WORLD WAR II ORAL HISTORY PROJECT UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SPENCER RESEARCH LIBRARY, KANSAS COLLECTION Interviewee: Senator U. L. Gooch Date: 21 June 2011 Location: Community Voice office, Wichita, Kansas Interviewer: Deborah Dandridge, Field Archivist GOOCH INTERVIEW NO. 1 Tape 1, side 1 begins. DEBORAH DANDRIDGE: June twenty-first in Wichita, Kansas, an interview with Senator U. L. “Rip” Gooch at the office of the Community Voice, the leading African American newspaper in the state of Kansas and the region. Senator Gooch, I appreciate your taking your time to do this interview concerning your experiences during World War II. And, so, what we’ll do is we’ll just begin from the first and if you want to talk about something else, please feel free to do so. Before you joined the military during World War II, where were you living, what were you doing, and that sort of thing? Do you remember? U. L. GOOCH: Oh I can give you a story. DANDRIDGE: Go right ahead. GOOCH: You really want a real story? DANDRIDGE: Yes sir. GOOCH: I was a senior in high school, working in the summer of 1942 helping to building military air base system(??) out term during that summer. And the work that I did was work on an air base for the navy known as the Millington Naval Air Base in Memphis, Tennessee, just north of Memphis a few miles. Then when school started I went back to school and started working a second shift at a military air base building an army air base, was to be known as the Dyersburg Army Air Base. So I worked in two military jobs, building military bases during that summer and when I started to school. Knowing that I was going to have to be getting into service sometime soon, I had found some information about the the—There was a flying school at Tuskegee, Alabama and I wanted to fly airplanes as long as I could remember and I thought that ____(??), I knew of no one black that had any thoughts or wanted to fly airplanes so I thought, Now that they’re going to have these guys, they’re probably having a hard time finding young men to fly these airplanes. So, if I’m going to be in a war, I’m going down there and tell them I’ll fly airplanes for them. So I hitchhiked to Tuskegee, Alabama in the fall, winter of 1942 and got down there and told ‘em I wanted to fly airplanes. Only to find an opportunity to meet someone that become a person that was strong in my life until his death, Charles Anderson, who was head of the primary flight training program for the Tuskegee Airmen. Uh, he informed me of the—he could tell young country kid that didn’t know nothing to go back to my home base, that they had no way to putting me to flying airplanes down there. I had to get in the lineup of people who are trying to get in there and the way to U. L. Gooch 1 do that you had to go through one of the government, federal government places, apply, and then they decide if they want to give you the tests and all that. And if they liked all what they could see, you might get to be sent there. So, he said, “Now the second alternative, if you get in the service and haven’t gotten in, be sure to tell ‘em you’d like to fly and maybe you can get into some related field after you are in.” So, I headed back to Tennessee from Tuskegee, Alabama and went to my little small town military representatives, whatever it was called, and told them what I had found out. And they informed me, Well we don’t do this testing and all that, you have to be at the federal building, so you got to go down to Memphis to this federal building and apply. So I took off a short time—now I’d been out of school for a week, I get down to Memphis to—fifty-five miles or so from where I live—to take this test. Now the story about that is very lengthy, but it all amounts to the fact that I didn’t get to take the test and, if you want to know more about— DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) I want to hear the story. GOOCH: Would you like to hear that story? DANDRIDGE: Yes, sir. GOOCH: Well, I— DANDRIDGE: Did you write about this— GOOCH: I wrote that story in my book and I talk about it in my briefing. I walked down to in front of the federal building and there were all these big signs and signs on everything: We need you; Buy Bonds; Join the military. All these things, you know, as you approach, getting you up for what you’re about to be involved in. And, sure enough, when I walked in this building, they had some military people who I was directed to the area of the building where they were that took care of this discussion with people who wanted to join. And I walked up, this was a person who was very sizable physically with military uniform on that had a lot of stripes on it and brass buttons and all this, and I—as I approached him, before I could make a statement, “What you want boy?” So, that wasn’t unusual, I knew boys even after you’re sixty years old in Memphis, by white people, so that wasn’t new to me. But I informed him that this boy wanted to fly airplanes. And when I said that to him, he started laughing so loud until I couldn’t understand why this guy was ____(??) such a laugh. And ____(??) as he calmed down on his laughing, he says, he yelled out—there were persons in the area that was blocked off that I couldn’t see, I didn’t know was back there even—and he says, “Lieutenant, there’s a boy out here talking about he want to fly airplanes.” And I heard the voice come back from back there related to this answer, and I wasn’t surprised by the fact that he said that it was a boy out there, that the Lieutenant immediately thought there may have been somebody that didn’t look like he or the sergeant and he says, “Well, do you know that they have said that we’ve got to get them to fly?” Says, “Some of ‘em are all ready flying.” He said, “Well, what do we do with him?” He says, “We have to take the application and put ‘em on line to test just like we do the rest of em.” And, so, at that well they started to tell me about the dates and the times that I would have to be coming back or whatever and I walked out. So I want back to my home U. L. Gooch 2 draft board and I told them that I was ready to volunteer to go in the service, because I had been told by Charles Anderson down at Tuskegee that once I got in the service that I could apply, so I figured I might as well get in the service now. This is early in the year. And afraid that my draft number would come up—it wasn’t going to come up until I graduated in May, but this is late January or—So I left them with the idea that I wanted to volunteer in the service and they said okay. And a few days later, a very short time later, I got a notice that I was going to be going to service. And I thought if I had asked them, told them that I was ready to volunteer in service that I had volunteered to go into the service, which I had, but there was a difference between a person’s service particularly in your identification of your serial number as whether you were a volunteer or you were drafted. Unbeknown to me the process they just put me on the early—recent draft call and send me in the service as a draftee and it wasn’t until I’d been in the service for probably a year that I found out from someone who was looking at my shield number and I kept telling everybody I had volunteered, You didn’t volunteer, your serial number don’t fit volunteer. So I found out that I had just been moved up on the list and went in as a drafted person. DANDRIDGE: Why didn’t they? Was it deliberate effort or— GOOCH: Well, what do you, how do you explain things? (laughs) I don’t know, in that small town, those people handling that, I don’t know if they realized there was any special identity for volunteering, they just thought this is just the easiest way we can do it, got a job to do, put him on a list