In 1945, Joe Capone’s outfit was the first to discover Dora-Mittelbau, one of thirty slave labor subcamps near the town of Nordhausen. Its inmates worked to build secret underground factories for the production of V-2 missiles.
By 1944, nearly 12,000 slave laborers were confined underground in dangerous, unsanitary conditions. As they died or became too ill to work, the inmates were removed to Dora-Mittlebau and surrounding subcamps. It is believed that Dora-Mittlebau had one of the highest mortality rates of any concentration camp.
In this audio short, listen as Mr. Capone gives witness to this horror.
Recorded on May 9, 2012 by the Veteran Voices of Pittsburgh Oral History Initiative at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Joe Capone of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania died this month at the age of 98. His oral history interview, along with many other WWII veterans, has been recorded and preserved by The Social Voice Project.
Althea Skelton: In My Own Words
Never Before Released Interview - Conversation Highlights
During World War II, Althea Skelton contributed to the war effort by building B-29 “Superfortress” bombers. Ms. Skelton’s interview is an enlightening and endearing account of her childhood years leading up to WWII, her career as a civilian defense worker at the Boeing Company in Seattle, and the post-war years in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Her early years were in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh. One of only a few African Americans in her school, she eventually moved to Pittsburgh’s Hill District. On December 7, 1941, Althea was at home doing homework when she heard on the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. After graduating from high school and with the war still raging in 1943, she married Benjamin Skelton, who was in the navy.
Still a teenager, Althea then moved to Washington, D.C. to work for the Maritime Commission. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Skelton moved to Seattle to be with her husband at his new duty station in Bremerton, Washington. After moving to Seattle, she took a job at The Boeing Company and lived in military housing. Eventually, Althea’s husband was shipped-out from Bremerton to Adak, Alaska, in the Aleutian Islands, but she stayed behind and continued her work at Boeing.
Many minority women worked on the Boeing assembly lines. They came from all over the country, Althea recalls, including the Mexican border lands, Indian reservations, and the Deep South where high-paying jobs for women and minorities simply did not exist. Ms. Shelton worked faithfully wiring the bomber’s co-pilot-side cockpit controls. It was sophisticated and highly skilled work, with good pay and benefits. However, while most workers were unionized, Althea and other minority technicians were excluded from the union; prior to 1948, the constitution of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) excluded “people of color” from membership.
It was a just how things were back then, s
Jack Rominger: I Have The Original Story
Seventy-five years ago on August 6, 1945, the United States became the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
Jack Rominger shares a story originally told on June 19, 2011 to the Veteran Voices of Pittsburgh Oral History Initiative in O’Hara Township, Pennsylvania. On this episode of Argot: Audio Short Stories from TSVP's Veteran Voices of Pittsburgh Oral History Collection, we hear a Japanese story about the human cost of the atomic bombs.
It was written in English by Yoshuishi Okaburo, the brother-in-law of the story’s protagonist. The story is called, “The Family of My Elder sister,” and it describes the awful plight of one Nagasaki family from the point of view of the father (and brother-in-law of Yoshuishi). Jack first heard it one quiet night while on patrol duty among the surviving homes of Nagasaki. It was being used to teach English to Japanese children; a language primer of sorts.
The actual text of the story was presented to Jack as a gift from Yoshuishi Okaburo, who eventually became a lifelong friend after the war.
“I’d call this a morality play,” Jack says of the precious yellowing papers that he has preserved for over seventy years. “There’s no mention of any hatred for us, the enemy. What’s most important in the story, through the ashes, deaths, and terrible destruction, is the importance of peace.”
Coming Soon: Joseph Grosko - In My Own Words
Every Veteran Has a Story: Listen
Fritz Ottenheimer: Without Conscience
Henry Parham: In My Own Words
