Oral History Interview with Lawrence C. Hall

WILLIAM BERGE: The following is an unrehearsed tape interview with Mr. Lawrence C Hall. The interview was conducted by Mr. William C. Berge for the Oral History Commission. It was conducted at Cumberland Falls State Park on October5, 1990 at 1:25 PM. I want to start off Mr. Hall by asking you to tell me your full name, and where you were born, and when you were born.

LAWRENCE C. Hall: I was born in Mountain Ash, Kentucky, 1919.

BERGE: Where is Mountain Ash?

HALL: North, or south of Williamsburg on old twenty-five. And then we moved 1:00to Hazard and from Hazard—my father was a miner.

BERGE: Ok.

HALL: Then we moved back to Jellico and then we stayed there and are still there.

BERGE: Tell me this, what was your father’s name?

HALL: Matt, Mathew BERGE: Mathew Hall. What was your mother’s maiden name?

HALL: Maiden name?

BERGE: Huh-hum.

HALL: Laura Young.

BERGE: Y o u n g?

HALL: Y o u n g.

BERGE: Where was she from?

HALL: They were from around Jellico there when they met—I think they were from Mountain Ash when they got married.

BERGE: Where did you go to school?

HALL: I went to school in Jellico.

BERGE: The whole time?

HALL: The whole time, yes, till I entered the three C’s.

BERGE: How old were you when you entered the three C’s?

HALL: I would say approximately sixteen years old.

BERGE: What year do you remember? 2:00HALL: No, I don’t.

BERGE: You don’t remember the year you went in?

HALL: ( ) BERGE: Oh, yeah probably about thirty-five I guess.

HALL: You want the year?

BERGE: It’s hard to remember dates like that.

HALL: Yeah it is.

BERGE: Where did you go when you went in?

HALL: Cumberland Falls.

BERGE: Ok. You came up here.

HALL: Yes. 1578.

BERGE: Do you remember how you found out about the three C’s?

HALL: I imagine it was just by word of mouth. A lot of people back then—the depression was on and everybody was kind of scrambling trying to make a living.

BERGE: So you probably knew somebody who was in or something like that.

HALL: Oh, there was a number of people from around Jellico that was in the CCC.

BERGE: I know sometimes when I first talk to people--I talk to people who went in the three C’s when it first opened and I ask them how they heard about it and most of them can’t remember, 3:00you know. And some of the boys in the city saw signs you know billboards and stuff like that.

HALL: If they had any billboards or any advertising like that… BERGE: They wouldn’t have wasted them on a little town like Jellico.

HALL: But a number of people were going in. Everybody was having a real hard time.

BERGE: When you came up here—when you first joined, did they bring you right up here?

HALL: I went to Corbin.

BERGE: Is that where you came in? Signed up at Corbin?

HALL: Corbin. Then they brought… BERGE: Brought you over here.

HALL: Hum-hum BERGE: How many of you came over? Do you remember? Were you by yourself or… HALL: No, there was quite a few but I am not too sure whether they went to Cumberland Falls Camp or not. I imagine that was a meeting point for… BERGE: What did you think of it when you came here?

HALL: Well, it was different—a lot different. I don’t know if… BERGE: What are your first recollections of life here? 4:00Did you like living in the camp? Or, do you remember that?

HALL: Well, it was much better—it had running water, you could take a shower.

BERGE: Electric lights. (laughs) HALL: Yeah, electric lights and the food was really not that bad.

BERGE: You know most of the fellas remember the food as being pretty good.

HALL: It was because actually at home we really didn’t have too much food.

BERGE: Yeah. Yeah.

HALL: Everybody was having a hard time then. They were really having a hard time.

BERGE: Do you remember why—did you come in for yourself or did you come in for the twenty dollars for your family? Do you remember?

HALL: I would say the twenty dollars for the family.

BERGE: Yeah, five dollars a week was a lot of money.

HALL: Oh, an awful lot of money then.

