Nordic Heritage Museum Nordic American Voices

Interview of Jan Brekke On June 15, 2013 At Seattle, Washington Interviewed by Gordon C. Strand

Gordon Strand : [0:03] Today is June 15, 2013. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum and I will be interviewing Jan Brekke for the Nordic American Voices Oral History Project. Jan, welcome. Thank you for participating in our project. Could you first identify yourself? Give us your name. [0:24] When you were born, and where you are born?

Jan Brekke : [In Norwegian: My name is Jan Brekke, born in Horten, Norway, on July 17, 1932.] [0:27] I'm very pleased to be here. I have just returned from Norway because history and tradition is very important. I saw the flags out in this room here -- these Nordic flags. Every one of those countries has played an important role in my life. [1:13] The statement is and I quote, "It is useful to remember that history is to a nation as memory is to an individual. A person deprived of memory becomes disoriented and lost, not knowing where they are going, so a nation denied a concept of the past will be disabled in dealing with the present and its future."

[1:52] It goes on. "The longer you can look back, the further you can look forward," said Winston Churchill. The first part was said by Arthur Schlesinger, historian. He was President John F. Kennedy's adviser. I would like to give you some of the events that has shaped my life. It has partly been outside my control.

[2:33] It has been world events that somehow shaped me. I will start reading a letter that was written in April 11, 1940. That was two days after we [Norway] were invaded by the Germans.

[3:00] My father was a submarine captain. His name is Gunnar Brekke. He was on board a submarine called B3. Here he writes in the letter: "My dearest mother and father," and I think maybe I will try to read it in English translation, "the war has raged for three days now." That happened to be up in Narvik area.

[3:43] "So far we have managed to survive. My thoughts are with you in the south. All communications is broken -- impossible to send you a cable or telephone. But I feel confident that you at Brekka Farm is safe.

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[4:05] God gives that Mosse," that was my mother, "and my small children would have been with you. I'm so desperately afraid for them. After the bombardment of Horten and The Center For The War Activity...And I lived and was part of the invasion in Horten."

Gordon : [4:36] Jan could you tell us approximately where that is in Norway then, where you were living?

Jan : [4:42] Horten is along the Oslofjord. It was a navy base for many, many years. As I said, my father was a navy captain on a submarine. It's on the west side of the fjord. I always wonder what kind of a guy my father was. [5:19] He was born in 1899 in Arendal. In Norway, he was kind of regarded as a vamp. He's kind of a delinquent. As far as when he graduated from high school, he got a non-passing grade in behavior.

[5:45] That's a non-passing grade in behavior, so much so that his sister had to go and pick up his diploma because he escaped and went to sea. That was during World War I, 1914-18.

[6:12] He got one advice from a friend. You see that was the “torpedo war” in the North Sea. Norway was neutral, but they were attacked by German submarines. His advice was if you get torpedoed and get in a lifeboat, you must row all the time, or you will die of hypothermia.

[6:53] [The ship was torpedoed]. My father then, he rowed for three days nonstop. He ended up at the navy academy in Horten.

Gordon : [7:07] This is after World War I?

Jan : [7:09] This is after World War I, yes. Up north in Narvik, in April of 1940, he was not able to escape with the submarine to England which he intended to do. They sank their submarine. [7:44] They thought the war was going to be very short, so they opened a hatch in the front of the submarine so that it went down with the bow first. It stood on the bottom because they wanted to retrieve it when this war was over.

[8:10] They were not able to bring the submarine to England because of the damage that had been caused in Narvik. He was put in a detention camp with General Ruge and all the Norwegian military officers.

[8:39] General Ruge said, "You need to give a promise to the Germans that you will never fight them, or[the alternative,] you will be sent to German concentration camps. General Ruge said, "I cannot do that." My father and the rest of them gave their word, and he came home to Horten a month later to the family.

[9:17] The first thing, he was planning his escape to get to Britain -- to England.

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Gordon : [9:25] How old are you at that point, Jan?

Jan : [9:27] I was eight years old. He found a place up in a valley in Norway called Sigdal. It was a valley that ended up in...It was not a true valley as Hallingdal, or Numedal, or Gudbrandsdal because he felt that could be a safe place for us to be. [10:09] He took a job in civil defense on Moss. Moss is across a fjord from Horten on the east side. It was at Moss Shipyard. He had already established how to escape. He had been there about three of four months. One night, he took a bus towards the Swedish border.

[10:45] There he met a guide, and through the woods, he then walked towards the border.

[10:54] The guide said, "You walk hundred yards in that direction, and you are in Sweden." We didn't hear from him directly [for five years].

[11:12] Father had an acquaintance in Sundsvald, a lady. She took letters when he was in England and rewrote them and telling about “Uncle” -- what he was doing in very disguised language.

[11:33] My mother also received, and we don't know where it came from and how it came, but every month she received an allowance so that we had something to live on for those five years.

