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Shurtz: It is June 10th, around three o’clock. My name is Clinton Shurtz and I am interviewing John L. Jones in…Fulton, Kentucky at your, your son’s is ( ) now?

Jones: Oh yes.

Shurtz: It’s okay. Doctor, Doctor John, John Jones…John tell us a little about yourself and, and first where you grew up at, and, then you can move in into your, your World War II days.

Jones: Well, I was born in Dresden, Tennessee. My family, my father moved his practice to, to Fulton in 1929, and we’ve been in Fulton every since, except when I was in, in the army and in college. And I practiced dentistry and took over my father’s practice, and…now my son, who is in there working, took over 1:00my practice, and I have been retired for the last ten—ten years, I guess, semi retired anyway. But…Alan has taken over and I, that was all written up in the p…at the hometown paper the other day, a hundred years of Jones’s practicing dentistry. My father graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1919—no, nineteen and nine, and he practiced until—by himself—until I got out of school in, in…1944, I believe, and…then I stayed with him until he died and I was here in, up until about ten years ago and I turned it over to Alan then. It used to be upstairs, we moved downstairs. That’s about the fastest summary of it I can give. I spent, right after I got out of the, got of school, 2:00in 1944…we went right, we were in the army when we graduated, and went on into active duty in, in the army dental corps. Half of the class was in the den…navy dental corps, and I don’t know how they divided it all up but anyway, we were in the army dental corps. I s…was at Camp Atterbury and Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, stopped off at Camp Beale, California, for some instructions of how to disembark from a ship [Chuckling], and just about the time we got through with all of that, somebody said ( ) turn on your radio, I mean the radio out there in the field. He says the Japanese have dropped a big bomb over there or rather they dropped a big bomb on the Japanese. And we got on into the barracks 3:00in time to hear Truman come on and say the bomb that…it was the energy of the universe, and…I said, “well they probably won’t need us now, we can go back home.” I was gone for sixteen months [Laughter – Shurtz and Brock]. We got on the boat about three days later and were gone. That was the last time I was at, in, in, that was from there on I was in uniform until I got back home. I met my wife over there. And she was in the American Red Cross and right soon after we got there. An old buddy of mine who was in the same class, I don’t know how he managed it, but he, he got there a, ahead of us and he knew I was coming over there, and…so when I, when I got there, I got assigned to this 29th Engineers 4:00as a engineering battalion. He knew I was there and what outfit I was with and he called me up. I said, “who, who knows that I am here?” [Chuckling] But it was John, John (Foust?) and…he said, “well, we’re going to the officer’s club tonight.” He said, “I, I’ve got some friends that are going to go with us.” And so we all met over to the officer’s club and Kathy was among the group that met us there…that’s John (Foust?) right there, he was… Shurtz: Which one of them?

Jones: Right there. He is the one who made really introduced me to my wife.

Shurtz: Uh-huh. Oh, okay.

Brock: All of ‘em are dentists.

Jones: Every one of them.

Brock: All ( ).

Jones: Yeah. I, I got it written down here on this piece of paper. I was always having trouble remembering (Foust?) [Chuckling], but…this is me with the cigar sticking in my face. We are all first lieutenants 5:00there and…I was not promoted until, oh I don’t know, it was about six months before I left, and this right here is Cary Middlecroft the golfer? Did you ever know him?

Brock: Mm-mm.

Jones: And he was in that class and this is…Harold Taylor from down in Mississippi, (Paper shuffling sound) in the middle of, in the middle here. Oh, that’s, that (Foust?), this is Taylor, Harold Taylor. Taylor and…(Foust?) were from Mississippi, Cary Middlecroft is from Fulton—I mean from Memphis, and I was from here in Fulton. As I get them all, Harold Taylor, he is down right close to Jackson, Mississippi, and…( ) over, that’s (Condor Shannon?) he is over here at Dresden, Tennessee.

Brock: That’s the one I was going to ask you about.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: Is Shannon, Dresden, is the town that he was brought up so you didn’t know him though when you lived there. You were seven years old. 6:00Jones: Oh, yeah, I knew him.

Brock: You knew him?

Jones: He was, he is quite a bit older than I was in…I, I knew him. I, he used to wear the fanciest sweaters around there and here I was a little kid twelve-thirteen years old.

Brock: You liked his sweaters.

Jones: Oh, I liked his sweaters.

Brock: Yeah.

Jones: Well he was a, he was a ladies’ man and they called him Pappy because he was a good seven or eight years older [Laughing] than ( )?

Brock: An older man, yeah.

Jones: And…Connor…that’s Connor Shannon, this is Cary Middlecroft, he was a, the biggest winner (every?) golf professionals.

Brock: Do you remember Middlecroft?

Shurtz: No, I don’t.

Brock: No. well he, this guy was on ( )… Jones: If you ever mention that around in Memphis, they tell you right away who Cary Middlecroft was.

Brock: Fifty years—well, forty years ago, he was a leading golfer… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …yeah, yeah.