and send it on in. I’m not sure that it was to do anything against me in anyway, they just probably this is the easiest way for us to do it. Put him on list; send him on where you want to go. DANDRIDGE: Was your draft board black or white? GOOCH: (laugh) They were white. DANDRIDGE: Okay. Did they know you? Did anyone on the draft board— GOOCH: Oh no, nobody knew me. DANDRIDGE: No one knew you? And Mr. Charles Anderson, was he African American? GOOCH: Oh, you bet, yeah. DANDRIDGE: So when you were hitchhiking to Tuskegee, what was it like? How did you do that? Who gave you rides? GOOCH: You got—I got many, multiple rides. I left Fort Ripley(??), Tennessee on a freight train. And it stopped—it was what we called the slow train, it stopped at every little small town between Ripley and Memphis, take care of whatever. And it took a long time, but it was much faster than walking fifty-five miles. And I left there on the highways, and back then it was just—hitchhiking was a lot used just for short distances. Somebody just wanted to go to the grocery store, they might walk out of their house a U. L. Gooch 3 mile down the road then a car or truck they saw come down the road, they’d throw up their thumb and you get on the truck and you ride that mile round to the little store down the road. So, hitchhiking— Nobody knew, but that was, that created a problem too because (laughs) many people offered me a ride for five miles and I had to start all over again. And that’s as far as they were going, they didn’t have any idea that this little black kid was going a hundred or two hundred miles, you know. Let me take him down, his house is probably down the road a few miles, and then you’d get along and this is far as I’m going and you started all over again. DANDRIDGE: Did you get rides from African American drivers? GOOCH: Yeah, I got rides from white and black. DANDRIDGE: White and black people. Um, what was Tuskegee like when you went there? Do you remember anything about it? GOOCH: Well, Tuskegee—Frankly, when I got to what was called the town Tuskegee, I thought that’s where I was headed, I didn’t know. I should have been headed to Tuskegee Institute, which is a few miles out of—and they had their own post office and everything, it’s a ____(??) Tuskegee Institute. So when I got to town, and I don’t remember now, but I’m just sure that I asked somebody about flying and that’s the way I was, the directions I was given. And, again, I had to catch a ride out to Tuskegee Institute, which was a few miles out of town. Course when I arrived at Tuskegee Institute, I found out that’s where the black aviators were, they were doing their ground school there and whatever, and they were going out to Moton Field to do their flying. So I—course I was interested in airplanes, I left, I got aways from that out to the airport, and found that these flying people and this guy that was, let’s say became a person I considered a friend and he was personable. And he’s some older than I was, he was not a senior citizen, but he was a grown man and I was somewhat a kid, nineteen, and found out that he was the person in charge and he give me some conversation. And I never thought I’d—Well, yeah, thought I’d see him again because I was hopeful I’d be back down there learning to fly. But I didn’t and didn’t see him again then until after the war was over and we made acquaintances again, which is a part of another story. DANDRIDGE: What did—How did Tuskegee Institute impress you? GOOCH: Well I didn’t know—it impressed me a lot, I’d never seen anything that, you know, like that except I’d seen another black college, I’d been to—We’d been to, in my little rural area, we’d been to Tennessee State at that time on the field trip, so I knew what that looked like. And I had a chance to observe Lane College, which was much smaller. Tuskegee wasn’t all that big but it was impressive. DANDRIDGE: Yeah, ‘cause the buildings, I guess, were built by the students at one time. GOOCH: Oh yeah. Made by, built with brick that they made the brick. U. L. Gooch 4 DANDRIDGE: How did you view the war at that particular time? GOOCH: Well at that time, you know, I think one of the things that I had had in my early bringing up was to be appreciative of—somewhat, of the little things. And segregating, as bad as it was this country was the best that I knew of. And someone’s going to do something bad about this, to this life that we have in this country, so it was important and, short time about that, just about a year before that, I guess, when December 7, 1941 when they declared war my junior year in high school, ____(??) to my principal took us all in and give us his thoughts. And he said, “Well you know probably going to end up some of you guys are going to—this isn’t over in a hurry, you’re going to be old enough that you’re going to be into this war.” And of course some of the kids that were senior was gone(??) soon thereafter. So we talked about the need and about the war and I had some feel for it. And I guess another close(?) feeling I got was from a young—another young person who was in my same class, grade in high school, left school early, much earlier in our senior year because his brother had graduated the year before and he volunteered and went into the navy. And this young man was in contact with his brother, conversation and discussing and he started telling me that, “I’m going to volunteer and go into the navy.” Do you realize that navy you’re on a ship, and you got a place to stay, and you got a place to sleep? You get in the army they have to have you all out in the woods and the mud and everything. So, I –those are some of the impressions that I had. And that was the other reason that I had very high hope about this thing about flying airplanes. That was going to not be the navy on the ship, but it wouldn’t be walking around in the river and in the mud. So those are some of the things that I had gotten in mind about what the war was or what it was like. DANDRIDGE: You had mentioned that you went on into, you had volunteered—exactly where did you say you volunteered, you did the volunteer or where you were drafted? GOOCH: Yeah, it was in Lauderdale County, in Tennessee, and the county seat is Ripley, R-i-p-l-e-y, Ripley, Tennessee and that’s where I entered the service from there. DANDRIDGE: What was it like when you—the first time, do you remember, you put on your uniform? GOOCH: Well, they—I think by(??)the first time you’re—they just scared the daylights out of you. (laughs) Yeah, in particular a youngster never been, you know, had this experience of being away and about from, as far. And maybe I wasn’t as bad off as some kids cause I had—the last few years of my life before went in the service, I was not attached to my family. When I say my family I mean, I didn’t go to my home of my family each night for the last three years I had been out living and about on my own and I got toughened up quite a bit. I had a lot of personal aggressiveness and didn’t have as—wasn’t as easy(??) as fighting as some youngsters were. But when they tell you you’re in the army now and then they start to tell you about, what if you don’t do this they can put you up to the firing squad and they can do this and, you know, they just really—every put the—they put you into a position to recognize and be obedient. You’re talking about obedient to the Lord, be obedient to whoever it is above you in the military, (laugh) or bad things can happen to you. So, that was probably the first thing that got to me U. L. Gooch 5 when I found myself in a uniform, how bad things could happen to you if you didn’t do everything just right. DANDRIDGE: Do you remember what your daily routine was like when you were in training? GOOCH: Oh yeah. (chuckles) This is my early entry story. I did tell ‘em