BERGE: And for you family too. But that was I think—probably for both reasons you know.

HALL: Probably.

BERGE: Did you like living in the woods and that sort of thing?

HALL: Yes, I did. 5:00I don’t know why but I just I--it was nice down there at that time, it really was.

BERGE: How long did you stay here, at Cumberland Falls?

HALL: I don’t remember how long we stayed; but we didn’t stay too long when they disbanded this camp. Then we left from there and went to Grayville Illinois.

BERGE: Oh, were you in that bunch that went to Grayville?

HALL: Hum-hum.

BERGE: Do you remember that fight they talked about on Halloween?

HALL: That’s right I remember that.

BERGE: Tell me about that (laughs).

HALL: Well a bunch of the boys went into town and, as usual they got to drinking, and got into a fight and tore the place up.

BERGE: Were you in there?

HALL: No, no, I am too small to be battering’ too much.

BERGE: But you remember when they talked about it?

HALL: Oh, yes.

BERGE: How long did you stay there after you got into that kind of riot?

HALL: We didn’t stay very long after that they, they… BERGE: Kicked you out, huh?

HALL: You might say that yes. Then we went to Tulelake, California.

BERGE: Ok. You were in that bunch that went out there then. 6:00HALL: Huh-huh.

BERGE: Did you like that?

HALL: California was different. We were in the high altitude.

BERGE: Cold?

HALL: Really cold. Yes, it was really cold. I remember one time we had two feet of snow and it was twenty below zero and they took us out in the field. And it was so cold that on some cliffs, we saw some little birds, and they were so cold that they couldn’t fly. We could walk over and pick them up. We built a fire at that time and we would walk over and put them around—where the snow had melted away from the fire. They’d hop around that fire just a little bit—they would just chirrup, just make a noise like and then they would fall over dead, right on their back. It took us a little while to realize that… BERGE: You were killing them with the heat?

HALL: We were killing them—we were warming them up too fast.

BERGE: Yeah. Thought you were doing a favor and… HALL: It took us a little time to realize… 7:00BERGE: Tell me this, what kind of work did you do out there Lawrence?

HALL: Ah, out there in Tulelake we were working--I guess you would call it another park out there. There were mostly caves, there were a lot of caves out there. We just… BERGE: Make trails and that sort of thing?

HALL: Yeah, just whatever… BERGE: How long did you work here before you went to Cali—before you went to Illinois?

HALL: I don’t remember. We weren’t here—it could have been possibly maybe a year.

BERGE: Huh-huh. What kind of work did you do here?

HALL: Ah, such work as you see around the camp here. Like working building the stone work and building the walk-ways. And the walk-way from the Dupont Lodge down to the river.

BERGE: Did you all work hard?

HALL: Well, it was steady, not really 8:00hard work. It was just—masonry work is slow--but all this work you see around here--I had to do that.

BERGE: Did you think of the fellows that were with you as hard workers or were some of them sort of gold-brickers?

HALL: I find that most of them were good workers. Because most of us were brought up—back in that day and time—we were used to hard work, hardships.

BERGE: Probably glad to get work too.

HALL: Right. We were glad to get something to eat.

BERGE: But you don’t remember a lot of gold-brickers or trouble makers or that kind of thing.

HALL: Not really, no sir. They were something similar to the army which I went into shortly afterwards.

BERGE: Before we—I want to talk to you about that—but let’s just talk about the CCC a minute. Now when you were here in Cumberland Falls, did you go home very often, to Jellico?

HALL: No, I didn’t. I didn’t have no transportation 9:00and no way to get there.

BERGE: You might have been a million miles away, hadn’t you?

HALL: Might as well, yes.

BERGE: Did you ever write your folks, or anything like that?

HALL: Yes. That was about all you could do because there was not very much transportation and the roads were not so good.

BERGE: Did you go and see them before you went to Illinois? Do you remember? When you were being transferred up there?

HALL: Probably I did, yes.