Jones: I never played with him. I went down to see him play one day…(Clears throat) these other boys, Taylor is from down close to…Jackson, 7:00Mississippi, down below Jackson, and this boy, I don’t know where he is down in Mississippi somewhere or other. He, he got into the…as a sideline got into nursing home business, and all these guys did very well.

Brock: You were on Luzon?

Jones: Lu…oh now, yeah on the island Luzon.

Brock: Yeah, yeah.

Jones: Mm-mm.

Brock: Tell him about what, what you did other than pull teeth over there and…filled them and what ( )… Jones: Well, that was all the, all my duty I had was to…do dentistry.

Brock: Yeah.

Jones: I shared a space there with a, with the battalion physician, and we…right there on the street they just kind of divided it all, and I was…a dental physician and I was on the right side of the street and across the street where the businesses, the, the buildings that housed the printing presses 8:00and then these…people who gradua…a lot of graduates, civil engineers in that outfit, it was a pretty dog gone well educated group and they went out and made surveys and so on. They got all this information together and brought it back to the company, and these reproduction companies would take this information and finally would come on down to where maps of the islands, not only Luzon, but a lot of other places around there. They brought all that in. They had some pretty sophisticated equipment to…way ahead of the…a lot of stuff that you’d find in the United States at that particular time. But…when the instrument of surrender was signed in Tokyo on the deck of the…what was that, the USS…oh, I’ll think of it in a minute, but anyway, 9:00when they signed that, all of the participants there wanted a copy of that, that…instrument of surrender, and somebody volunteered the information, says, well the only place they could find—now Xerox equipment was not even invented at that time—said, they knew that it could be d…reproduced by the 29th engineers. So they brought it down there, flew it down there and this command car pulled up out in front, two people got out. The best I remember one was a lieutenant colonel and the other was a major, and the major had a briefcase handcuffed to his [Chuckling] wrist there, and they came out, went on in the building, and now the, those people knew they were coming, and they cleared everybody else out and they said “yeah, we, we can handle that.” So turned it over to…a fellow from Gulfport, Mississippi, and he—I 10:00was in the barracks with him at that particular time—and he was in charge of that machine and his family ran a printing company down there, I bet they still do. Anyway, he took that and they told him what they wanted, they said they wanted so many copies made (Phone ringing sound - once) that many, no more, no less. So he got it all fixed up and—you got the fellow disconnected there.

Brock: We want to be able to keep track.

Jones: Yeah. So…they, they turned the machines on and that, they ran them all out, and…they were all stirring around over there and so on like that, and they didn’t want anybody inside other than the authorized people and when it was all over, they s…the colonel said, “is that it? Did you got them all?” said, “yeah, you can count them.” He gave us, they counted them out there. Said, “all right, bundle them up,” put them back in the briefcase and handcuffed them back on to the major 11:00and a lot of saluting and hill clicking there together at the door, and that, they got into this command car which was an old four-door Dodge sedan [Chuckling] and they went on over the hill, and (Lowry?) who was who was in charge, Lieutenant (Lowry?) who was in charge of that machine sat there and saluted and as soon as they cleared the hill over there, he went back and pushed the button and he ran off that machine [Chuckling] enough copies for everybody in the battalion to have one and I got one of those [Laughter – all]. And we always thought that was funny, and he had all those things and was going around passing them out just like somebody having a sale out here. But…I stayed there, at the, that outfit for a long time, and…I have a copy of that, that instrument of surrender out there at home. I thought, I thought about it and brought it down here, and I might still be looking for it 12:00I got it out there but I don’t know where it is, but…we’ve carried that around in different things, they ( ) when they had that, what’s it worth thing out here at the, at the (Poundtalk?) what’s it worth it, lot of antiques and so on. I took it down there and they were completely baffled. They didn’t know what to, how to gauge the value of that, because after all that was, was, there was ( ) enough for a whole battalion [Chuckling] out there somewhere. But…it was very interesting, and I got my copy and the only time I’ve ever seen another copy of that since then, I was at the, ‘The Pink Palace’ down in Memphis, and I was walking through there waiting for the rest of the family and walked to there was this glass case and there was a instrument of surrender and I looked at it and to where it was copied by the 29th engineers. I asked this little girl who was kind of an attendant setting there, I said, “where did you get this?” 13:00“I don’t know, somebody brought it in.” Well I knew from out there, being a b…a battalion dentist, and everybody came from the address and everything, there was a (Wooden Key?), and he came through there he was from Memphis… Brock: Yeah.

Jones: …and he probably got his copy and that was probably it in that. Now that’s the only one I’ve seen other than mine. I stayed with the, stayed with the army for, until I was then discharged in, well I think, I forgot to put the date it was, anyway, Kathy and I got married out there in ’46, and…we came on back home. I was afraid sh…she…might, I might be shipped out before she was, though I made arrangements with some connections (with?) people like (Foust?) and [Chuckling] others around to get… 14:00Brock: So she came in front of you.