as I—South Anderson(??) that told me, I told ‘em that I—They asked you about what is your interest and what you been doing. Of course I couldn’t say I’d been flying airplanes, but I said I want to fly airplanes and I like airplanes and that ____(??) after they quiz you when you, before you got any assignment before anything happened. Meantime they look over your records as to what you’ve been doing or whatever you’ve been(??) and they noticed I was just out of school and— DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) About how old were you then? GOOCH: Nineteen. So, they said, Well we got something for you. ____(??). So I got assigned to an Army Air Corps unit. Now this itself was something special at that time because it wasn’t, it hadn’t been long before that that this type of Army Air Corps for black, it had just begun to be a thing to be(??). But I was put in the Army Air Corps Service Quadrant and sent to a military air base that had not been, well we activated, we arrived there and became the ____(??) people for the base, many people arriving at the same time I arrived. We were actually opening this base, other words it was new. And it had been built and organized and set up to train pilots in the basic part of the flight training program and that was called the Army Air Corps Basic Flying School. And the Basic Flying School meant that you, that people learning to fly have gone through their primary training, now they’re going to take the next stage up in a different kind of airplane that will move them up the line. So we opened this Majors—Majors is the name of the place—Majors Army Air Field. DANDRIDGE: Where was it? GOOCH: Glad you ask. Majors Army Air Field was in Greenville, Texas. And the first day that we were able to go into the city across the street, full-length of the main street, which was a highway that went through town, the sign expanded it says, Welcome to Texas, Welcome to Greenville, Texas, the Blackest land and white people are welcome in Texas. DANDRIDGE: Is that what it said? GOOCH: That sure is(??). It’s picture’s in my book. So, anyway, that within itself, if you start analyzing this a little bit to find out the past history of Greenville, Texas, you find out that the location wasn’t an attractive place for a person of color to have been given the opportunity to serve his military in and the treatment we got there was somewhat representation of that. Maybe somewhat because the commanding officer who had been fortunate to be assigned to command that base was a person whose—actually his home had been in that area. They sent him home to run that base. So, anyway— U. L. Gooch 6 DANDRIDGE: Well let me— GOOCH: (continuing) That was my early time and my early assignment to Greenville, Texas, Majors Army Air Field, which was a basic flight training program. Now I get to my job assignment. DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) Let me ask you about that training program. Were the instructors white or were they— GOOCH: Ended up all, everything was white until I got there. (chuckles) DANDRIDGE: So you were the only African American in this training— GOOCH: No, no, they—this quadrant was formed, newly formed squadron, a service squadron. We cleaned the officers’ quarters, we served them at their table with grace, uh, we uh—Group signed at the students who were being trained, called cadets, we served them their food, prepared for them. We did not clean their officer’s, they had to clean their own barracks, but the officer’s we cleaned their facilities and did anything that they said very friendly and quickly. DANDRIDGE: Now did you have anybody—was there anybody black over your squadron? GOOCH: To what extent of over? Starting at the top? No, but underneath that. My command was by, first highest command that I had was a sergeant in charge. DANDRIDGE: And he was African America? GOOCH: Yeah. Above him all were white. DANDRIDGE: Do you remember that sergeant’s name or do you? That’s all right. He left a big impression on you, didn’t he? Okay. GOOCH: Yeah, no, I don’t mean it that way, he did. He—Later he was a school teacher, had been a school teacher and, young fellow just got out of school and had got a job teaching school I guess, and got drafted in service and—but he had gone through college and didn’t go through an officer training program, but he assigned an officer training school after I left. I wasn’t there but so long. And understand that later he was selected. I knew that he was on the list before I left to go to become a military officer. DANDRIDGE: Who were some of the other people in your squadron? You remember any of them? GOOCH: We had—Oh yeah, we had—In fact we had arrived there with no training. I mean all of us that came in this service squadron, basically, with no training. So they had formed a cadre of people who were already in the service who had training, of color, to take the lead positions to give us orientation to U. L. Gooch 7 the military and give us the orders and instructions in how to do what. And one of the people, person that I remember that’s a person of ____(??), had just been recruited from Kansas and—Sergeant Guess and he was an older person, he’d been in the army for years before the war started. And he was our— he came there as our first immediate sergeant over us. And we got this other person I’m talking about who became the sergeant over us after we all had been assembled. But these, this group that came there first that got us started then most of us(??) sent out after we had got learned our way to the bathroom (chuckles) and whatever. DANDRIDGE: Well, do you remember some of the men who were in your group to get—that were learning the training with you? GOOCH: Oh yeah, yeah. DANDRIDGE: Who were some of ‘em? Not necessarily their names— GOOCH: Oh I remember some of ‘em names, I remember some—Again, read my book. (chuckles) A story about some of the guys, one of my guys had finally—One person I got to get close to and it lasted until after service was over, it just so happened, we found out, that he and I both were claiming to be from Memphis. And all kids who left home from out in the sticks, they all—and they got in the military, they were from whatever the closest big town was; they didn’t want anybody to know that they didn’t know their way to the zoo. So this guy got assigned to the same, this same service squadron and he was from an area closer to Memphis than where I lived, an area called Woodstock, and his name was Harris, George Harris. And George and I got to be pretty buddy buddies in the service; and after the war was over George and I still continued to communicate with each other. Another young man, Edgar Evans; Edgar and I—Edgar was the post office, he ran the post office for our little unit and—Jesse Joiner, Jesse and I were real running buddies and, again, he’s mentioned in my book. Uh— DANDRIDGE: Where did you guys go for off duty activities? GOOCH: We had a couple of ways. On weekends, of course the closest town there was Greenville, very small town, and if you could get a pass there, you might go to Greenville. But then there were a number of small towns close around that some of the people would get to know somebody at one of the other little towns and if you could get to go to one of these other little towns, where all the GIs wasn’t going, you had a better choice, of selection of____(??). (laughs) If you could go to Sulphur Springs or somewhere else, instead get out of Greenville. But, anyway, we’d visit the small towns. But then the other thing that would happen, sometimes when they would not be letting us off base, the command would make connections with—I don’t, when I say senior citizens, I don’t mean somebody that was a hundred years old, but make connection with adults who were not in