Corp and my wife stayed in New York and moved in with her mother and her step-father. And I was able to get a supplemental income from the insurance company. So I rented a cabin down at the Marine Corp base for $40 a month. And then I had my wife quit her job in the insurance company and live with me down outside of North Fork, Virginia, where I spent two years and finished my requirement.

Student: And then so backto WWII, do you remember your address or what street that you lived on?

Interviewee: Yah I remember the address was 106-38 144th Street, Jamaican, New York, where I was born in that house.

Student: And what was your home life like? Did you have chores or did you have to help around the house?

Interviewee: I had chores. My younger brother and I, Norman, we had chores, but we both shined shoes out in the public, during World War II when we were ten and twelve years old. And around age fourteen to fifteen in high school…in junior high I was able to get a job in the grocery store delivering people’s orders that they bought. And my brother Norm too he was able…

Student: Hold on. I’m going to pause you for a second. Can you stop it for a second? Okay. So what was your home life like? Did you have chores or did you have to help around the house?

Interviewee: Yah, we…my younger brother and I had chores. Yah we had to keep the outside of the house pretty clean of any rubbish, especially leaves were very common. In them days you could burn leaves that came off the trees and even though it was smoky, most of the time but we did that. And then we went out shining shoes after usually on a Saturday but I started to go out after school a couple times before I got the job doing groceries. So we were pretty busy after school and even including Saturdays. So chores had to be done after school, every day. Whatever came up we had to do.

Student: Do you remember what some of the chores were that you had to do, besides the leaves?

Interviewee: Well my dad had rabbits so we had to feed the rabbits.We had to clean their coop which was a regular job to do, keeping rabbits clean. And other than that if it snowed in the winter, we had to shovel all the snow off the sidewalk and the driveway. So whatever the day brought on, we had to take care of it.

Student: And what did your father do? Did he work?

Interviewee: My father was a carpenter ever since he came from Europe, Eastern Europe and my mother was a house wife and she worked when I was close to a baby. I remember hearing that because of the income before World War II was Depression and jobs were not available at all. So the government had to come in and support families and they had an…aoutlet the government called NRA. It was the National Recovery Act and they would give families money for shoes. I remember going to the shoe store and getting free shoes and I remember getting free food. My parents got cans of free food, so they kept us going until the war broke out when my dad was able to get a job at the…ship yard while my older brothers were in the military. And my brothers in the military sent money home, an allotment for my mom so she was able to keep up with my dad’s income.

Student: Anddid you attend school? And if so, what was the name of your school that you attended and what grade were you in during World War II?

Interviewee: In World War II, I gradu…in fact in, just around Pearl Harbor, December 7, I graduated junior high school and I went to a regular high school. And I was working in a grocery store up in junior high school and high school and I continued working after school until graduation. And that was 1947. I graduated and went to Manhattan to work for an insurance company and I became an insurance underwriter.

Student: What did you have to do at the grocery store when you worked there?

Interviewee: All I did was deliver peoples purchases. They bought when the store was really a vegetable in food store and I delivered that to people’s house. And then I changed jobs and I worked for a butcher and delivered the orders to people’s homes after school. They waited for me to come in about three o’clock or three thirty probably. And I had to take a bus from school to the location where the retail stores were. So I continued that from junior high till graduation high school before going into Manhattan working for an insurance company.

Student: And did you ride on your bike or did you walk?

Interviewee: Yah no the employee had bikes with baskets in the front with big bags of grocery which sit in there.And most of the days I was able to deliver except if a blizzard happened but I did deliver in the snow because by the time I got to the grocery store which the snow plows had plowed the streets of New York. They were very quick in getting the streets plowed rather.

Student: And what was the typical day at school like for you?

Interviewee: A typical day is a boring day. You come in and be disciplined and sit at a desk and you would have a subject in one class and then you had to change class for the different subjects in junior high and high school. So it was a continuous movement from one class to another all day. You had a lunch hour, half hour, forty-five minutes and they had hot lunches that I did some days because money was not that common at all, as a teenager anyway. So that was a day, I finished the class time, I would run to a bus stop to get to work every day and just run.