Jones: Yeah, she got, she was in the states before I had gotten back. But…she came on in and…before she even got here, I got orders to leave, and she went…she went to school at the University of Michigan and she was coming back and she routed herself through Ann Arbor Michigan to visit old friends and then to, on to her home in New York, and…I finally caught up with her in Ann Arbor, and she didn’t know I got—there is no way I could contact her, and we caught up, we got together at…in Chicago, and that’s where I was discharged in Chicago, Fort Sheridan, and, did you go there too? And we were there, we were there in Thanksgiving Holidays. Now they closed down their operation 15:00at, on the Thanksgiving holidays and we could take off and go anywhere we wanted to. So I got on the telephone and I was able to catch up, catch with Kathy at Ann Arbor and she came back to Chicago. Do you remember (Robert Colen?), Peggy (Colen?)…well he was in high school here (Clears throat), and ( ) close friend and all like that, and I knew that he’d been discharged for some time, he was in the air force, and he was in Chicago, and I thought well, I can go, no harm done, and I got my (dirk?) and telephone directory and [Chuckling] went down to Robert (Colen?) and I called him up and Bob answered the phone, and we had a homecoming up in…in Chicago (Clears throat). He was right out of the air force and some other people that he knew and I knew distantly, and so on like that, and Kathy, all [Chuckling] got together 16:00and had a big ball up there. And I k…I think I stayed another couple of days d…I was able to come on home. I got on the Panama Limited, or something and other, and came on back here and that thing was full of GIs. They were, I don’t know whether they were going to another assignment or where they were but they waited in there on that, on that train. Now Kathy had gone on to, to Naples, New York, and I was coming here, and my parents were over at the station, they were waiting for me to get off the train, and I hadn’t seen them for two and a half years, and so ended the war [Laughing]. But…I, the army dental corps, the navy dental corps either for that matter, was undoubtedly the safest place you could be. Nobody shot the army dentist [Chuckling]. Might have wanted to bite him or something or rather, but, 17:00but…it was a good safe assignment and you were back from all of the hostilities, and I remember reading one story in the old ‘True’ magazine where an army dentist got drafted before he could sign up, he got drafted in his hometown, he was single and…unattached to anything at that time, and his draft board found out that he was, he complied with all his degree and they drafted him into the army, right there his hometown despite the fact he would—had a degree in dentistry, and went on into basic training went through all of this stuff and everything, was shipped out into, out in the islands out there somewhere or other and fight in combat, the whole works. And sooner or later how those things happen, somebody found out that 18:00he was a dentist and that he should have been, instead of out there behind a machinegun, in the dental corps. So they pulled him back and they sent him over to…was it Fort Sheridan, up to that, out on the f…in, out from Honolulu. I may not have that right, but anyway, there is an old fort out there and brought him back there and he stayed at the dental corps for a while and he got attached to… Brock: Is that Hickman, Fort Hickman in, in Honolulu?

Jones: Huh, yeah Hickam Field I think he s…he said (Strident telephone ringing sound) Brock: Excuse me.

Jones: Yeah. But…he…the outfit that he was in dentistry, his company was attached to a hospital and that hospital was shipped overseas and finally he wound up on one of these islands. Somebody will answer that [Chuckling] 19:00( ). One of these islands, and…they set up, set up a field hospital, and…in this field hospital came that fellow who was a dentist, and (Phone ring replaced by another ringing) they were being (Phone ring ceases) overrun by a Japanese force and he was fight—somebody out there was fighting them off and ( ) why he was injured pretty severely and he just slumped over his machine gun. Well, this guy, the, the dentist got out and made his way over to that machinegun knowing his, what he had to do because of his experience that he had in the infantry before he got back in the dental corps, and he sat in with that machinegun and broke their charge. He…was up for the Medal of Honor, but then they found that (Clears throat) he—they got him, the Japanese finally got him and said how many bullet holes they found in him. 20:00But…they were going to give him posthumous Medal of Honor, but because he was in the medical department, they couldn’t do it. He was not supposed to be behind that gun. Now that’s, I remember that, it was in that old ‘True’ magazine, it was with something else.

Shurtz: Well, being in the dental corps, do you not go through any sort of basic training, or you just go straight to… Jones: Yeah, we did. We had the basic training in the Carlisle Barracks (Clears throat). They taught us how to salute, and how to keep the barracks clean and the whole bunch of that basic stuff that the army liked to do, how you got to keep your shoes shined and, and wear your insignia right, and, and… Brock: Military Courtesy.

Jones: …salute, yeah, military courtesy, there is a whole lot of that. And…we went on, and, and from there to be assigned to some outfit, just like this fellow was. He was assigned to some field hospital that 21:00was attached to some…battalion (supporting the?) (Loud phone ringing sound - once) infantry battalion. But I had it, really I had it pretty easy, but I, there, all these fellows did too. I don’t—out of that group, besides from, that one right there, I don’t know if any of the rest of those ever got overseas or not. If they did, I don’t know it.

Brock: He won’t tell you about his family unless you ask him.

Shurtz: So, tell me about your family.