BERGE: But you don’t remember.

HALL: I don’t remember.

BERGE: What did you do for—what was your big thing for relaxation when you were in the CCC?

HALL: Well, on the week-ends they would take you into Corbin, you could stay there all day. See a movie or entertain yourself as best you could.

BERGE: Were you , ah, did you play any ball or any sports or anything like that?

HALL: In camp, yes. We had… BERGE: You, yourself, I mean were you a ball player?

HALL: Well, about everybody participated—they tried to get you to participate 10:00as much as they could.

BERGE: I don’t know about here but you know, a lot of places that I talked to people in the three C’s there was a lot of boxing. Do you remember going to a boxing match?

HALL: They had some. Some of the boys did box. I never did participate.

BERGE: You knew better. (laughs) HALL: I knew better. (also laughs) It was too rough for me.

BERGE: Yeah, but I mean they did have that kind of stuff.

HALL: Yeah. they did.

BERGE: Where—you went in thirty-five or thirty-six, something like that?

HALL: Yes.

BERGE: And then you went to California. That Tulelake, that was almost in Oregon wasn’t it?

HALL: Yes, it was. We went into Klamath Falls for our recreation.

BERGE: Yeah. That was the closest town probably, I guess, wasn’t it?

HALL: Yes, I don’t know how far it was but probably twenty-five miles or something like that.

BERGE: Now, ok. Now was that the last place you were in or did you go somewhere else?

HALL: We left there and went to Orland California the last place 11:00where I was discharged from.

BERGE: I saw a picture of you in one of those year books, or a manual or something like that. I think that was what it was and your picture was in one of them; or pointed out by different people.

HALL: Could be. I was thinking maybe they were referring probably to the movie Back to Japan.

BERGE: No, no they had a—I saw it today—they had a manual or yearbooks or something—and there were pictures in there. Yeah. Well anyway let me just ask you some other things now. How long did you stay at Orland, do you remember?

HALL: I don’t—I can’t remember exactly but I stayed there until they were disbanding the CCC. That’s before the start of the war.

BERGE: Yeah. What were you all doing in Orland?

HALL: We were working on irrigation canals. 12:00BERGE: Yeah. Somebody told me about that. They said that—let me ask you—do you remember this, they said they were fixing up places for people who were coming there to live; that had land given to them and that sort of thing, is that right?

HALL: I yes, that was true. Some of the people—in fact I ran into some people that were from my home town that were homesteading out there. That was rather unusual.

BERGE: Huh. And they homesteaded on the irrigated land I guess.

HALL: People that… BERGE: Have you ever seen that land since?

HALL: Ah, after I got out of the three C’s, I went back out there and that is where I was inducted into the army.

BERGE: Oh. ( ) HALL: Huh-huh. A friend of mine—I worked on a farm with a friend of mine that I knew, for a while before I went into the army.

BERGE: Huh. So you went in the service from Orland.

HALL: I went in 13:00the service yes, from California.

BERGE: Huh. What year did you go in the service?

HALL: About 1940. I think it was October 1940.

BERGE: Huh-huh. What did you go in the army?

HALL: I went in the army, yes.

BERGE: Why?

HALL: Well, I had already got a call to go in the army and they… BERGE: You got caught in the peace-time draft… HALL: I guess you would call it that. (laughs) BERGE: Yeah, they had started that draft before the war. I guess that is what you are talking about. But you enlisted though?

HALL: Right.

BERGE: All right when you went in the army where did you go?

HALL: Huh, Presidio, San Francisco.

BERGE: How long did you stay there?

HALL: I stayed there from—let’s see October… BERGE: That’s a long time for you to remember now.

HALL: A long time ago yes. 14:00I think I went in, in October, about the last of October and left from there to go to the Philippines in November.

BERGE: So you didn’t get a lot of training then did you?

HALL: No, I didn’t. (laughter) BERGE: Where did you go in the Philippines?