the military, maybe ministers, teachers, whatever in towns that was a few miles away. And somebody would arrange and say, Well if you send a bus out to such and such a town, we have some young ladies that would be glad to come in to Saturday night dance. U. L. Gooch 8 DANDRIDGE: So they were kind of like USOs of some sort? GOOCH: Really wasn’t like USO. This was kind of like one night, one night you got invited to come to the base to a dance and you never—And if you were fortunate enough to get to know one person that you met at this dance and it wasn’t but ten, fifteen miles away you might arrange to get over to their church one Sunday if you were on a weekend leave, instead of going to Greenville. And the other thing that created some noise in my book was a fly, flying out. We were not learning to fly but this happened later when some of us were fortunate enough to get out of the kitchen and get a chance to wash the airplanes and put gas in ‘em and clean ‘em up after a cadet get scared and crap all over ‘em, you worked on the flight line servicing, doing some service around the airplane and you got to know the instructor pilots. And if the instructor pilots—of course these are all very young people, too, you know, even though they’d graduated from that flight training but now instructors. So they were—they would take, they could take an airplane and go on a trip to some town. And, often time it depends on where they were from, you know, they might fly up home for a weekend and if you were, making requests, you could get a ride. If somebody’s going, if plane’s going to go, instructor’s going to go to Dallas and you wanted to go to Dallas you can—get a ride to Dallas if you could get an off base pass at that time. DANDRIDGE: And these instructors were white right? GOOCH: Oh yeah, oh yeah, they were white, the students were white. Everybody was white there except those black guys that was cleaning up. So, anyway— DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) Take one of those trips? GOOCH: I made several of ‘em. But—let’s say I made several of those trips and, uh, George Harris that I mentioned, he and I on a particular trip that I wrote about in my book, had a trip to Memphis and the— There were two instructors and four flight students, they could do, they could have the students fly with ‘em when they were in the advanced formation training stage to get their additional training of flying formations ____(??). So on this particular trip, two instructors—one of the guys was from Memphis, and he had one of his buddies, these young guys, as I say, they used most of em fresh out of college and some of still hadn’t got out of college, so they were out to enjoy life. So he had one—this white person, he had one of his buddies that was an instructor and they were going to fly down to Memphis and they had, each one of ‘em had two students to fly on their wing for formation training, and these airplanes only seated two people in the training for two people. So the instructor actually, nobody to be in the airplane with him because the training was for the student to learn how to fly in formation; so all you had to do was make a request to the instructor that you could ride with him. We saw somebody post the board they were going to go to Memphis, George and I signed up to go to Memphis with ‘em, yeah. So, we flew to Memphis on this one particular trip. And George had family in Memphis and, of course, I had a sister that was living in Memphis. We spent the weekend and there came a terrible hail storm and the airplanes that we were flying had some damage on them during this hail storm. And, course these instructor pilots, they’re in charge and we’re signed out with them, so whatever they were doing is going to be what we could do. So they wasn’t ready to leave town, they went out, we went to the U. L. Gooch 9 airplane and saw that they’d had some damage and immediately this guy that was from Memphis we can’t get these airplanes out of here, call ‘em and tell ‘em we got to get some repairs. So we got to spend a couple of extra days in Memphis while we were supposed to be waiting for repairs. And they go staying ____(??). DANDRIDGE: (overlapping) What did you do while you were spending—How did you spend those extra day? GOOCH: Oh. (laughs) Maybe I shouldn’t say right now. (laughs) We both knew people in Memphis, we’d been there—we’d already been there two days, we’d made the connections. Can’t(??) tell you all that happened in Memphis, but we enjoyed Memphis a couple of days, I can tell you that. DANDRIDGE: Now after this training, did you go somewhere else? GOOCH: Oh yeah. Uh, next story. DANDRIDGE: Okay. GOOCH: You put all these stories in you’ll have my whole book. My next—let me tell you— DANDRIDGE: (overlapping) Well tell me something that’s— GOOCH: (continuing) I was disgusted with the base. DANDRIDGE: In Greenville? GOOCH: Yeah, what I was doing. And I had gone through as Charles Anderson told me, to apply to go to flight training. Two of us, we made applications, two guy’s another person I didn’t mention; James Haney from Atlanta, Georgia. James and I had both applied to go to flight school. We were thinking that we were just waiting for our name to come up, only to find out that the base commander had been a part of the rejection of blacks being in flying. And he had made it clear, even though we had applied, that he wasn’t going to sign us off the base the go, even if—____(??) our name wasn’t going to ever come up. I found this out from another white person who had this knowledge and when he revealed this to me I went to headquarters and made some brief remarks as to what my opinion was of this particular place and that I wanted out of there. And it didn’t take long and I was out of there and I ended up where I always said I didn’t want to go, to the woods and the mud and the infantry. DANDRIDGE: So, do you remember the guy’s name? Do you remember the man’s name who had made it a point to reject African Americans? Do you remember his name? GOOCH: Colonel Herbert Nustrum(??). U. L. Gooch 10 DANDRIDGE: That was his name? So— GOOCH: Colonel Herbert Nustrum. DANDRIDGE: So, he made sure that you weren’t going to get up; your name wasn’t going to be involved in it? GOOCH: Going to flight school. DANDRIDGE: Right. GOOCH: Which would have been Tuskegee, cause that was the only place. DANDRIDGE: Right, right. GOOCH: (continuing) When I said, told them what I thought of that place and I wanted out of there soon, I did get out. Instead— DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) Why did they let you out, though? Why did they let you out? GOOCH: They didn’t let me out of the service, they just transferred me out of the—I wanted a transfer and they transferred me. DANDRIDGE: Okay, so they let you do that? GOOCH: Yeah, but they sent me to the worst place I could go, to the infantry. I was out of the Army Air Corps all together and the Army Infantry. DANDRIDGE: So, where did you go when you— GOOCH: Camp Livingston, Louisiana. I thought it was bad in Greenville, Texas, I ended up at Camp Livingston, Louisiana and the infantry and that was hell. DANDRIDGE: Why do you say that? What was it like? GOOCH: Like hell. DANDRIDGE: Okay, give me a little bit more specificity. (GOOCH laughs) What did it look like? What did you have to go through? GOOCH: Well— U. L. Gooch 11 Tape 1, side 1 ends; side 2 begins. GOOCH: —Running, walking, or crawling in the mud and the rain and woods. It was tough. DANDRIDGE: Did you, what did it look like, what did the camp look like? Did you have tents or what, do you remember? GOOCH: Oh, yeah, we had tents, but—If you got lucky enough to be in a tent, that was quite a compliment. (laughs) DANDRIDGE: So where were you if you weren’t in a tent? GOOCH: In the woods somewhere. DANDRIDGE: But you had bedding or a—of some sort? GOOCH: Some sort? Yeah, yeah, some sort. DANDRIDGE: Okay. So, who were—were all the officers in that area, were they white? GOOCH: The officers in that training unit were white. We had white officers in our training; we had black enlisted sergeants, but the officers were all white. DANDRIDGE: So everyone was African American, you didn’t have a segregated barracks? You didn’t have whites over here and— GOOCH: Unh-uh, no. Where we were—The area—Camp Livingston, Louisiana had areas where white folks, but we wasn’t anywhere close to them, we never did see any of them. DANDRIDGE: What was your— GOOCH: Then at the completion of training at Camp Livingston, Louisiana I was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland for our final combat—I thought I’d had combat training, but when I got up to Fort Meade, Maryland, they give you the real, live combat training where you could get killed even in training. In fact, we did have one guy got killed in training. So it was tough there. DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) What did you do there? What did you learn how to do? GOOCH: Survive. DANDRIDGE: Do shooting? Was it with guns and that sort of thing? U. L. Gooch 12 GOOCH: Oh yeah. Yeah. Learned to survive, ‘cause you were really getting ready—Well, not just getting ready, we left and went—left there and went to Italy where the fighting was going on, as a replacement for the unit. So— DANDRIDGE: How did you feel about that? GOOCH: Well, I felt like, you know, why did I get out of washing airplanes back in Greenville, Texas? (laughs) Cause, really, I thought they were going to—when I went down and—but I thought they would send me at least to another Army Air Corps unit. I really didn’t expect to be sent to the infantry. And what I found out in the infantry is that—I knew I’d had nothing to encourage me about the infantry. DANDRIDGE: So there was nothing you did kind of like about the infantry training? GOOCH: Unh-uh, no. Wasn’t nothing to like there. Wasn’t nothing to like there. DANDRIDGE: Okay, I’m getting the sense here. What was Fort Meade like? GOOCH: Fort Meade was—we had more developed training facilities for your combat-type thing. For instance we did combat runs in and out of buildings, for instance, like we never did anything in the actual buildings in Camp Livingston. But, you know, they’d set up simulated situations and they’d have one ____(??) shooting in the building and, so you’ve got to be—a matter of how you time yourself to go in there and then—you know, to take over somebody’s in there, supposed to be or whatever, if they had been—And, that’s what I said, one guy—We missed connection between entry and shooting, we had one guy got killed, went in they were still shooting in the building. So you had some of the contact-type things that you hadn’t had in Livingston. DANDRIDGE: But all of these men were— GOOCH: (continuing, overlapping) But we still did—In fact, I tell you, one night at Meade, we were out and it got so cold and what we had was only pup tent to go over you. And it was freezing drizzle and I had hung my over—outer coat on a deal, on a limb out there and when I crawled out from under my pup tent the next morning, I took my coat up and sat it down on the ground, it just threw it up, it was frozen stiff with moisture and I—You know. It made you decide whatever it is that ____(??) don’t make any difference, it can’t be no worse than this. I think— DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) The guys you were training with were all African American, right? GOOCH: Yeah, uh—And they were, no there were some white train—instructors. Yeah, we had some white people who were in the instructor part, but these guys were—that was their assignment, training, instructing. And that’s another thing, I killed(??) my book, I said, the hell they put you through and the way they treated you, you knew they wasn’t going to be going with you, they wasn’t going to be going U. L. Gooch 13 with you they were going to stay there for the next group that comes to put them through this same kind of stuff. You know—Some of the guys were saying, If I never see you(??)— DANDRIDGE: So when did you get notice that you were going to go to Italy? GOOCH: I didn’t know where I was going, but I only knew one thing. I had heard at that time where the black infantry unit was and it was only one that they were in Italy and so we knew that being trained for replacement that we were going to be in____(??) into that particular unit. We left Meade, went to Africa just for another real brief deal there and then sent on over into Italy. And then we following the unit up and they’d come in, sometimes daily sometimes every other day or whatever and have everybody out. You’d see ‘em pull their lists out and they called names. If your name was on there, you knew what was fixing to happen, you were fixing’ to go up there and get in the river. DANDRIDGE: So you went on a boat? How did you get to Italy? GOOCH: Yeah, we were on a ship to Italy. No, but I’m talking about them guys that was up there fighting up and down that Po(??) River. DANDRIDGE: Oh I see, I see. GOOCH: (laughing) ____(??) he was in the group(??). Yeah, they were up there and they were following that river up and we would move up periodically to—as the fighting unit moved the replacement group that we were in—And during the time of our, we’d just go through routine training to keep you somewhat fit, and you’d wait till your name be called, and they called them regularly. And you always, when they said fall out for formation, you knew, I might, This might be my last day back here, I might be headed up there. But my name never got called. DANDRIDGE: What did you see while you were in Africa and Italy? GOOCH: I didn’t get to see much of anything in Africa, we just, uh—other than some dessert land, cause we wasn’t there but a few days. But then—northern Africa. But then we went on Italian boats from Africa on over to Italy and we went in, started in just outside of Naples and followed ‘em all the way up to Varese(??), Leghorn(??), all the places on up to there. DANDRIDGE: When you’re on this boat— GOOCH: (interjects) Which, on the ship to, going from the mainland to It— DANDRIDGE: (continues) —to Africa, yeah, let’s say from the US to Africa. What is it—was the ship comprised of only African American military men? GOOCH: Oh no, no, no. U. L. Gooch 14 DANDRIDGE: So where you situated(??)? GOOCH: Well, on this ship, it’s taking replacement people for everybody, so it’s probably many more white folks on it than black. DANDRIDGE: So did you all stay in the same quarters? GOOCH: No, no, no. Never in my entire time in the military there was never any co-mingling of white and black. DANDRIDGE: Did you all ever socialize together? Maybe play ____(??), play cards. GOOCH: (overlapping) Very little, very little, very little. So, we started following them up(??) and I was in Italy when the war was over. DANDRIDGE: What was Italy like when you were over there? GOOCH: Dirty. (chuckles) Oh every place you went was—Course the people had just, the war had just gone through and tore up things; it just was a mess. DANDRIDGE: Did you see animals or anything? GOOCH: A cow or see some—yeah, you see cows; Paisan going down the road with a big barrel of grape juice on a two wheel cart with a cow pulling it. Yeah you saw a kind of—Then one of my first little stories about—We moved up, camped out just close to these tall buildings. And this guy, I don’t remember who it was now but probably somebody that had come out of a different than where I got my education, and you had that, you were very mixed. By this time you were getting very mixed up with the kind of people, I’m talking about all black; I had people who