"I remember because my last name was Blust. It was a German name. And my father's name was Adolph and my grandfather's name was Adolph and it was not a very popular name, at that particular time. So you didn't go around telling people that your grandparents came from Germany because you didn't want them to be upset."

Delores Hammon was born in Bloomingdale, Michigan in 1930. During her interview she discusses the impact the war had on her childhood. She speaks about her father's career change from farmer to defense worker and watching her cousins go off to war. She shares her memories of rationing, including her embarrassment about her grandmother who was a hoarder. In the first segment Delores discusses how it felt to be of German ancestry while at war with that nation. In the second segment, Delores relates how the newsreels she saw as a child during the war affected the way she raised her own children
 
 

"And I remember how upset my parents were, my grandparents were. Everybody seemed afraid of everything. Afraid that wethat the war would eventually come to the United States, proper. I remember because my last name was Blust. It was a German name. And my father's name was Adolph and my grandfather's name was Adolph and it was not a very popular name, at that particular time. So you didn't go around telling people that your grandparents came from Germany because you didn't want them to be upset. Oh, we really thought of the enemies as terrible people. In fact, I was brainwashed so much probably, by the adults around me that I couldn't see anything good about the Japanese at all. Now, of course, knowing that my grandparents came from Germany, I knew all Germans weren't bad. (Laughs). It was a little different. But you wondered how people could act the way that they did. We were proud, very proud of American involvement. We all believed that nobody could put the Americans down. Patriotism was at its height"

Now you mentioned that you didn't advertise that your family was from Germany. Did you feel you had to hide it or?

"Uh, I think there were times when yes, people would talk about their backgrounds and so forth and I would not volunteer to talk about mine. It was probably because I didn't want people to think of me as being part of the enemy. (Laughs a little). People were funny, they were funny. There were slights, slurs and that, you know if you were of German nationality there had to be something wrong with you. I can remember some people that we knew who lived in Chicago and they said people threw things at them, you know. Young kids would throw things at a German named child. They would Walking down the street they might get things thrown at them. And see, I didn't want anything like that to be happen to me."
 
 
 
 

"Well, watching the newsreels and seeing the children in Europe wandering around without parents and they didn't know how they were going to survive, how they were going to eat or anything like that, made me make sure that my children were raised so that if something happened to my husband or myself or there was a third world war, they were going to survive. So they were taught how to find food, how to do things for themselves, so they would be able to survive. I guess I showed them how to do things so thatHow to find food, what they could eat, what they couldn't eat, things that were in the wild that they could eat if they needed to. How to keep warm when they were there, how to build a fire if they needed to.

How young did you start teaching these skills to your kids?

Very young, I'm going to say four and five years old. Because Bill was the oldest, my oldest son, the younger ones learned also from him. They are quite good at doing these things today yet. (Laughs)."