HALL: Huh, I was in Manila, is where we landed in Manila and that is where I was when the war broke out.

BERGE: Ok. You weren’t on Corregidor then, you were on the mainland?

HALL: No, I was on the mainland.

BERGE: I guess, say the Philippines not mainland, you were on the main island, you weren’t on Corregidor.

HALL: No, I wasn’t.

BERGE: Ok, when the war started—do you remember where you were that day, the day the war started?

HALL: Hum-hum.

BERGE: What were you doing? When you first heard of the war what were you doing?

HALL: Well, we were back in a small little woods behind the hospital. Yes, I remember very clearly when they bombed.

BERGE: What were you doing. Do you remember 15:00what you were doing back there?

HALL: We were field bivouac I imagine. They just took us back there so we wouldn’t be concentrated too much.

BERGE: Was this on the seventh? Was this on Sunday or was this the next day?

When they bombed, do you remember? Was it December seventh or was it the next day when they bombed in—had the war already started? Pearl Harbor had already happened I guess?

HALL: Yes, Pearl Harbor, it was bombed on the seventh and I think we were bombed on the eighth.

BERGE: Yeah, so it was the next day, that is what I was wondering. I know I was talking to a man from over in McCreary County one time who was in Hawaii on December seventh and they didn’t even—the group he was with they didn’t even know what it was when it first started you know—they—I think it was Seabees or something like that and they were building something. So you were bivouacked out in Hawaii—I mean in the Philippines when it happened.

HALL: Yes.

BERGE: How long from the time that the war started 16:00before you were a captured?

HALL: It started in December and I think we were captured in about May or June.

BERGE: Hum-hum. Where were you when you were captured?

HALL: Well, I was on Bataan at that time because we had been pushed all the way back to… BERGE: Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember very well the day you were captured?

HALL: I don’t remember the day. I don’t even know what day it was.

BERGE: No, I mean can you recall when you were captured. You recall the event?

HALL: Oh, yes.

BERGE: What were you doing?

HALL: Well, we were very disorganized and we were just milling around… BERGE: You knew it was inevitable and you were waiting for it, I guess.

HALL: Oh, yes. In fact we had already been told that… BERGE: It was over.

HALL: Well, a lot of people like to say 17:00that they said… BERGE: Do you mind talking about this?

HALL: No, they said it—they say that—some people say that it reminds them of themselves. I don’t know who said it, but it was pretty well true. You were on your own.

BERGE: When you were on that march from Bataan did you meet any of the people from Corregidor?

HALL: At that time they hadn’t captured Corregidor, when they captured us.

BERGE: It was after that that Corregidor fell.

HALL: Yes, Corregidor fell later on. I don’t know how long.

BERGE: How long did that march last to you?

HALL: How long was the Bataan Death March, as they call it?

BERGE: Yes. How long were you on it?

HALL: Ah, probably a week or ten days. It was approximately sixty miles from there 18:00and they couldn’t—most of the men, the boys couldn’t--if you want to call them men—we were mostly boys then—they couldn’t make the trip without walking away and stopping and a lot of them did fall out.

BERGE: Hum-hum. Were you in pretty good shape?

HALL: Well, no and I don’t think anyone else was, we were pretty well… BERGE: No, but I mean could you make the walk ok? That is what I meant.

HALL: I made the walk ok.

BERGE: Probably some of the smaller people like you did better that the bigger people don’t you think?

HALL: Well, in that prison camp I found that it takes a lot more food for bigger people, big men, than it does for smaller people. But even at that when we were recaptured I only weighed ninety pounds with all my clothes on.

BERGE: Where was your camp? Where were you in prison?

HALL: Well, I was in Camp O’Donnell for one.

BERGE: Where was that? 19:00HALL: That was in the northern part of the Philippines and then we were moved to ( ), there were some other camps in there that we went to, but we didn’t stay very long. They seemed to be moving us in segments north so that… BERGE: But you were always in the Philippines the whole time?

HALL: Yes.

