Shurtz: It is July 1st, at about 12:30 and my name is Clinton Shurtz. I am
in…Clinton, Kentucky talking to Earl Warren and his son, Earl Warren Junior…about Earl’s experience in World War II, and I guess, first Earl, tell me…where did you grow up at?Warren: Where I what?
Shurtz: Where, where did you grow up at?
Warren: Oh, in Hickman County.
Shurtz: Hickman County?
Warren: Mm-mm.
Shurtz: What did your parents do?
Warren: They…farmed.
Shurtz: Did you do much farming yourself?
Warren: No.
Shurtz: No?
Warren: No. They…well [Chuckling] I go, tell some on me [Laughing].
Earl Warren Jr.: What was it you said about setting on the (Clears throat)…on
the horse, sitting backwards on a horse?Warren: Yeah, backwards on a horse, and something
1:00about—what did I say?Earl Warren Jr.: Fertilizer, or… Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: Fertilizer, cam… Warren: Oh, yeah, yeah, I, I was spraying cotton.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Warren: Spraying cotton behind, and riding the horse backwards, and they…my
father said that, they, I done that because of the dope, they won’t want it to get in the horses eye, didn’t say anything about mine [Chuckles – Shurtz], see? So I, that’s when I decided I wouldn’t take up farming [Laughter – Shurtz]. And I took up banking, I had sixty years in at the bank, that’s the picture up there of the bank board of directors… Shurtz: Oh.Warren: …and…they…my son made the picture and they all endorsed it [Chuckling].
Yeah, I was in China during World War II.Shurtz: How old were you when you went in?
Warren: [Chuckling] Oh, my goodness, I wouldn’t know. Huh…I wouldn’t know.
2:00That’s the… Earl Warren Jr.: You were… Warren: That’s the… Earl Warren Jr.: You went in, in ’41.Warren: That’s a picture over there.
Shurtz: Yeah?
Earl Warren Jr.: Didn’t you go in in for…forty-two after…Pearl Harbor?
Warren: I don’t know, I don’t even know when I served in… Earl Warren Jr.: Well,
from twenty to forty-two… Warren: Yeah.Earl Warren Jr.: …you would have been twenty… Warren: But… Earl Warren Jr.:
…about twenty-(two?) years old.Warren: But I was in China when he was born, and my wife sent a cablegram and
they could only say three things. It said, ‘a son was born, doing fine, wish you was here.’ And so I got several together and we went into town and had a meal that night…for the…and his birth, mm-mm.Earl Warren Jr.: You were in China, weren’t you?
Warren: Yeah, I was in China, yeah, yeah.
Shurtz: And what was your job in the military?
Warren: Huh…mm-mm [Laughing] I don’t, I don’t know…I
3:00think I was in the supplies, I keeping record of supplies, I think.Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Warren: Yeah. Yeah what I have…they had, all the m…all motels and places where
people stayed in China, they all had a U-shape back, and…back behind it you know, had and then a U-shape, and they had ditches dug for you to get in, because the Japanese was bombing, they was bombing and then you had to go out there and get in one of those ditches [Laughing], yeah. Yeah that’s hard for me to remember anything, almost.Earl Warren Jr.: You, now you remember flying over the mountains zone.
Warren: Yeah I remember flying over the
4:00Himalayas Mountains, flying over, and they told us that they, if we had to go down, or out, they had headhunters that they paid money…to bring you in, and boy I got in an airplane, got up over that thing, the Himalayas Mountains, I believe, and I thought, boy they’ll have to push me out of this airplane, I, I don’t, I don’t intend to jump out [Chuckling] of this airplane, yeah.Earl Warren Jr.: What about the… Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: What about the truck? You said you all had a convoy and you
were in the truck and had to scotch it?Warren: Yeah, convoy in a truck and they had no breaks on the truck, and we go
up a mountain and they have twenty turns in it [Chuckles – Shurtz], or better, and they had to get out and put a block of wood under the truck because it didn’t have any breaks, and here we was riding in the back end of that thing, 5:00the GIs was, and so many in there. Boy I mean, that was something else too, yeah, and…let’s see, I don’t know whether I can remember anything else…in, in China or not.Earl Warren Jr.: Where were you in China?
Warren: I don’t know. I probably would have to look in the map to, to figure out
the town, see, I… Earl Warren Jr.: I thought you were in Kunming.Warren: Well, I think so, it’d be over the mountains, right over the mountains
that’s where, where I was, and…I don’t know, my mind is about gone now, 6:00really, it’s been so long… Shurtz: And you were in India too, right?Warren: Yeah, yeah, I was in India and then flew over, over the hump, we called
it, over the hump to China, and… Shurtz: Did you interact with the…the Chinese people, or the Indian people much?Warren: Huh?
