Pete Seeger leading the crowd in “When We March into Berlin” at the opening of the Washington labor canteen, sponsored by the United Federal Workers of America, CIO, 1944. Library of Congress LC-USW3-040953-D.
Pete joined the army in July 1942 and was stationed for many months at Kessler Field in Mississippi, training to be an airplane mechanic. He was transferred to the Special Services (entertainment) Division at Fort Meade in Maryland, then to Camp Siebert in Alabama, until he was finally shipped off to Saipan Island in the western Pacific in mid-1944. During the summer of 1943 he married Toshi Ohta, the daughter of a Japanese father and a mother from Virginia, in Greenwich Village. They first met in 1939. Toshi had worked with the Almanac Singers, and they shared a radical political agenda. During the war Pete remained in close touch with the folk music world. For example, in April 1944 he wrote to Benjamin Botkin, who had replaced Alan Lomax as the Assistant in Charge of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, concerned about the manuscript for “Hard-Hitting Songs” and whether it had been microfilmed. Botkin quickly responded that this had not yet happened, then concluded: “I have been hearing of your recent recording activities and plans and am looking forward to the release of The Lonesome Train, which I enjoyed hearing on the air.” Pete had performed on the Decca (1944) recording of the Earl Robinson and Millard Lampell cantata The Lonesome Train, along with Burl Ives. In late July Pete again wrote to Botkin, congratulating him on the recent publication of A Treasury of American Folklore: “It seemed to me like a swell collection, with a lot of variety—the kind of thing to keep around the house for years.”*
SOURCE FOR CHAPTER 9 Daily Worker, January 8, 1943.
SOURCE “Report from the Marianas,” No. 2, April 26, 1945; No. 6, May 24, 1945; No. 9, August 12, 1945; copies held by Ronald D. Cohen.
Pete Seeger leading the crowd in “When We March into Berlin” at the opening of the Washington labor canteen, sponsored by the United Federal Workers of America, CIO, 1944. Library of Congress LC-USW3-040953-D.
While at Fort Meade he made frequent trips to New York City and participated in various recording projects, mostly for Moe Asch (1905-1986). In August 1942 he joined with Tom Glazer, Butch Hawes, and Bess Lomax Hawes on the album Songs of the Spanish Civil War, released on the Asch label. In March 1944 he returned to the Asch recording studio, along with Glazer, Ives, Josh White, Alan Lomax, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee, performing as the Union Boys, on the album Songs for Victory: Music for Political Action. Along the way he joined Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston for a series of recordings issued as American Folksay, as well as performing on the Asch album American Banjo. Moreover, in 1944 he worked with the stellar lineup of Ives, Will Geer, Guthrie, Lily Mae Ledford (a member of the Coon Creek Girls), Tom Glazer, Cisco Houston, and assorted others for the BBC antiwar musical play The Martins and the Coys, produced by Alan Lomax from a script by his wife, Elizabeth Lomax.
While stationed on Saipan he continued his musical life, organizing the hospital entertainment while performing in his own string band, the Rainbow Boys. He appeared on the base radio station, WXLD, and was heard by Mario “Boots” Casetta, who recognized his voice. He would soon meet Felix Landau and the USO singer Betty Sanders, and with Casetta they helped Pete launch People’s Songs after the war. Pete also visited with the local Chamorra people and recorded their songs at the radio station, along with selections from the Rainbow Boys daily program Calico Jamboree. He kept a diary from April-September 1945, “Report from the Marianas: Notes of an Innocent Bystander,” and sent copies of the nine reports to his family. He referred to himself as “an innocent bystander” apparently because he never saw combat. These three samples give a good flavor of his writing style and interests, displaying his wide-ranging curiosity and views of his fellow soldiers. No. 9, written a few days after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (both bombers had taken off from the neighboring island of Tinian), explores feelings about how the war was ending. Pete would always remain an avid letter writer, to friends and strangers alike, eager to connect to the wider world, while both inquiring and informing.*
In rear echelons, which seem to be about 95% of the army, the boredom and the endless routine induces a lethargy which makes things even worse. You lay around on your bunk even when you don’t have to. You listen to the 5-minute news broadcasts even though you’ve heard it five times before that day and know it by heart. Some men will hardly vary their life from month to month, eating—taking food in at one end and letting it out the other—and sleeping and working and in the evening seeing a movie. Every day the same thing in the same spot.