BERGE: Now some people they took places but you were never one that was taken, you were always on the island.

HALL: I stayed on the island, yes.

BERGE: When were you liberated?

HALL: Actually I don’t remember. The date I don’t remember.

BERGE: No, but approximately then. How long were you in the camp do you remember?

HALL: I was there about—I was in there thirty-two months.

BERGE: Hum-hum. Did you meet any other people from Kentucky in the prison camp?

HALL: Yes, I did. Incidentally a boy by the name of Combs.

BERGE: From where? 20:00HALL: Well, he was from the Fifth he was from Harlan County. His sister married Brit Brown from Jellico. After we came back—after we were liberated he came back to Jellico and I met him there.

BERGE: Huh. And you remembered him from… HALL: Yeah.

BERGE: That’s something.

HALL: ‘Cause we used to sit and talk an awfully lot in the camp.

BERGE: Did you meet any of that bunch from Harrodsburg? There was a bunch from Harrodsburg that were in that Bataan March. You know there was a whole National Guard group that were there together on that march.

HALL: No, I didn’t.

BERGE: That is kind of interesting because it is almost somebody from the same town, you know.

HALL: Yeah, but I don’t know most of them, I mean. We had so many others—survival was the..

BERGE: Yeah, I know. What kind of—this 21:00isn’t about the CCC, but I don’t know—it is still very interesting to me. What was your—how did you occupy your time in the camp?

HALL: The way I did was try to conserve my energy as much as I could. Just rest whenever I could, you know. And a lot of the people, it seemed to me that they were nervous. I guess one thing that was to my advantage was that I had started from Luzon and went all the way up to—where was the place Baguio where they had that earthquake the other day? And I knew the island pretty well, so when we fell back and went back up I remembered the places. So 22:00I knew—I knew that there was no use in trying to get out of the camp because I knew… BERGE: There was no place to go.

HALL: Well, yeah, I knew it was about three thousand miles to Hawaii and I didn’t swim so well.

BERGE: Yeah. I know that my Uncle who was a prisoner, he spent all his time thinking up recipes. That was what he did, he made up a cookbook.

HALL: Some of the people there, did too. We were always hungry though.

BERGE: Yeah, but he just made up recipes. Fixed some of them when he came back.

It was an interesting kind of an phenomenon. When you got released from the prison camp, do you remember how much pay you had coming?

HALL: No I don’t. They gave us a partial pay.

BERGE: Oh, they did?

HALL: Huh-huh.

BERGE: And then you got the rest of it when you got home?

HALL: Later on yes. 23:00BERGE: When you got back to the states, did they send you somewhere to recuperate and… HALL: Yes, they did. In fact, well, there was five hundred and ten or eleven of us. I think one of the boys got killed when we got liberated. They kept us—most of us they kept in the hospital because we were really too… BERGE: Malnourished and… HALL: Well, at ninety pounds you know… BERGE: Sure, sure… HALL: Because I can remember we had a kitchen you could get anything you wanted to eat anytime you wanted, but we couldn’t eat.

BERGE: Yeah, yeah. It would probably have been bad for you too.

HALL: Well… BERGE: Gorge yourself… HALL: I remember, you couldn’t eat very much—your stomach wouldn’t. I can remember taking an ice cream sandwich and I could eat a few bites off of it and it would just come back up in my mouth. I don’t know why. You could 24:00eat very little at a time you know. Well, we were in bad shape there is no doubt about it.

BERGE: Did you get so you could understand Japanese?

HALL: (laughs) Not really, no. I—the count off, you know—one, two, three, four—that is about all I knew. I wasn’t interested in… BERGE: Learning anything about it.

HALL: Well, I tried to stay away from them because some of them were kind of mean.

BERGE: Oh, sure. And if they got to know you it was worse for you. Sometimes it is best to be incognito, you know, be… HALL: I think so, yes.

BERGE: Well, you have seen them do mean things to people and things like that. Well if you don’t mind I would like to go back and talk about the CCC stuff.