Shurtz: Did you interact with the Chinese people?
Warren: Yeah, yeah I did with the Chinese people.
Shurtz: Did you get to learn any of their language?
Warren: No, no.
Shurtz: No?
Warren: No, no I don’t think so.
Fourth Party: ( ) marriage certificate.
Warren: And...
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah, Dad, show him the… Fourth Party: Chinese marriage
certificate ( ).Warren: Yeah, those, my Chinese marriage certificate. Either member of either
family can marry you in China, and I had them fix me a marriage certificate, one for me and one for my wife, and you start reading at the right and read over to the left and…and I had 7:00one made for, for each one of them…mm-mm, mm-mm, yeah. Yeah, I had that and…I, let’s see, I don’t know.Earl Warren Jr.: What about…Columbo, Ceylon, remember you being there?
Warren: What?
Earl Warren Jr.: Columbo, Ceylon.
Warren: No. What about it?
Earl Warren Jr.: Well, you were there. I thought you had a picture of you in a
rickshaw. Do you remember going in a rickshaw riding?Warren: [Laughing] Yeah, probably so.
Earl Warren Jr.: And… Warren: ( ). [Unintelligible background talking] Warren: Yeah.
Fourth Party: Aow! Don’t you ( ) [Chuckles – Earl Warren Jr.] Warren: I don’t know.
8:00Fourth Party: Why did you ( ) [Laughter – Warren]? Don’t do that.Shurtz: Did you ever come close to getting bombed yourself? You said you were
down in the holes.Warren: Yeah, yeah, I’d go out back and get in a trench. We had trenches dug
where you’d get in… Earl Warren Jr.: I don’t think that ( )… Warren: …and…I, I don’t, I don’t remember any bomb hitting in our backyard.Shurtz: Uh-huh.
Warren: It seemed like all the backyard, the places where I stayed, was all
u-shape, you know, and u-shape, and, yeah. So, I don’t know. I tell you that’s something. I should have recorded lots of it while my mind was still active and remembered, you know, remembered 9:00anything about that. Yeah they sound the siren and we know that the Japanese was going to come, come in, and we’d go, we’d go out in our backyard at the motel, or wherever we were staying, and…get in a trench, and…there to…and to stay. Mm-mm!Shurtz: And you worked in supplies, you said?
Warren: Yes, I think I did, I think I handled the supplies.
Shurtz: Do you remember what kind of supplies?
Warren: Well, bombs and ammunition, and, and…gas and stuff, you know, I probably have.
Earl Warren Jr.: And mother traveled with you in this country, right?
Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: Did Mother go with you here,
10:00in this country? Mother traveled with you. She was in Biloxi, and she was in Salt Lake City, and… Warren: Oh, oh, yeah, yeah.Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah, she went with you.
Warren: Yeah, she went with me here.
Earl Warren Jr.: Worked in the USO some.
Shurtz: Oh!
Warren: Yeah, yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: And…and I thought you got a marksman ( ) with a submachine gun.
Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: Didn’t you get a marksman’s badge or whatever for submachine gun?
Warren: I don’t know [Laughter – Earl Warren Jr.].
Fourth Party: M-m-m.
Earl Warren Jr.: I’ll have to listen, his, her sister… Fourth Party: Don’t touch
( ).Earl Warren Jr.: …[Chuckling] tape-recorded him… Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: …about two years ago.
Warren: I’m wondering here…Butch.
Earl Warren Jr.: What?
Warren: See if there is some tapes in there,
11:00a tape of that, I don’t know what’s in there. I haven’t had that out in a long time.Earl Warren Jr.: I don’t know what’s in there either.
Warren: And see if there is any set of tapes and whatever. I don’t know where
you can play ‘em.Earl Warren Jr.: Oh no, I don’t think…these are all…these are all Dixieland, Dad.
Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: Those are all Dixieland. Daddy likes Dixieland, and, but I, I
mean I made a, I, Lydia taped him…last year, the year before last, I guess.Fourth Party: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: Her youngest sister…
12:00Shurtz: Hum.Earl Warren Jr.: …and…I don’t know if he told anymore about the war or not.
Shurtz: Hum.
Earl Warren Jr.: But I’ve got it on the ( ).
Warren: Nothing in there?