For this reason, I usually try and get away from home base every Sunday. I happened to come over on the boat with a unit which set up a hospital for the civilians on this island, and since they live right on the beach where there’s good swimming, and since they also eat very well, I have been used to visiting a couple friends down there. I take the banjo along, and if I do not have to come back to help with a show in the evening, we sit around and have some good singing.
One of my best friends there has just left the island, unfortunately. For convenience, I’ll call him “Bert”; censor says I can’t give names of friends in other outfits. Well, Bert was once a civil engineer, and was placed in charge of a gang of local workers building Quonset huts, drainage ditches, etc etc. In about three months, from this daily contact, he learned an extraordinary amount of Japanese. And through him I learned a great deal about the people who lived on this island before the Americans came. On Sundays Bert and I used to go into the civilian enclosure, with the banjo, and swap songs with the kids. You should hear “Coming Through The Rye” and “Auld Lang Syne” sung in Japanese! These are two very popular songs with them. And of course they have all learned “You Are My Sunshine” from the American soldiers. And some have learned “Lay That Pistol Down.” Of the Japanese songs, the one we liked most was a children’s nature song (Bert translated it vaguely for me) called Umi-o-kaba. I don’t know the spelling, but that’s the pronunciation of the first line. The kids sang well, with the directness and enthusiasm that kids the world over have.
Through Bert I also became acquainted with the recently elected Mayor of the Chamorro encampment, Gregorio Sablan. He is a very well educated gentleman, elderly and slight of frame. He knows half a dozen languages or more, having been born under Spanish rule, grown up under German, and spent the last 30 years—until last summer—under Japanese rule. He graduated from the University of Peking, was an officer in the German army in the Pacific during World War One, and since then a schoolteacher. It was in his house that the man who wrote the articles in the National Geographic stayed during his brief visit here. Sablan welcomes the Americans as liberators now, for the Japanese occupation, at first fairly liberal, grew increasingly fascist and harsh. More basically, I believe that Gregorio Sablan is a man who feels he and his people, a small Pacific colony, must swim with the tide. I would like to write a great deal more about the civilians on this island—it’s a story that needs telling, I believe—but I am not sure how much the censor will allow me to say. All for now.
There has been too much generalization about what soldiers think. “G.I. Joe” says this or “G.I. Joe” says that. Really, there are just as many differences of temperament, outlook, and background among soldiers, as civilians. If our common life and experience does breed certain common outlooks, remember that there is almost as great a difference between the life of a front line combat man and a rear echelon chair-warmer as there is between the latter and a civilian.
Certain soldier opinions are undeniable, however. The vote for Roosevelt among the armed forces was 60 to 40, as against 52 to 48 for the country as a whole. When the UAW-CIO polled its members on the no-strike pledge, the vote was something like 70 to 30 for it. The soldier members were 95% for it, however.
My company is probably typical: We all long to go home; we hate the regimented life; we also want total victory and no half measures with the enemy. But there is little agreement exactly how to treat the enemy nation when conquered.
We want home and family terribly—and a job to hold them together. But damn little agreement as to exactly how these are to be provided.
Like the movies and the radio, the army is a great leveler of cultural tastes and social outlook. Some acquire new prejudices and bad habits; others are forced to discard some of their own.
Many soldiers pride themselves on their skepticism, but actually we are more at the mercy of propaganda from such widely read magazines as Life and Time, and Reader’s Digest, than civilians are. Many surprisingly good books reach us through the paperbound armed services editions, though. Also, Book-of-the-Month Club selections receive complete distribution, and are well read. People on Our Side and Black Boy are two recent examples. Men who read little before during their lives, often read a lot now, for lack of other diversion.
