WORLD WAR II INTERVIEW AUGUST 31, 2000
By: Kimsey M. "Mac" Fowler
Dr. John Walker "J. W." Zetterower
1704 Stonewall Street
Dublin, GA 31021
I was a freshman in Dental School in Atlanta, GA when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I entered Dental School in September of 1941. I don't remember where I was on Sunday, December 7, 1941. It wasn't a school day so I was probably in my apartment where I lived in Atlanta. I do remember the next day, on Monday when Roosevelt gave his speech, I was in the freshman lab in Dental School listening to the radio. I remember it very well. Of course, the war started then.
Dental School was just like school is now; you went to school nine months and off three months. They instituted the accelerated program so that we would graduate faster. We had two weeks between the freshman and sophomore years. Which I was glad of because we saved money and everything else.
In the summer of 1942 or 1943, I was inducted into the Army. I went through what the draftees went through. I stayed a week at Ft. McPherson, we were issued uniforms. This was a good thing; I liked that because I was receiving Buck Private's pay and it helped me get through school. I was a junior in Dental School. Upon graduation, we were expected to go right into the Army. They told us that the Army had their quotas filled and any of us that wanted to go into the Navy could. That's what I wanted to do. I became a Naval Officer in August 1944.
I was married at that time and my wife, Virginia was expecting our first child. The baby was due around the later part of September. I had received my orders to go to Farragut, Idaho, that was a Naval Training Station, a few miles from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. I was supposed to report October 2nd. Fortunately, our baby was born September 29, I was glad to be there with Virginia at that time. She and Cheryl was still in the hospital when I left. That was NOT a very happy time to leave my wife and daughter. I had never been away from Dublin any further than Atlanta in my life! I thought going to Idaho was going to the other side of the world. But anyway, I went there and stayed in Farragut, Idaho from October 1944 until March 1945.
One little incident that happened and I sent this in to Readers Digest. You know they have a little section "Humor in Uniform". Being in the Navy, the Navy talk is different. They call the floor - a deck, the ceiling - overhead, and bathroom the head. When I first reported to Farragut and went through an orientation for about a week, I thought I would go into Couer d'Alene, Idaho and find a place to live to bring my wife and baby out. I walked out the main gate and there was a Shore Patrolman on duty. Of course, he saluted me and said, "Going ashore, Sir?" I replied, "No, I'm just going into town for a little while." When you leave the Base, they call it "going ashore". He looked at me and thought, "He's an officer and he doesn't know which end is up".
Virginia and Cheryl came out and we lived in Coeur d'Alene and we loved it out there.
In January, I received a message that my brother, Frank was missing in action. This was a very trying time. I wanted to come back home and be with Mother and Daddy. But being that far, it just wasn't practical.
In March (1945) they transferred me down to Camp Parks, California outside of San Francisco near Oakland. Camp Parks was a Seabees Station. They would come in from overseas and we would repair their teeth and in six or eight weeks they would ship them back out. I liked it there.
Virginia and Cheryl came down and found a place to live at Castro Valley (an area where chickens were raised). I bought my first car, a 1936 Chevrolet. It was a pea green; the ugliest color you ever put your eyes on! When Virginia first saw it, she said, "Oh, sugar, you didn't buy that car, did you?" About two weeks after I bought it, I got me a brush and a can of black paint and painted it. It looked pretty good! That's the car we came back in from California to Dublin. We put a mattress in the back seat; Cheryl was a year old then. It took eight days to drive home. I had to buy three new tires on this trip. You had to have permits to get tires during those days. You had to have a permit to get gasoline, meat, sugar, etc.
I think a lot of times when I hear the young people talking about inconveniences; they don't realize what people had gone through in those days. It really didn't bother us all that much. I've forgotten what my paycheck amounted to but I remember one day just before payday I ran out of money. I gathered up all the Coca Cola bottles and took them down to the grocery store and got a penny a piece for them and used that to buy a quart of milk for the baby. That sounds bad, but that's how close things were. We didn't complain. My wife didn't complain. We were living in a clean place, but it was very small. In those days, every Veteran felt the same way I did; everybody, even civilians we were going through a hard time doing without many things that today is expected, the main goal then was to "win the war". There hasn't been another nation, not even Russia that has threatened the world like they (Germans and Japanese) did. It was a great sacrifice. That generation of people that went through all those things like the Great Depression, they were hardened. People today have it good but I think they realize they have it good. This is a great generation today. They have high ideals. A lot of people today are going through hard times like we did, not in the same sense but they have their troubles. I admire the young people today because they have this Nation on their shoulders. Really times now are harder morally than they were then. It takes strong Christian people to keep this country straight today. Even though we had a hard time, this generation today is to be admired.
We had some good friends right across the street there in Castro Valley; a Naval Officer named Jim Stackhouse. He visited us two years ago and Jim died last year. He was a little older than I was. He had moved to North Carolina. I'm glad that he came to see us.
When the war was over, I requested duty in the Sixth Naval District. They transferred me to the V. A. Hospital in Dublin, GA in November 1945. I stayed there at the V. A. until May 1946. I was discharged while at the Naval Hospital.
But in May of 1945 while still at Camp Parks, I received word that my brother, Frank had been killed in action. This was a very trying time; I couldn't go all the way back to Dublin to be with my parents. I did, however, talk with them several times.
My brother, Frank was in the Army. Scott Thompson wrote a wonderful article in The Dublin Courier Herald in 1999 about my brother, Frank and he found out a lot about him that I didn't know. Frank was in the Old Rainbow Division in the Army. He was in France when the Battle of the Bulge came. His outfit had just arrived. Really, they were not prepared for combat. They had just captured a little town in France and the German's had recaptured it the following day, they were in retreat. Frank was a Staff Sgt. and one of his men had been wounded. Frank went to pull him back and a Sgt. that was close-by told Scott that he got shot with small arms fire in the forehead and was killed instantly. I don't know what happened to the young boy that he was trying to rescue. Scott did a wonderful job with this article. Frank was married at the time to Nona Thaxton from Statesboro. Frank was two years older than me. He went to Georgia Southern at Statesboro for two years and was working in Dublin with Dunlop Tires when he was drafted. If Frank had lived, he would have gotten the Dunlop franchise that Bill Duncan got and you know what success Bill has had with that business.
My father was Dr. Frank Zetterower, Sr. My mother was Sally Walker. Their children were my brother, Frank and my sister, Maudine and I.
My wife is Virginia Perryman from Cedartown, Georgia. Her parents were Virgil Perryman and Jeanette Knighton.
We have three children, Cheryl, Mary Laurel and Frank.
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