Earl Warren Jr.: …on the computer, I up loaded it.
Fourth Party: There is nothing.
Fourth Party: No.
Earl Warren Jr.: Uh-uh.
Fourth Party: There is nothing.
Earl Warren Jr.: I didn’t do anything with it, I burned her a CD… Shurtz: Mm-mm.
Earl Warren Jr.: …but you know, and, and I haven’t done anything else.
Warren: Boy I tell you, that’s something else, flying over those mountains from
India to China, and…they told us, you know, if we had to go out, jump out, why they had headhunters and they paid them to bring and bring us in.Shurtz: And you didn’t want to get picked up by the head hunters, huh?
Warren: No, no, I tell you what, I got in there praying and looked out, and, as
we was flying over the Himalayas, and I waved at the mountains. That’s between India and China and I say boy-oh-boy, and I just—they had to push me out 13:00of this plane [Chuckling].Shurtz: But you did jump out eventually, right?
Warren: Yeah [Chuckling].
Shurtz: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: Well no, they landed ( ).
Shurtz: Oh, okay [Chuckles – Shurtz, Earl Warren Jr., and Fourth Party].
Warren: Oh me!
Shurtz: Did you ever jump out of the plane?
Warren: Huh?
Shurtz: Did you ever jump out of a plane?
Warren: No!
Shurtz: No?
Warren: No, I never did have to, so that’s good.
Earl Warren Jr.: You were in Biloxi, at Kisler Field, right?
Warren: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: And then in, in Utah, at Wendover Field, and you went to
Oxford, Mississippi for…a school, when you were at Kisler Field, they sent you up to Oxford, Old Miss.Warren: Huh! Yeah, and I forgot that [Chuckling].
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah [Laughing].
Warren: Yeah. ( ), and…The reason I, they’d tell us…you know,
14:00bombing, they, they kind of alerted us when they, ( ) the Japanese plane were coming over, and…and boy we, we’d get in those trenches that they had dug out, that we got in there.Shurtz: How long did you have to stay down in there?
Warren: Oh, I don’t know, not too long… Fourth Party: ( ).
Warren: …not too long.
Earl Warren Jr.: Well ( )… Warren: I tell you what, my mind just gone, and it’s
gone. I was eighty-nine in April.Shurtz: Hum.
Warren: How old I was, and… Earl Warren Jr.: [Chuckling] Yeah, I don’t know, I
can’t think of anything. I’m sure there is a lot. There was things that Mother used to tell about her setting out in the hotel in…California, or Utah, somewhere, holding 15:00your gun [Chuckling] but I guess everybody traveled with them, and you know, on trains and stuff… Shurtz: Mm-mm.Earl Warren Jr.: …they didn’t have any ammunition, but they had guns.
Shurtz: And what, what does your mom do during that, that time?
Earl Warren Jr.: Well, she worked at the USO, and I know she did in
Wa…in…Biloxi, Mississippi, and then she…and she did out west, and I’m not real sure. You shipped out of San Diego, didn’t you?Warren: I guess so.
Earl Warren Jr.: On the ‘Marine Angel?’ Warren: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: Wa’n’t that right?
Warren: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah. And, anyway, she worked until he lef…shipped out I think,
and then came back here, and I’m not quite sure when that was, I was born in 1944 in the summer, 16:00so…I’m not exactly sure, and he was…I was eighteen months old when he came back, when he saw me.Shurtz: Hum.
Earl Warren Jr.: But yeah, I think she used to work out there. I don’t know
whether it was like, you know, waitressing and whatever and what they did, you know. Can you think of anything else daddy?Warren: No, I can’t.
Shurtz: So you came home from the war, and then…what did you do after that?
Warren: I worked in the ASC Office, and…a while and they asked if I go work at
the bank, and I had sixty years in at the bank. I worked at the bank, Clinton Bank. I have a picture up there, and… 17:00Earl Warren Jr.: You worked your way up from being a, whatever you went in as… Warren: Huh?Earl Warren Jr.: What did you start off as? A clerk, or assistant cashier, or something?
Warren: Yeah, probably assistant cashier.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah, and then worked his way up to president and chairman of
the board, so… Warren: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that, I did that.Shurtz: Then he said you were in a Dixieland too, huh?
Warren: Into what?
Shurtz: Dixieland, Dixieland jazz? Is that… Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Warren: Dixieland.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah, you like Dixieland jazz.
Warren: Oh yeah, yeah [Laughter – Earl Warren, Jr.]. Yeah I like, I like…jazz
music, uh-huh.Shurtz: So then you lived here in Clinton?