HALL: All right.

BERGE: When you were in the CCC what did they do about the health things, hospitals, doctors, things like this. 25:00Did you have pretty good medical care?

HALL: They had doctors and dentists and we had regular examinations. I think that if you got to—even at Cumberland Falls—if you got sick or you had to be hospitalized, I believe they took you to Corbin to the hospital.

BERGE: In other words they didn’t try have a hospital up there.

HALL: No they had first aid and just micro-manage things.

BERGE: Do you ever remember anything like entertainment at the CCC camp? Did they ever have anything special for you?

HALL: Not that I remember. Never did as far as I know.

BERGE: What did you think about the instruction you got? Did they teach you how to do things 26:00or did you just sort of on your own?

HALL: Well, they would try to teach you . But most of us were not experienced like in masonry that we had to do here. Like when we were in Illinois we would just build brush dams on the farm, where the farmers were. Most of it you could pick up yourself.

BERGE: How about this masonry stuff, did people get good at it?

HALL: Well, it looks like they did..

BERGE: They did some good stuff.

HALL: Did some good work here.

BERGE: Do you remember where they got the stones?

HALL: No, I really don’t.

BERGE: When you got here was it all cut up nice and square and everything?

HALL: It was more or less shaped but you had to reshape it.

BERGE: What did they do, haul it in and dump it here for you?

HALL: They brought it in, in trucks. I don’t remember really where it came from . It looks like it came from around here.

BERGE: Well it is beautiful stuff, 27:00you know. I ( ) some of that and haul it off to my house. Some really beautiful stones here.

HALL: Yes, some really beautiful stone here.

BERGE: Do you remember that thing out here that they lowered the stone down the side of the hill with? I heard people talk about that it was a kind of a gravity… HALL: Ah, no I don’t really recall that, although I did work on it—the walk from here on down to the river. Dupont Lodge to the river. We—I am not so sure, seemed to me like they kind of moved you around. I guess it was to give you more experience at different things.

BERGE: Lawrence, do you think that the CCC was a good experience for you?

HALL: Yes. Yes.

BERGE: In what ways? How do you think it helped you?

HALL: I think it helped me when I went in the army. Because it was just like a close order drill… BERGE: You already knew how to do it?

HALL: Yes. And it teaches you discipline. 28:00I think it was a big help, I really do.

BERGE: And it teaches you to get along with other too.

HALL: Right. With different types of people.

BERGE: You meet people from all over I guess. Do, by and large, do you think it was a nice bunch of young men you met or was there any trouble in the barracks or anything? Lot of fights and things?

HALL: Very little. They, as usual, you know would get in a shuffle or something but I don’t remember… BERGE: Probably because you worked so hard, too don’t you think? People who work hard don’t have a lot of time on their hands.

HALL: That’s right you didn’t have all the time on your hands.

BERGE: Do you think that there was a—you know you weren’t actually in the army very long before you were captured. Do you think that the CCC experience helped you in the prison camp?

HALL: I think—I think it taught me how to survive a little. And then growing 29:00up the way that I had to grow up taught me how to survive too.

BERGE: What kind of stuff did they feed you when you were in the prison camp?

HALL: Rice.

BERGE: Do you like rice now?

HALL: Not too well.

BERGE: (laughs) You better believe it. Was this the kind of stone, the stone in this wall that you had to work with?

HALL: Yes.

BERGE: (he has walked away from the mike, can’t hear him) HALL: It sure is.

BERGE: How do you like these meetings? Do you come back to them very often?

HALL: This is the second time I have been here. My wife and I lived in Ohio for thirty-five or six years.

BERGE: Where are you from Mrs. Hall?

Mrs. Hall: ( ) BERGE: Oh, you’re from there. So you knew each other from there.

HALL: We grew up together, yes.

BERGE: Quite a few of these fellas married girls from where they were stationed in the CCC, 30:00there was a lot of that. What have you done since you got out of the service? What have you done?