Jones: My family?

Shurtz: Yeah.

Jones: Well I…got a bunch of them.

Shurtz: You’re doing fine.

Jones: Five kids, and four boys, four boys and a girl. One of them, one of the boys is a, is a dentist, the one right in there, right now at work. The other one 22:00is…down in…South America. He took one of his nephews down there with him, and they’re, they’re shooting doves, whatever, shooting doves and…and, and Dick is doing some…d…d…medical…not medical work, he is doing, working for his company down there, they, they build fireproof filing cabinets and all this sort of thing up here in Louisville, and he was down there p…tending to business, and he took Shelby with him, and Shelby has been having a ball, he says how many birds [Chuckling] he estimated he had killed. His younger brother is jealous as all get out because he, he wanted to go too ( ) but…they, they are having a ball, they will be back this weekend, and he is going to be at the Lions Club, he don’t know it yet, but he is going to be [Chuckling] at the Lions Club, and…Chris 23:00is with FedEx down in, in Memphis. She…I expect is, one of these days to see one of these FedEx trucks barreling down the highway and see Chris driving. But she says she didn’t think so. She’s been with FedEx s…this, this caught me by surprise, she said she got an award, a watch written on the backside of it ‘Chris Jones for thirty years of service.’ I said, “Chris, that can’t be right, because you are not thirty years old yet.” [Laughter – Shurtz and Brock]. But she said, “yes I am!” Well, the other—one of the other brothers, the twin is a stock broker up at, at…Lexington, and Dick is the one that’s working over trying to sell 24:00the, the fire proof filing cabinets and Steve is in New York…Wall Street Journal and, did I leave out anybody? Chris, I guess that’s just about it.

Shurtz: So I guess, aside from meeting the wife, is probably one of the most memorable experiences of, of being in the military, I, I would seem. Wha…besides that what, what, what where…what are the numeral—memorable experiences can you…talk about during this?

Jones: Well, we didn’t go, we didn’t go right into any s…tough situation, just one thing they were doing out there. I was able to wa…watch a little of it. They were having the war trials out there, criminal war trials, and I have a copy of a letter that this General (Hamon?) wrote to his legal advisers…of 25:00course he was convicted and shot before a firing squad. But…I saw that over Yum…Yamashita, of course they found…I wasn’t over there but they had a trial, but found him guilty and they hanged him out there out of Manila there somewhere or other. MacArthur said that he wanted him to cr…declare Manila an open town. MacArthur had declared it an open town to keep them from destroying the place, and they didn’t do it, they came plowing right on in and it, the town was a wreck and he pu…tried to get the Japanese to declare it an open town again and they wouldn’t have to fight their way through it, but he wouldn’t do it, and he said that he would hold Yamashita—some people called him Yamashita—Yamashita, they hold him responsible for that 26:00and they’ve, they convicted him and hanged him, and they had this letter written there that was passed around where his family had written a letter that they preferred that he would be shot rather than hanged because he was in the military. Hanging was for the common folks, not military. Old MacArthur, one thing that we did do, they, they had their formal ceremony out there where the Philippine Islands was given its independence, and…we were, my wife and I went over the front steps of the army-navy club where we could see the festivities over there.

Brock: The Philippines, up until that time was a protectorate… Jones: Of the United States… Brock: …(military?) Jones: Uh-huh. And…we sat there and watched it, MacArthur said… “hang your ( ) colors, let no one take them down,” and all this that and the other, and 27:00that’s when he said, “No.” He said “I shall fade away, old soldiers never die,” but he said that as this congress, didn’t he?

Brock: One of the biggest… Jones: Old soldiers… Brock: …One of the biggest atrocities that was experienced during World War II he was stationed close by in Luzon, this is Corregidor… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …this is…The Death March, and Americans I, I doubt if, if they suffered any more or any where, that magnitude… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …of people. And he, he was, he was stationed near, near there, yeah. MacArthur had a…that’s when he said now we can ( ).

Jones: I shall return.

Brock: Yeah.

Jones: Well he did. And this fellow that had the, that…death march, they shot him.

Brock: Yeah.

Jones: They should have bayoneted him because that’s what they were doing, anybody dropped along back along that line and the other, 28:00they bayoneted them to save ammunition. But they had all sorts of atrocities out there and, but the Filipino People were very nice people, they, GI Joe with all this, that, and the other and (Clears throat) we stayed at an apartment, one little apartment is just a big house over there, in, in Manila right after we got married, and I had my own jeep by ( ) have one assigned to me, and I drove it around all over. There from there on it was, the Hukbalahaps was the only ones you had to worry about. They, they catch you up in that jeep, they might try to take it away from you, that’s the reason why I was carrying that forty-five [Chuckling], and, but we, we went everywhere. There is another place out there, Baguio, that they used to send a lot of troops up there 29:00when they were recovering from in the hospital down (the station?)… Brock: R. and R.

Jones: Yeah, R. and R.

Brock: Yeah.

Jones: Rest and Recuperation.

Brock: Yeah.