Warren: Huh?
Shurtz: You lived here in Clinton?
Warren: Yeah.
Shurtz: Yeah.
Warren: Yeah, the whole time, I…
18:00Earl Warren Jr.: He lived down the street here, I was seven or eight ( ).Warren: I worked at the ASC…I worked there, I guess, before I went into the
service, and so I came back, I worked there for a little while, and then they asked me to go to work at the bank. So I had sixty years in at the bank.Earl Warren Jr.: Now did you… Warren: …Clinton Bank.
Earl Warren Jr.: …you were, you were on some board that built this place, right?
Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: You were on the board when they decided to build this place, ICF.
Warren: Yeah, I guess so.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah, because when we came out here to look, you walked down
the hall with Bill Little, the administrator, and Daddy [Chuckling] said, “why I never thought when I made the motion to build this place that I’d be here.” Shurtz: Hum.Warren: Yeah, yeah. Well see,
19:00my mother and dad was here one part of this is the hospital, and my mother and dad died here, in the hospital.Earl Warren Jr.: And Margaret was born here, my daughter, my oldest daughter.
Shurtz: Hum.
Warren: Yeah [Chuckling].
Shurtz: How long have you been here?
Warren: Oh me! I don’t know.
Earl Warren Jr.: You know, I think probably about three years.
Fourth Party: Since ( ) was been born.
Earl Warren Jr.: Four?
Warren: Over where?
Earl Warren Jr. and Fourth Party: Here.
Warren: Here in ICF?
Earl Warren Jr. and Fourth Party: Yeah.
Warren: Oh yeah… Earl Warren Jr.: Four years?
Warren: …yeah, yeah, yeah.
Fourth Party: I think he came in 2004.
Warren: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Warren: Yeah, I lived here.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah, I think he did.
Warren: I was eighty-nine in April.
Earl Warren Jr.: In the fall wasn’t it, of 2000.
Fourth Party: Yeah, it will be four years this fall.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
20:00Warren: Yeah.Shurtz: Did you ever do anything with, like the American Legion? Were you
involved in Veterans activities?Warren: Well, I was a member and the American Legion, we, you know, we had a, a
unit here and, and things, but I, I don’t know that I took an active part in it, and there is no ( ).Earl Warren Jr.: Daddy was more active in the chamber of commerce and…industrial
development… Warren: Yeah.Earl Warren Jr.: …try to help them get industry here and stuff like that.
Warren: yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: the VFW, I don’t know if anybody is around that could tell you,
but the VFW here used to have slot machines, served beer and everything. Now the county is dry.Shurtz: Oh whoa!
Earl Warren Jr.: It was in the basement down there ( ). When I was this big, I
barely, but it was pretty funny they had the slot machines. Then I guess they had to clean them out 21:00 [Chuckling].Warren: I just wondered if I had anything here that’s, that’s…but I don’t think
so, I don’t know what.Earl Warren Jr.: That’s Margaret’s things.
Warren: Yeah that’s Mar…Margaret, my granddaughter wrote that. I don’t know. You
waited too long, I’m too old, and I don’t even remember what my name is [Laughing].Earl Warren Jr.: I ( ), yeah, I…I don’t, I don’t know if Lydia got anymore on
that tape she made or not.Fourth Party: Mm-mm. I don’t think I have ever heard it.
22:00Earl Warren Jr.: I got it on the computer.Fourth Party: ( ).
Warren: What?
Earl Warren Jr.: I don’t think that, you don’t want to hear it, the tape Lydia
made of you.Warren: Lydia.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Warren: Did what?
Earl Warren Jr.: She… Fourth Party: She made a tape of you.
Earl Warren Jr.: She made a tape of you.
Warren: I didn’t know that.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah [Chuckling] a couple of years ago.
Warren: I remember the day it was, was that talking about the service and everything?
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah, service and everything.
Warren: Oh well, I… Earl Warren Jr.: …how you met Mother, and she asked you all
kinds of questions.Warren: I probably remembered more then.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Warren: Yeah.
Shurtz: Do you remember that now, how you met your wife?
Warren: Huh?
Shurtz: Do you remember how you met your wife?
Warren: Well yeah…my mother said, “why don’t you ask that fancy Callahan to go
to church with you.” She said, “she is a nice girl.” Then you carried girls to church whenever you dated them, yeah [Laughing]. 23:00Shurtz: And what’s your church?Warren: First Methodist Church at Oakton, when I joined was at Oakton, uh-huh.