HALL: Well, I worked as a machinist for quite a while for General Electric in Ohio.

BERGE: You learned how to drive in traffic then didn’t you if you went with GE in Cincinnati?

HALL: Yeah. We just got back from there.

BERGE: Oh, you don’t live there any longer?

HALL: No, we live in Jellico, My daughter lives in Cincinnati. She had to have an operation and we went up and stayed for a while.

BERGE: You glad to be back in Jellico?

HALL: Well as they say there is no place like home.

BERGE: Yeah. Yeah. Kentucky boys like their home. You live in Tennessee though actually.

HALL: We are in Tennessee, yes.

BERGE: Well, I sure want to thank you for coming down here and giving me your time. It is a big help for us we try to talk to as many 31:00people about their experiences as possible. You think that probably the biggest advantage to you was learning--it wasn’t so much that you learned any skills--it was that you learned how to get along with people?

HALL: I think it teaches you quite a bit, yes.

BERGE: Do you think that they should have something like this later in the United States?

HALL: Well, let me put it like this when the war was starting they didn’t give the boys too much training, at least the bunch I was with. I could see some of them that I really felt sorry for—boys form the city couldn’t take care of themselves. They were really in bad shape.

BERGE: Well, while I am thinking about it, do you think that in recent years some of the problems that they have had in the United States, particularly the inner cities, that they should have started something 32:00like the CCC?

HALL: Yes, I do. I think it would have been a help.

BERGE: Yeah, I think so. You know it really has been the most successful thing that the United States government has ever done. It is too bad that they didn’t follow up on it.

HALL: I think that the problems with the younger people this day and time is that they don’t have anything to do.

BERGE: And you had something to do.

HALL: We had plenty to do.

BERGE: Did you ever—do you remember any of the—what did you all do—did you ever go down along the river, did you ever see any of the tourists that were here looking at the park? What was the relationship between you fellas in the CCC and the people that came to the park as tourists? Did you ever see any of them?

HALL: At that time there was not very much tourist traffic in here.

BERGE: You remember the stuff across the river don’t you? The hotel across the river?

HALL: Oh, the one over this way?

BERGE: Yeah.

HALL: Huh-huh. Yeah. Oh yeah.

BERGE: Well people didn’t come much then. 33:00In the depression there wasn’t a lot of money and people didn’t do anything.

HALL: I know the roads were awful bad. Very bad.

BERGE: I guess it was easier to get here from the west side, you know people down from Somerset and down through that way ( ) see the falls.

HALL: Even at that time they had a wooden bridge out there and it was not very steady at all. In fact, it was dangerous.

BERGE: The one across the river?

HALL: No the one that was across the… BERGE: Oh, across the gorge, yeah, yeah, yeah, That’s right they did have one didn’t they.

HALL: Did you see the picture of it?

BERGE: Yeah, I’d been afraid—you all went across it didn’t you?

HALL: Yeah, we would ride across there in the trucks… BERGE: Big old trucks.

HALL: Many the time that I looked out the window to see if we were going to fall or not, it was shaking. (laughs) BERGE: Yeah, they told me about that. Well I sure want to thank you. I want to ( ) before 34:00this runs out I want to ask you one more question. When you were working in the park here, did you think of it as being a real beautiful place and did you think that it was important work that you were doing?

HALL: I did. I thought so yes. I thought that we would benefit from it later on.

BERGE: Did you feel the same about the work you did in Illinois and the work you did in California?

HALL: Ah… BERGE: I know the work was different you were working on individual farms and stuff like that.

HALL: It was different, but I looked at it that we were helping other people.

BERGE: ( ) or erosion or what were you working on?

HALL: Erosion.

BERGE: And of course, irrigation was important in California. Did you all understand how important that was? Did they explain to you what you were doing and why you were doing 35:00 it?