Jones: Yeah we, we went up there for a few days. It’s a matter of fact, I got notified when I was up there that they were separating dentists, two-year dentists, so I came on back to the 29th engineers and, and there were my orders to report to some place down there where they were disembarking and the, the next day I was on the boat. Of course Kathy was already back in the states, but…I shipped out the next morning. By the time I’d go and get back and packed a few things together, and here I went. That old boy that was my assistant there in that, in that dental clinic, he went down and [Chuckling] got, got the jeep, loaded it up and (being?) here we went.

Brock: Yeah, you all 30:00were allowed to fraternize with the Filipinos.

Jones: Oh yeah, yeah.

Brock: We, we, we couldn’t. The Okinawans were Japanese now, they, they… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …they were Japanese and that, the Filipinos have always been our allies.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: They, they, they, they fought real well, didn’t they.

Jones: Oh yes, yeah, yeah the Japanese really were, treated them like dirt, that… Brock: (Whispers) I should ( ).

Shurtz: Oh you, you can go (right?)… Brock: Is that all right?

Shurtz: Yeah, you… Brock: This, this guy is a…well he’s anchored the town for [Chuckling] many years. Now, I didn’t, we hated to see him…leave but it was for the benefit of him and Miss Kathy to go…to Lexington but, as I understand, 31:00he is ready to come back.

Jones: Oh yes.

Brock: If, if she could be well, you’d be in business, but...

Jones: Yeah. I didn’t realize how many people you—that we were going to, that’s across town and somebody “oh when did you get back?” When I was at Walmart I couldn’t [Chuckling] couldn’t walk any distance at all, “what are you doing back here?” Brock: Yeah.

Jones: I walked in and saw (Marcelyn?)…standing there right there at the front door just like over at the bank.

Brock: Yeah.

Jones: And…spoke to her and walked over a few more feet and here was a girl worked out at the drugstore and, and all the way in and all the way back out again.

Shurtz: What do you mean, George, by, by anchoring the town?

Jones: I don’t know what he means by that [Chuckles – Shurtz, Brock and Jones].

Brock: He’s been, he has been active in civic work as…one of the, 32:00well, city farmers. He’s reared a family here and he’s backed the school, he’s been a Lions Club member for sixty-three years, he has been very active. He and ya—he and I last year sold tickets right and left.

Jones: Sure, sure.

Brock: Yeah, we, we…walked the town. Both of us are retired, we have time to spend together and do these things. But boy scouts…he has been a promoter of the fire department…he knows about the fire department. He can…so, he’s been active…boy scouts and girl scouts, because his, his daughter was very active and reached the height of a…first class scouting girls and that’s about as high as you can get in girl scout. But he’s gone on the jamborees with the boys and, and what have you. And, I just…I 33:00met him, his office was upstairs and our own office was… Jones: Across the hall.

Brock: …across the hall from me, and I’ll tell him, I’ve liked him ever since he came here, and that’s been, that was…about August of, that was about…October the twenty…( ) the twenty-third, 1961 is the first time I ever saw him, and…he was…my, my dentist and he says, tell me, I had wisdom teeth and he said to me, he said, “I’m going to send you up to…Paducah…to extract these.” And I says, “can’t you do it?” And he said, “Oh yeah, I can do it.” I said, “well, why not?” And he had a lady by the name of (Spate?) that was his assistant at that time, and then the two of them anchored me 34:00and they extracted those wisdom teeth, yeah. So, he is just…Clint is the kind of guy that you like, that was…he is a professional man but he is down to earth. He likes hunting, he, he’d shoot a gun right now at, at skeet and he just, we, we’ve spent some time goofing off together and I just, I liked him. I owe him a, a hamburger from [Chuckles – Jones], over at the Keg. I promised indirectly but we, we didn’t make contact. He’ll be here a little while… Jones: The Keg is closed up now, isn’t it.

Brock: Is it?

Jones: Is it?

Brock: Mm-mm.

Jones: Oh no, not the keg ( ), I was thinking… Brock: Yeah, ( ) that the, that the one out there, B. (Marcum?) is closed.

Jones: Oh, yeah.

Brock: B. (Marcum?) Jones: Yeah, that’s right.

Brock: Yeah, yeah.

Jones: We talked about the boys a while ago being first class, all my boys are eagle scouts. 35:00Brock: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the reason I say… Jones: Yeah, I had to get that in [Chuckling].

Brock: Good thing, yeah, yeah the…boys, any time that you read the newspapers it’s complementary. Those boys aren’t in trouble, they never have been in trouble, and the grandsons, like it. I mentioned that we put out flags for each veterans graves in about five or six cemeteries around. His two grandsons assisted us this past Memorial Day, which was the 25th of May, I put out the flags out there, yeah. It’s quite an ordeal to put six hundred and some flags in ( ) graves ( ).

Jones: I’ve wondered how many they’d brin…before we just put veterans but the ones that were dead out there, we put it out, yeah, I, I thought, I always thought… Brock: You helped us about three years ago… Jones: Oh yeah!