High school I got off at one thirtyso I was able to get to the job earlier then junior high which was three o’clock. But every time I ran to get to the job, especially in the winter it got dark early, so I only had two hours of daylight. So I had to know where to ride the bike and they had no lights on bikes then. So I just came into the workshop and there’d be a whole line of bags of groceries of meats that I would take one after another. Maybe two or three at one time if they’re not too big. And just ride all over town, delivering all of it until maybe seven o’clock when I got done, depending on how busy it was. But five days a week and Saturday, all day.See? So I was really a busy person. And my younger brother after he finished shining shoes too, he was only a couple years behind me in school and then he got a job near where I was working. So we both did the same thing, take a bus after school.

Student: Did your teacher talk to you and your classmates about the war or how you could help the war effort?

Interviewee: Not really. No I don’t remember. No it was more on the radio that they talked about doing that. Buying bonds, war bonds to support the country, purchase of military equipment. Oh it was busy…life really.

Student: Did your family buy any war bonds?

Interviewee: Yah I remember and I…they got me to buy ‘em too when I was eighteen and I was still…when I was working in the insurance company then. Yah.

Student: And so could you explain what the war bonds entails, like what it is?

Interviewee: Well war bonds was…you were buying a guarantee that after ten years your money you paid for the bond would show interest and you could cash it in after ten years.And the money you paid the government they used to buy military equipment. And it was a really powerful effort by the government. If you went to a movie, you would see a commercial on the screen, telling you to buy war bonds. And these radio programs were really big in…asking for a ton of people, buy war bonds. And if they had a commercial and the commercials were mostly for the government, buy war bonds.

Student: Okay. What was your daily routine during the week like? So you did already kind of explain that you worked five days a week, so how was like a Saturday? How did you spend your time on the weekends?

Interviewee: On Saturday was a full day working of delivering grocery and meat orders to people. And we started maybe nine in the morning on a Saturday and probably finished about five or six. And go home and listen to the radio, eat, and listen to the radio. That’s all we had as a teenager. If I wanted to go roller skating I would do that once in a while. Not often. I should a gone more, but I didn’t. A nice day too in the winter, I would go ice skating but it was infrequent you know I didn’t leave the house if it was always cold in the winter which it was. In the summer I would go to the beach and if I wasn’t working during the week and Sundays usually. But it was continuous keeping busy growing up, like it is today.

Student: So what were some activities that cheered you up during the Second World War?So you said roller skating, were there any other things that…

Interviewee: Yah, well basically too my younger brother and I bought these military airplane models. They were made out of balsa wood about 10 inches wide and the hobby shops would sell these airplane kits. You could buy a kit for maybe 10 cents, 15 cents and make a fighter plane that was named after a United…U.S. air force plane. And my brother and I kept pretty busy when we weren’t working. That was basically mostly what we did or listen to the radio. That was it. Making model planes and listening to the radio when there was good stories on the radio which was mostly good stories on, but some were war stories. But they had musicals and all. But that was life really, you know.

Student: Do you remember one of the radio little talks that you heard or the one that you enjoyed?

Interviewee: Oh yah. They were like shows, Bob Hope show, the comedian and then they had a comedian Red Skeleton. And they would tell jokes for half hour and that would be interesting. And there were a lot…quite a few comedians telling jokes on the radio.

Student: Were there any items you and your family had to ration…

Interviewee: Oh yes.

Student: …during the war?

Interviewee: Yes. My mother had to buy food, butter, or meat or other products with coupons that restricted the amount they would be able, eligible to buy.So andcoffee was restricted. Butter. You didn’t see butter as much because they said the military needed the meats, the beef, and pork and everything else. They were number one. So the people had to live with a ration book and they were rationed how much milk, butter, and meat they would buy.

Student: Okay.Did your community or neighborhood help the war effort in any way? Your neighborhood or community, help the war effort in any way?

Interviewee: Not that I rememberedno. People were busy doing their own thing and especially families that had their sons serving in the military. There wasn’t much enjoyment around town that you could call. I played baseball during the summer too, if I had the time but it was infrequent. And ninety percent of my summer, teenage growing up was working.