HALL: It was plain to see you know without the irrigation, they could not do anything with the Sacramento Valley. I could see that. Nobody ever explained it to me, but I could understand… END OF SIDE ONE TAPE ONE BEGIN SIDE TWO TAPE ONE: BERGE: I wanted to ask you that one question about, you know how you were at all confident about the work you were doing out there and why you were doing it and did they explain who was going to come live there?

HALL: In California?

BERGE: Huh-huh.

HALL: No, they didn’t. I knew that 36:00a lot of people were homesteading, ‘cause… BERGE: Were they already homesteading when you all were working doing the irrigation?

HALL: Yes, there were several people there. The reason why I knew that was my Uncle, his wife’s father, or his father-in-law homesteaded in Oklahoma. That was back before the three C’s were… BERGE: Yeah so you knew about how the project worked and everything.

HALL: Ah, yes, yes.

BERGE: did you ever go back to that Valley later, years later to see what it looked like?

HALL: Like I said when I left, when I got out of the three C’s I came back to Jellico, stayed for a while and then went back to the Valley.

BERGE: How much later was that?

HALL: (sighs) Not very long.

BERGE: A year?

HALL: About five years I guess.

BERGE: Well, could you—what 37:00was it you went back—after the war?

HALL: No, it was before I went in, before I went in the army.

BERGE: Ok. Well could you already see the effects of your irrigation or was it too soon?

HALL: You could see the effects of it, you could actually tell the benefits that the people were deriving from it. It was… BERGE: Where did that water come from do you know?

HALL: Ah, they had a dam back on the mountain that caught their snow melt off and I guess run off when they had rain too.

BERGE: Is that pretty country up there around Tulelake?

HALL: Where I am talking about, that was in Orland California.

BERGE: No, I mean later, or earlier where you were before. Was that pretty county up there?

HALL: It was similar to these mountains here. In Tulelake as I understand it, they had an earthquake, ah an earthquake or a volcano explosion, more than likely 38:00it was a volcano explosion as they had several caves there. It was similar to the hills here. It was higher altitude.

BERGE: But different vegetation though wasn’t it?

HALL: No, you don’t have the vegetation like we have here. The trees were much smaller because of the altitude, I imagine.

BERGE: Hum-hum. Did you ever think of going back to live in that part of the country?

HALL: I don’t think I would like to live in Tulelake, because it will frost there in July.

BERGE: (laughs) Yeah, it is cold.

HALL: That is too cold to me.

BERGE: How about down closer to the Valley, did you like that country?

HALL: In Orland? It was nice, it was really nice there. It gets awful hot in the summertime.

BERGE: Yeah, you never really thought about it.

HALL: Not really no. Since I’ve left they have built a dam across the Sacramento River, now 39:00it is different.

BERGE: Have you ever gone to any reunions with people in the Death March?

HALL: No, I haven’t.

BERGE: They have them all the time.

HALL: Most of them are so far away now and I am not as good a traveler as I used to be.

BERGE: Huh-huh. Would it interest you to go to one?

HALL: It would probably be interesting, yes.

BERGE: You were one of the young ones weren’t you?

HALL: Well, I don’t know if you would call it young or not; I will be seventy-two in March or February.

BERGE: Yeah, but you were one of the young ones though in that March?

There weren’t an awful lot of them younger than you were there?

HALL: No, there were not very many younger.

BERGE: No. You were one of the young ones. Did they have the officers walk just like they did you all?

HALL: All that I saw they did, yes.

BERGE: Bet they had a hard time didn’t they some of them?

HALL: Yes, they did. They 40:00sure did.

BERGE: I want to ask you some questions and if you don’t want to answer them just tell me not to ask them because they may bother you. Actually movies you know men falling out of march and being beaten and stuff like that. Did that kind of stuff happen?

HALL: Yes. (softly, with great emotion) BERGE: Well, I sure want to thank you and it is really helpful for us to talk with you about all this.

END OF SIDE TWO TAPE ONE END OF INTERVIEW.