were college graduates, people who had been teaching school, they had—by this time this was a mixture, no general pattern of people, other than black—But, anyway, we looked up and saw these, this big ____(??), “You know what that is?” I said, “No, grain elevator about to fall down.” He says, “Man, you know, I know where we are now, that’s the leaning tower of Pisa.” I said, “What the hell’s that, that don’t mean nothing to me.” “Man you hadn’t heard of them?” No. “That’s one of the wonders of the world.” My wonder is when the hell I’m going to get out of here. I don’t care about that leaning tower of Pisa. This was another black person that had somewhere, I guess, in their educational life they were aware. But they—you know, we wasn’t sure how we were progressing and we got up to there and he, they saw that, and he said, “That’s the leaning tower of Pisa.” We knew we were in Italy, we knew we were moving up. And the people relate to things that they had known or heard of. DANDRIDGE: Did you ever— U. L. Gooch 15 GOOCH: (continuing) Didn’t mean anything ____(??). DANDRIDGE: Did you ever associate with any of the local people there? GOOCH: Oh yeah, every once in a while we would. For different reasons. (laughs) DANDRIDGE: How did, generally, were you treated? GOOCH: Let’s not talk about that. No I talk about some of that. No they were nice to us black people, they were nice to us black people. DANDRIDGE: And could—Did you all ever go eat in some of the areas there? GOOCH: Um-hm. (laugh) Yeah, we were at(??) a place one night and they were cooking something and these guys thought we were going to get some of it to it. ____(??) came through the house chasing this damn cat and trying to catch it. They called ____(??) , he said, “What was it they told that thing was? Wasn’t that the same thing they were fixing to eat?” (laugh) We were about ready to be served from cat. DANDRIDGE: Times were hard, though, I’m sure. GOOCH: Oh yes, a lot of crazy things. DANDRIDGE: So what were— GOOCH: (interjecting) You want to keep on with this story? Let’s move on, get off of Italy, we’re going to be a long story. DANDRIDGE: I’m not through with Italy yet. So, what was it like—what did you think of the people there? Were they destitute, were they— GOOCH: Oh yeah, you saw some of all of it. Every once in a while, for some reason, and I can only say maybe once or twice in my time there, you were privileged by some ____(??) I don’t know how it happened, to a better home, and some of ‘em—their life hadn’t been bad all their life, it’s bad now because of the war, they’re just trying to get out of the war, you know, and don’t got nothing. They might have some real good cognac that they’ve had hid and they bring some of it out. DANDRIDGE: Really? GOOCH: (continuing) Break out some, get some of the ____(??). If you were fortunate and course it wasn’t a long yield thing, but for an evening you might to have a chance to be visiting with somebody else. It’s a very mixed bag of the kind of things that happened. U. L. Gooch 16 DANDRIDGE: Was there any instruction to you from officers that you were not to fraternize with the— GOOCH: Yeah, um-hm. Stay away from the white women, boy. Y’all aren’t supposed to do that with no white women. DANDRIDGE: So did you all adhere to that? GOOCH: Yeah we did it yeah. (laugh) DANDRIDGE: So how long were you in Italy? Or how many— GOOCH: I was there, let’s see, I had never thought about it in those terms. Few months. Got to Italy and January, February, March, April, May—I don’t know, I think I was in Italy from like January to maybe September, August—no it wouldn’t have been Aug—I’d have to go back to try to track it. I was there, I was in—if my memory was working right now, quick-like, I was in Italy when the war was over in Europe, within a month after the war was over, and again because of—you checked my writing, my notes or something, I can tell you the day was over, but within a month after the war was over I was on another big ship headed somewhere and I didn’t know where it was. DANDRIDGE: Well did you find out where it was? GOOCH: After the war was over in Japan, after the war was over in Japan, I was headed for the invasion of Japan mainland(??). We didn’t know it. We spent several months making up a deal in the Pacific to invade Japan’s mainland. DANDRIDGE: But you were on that ship headed there? GOOCH: On that ship all the time. And when the war was over and they would—Ship captain and I believe command(??), we don’t know what we’re going, we don’t know what’s going on. We tried— everyday we’re on a new day orders for the day. And when the war was over we just got announced that we dropped this atom bomb and the war is over and we still don’t know what we’re going to do. But we do know, now, what we were going to do to start with, which we didn’t know that we were heading for invasion of Japan mainland. DANDRIDGE: So— GOOCH: (continuing) And a few days later we just got a new order, Hate to tell you you’re not headed back to the States, you’re headed to Philippine Islands. There we don’t know what your duties are going to be, we just know that that’s where this ship’s going. And we got there and we find out that our duties were to clean up the Japanese there that refused to accept the fact that the war was over and do some things there. I left Japan— U. L. Gooch 17 DANDRIDGE: So you all fought for a while? GOOCH: Well you had to survive and they didn’t know the war was over. If you got in the close proximity of where one was, you were fighting. DANDRIDGE: Did you ever have that experience? GOOCH: Yeah. But they start giving—you know, they start showing up on the roadside with their hands up. DANDRIDGE: So, some of them knew? GOOCH: It started circulating, you know, they were giving up(??). So we were, I got there and we knew that it’s just a matter of time, we had a different feeling about things. The war was over; it’s just a matter of time how you’re going to get away from it. My experience there, one of my experiences there, again that I wrote about was, I had again a white person that was in, that was above me and I was a sergeant, and he said the war was over and he was coming back to the States for a furlough and was going to be coming back to Philippine Islands out of uniform on the US Government job assignment. And he ran this deal by me; said, “I’m going to get a W ____(??) something,” I don’t remember the number, but it was a number that he was excited about and come back over here. He said, “I’ll probably be back here for a year, it’s a civilian job, and then you go back to the States you can’t take(??) your same job rating with you. He said, “You and I have worked together good”; he said, “You see this job I got right now?” He said, “If you want to go back to the States and come back, you can have this job and ____(??) and then would be a W-so-and-so-and-so-and-so.” He said,” Ain’t no way, man, that you could get that in the States for years, but once you go back with it, they can’t take it away from you.” I said, “Do you know what you’re talking about? Talking about me going off of this crap, back to my home, and come back in this crap again. (laughs) I might look crazy, I don’t care nothing about them ____(??).” That was the stup—one of the earliest stupid things I did. I wrote about that in my—one of the early stupid things that I did. DANDRIDGE: So after the Philippines, what did you do? GOOCH: Come home and discharge. DANDRIDGE: Where did you come home to? GOOCH: I—got out of the military and I had a sister who was living in Memphis and I just—I decided I would probably spend some time with them while I sort of find a direction that I wanted to go. DANDRIDGE: What base did you come home to? U. L. Gooch 18 GOOCH: Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. DANDRIDGE: Were you glad when you sat foot on, on US soil? GOOCH: You bet. Yeah, party hardy. I told somebody that first night I was back in the United States was the only time I’ve been high on marijuana. (laughs) We went to one of them basement parties and it was, like, is that somebody there? DANDRIDGE: You couldn’t see anybody because of the smoke, okay. (laughs) So when you came back to your—What was it like when you came back to the States? Was everything like you expected it to be? GOOCH: No. And, again, that’s not due to World War, to your interview. But that’s my next part of my life story, is my after war— DANDRIDGE: So how did you view, when you came back, what did things look like? GOOCH: Well, you know, I hadn’t been gone that long, but I had sort of forgot how really bad things were a little bit, you know. And when I came back and found it to be as it was, it really put the—And you had that feeling that all of what you’re going through with and you—All the time you’re thinking about your country and then when you got back and you started to get into the conditions that pointed out to you that it, you know, this really isn’t your country, to the extent that you’re welcome everywhere. And that’s when some other things started happening in my life, that, some of ‘em, that I got into. DANDRIDGE: Well what were some of those unpleasant settings that you saw yourself, when you were in Memphis visiting your sister, what— GOOCH: All right. Well, the first one—again, I’ll track you down, read my book—my first one was an incident I got into with the bus driver. DANDRIDGE: In Memphis? GOOCH: Well just out of Memphis, ordered me to the back of the bus. DANDRIDGE: You weren’t wearing your uniform? GOOCH: Yes, at that time I had not—At that time I had not officially pulled off my uniform, but I was back and out of the war, but I had just gotten back, this was a few days after I was back— DANDRIDGE: And you were in uniform? GOOCH: Um-hm. And this –and I had my military bag, the bag that we called our duffle bag with all my after military stuff and everything in it. And in that I had a weapon that I was supposed to have, I was U. L. Gooch 19 authorized. I had took away from a German, I mean a Japanese in the Philippine Islands and I still have the papers for it that the government give me that I brought it home. But that wasn’t the present situation. DANDRIDGE: So what did you say to him when he directed you to the back of the bus? GOOCH: Well I told him I wasn’t going there and he made the mistake of the putting his hands on me, and that wasn’t good for him. Wasn’t good for him. DANDRIDGE: So what happened? GOOCH: I whooped his ass. And not only that, I’d made it very clear to him that I had a German Luger and I could kill him in one minute. DANDRIDGE: So what did he do? GOOCH: He got back—I told him to get his ass back on that bus and go, and he did. DANDRIDGE: And you sat where you wanted to sit. GOOCH: No! Kicked off of the bus. I went and called George; George came over and took me out to my aunt’s where I wanted to go. DANDRIDGE: So they didn’t call the police on you or anything? GOOCH: Oh no, God no, they didn’t call the police; they were scared that somebody were following me. I told them the guys on the bus were gone, but they were scared to death that I was in big trouble. They were going ,Get out, leave here, go somewhere else, don’t be around here, they’re looking for you. DANDRIDGE: Was that true? GOOCH: That was my—No, no, none of that. DANDRIDGE: Why wasn’t it true? GOOCH: Nobody knew anything about it except him and me. You know, the bus was on—This was a cross country Greyhound bus and he was headed to Chicago, somewhere, Louisville, I don’t know, wherever he was going. But my aunt and her husband they found that I had—they thought I was in big trouble. DANDRIDGE: And what did they want you to do? U. L. Gooch 20 GOOCH: Well, they didn’t know, they were just—they were afraid for me being there, they thought somebody knew where I was, they didn’t know what to do. So I went back to Memphis where my sister—after a couple of days I went up to visit my dad and them, went back to Memphis where my sister was. But then that was, that was that incident of, a lack of(??). A month, not more than two months later, probably less than two months later the next thing that was real heartbreaker, I decided that—did you cut, have you cut this off? DANDRIDGE: No— GOOCH: No, no, I don’t care if you want it one there, but it just— Pause in recording. GOOCH: Probably the next real heartbreaker came when I had been out for a while and sort of juggling things around as to, you know, what am I going to do with my life? There was one thing that still was burning that I was so disgusted by the fact that I didn’t get a chance to fly them airplanes. I don’t care what I think about(??), I thought about might want to be a dentist, thought about what am I going to do with my life? Might want to be a veterinarian. But ____(??) an airplane. So there come the newspaper and this add in the newspaper, flight training for veteran’s at this little airfield in Memphis. And I wanted to learn to fly—you close the air off(??)—I want to learn to fly, I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but at least—I know what I’ll do, I’ll satisfy the fact that I know I can fly one of them airplanes and this is a chance for me to prove to myself and everybody else that all I needed was an opportunity, I could fly one of those airplanes. So I took off, out to this facility, and ____(??) there and ____(??), said I saw the add in the paper, that I’d like to sign up for their GI training. There were any number of GI trainings going on; there was GI training on how to cook, how to do anything, everything, somebody had a training program that they could make some money off of Veteran’s Administration as training, you go to law school or anywhere between becoming a medical doctor to being a truck driver, you know, GI trade training. But this was an ad about learning to fly airplanes so that appealed to me. So I walked in thinking that I’m going to start learning to fly airplanes and satisfy this deal that I have, I might not ever use it for anything else, but I’d know how to fly an airplane. And they informed me, indirectly, what you want to be involved in this flight training school, this is a white folks school. DANDRIDGE: How did they convey that to you? GOOCH: Huh? DANDRIDGE: How did they convey that to you? GOOCH: I’m going to try and use the same words that I used in the book cause I told many people that most of the things I said in there was true, that’s the reason I could say ‘em over again. He said, “You know, there was a man come through here the other day,” and said he landed here and got some fuel in his airplane, “and says he was going up to Nashville and said they had a flight training school up there.” U. L. Gooch 21 Heck, you’ve got a flight training school right here, right? He said, “Why don’t you go up and see if maybe, maybe you can get in that school.” And I think the way he revealed it to me, something along that line. DANDRIDGE: So they didn’t confront you dead on by saying— GOOCH: Get out of here. DANDRIDGE: (Continuing) Right, because your black, right? GOOCH: No, but he made it very clear that they didn’t need me in that school. DANDRIDGE: So how did you feel, what did you do? GOOCH: I went on up to Nashville a few days later and got into flight school and I’ve been flying for sixty years, twenty-thousand hours, and did everything there is to do in aviation. DANDRIDGE: Well, when you went to Nashville, what were your expectations? GOOCH: I expect to find black folks and get along with them. DANDRIDGE: (interjecting) I mean with your flying. GOOCH: (continuing) I knew how to get along with black folks. DANDRIDGE: I