Brock: …two or three years ago.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …two years ago maybe, yeah.

Jones: Why I like to go out there, we’ve always had a lot of fun with all this. 36:00Brock: He belongs to the American Legion. He belongs to the Lions Club now even though he is in Lexington he says, “I want to continue.” He’s helped make Fulton the way it is, yeah. It’s been better hadn’t it?

Jones: Well, I, I guess so, I don’t know, I… Brock: I still enjoy it, I, I never looked back, I’ve never look back. Having moved here and…liked it well enough to comeback after being away for…in Huntsville, I told you about being in Huntsville, and…I got the offer and came back and I have…it’s been a good place to rear a family Doc.

Jones: Yeah, it sure has.

Brock: Yeah, yeah…yeah.

Jones: The school is not so big but what students get per, a lot of attention, and they pick graduates of Fulton High School have done very well.

Brock: Yours, yours competed at, at Vanderbilt, they competed at 37:00the University of Tennessee and the University of Kentucky, they competed favorably from a small school, mine did, mine didn’t. Again I don’t want to be boastful but, but Gigi and got the Sullivan Award at the University of Kentucky, the whole world just and that’s…the best award that…she made a, a B in calculus when she was a freshman, she made a mistake taking calculus [Chuckles – Jones] as a freshman. Other than that she made straight A’s, yeah, so.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: You say a little school…it’s unfortunate that they don’t have the exposure, but Fulton has produced some good students.

Jones: They really did.

Brock: His have done well, they have done well. He didn’t mention that Steve, there is a story that you didn’t tell him about the story that James (Butts?) pulled on his guys there, 38:00in Indonis…Indonesia, no, was it the China Wall, where was it that… Jones: Oh!

Brock: . . . where was it that Steve was Far East, Far East editor.

Jones: Yeah, he was at Hong Kong at that time… Brock: Hong Kong, yeah, Hong Kong.

Jones: …and…he, there, he was b…(Butts?) was with a, a group of people at one of those restaurants in, in Hong Kong, and (Butts?) told a waiter, because he had a telephone and he used Steve’s number and he called him, and Steve answered the phone. So he got on the phone (Clears throat) and…they talked along there did you, and… Brock: In the hearing of this group that he is with. They are all listening.

Jones: And he said they wanted to be at the program for the Lions Club next Friday, and he said, “well, I can handle it, I’ll be in Fulton 39:00then anyway.” So he went on, these guys thought Steve was pulling their leg some way or the other, how did they know how he had dinner all set up. And he said, “that’s Steve Jones and he is the editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, and he, he is going to be in Fulton Friday to be at a program out there.” He got a real kick out of that, because the other people were just, they just thought they didn’t want to laugh or cry or what, he could made connection with the Wall Street Journal.

Brock: Town east of Bowling Green, the name of London. You’ve heard of London.

Shurtz: Mm-mm.

Brock: One of these guys was from…out in the country, by the name of Stewart…that I, I know one of the guys that was with him, and his dad was in the coal business, and so he was, so he ( ) people that were fixed… 40:00Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …with money and all, and I think that maybe at the time, he had changed jobs and was over Blue Cross Blue Shield or something of that sort, but he was a friend of James (Butts?) from here, from this town, and…they didn’t know…that James was from, was from Fu…, or didn’t know that…Jones, Steve Jones was from Fulton, and he pulled a good one. I, I thought that was a great story. Yeah he could be in, he could be in Fulton Friday for to speak to the Lions Club.

Jones: I, I don’t know there’ll be much more about myself [Chuckling] of any importance.

Shurtz: What about…do you have anything to say about your, your wife’s duties…during the war?

Jones: She was with the American Red Cross and…she…did 41:00what all they did, they did, did a lot letter writing and everything like it and got aid and assistance to a lot of the patients who were there, a lot of POWs, and Filipinos and other nurses and wherever else, but they were beginning to thin the patients out, they weren’t taking in very many more at that time. But…yeah, she was, that’s what she did and really everything that the, the nurses did, but…she wasn’t supposed to.

Shurtz: But was she there and saw the after…the bombing of, the… Jones: Oh yeah, yeah she, she, she was only there a few days before I was.

Shurtz: Oh, okay.