Back in Hawaii there was a bunch in our company who used to argue each other’s ears off. There was more shouting than sense, usually, and it used to annoy-the quieter members of the company. Few discussions had logical progression. Here, the platoon 1 am in now argues hardly at all. We seem to value each other’s friendliness, rather than his opinion. After all, we have to live in the same barracks with each other for an awfully, awfully long time.
Thus before the election, there was a minimum of arguments, it seemed to me, and when FDR won, a minimum of exulting. When Roosevelt died, many faces fell, and a few sober comments. But at least in my hearing, no arguments.
I cannot, therefore, presume to talk for other soldiers; the censor is supposed to forbid such generalizations, anyway.
NOTES FROM ANYWHERE: … In the chapel of one outfit is a small wooden figure of Christ, salvaged from a local church after the invasion. Like a Bonwit Teller manikin, it has movable arms, wrists, and hands, and was evidently meant to be clothed with a real robe …. Any home-made likker is called “Torpedo Juice” after the concoctions brewed by sailors using as a base the alcohol meant for torpedo fuel …. When the first USO girl-show reached the island after a six-month’s drought of them here, we met them with a brass band, five floats representing the various services, a troupe of native dancers, newsreel photographers, and several hundred GI’s. They stepped from the plane and a mike was put in their hands; to say they were astounded is putting it mildly.
Soooooo … the war is over. Or least the radio says it is a matter of days, or maybe hours. “We gave them an ultimatum; they were coy: said they would accept unconditional surrender terms if the emperor could retain complete control. So we reword it and fling it back. When will they got tired of playing and make up their minds?
Well, the war is over—and now the fighting will begin. That is, we will all start fighting to get home. Businesses will start fighting each other to see who can grab the first millions spent for civilian goods. The NAM will fight labor (all the harder). Etc. etc.
The night before last, when the news first came over the radio that Japan had offered to surrender, there was whooping and shouting. It was about 11:30 PM—one boy burst into the barracks, turned on the lights and shouted the news. We rolled over rubbing our eyes, and thought, Chrrrist, Poileke’s drunk again. But then we heard the midnight report on the radio, and for some there was very little sleep that night. A neighboring outfit promptly rounded up some beer and had a party, with much singing. I confess I was so sleepy, though, that after that midnight newscast I rolled over and slept soundly from then on.
Next day came the reports of indecision back in the states. Reports of sidewalk interviews which said 60% in favor of holding out for complete unconditional surrender, 30% for taking the offer, and 10% in favor of leaving it up to the experts.
You should have heard the resentment of some guys! I was surprised, and as it went on, disgusted. “Those lousy c ……….g civilians making a lot of money, want to keep on fighting the G … D …. war. Every single one of that 60% ought to be stuck out on one of these islands for two years !!!”
I nearly got into a couple fights about it. To me it seemed silly to debate the point. A few more atomic bombs, if necessary, would bring the Japanese government to its senses. Furthermore, on the other hand, what’s wrong with leaving the emperor there if we take away the two main groups whose support gave him his power: the militarists and the big trusts?
I only regret that one has to show any deference to any emperors anywhere. I foresaw that the Allies would do just as they did: reword it to say that the Emp. could stay but we’d tell him what to do.
From the looks of things, it’s my own personal opinion I won’t get home any too soon, in spite of this quick surrender. A large force will be needed to occupy Japan, and garrison troops like me who haven’t borne the brunt of combat so far, would naturally be picked for such a job.
So … as the gagman said, I’ll see you in the spring if I can get through the mattress.
Pete passed by censor (I hope) ……
PS—I forgot to mention Wendell (an actor in my office) trying on his civilian suit yesterday, to our amusement. (He had it here for a show.) Nor did I mention the comment of another: “Think of the poor officers who will have to give up their private empires out here.” Tsk.