mean with your flying. Was the training hard? Was it— GOOCH: No, no. It was just like I’d thought it would be. DANDRIDGE: What’d you like most about it? GOOCH: Oh, I just liked all about it. That’s the reason my life has been so good. Spent all these years of my life getting paid to do something I’d pay somebody to let me do. DANDRIDGE: So after you did the flight training, then what did you do? GOOCH: I thought we were on the war, this— DANDRIDGE: Aftermath of war counts. So then what did you do after the—‘Cause how long did you go to the flight training school? U. L. Gooch 22 GOOCH: I ain’t going to tell you my book story, you read it. I done did the war review with you. I got certified, went down to Tuskegee, got certified pilot, and came back and I walked in and Tom Hayes, who owned the Birmingham Black Barons was sitting there and he wanted somebody to fly with him and I flew with him that summer and then came back to Tennessee State that fall and went, started to school, and opened my own business and—It’s all there, my whole life. DANDRIDGE: How did you get to Kansas? GOOCH: Um—Give me twenty dollars. DANDRIDGE: Okay, I don’t have twenty dollars. Come on— GOOCH: I’m going to get you my book and let you, so you can read it. I— DANDRIDGE: What was your motivation for coming to Kansas? GOOCH: My motivation for coming to Kansas? DANDRIDGE: Uh-huh. GOOCH: I was out of a job and my wife—I didn’t want my wife to have to be taking care of me and I needed something to do until the next—I was doing agricultural flying and it’s seasonable and nothing to do and there’s somebody there in Nashville recruiting people to come out here to Boeing to work on the airplanes, so I’d go out to ____(??) work for a few weeks, I’ll be back home. And that’s been nineteen—that was March 1952. DANDRIDGE: What did— GOOCH: I had no idea I’d be here more than sixty—I didn’t think I’d be here more than six months, no sir. DANDRIDGE: What was Wichita like when you came here? Read your book, I know. But what was it like; just give me some general impressions. Nineteen fifty-two. The African American population had grown significantly since it had been—I mean you wouldn’t have known that necessarily, but since the twenties and thirties. And the aircraft industry was the motivating— GOOCH: Just for a temporary job. And I didn’t think it would last more than six months. DANDRIDGE: And so from there you engaged in politics? GOOCH: That was a long ways between there and politics. Let’s see, I had my own business for many years before politics. U. L. Gooch 23 DANDRIDGE: What do you think about—in terms of your relating your war experiences to your career experiences after the war? Do you see a relationship or how do you see— GOOCH: Well, there’s so many things that I look at. I think about the fact that I turned out to be what I know was a hell of a good pilot and I didn’t get a chance to do it for the military. And I proved that I—if I had had that opportunity I would have. And that’s the first thing that got done. Then my idea of trying to survive, I had to learn a lot about how to survive in a country that you fought for thinking that you’d have an equal opportunity to succeed. And even after that, even though you didn’t get to do what you would have preferred doing, you’re denied doing what you wanted to do while you’re there, but you did what you had to do because that was your duty, but now you’re back and you’re still being denied of opportunities to succeed in the way that is your interest. That continues to face you. DANDRIDGE: When you came back did you ever remember anything that made you think that men who were white who had also gone to war had changed their attitudes about race relations or had a more favorable attitude toward race relations? Did you observe or hear anything like that? GOOCH: You know, no. I can look back over it today and think about had we had President Truman, somebody to—decided that this isn’t the right thing to have done, instead of Roosevelt, somebody, whatever, and declared that this is a war we’ve got to fight for our country and we’re going to win it together, I think if we had fought together in that war, we’d have come out of that war more of a united group. I think it’s a lot lost because the decision wasn’t made, this was a fight for our country and we’re going to fight it together, and they just—if you’re going in here, you’re going in the war together, fight together, you’re going to die and bleed together, they’d did that, I think we would have come out of that war with this country so much nicer country for everybody. I think that things—so much that we got back and continued, I’m talking about World War II, we got back and continued with this fashion when that, we would have been past that and what we could have done for this country during that time, where everybody doing the best, being the best that they could be— DANDRIDGE: In other words, that experience, if they had fought the war together, there would be no need for the modern civil rights movement? GOOCH: I believe ____(??). DANDRIDGE: Are you any other comments that you would like to talk about or say about your war experience? GOOCH: No, no. I have to admit that I’m glad that it wasn’t necessary for me to get in the mud, but I was ready to go. I was ready to go. And I’m sure glad that we never had to invade Japan mainland, and that’s where I was next and I was ready to go. DANDRIDGE: After the war have you joined any veteran’s organizations or engaged in any other activities, veteran’s activities? U. L. Gooch 24 GOOCH: Yeah, yeah I was in American Legion. I joined for a while, not active now. DANDRIDGE: But you did— GOOCH: Uh-huh. DANDRIDGE: Okay. What did you like about the American Legion? Why did you join? GOOCH: Oh, joined because it had an active black place of getting together of like people, just like any other social club. Like people getting together. DANDRIDGE: Were there any other World War II veterans there? GOOCH: No, no. This was after the—Korea and Vietnam, so— DANDRIDGE: So there weren’t too many of you that had experienced Word War II? GOOCH: Well, when I first joined there were quite a few, but by now there isn’t, they’re getting scarce. I’m talking about thirty years ago. There were quite a few World War II people then, active in American Legion. DANDRIDGE: Right. So when you all got together in your private social circle— GOOCH: We talked about the crap that we went through. DANDRIDGE: No. Yeah, did you all talk about your experiences at war? GOOCH: Heck yes. That wasn’t all the conversation, but it would come up. DANDRIDGE: Okay. Well we appreciate all your time and if you want to add anything else or let us know. GOOCH: No I’ve over gone war and all this civilian stuff and everything else— DANDRIDGE: War has everything to do with civilian. So our next goal, of course, is to go back and review other aspects of your life as well, Senator. And we do appreciate your time. Thank you so much Senator. GOOCH: Well, thank you. Tape 1, side 2 ends. End of interview. U. L. Gooch 25 American Legion, 26 Italy, general, 16 Kansas, 24 Memphis, Tennessee, 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 19, 20, 21, 22 Race relations, 22, 23, 25 Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama, 4 United States Army Camp Livingston, Louisiana, 12, 13, 14 For Chaffe, Arkansas, 19 Fort Meade, Maryland, 13, 14 Infantry, 11, 12, 13, 14 Race relations, 13, 16, 25 United States Army Air Corps, 6, 12, 13 Majors Army Air Field, Texas, 6, 7 Moton Field, Alabama, 4 Race relations, 7, 11 Tuskegee, Alabama, 1, 4, 11 United States Navy Millington Naval Air Base, Tennessee, 1 World War II, 1, 4, 5, 8, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26 European theater Italy, 15, 18 Pacific theater, 18 U. L. Gooch 26