Jones: You know, it’s a funny thing…I was telling you about the, the fellow that ha…that was…in the printing press over there that was pushing the button and ran off all the copies. 42:00He was from Gulfport, Mississippi and one weekend Kathy and I went down to…new a town Louisiana where her half sister lives at, in Louisiana and…we had never, Kathy had never been to New Orleans so she wanted to go. Well, we saw my sister and her family then had some days left there, we went on down to New Orleans (Clears throat) I got to thinking about that. This whole…boy that was a company commander that ran off all the copies of the instrument of surrender, was over at Gulfport. Well, Gulfport is just kind of a suburb there. So I went over there, and I went up to one store, one place there with a printing press and the man said, “I know who you’re talking about, he is up the road here.” I went on up the street, about a block and a half, and there was somebody’s printing press, and…I went in 43:00and…I asked a person and I said, “I’m looking for John (Lowry?) who was with the 29th Engineers, and these flip-flop doors opened up, “who said 29th Engineers?” I said, “I did.” Said, “Jones, what on earth are you doing here?” And we sat there and talked for thirty minutes-an hour, but he was busy and he came on out and met Kathy, he had met her before and saw the children, the older boys and we talked a few more minutes and he said, I better get on an hit the road. He said, “you ought to stop by that…children’s playground up here,” he says, “it’s just been opened up, you ought to stop by there, it’s on your way out.” Well the, I guess that’s a good way to let them run off some steam. So we went on out, we went on out and got out of the car, wasn’t anybody out there much, and Kathy had the twins and went that way and Steve 44:00went this other way, and I was kind of following along behind him. There’s a gal sitting on the bench, said, “is that (Kathleen Reisenberger?)?” I looked at her and I said yes, and your name is MacArthur.” And it was her name. Everybody remembered her name because no other MacArthur there [Chuckling] besides Douglas. And it was her, and I have thought so many times, what would be the odds of going down there and running into the only two people we knew in that part of the country, and find them both and see them and have a visit with them. I said that, that’s just… Brock: Without prior appointment.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: Yeah, yeah. Have you heard of the USO?

Shurtz: Yes.

Brock: USO, yeah the, the American Red Cross ladies was very similar to the organization other than the USO was pretty well entertainment service all together. But the American Red Cross 45:00were medical plus service.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: The American Red Cross tried to make the boys comfortable… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …and they’d even…run coffee lines and doughnut lines, and…fix a place for each and…and then I guess set arms…they could, became orthopedic surgeons in all of this… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …their expertise was real, real, real broad. They were protected.

Jones: Now this gal was a, was nurse.

Brock: Yeah, yeah.

Jones: MacArthur was a nurse… Brock: Yeah.

Jones: …but she and Kathy were in the same barracks. They had nurses and…Red Cross people in this, together.

Brock: A lot of them, a lot of them would be gone. Their degrees didn’t… Jones: Oh yeah… Brock: …they?

Jones: …she was just… Brock: Yeah, they just… Jones: …they’d get the first aid and, and… Brock: …their… Jones: …kind of extended it up, yeah, yeah.

Brock: Yeah. And they wouldn’t, they, 46:00they…kept nurses, USO people…the Red Cross nurses and the Red Cross employees other than nurses, they had to protect them.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: They, they pretty well compounded them, didn’t they… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …( ) they, they had guards pretty well over them… Jones: Oh yeah.

Brock: …the whole times, yeah. I guess some times you had to go around and pull strings to get to see Kathy, didn’t you?

Jones: No.

Brock: No? You… Jones: That was another one of those…deals that just happened so, because the hostilities were over at that particular time.

Brock: Yeah, yeah.

Jones: And this old boy, right here, came over there and he had a couple of other of his friends and two or three of these Red Cross nurses and there was a—I mean Red Cross personnel, wasn’t nurse—they all came over there and I think we pulled a great big table around and got acquainted and the rest is history 47:00[Chuckling] ( ).

Brock: It, it was, it was a so a little different. But…I, I guess they had to be more cautious… Jones: Oh yeah!

Brock: …say where the natives…were friendly and the Philippines, the natives the, the…the GI, it was a friend of theirs.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …whether on Okinawa and some of the other islands… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …and they worked… Jones: No.

Brock: …They worked, so they had to guard the ladies against…all of them… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …to avoid getting any of them… Jones: Oh we were… Brock: …someone said… Jones: …we had…we had several Filipinos was working in the dispensary, and…they did everything, from sweeping up the place, to helping the doctor do whatever he had to do. This guy, the doctor was named (Macmillan?), and he was from Omaha, Nebraska, and we were passing through 48:00Omaha going pheasant hunting, and ( ) by golly, I’m going to see if old Max is around here anywhere, and I found, found a name John (Macmillan?) in the phone book. I said, “by Golly.” So I dialed that number and I said—told him who I was. I said, “I’m looking for a Doctor John (Macmillan?).” He said, “well, I’m afraid I’m not the right one you’re looking for.” And…he tried to help me find the, where, whoever he was but it was the funniest thing to me I got to thinking about it. I said, that fellow’s voice sounded much like old Jip—John (Macmillan?) as he could possibly and I just wondered if that rascal was pulling my leg [Laughing] ( ) but this fellow suggested that I call…some dispensary out there somewhere and check on it, of course they know about him. I didn’t do it. It was late at night. 49:00We were anxious to get on with the shooting.

Brock: Clint, he’ll talk to you.

Shurtz: Yeah, people like doctors and dentists, did you, did you get any preferential treatment? Did you eat better, or anything like that, while on ( )?

Jones: Not necessarily.

Shurtz: No.

Jones: Commissioned officers always got a little bit better, I think, but…no, I don’t think that…certain (Loud phone ring), certainly dentists didn’t get any better deal. No.