Earl Warren Jr.: They lived here years and years. They lacked a month being
married sixty years, and…and mother taught kindergarten and ( ) at the church.Warren: And m…my grandmother, I like to remember thing. She had a neighbor she
sort of stayed too long when she come, if she’d see her coming, she’d run the clock up an hour and she sat there and talked for a while and things, she just looked at the clock and said, “you know, it’s later than I thought it was,” she said, “I need to go.” So it really worked, you know, and…so…and 24:00they kept a boarder, her grandmother did, some fellow, and he hadn’t been gone but one day and the FBI came there, were checking on him. He was [Laughing] they thought he was going to rob the bank, he was going to rob the bank, you know. Oh me [Laughing]. Oh me! A sixty-four year old should remember more than I do.Earl Warren Jr.: I can remember a lot of things [Laughing – Warren and Earl
Warren Jr.] but most of them had to do with me, not with you though [Chuckles – Earl Warren Jr. and Shurtz]. All these kids, I got three girls, 25:00they all live close.Warren: And I have three granddaughters, one son and three granddaughters.
Shurtz: Do you…what do you do here to…pass time away, do you have any hobbies,
anything you like to do?Warren: [Laughing].
Fourth Party: You like bingo.
Warren: Well now [Chuckling], yeah, I like to play bingo, and ( ) (Static
Sounds) Fourth Party: It’s out of tune.Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah. And you play solitaire.
Warren: I don’t read much anymore, on account of my eyes, you know, and I, but I
play old songs some, and...Shurtz: You play old songs?
Warren: I play that, huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: Solitaire.
Fourth Party: Solitaire.
Shurtz: Oh, solitaire, okay.
Warren: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: It’s very interesting, none of these people have (
26:00 ).Shurtz: Hum?
Earl Warren Jr.: ( ).
Shurtz: Anything else you can think of, anything to say?
Earl Warren Jr.: No, I just, I can’t think of anything. I mean I don’t know
anymore some of these places and some of these incidents, I couldn’t elaborate on them… Shurtz: Yeah.Earl Warren Jr.: …( ) events ( ).
Shurtz: Did you get any medals?
Warren: I don’t think so. I don’t know what I did now.
Earl Warren Jr.: He got ribbons for theater ( ).
Warren: Huh?
Earl Warren Jr.: …( ) ribbons and I think he did get…what was it, was it the
bronze star?Warren: What?
Earl Warren Jr.: I don’t remember, I thought there was something you got, it
wasn’t the bronze star, it was something else.Warren: Yeah.
Earl Warren Jr.: I can’t remember.
Warren: I don’t remember.
27:00Earl Warren Jr.: We had, we…they lived down here in this house, I grew up in Mount ( ) right down, right down the road there, and…of course they have been there sixty years, and both of them were raised during the depression, they didn’t throw much away [Laughing] and we had about, the house was just full, so when my mother passed away and, and he came up here, and then I had to go through it and sell it, and…it was a…it was quite a feat, but we have things that are kind of scattered. So we have a little dab up here, not much, and then some in a storage building I have, and [Chuckling] then some in a safety deposit box, and some the kids took with them, specially the oldest one, came up with a trailer and took some furniture, and then she, they’re going to pass it on down 28:00whatever, but… Warren: Behind the….Earl Warren Jr.: Excuse me s… Warren: ( ).
Fourth Party: ( ).
Earl Warren Jr.: Huh… Fourth Party: Here you go. Thank you.
Earl Warren Jr.: She said thank you [Chuckles – Warren]. But, so I, some of
these things I couldn’t, you know, I’m not sure where they are right now [Chuckling] but, and…but most of the thing—he was, he was not in direct, you know, combat. I think what they did, they went, the ‘Marine Angel’ was a cargo ship I think they converted—maybe it was one of the Liberty ships, or some—I, I don’t remember, but they took it to, I think the first place was Columbo, Ceylon, and then they went from there to Calcutta, and then somewhere in India and then that’s where 29:00they flew them over the Himalayas into China, and I think they went to Kunming, China, but…I’m not sure, and… Shurtz: ( ).Earl Warren Jr.: …I mean I know he went to Kunming I just down if that’s where…
Warren: That’s the main (port?) in China.Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Warren: Mm-mm.
Shurtz: Well, thanks Earl for talking to me… Warren: Well… Shurtz: …and Earl Junior.
Earl Warren Jr.: Yeah.
Shurtz: I appreciate it.
“END OF INTERVIEW”
30:00