Oral History Interview with Clarence and Delia Wood, June 17, 2005 Page: 6

                                
6

Mr. Sebesta:

lot of women going into the field of airplane repair and so on and so forth,
working; building tanks and everything else.
That's right. In submarines. I've met people that worked on B-17s and., of
course, looking back on history now; we know how it all came out. But on
that train ride over in 1942, you didn't know how it was going to come out.

I didn't even know where I was going to live.

Mr. Sebesta:
Female:
Mr. Sebesta:

I know. Much less how the war was going to come out.
Of course, I knew that it would be easy to get a job, but where were you going
to live. I don't know. But I had to get away from my ex-husband. He was an
abuser and that was it.
Well, you have a lot of guts.

When you get scared, you have a lot of guts.

Me. Sebesta:

That's what gets you the guts, huh?

Yeah. (laughs)

Mr. Sebesta:

Mr. Sebesta:

Mr. Sebesta:

Fascinating story. I love those stories from the home front. Where were you
when the war ended?
I was in California. I heard that Japan had surrendered and I don't remember
where it was, but I remember there was an awful lot of noise. Everybody
was.......
Now did they, that very next day, did they quit making P-51s.....?
No. You had to finish up what you were working on. As a matter of fact they
remodeled and started making it into another commercial flying.......
The reason I asked that question is, Mrs. Wood, is that I interviewed a man
who was Colonel Tibbets right hand man. Tibbets was commissioned by the
government to put together the Atomic Bomb flights and this man that he met,
that I interviewed, was ninety-one, was, kind of, the PR guy, the paperwork
guy, you know, he was in charge of, they had about a thousand people
working on it. They had six B-29s that were specially outfitted. They had to
be redone to carry the Atomic bomb. There was a lot to do. He said he
remembered, very vividly at 2:45 AM on Tinian, watching the Enola Gay take
off and he said that on Tinian, they had been planning on the invasion of
Japan and they were talking about a million casualties. On Tinian they were
building a hospital that would hold 5,000 patients. He said the day after the