Brock: You had a separate, separate dining… Jones: Oh yeah.

Brock: …area.

Jones: Yeah.

Brock: Now, probably the same chow, I don’t, I don’t know.

Jones: Yeah, I think so. I don’t remember any, anything special.

Brock: You notice the term for all your meals was ‘chow,’ yeah (Loud phone ringing sound).

Jones: Well you know, going over on that ship there is more separation of officers and enlisted men than anywhere else, that transport. They’ll catch it and then…but…I 50:00don’t know whether I said, I’d said this that as far as I was concerned that there wasn’t a whole lot of that…difference between enlisted men and (Loud phone ringing ceases)…commissioned officers.

Shurtz: And did you have any…recreation activities or anything? What did you do in there?

Jones: Yeah we’d, we went s…we went skiing one morning down on the, in…Manila Bay [Chuckling] that, we just did that one time [Laughing].

Brock: Had you done that before?

Jones: Lost my cap. No they, they said, this old boy had a, had all the equipment and I went down there with him, and he said you can try it, and I said, yeah I can ( ). But I fell in the water and that’s just like a big cesspool. I got out of that as fast as I could, 51:00and…the…when they were going into Manila, they were given instructions that…I don’t know who gave the instruction, maybe this was all something made a good story. But they said that there’s two places they wanted to tear up everything, but says, do not tear up this building, as it is at such and such a place, that is a presidential palace. So they left it alone. Do not tear up this building over here, that’s the brewery [Laughter – Shurtz, Brock, and Jones]. They, they left it alone, and everything was torn up all the way around but that brewery didn’t have a scratch on it. And they didn’t miss a day’s working, turning out the beer.

Shurtz: Now was, was beer supplied to, to the military?

Jones and Brock: No.

Jones: That ain’t right.

Brock: No. Coca-Cola, when, when they established a beachhead, say you are on Luzon, 52:00the next thing that came in was a refer and a coca-cola and a, and a, and, and brew, yeah.

Jones: Oh we…somebody came into this replacement there when we first got there, we rode a train and got off the ship, went on up to right out Clark Field, you’ve heard of Clark Field, and you know, the mountain that, the volcano that erupted by there, they covered up that Clark Field ( ). But we were out there in tents. Somebody came back and said, “there is somebody set up a tent over here yonder got Coca-Colas.” They said, “you’ll have to bring a cup for your, or your canteen.” So, we went over there and they had the coke all right, and they poured it out there, but it wasn’t carbonated, and it wasn’t cold [Laughing]. I said, “this is the sorriest coke I ever saw.” Brock: The reason I made that statement, I was telling him about three days after I arrived on Okinawa, it fell my lot to operate an amphibian 53:00truck, because I had driven heavy, heavy trucks before in the lumber business, my dad was in the lumber business. And (Clears throat) I had never seen a dock before. Of course, the amphibian trucks had bilges, and had pumps of course… Jones: Oh yeah.

Brock: …the bilge, and if we were hauling beer… Jones: Yeah.

Brock: …now I didn’t drink at all, but I had two guys that were shack mates [Chuckles – Jones], that we three of us lived in on a shack that we had embezzled the lumber, made us a, a, a shack in the form of a tent. And the floor, the floor was dirt, and cut a hole down in the, there, maybe it was half as big as that refrigerator in there, and across the, the…in front of the tent was a ice maker reef…in, in forty-five pound blocks of ice. 54:00So, if we were hauling liver, if we were hauling steak, if we were hauling, these guys were beer drinkers, down in the…near Birmingham. One was ( ) and one was older, and it was my orders as a nineteen year old, and these guys were older, they’d come from England…with the 8th Air Force, and said, “if you’re hauling beer, you can haul some beer in here.” So I, I’d take that beer by the cases [Laughter – Jones]. It was in cans, all that was in cans at that time, and had forty-four cans to a case, and you could put six, six cases in the…this load that b…that beer, and then what they’d do is with the…I told you about the nets where the overhead cranes this s…dropped it down and then the hook did this kind of a thing and just released the b…by hanging 55:00part of the net, and it was open. I had access to it. So I just put beer by the case in this, in these bilges, haul it home, haul it to the company area, take it out of there, put it in that hole, here is this ice. And we, we could be frying liver or steak at twelve o’clock that night. I didn’t drink any beer though, I did a… Jones: Let me check with (Allen?) here.

Brock: I enjoyed the guys who did, now I just enjoyed those guys.

Jones: Let me check with (Allen?) here.

Brock: Yeah. We…if that’s all that you want to talk, talk to him about?

Jones: You got just about, that’s got my biography there ( ).

Shurtz: That sounds good, yeah, thank you. Let’s see how ( )?

Brock: You wanted to sign, he’ll sign that form for you.

Shurtz: I was telling him ( ) Brock: You’lll be back, won’t you doc?

Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Shurtz: And also for the sake of for the interview, I’m interviewing is George Brock.

Brock: Yeah. 56:00“END OF INTERVIEW”

57:00