Gordon : [11:50] You had moved to Sigdal. Is that correct?

Jan : [11:52] Yes, we had moved to Sigdal. As far as my life in Horten -- as my father referred to in that letter -- we were bombarded. Horten, the navy station was bombed by the Germans. I was born in the [navy] hospital. That received a hit. [12:44] By the way, John Sjong that lives here in Seattle, he was also born there because he was a son of a navy man who actually later perished in the war. At 4:00 in the morning, we heard the sirens. We heard a colossal gun warning shot, and we escaped down into the basement.

[13:17] That was a time when the Germans are coming up the Oslofjord with Blücher . . That was a big cruiser bringing the German government to Oslo. However, it never docked there. [Blücher .was sank at Drøbak.

Gordon : [13:39] Was there a worry that this was going to happen, or was it a total surprise?

Jan : [13:43] Total surprise, but of course, it was building up because we had a foreign minister in Norway. Very much like Chamberlain, he had been to Germany. He came home with a piece of paper and said, "There is nothing to be concerned about." [14:05] We experience what was called the Blitzkrieg. It came suddenly. We know what happened to

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the King and the Parliament. They escaped to Elverum and so on. When we were in the basement there, there was a ship called Olaf Tryggvason, a [Norwegian] navy ship.

[14:35] [cuts off]

Part II

Gordon: [0:00] OK.

Jan Brekke : [0:06] Olaf Tryggvason was in the harbor, and a German munition boat had come outside the harbor. This is a drawing from before the war, and it's by O. Sorensen , he was an illustrator with Aftenposten. This was one of the guns that fired at that German munition boat, and it exploded, and our basement door was ripped open, and a piece of the door was missing because of the size of the explosion.

Gordon: [1:02] Were you living in what was like base housing, or was it...

Jan Brekke : [1:06] No, we lived in our house, and let me just finish the story.

[1:21] When the hostilities stopped, we came out in the street, and at one end was the Germans, they had landed troops and we could see them [in one end of the road]. In the other end was the Norwegian that had set up machine guns, and we were in the middle, but we had to make our way. My mother -- and we were three children -- we came down town Horten, but all the windows in all the stores in Horten were broken of this blast. We were trucked out of town past Borre, but there were so many people there that we were further moved into Nykirke, and we were there for about a week before everything had calmed down and we came back to Horten.

[2:44] This is a picture that was taken in 1800, and that's the house I grew up in. That is the old Horten harbor, and this is what it looks like today. Why I bring these pictures? This is my grandfather's house, and this is some years later. This first was from 1800, this is now 1907, and there is our house that you saw, and this house was my grandfather’s. He was in the navy, he was head doctor of the navy hospital.

[3:54] As such, he was doctor “on Heimdall” that went in 1905 out into Skagerrak, and brought Prince Carl and Maud and Olaf into Oslo. Prince Carl took the name Haakon VII. My sister had old letters from when [grandfather] made that trip out, picked him up, and later, when, when King Haakon made the tour around the coast to Norway. He became the King's physician on that trip.

Gordon: [5:14] That's when Haakon became the king?

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Jan Brekke : [5:17] Yes, and he was part of coronation in Nidarosdomen, and he claims that... There's a picture, but you can't... He is in that picture in Nidarosdomen. This was published just some years ago when Priscilla and I was at dinner for the king, King Harald. This was in 2005, the hundredth anniversary, and it was discovered that my sister had all of these pictures up in her attic.

Part III

Jan Brekke : [0:00] I am ready. My father he walked into to Sweden and he was going to lead a group from Sweden to England, the only way they could travel. He had tickets made up for him and his group. It went from Stockholm to Moscow, from Teheran, Singapore, New York and to England because all other ways were blocked.

Gordon Strand : [0:40] From Moscow to Teheran?

Jan : [0:42] Teheran, yeah. The day before they were to depart, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and everything was blocked. The hostilities while in Norway, there was a reason for that. The Germans was up in Narvik. My father and two Panzer ships, these are the biggest warships we had.

[1:29] They were up there, because the Germans needed the iron ore from Kiruna that was shipped through Narvik. So that was all important for them. How he has given his word that he would not fight the Germans, which means if he was captured he would immediately be executed, so would all the rest of the officers in the Norwegian Armed Forces at that time.

[2:14] Britain desperately needed ball bearings, and once-a-week a plane was coming from England, fly by night over Norway. They came in and landed somewhere around Gothenburg. It was loaded with ball bearings. It's very heavy, but it had two seats on the plane, and my father got one of them, and that was how he ended up in England.

[2:57] In the beginning, he was captain for a submarine that was given by the United States to the Norwegian navy, but that was just training younger officers in submarine warfare, and my father ended up in Dundee where a lot of navy, British as well as Norwegian, and he was in charge of eight [Norwegian] minesweepers.

[3:35] These are some pictures from the minesweepers, and its King Haakon and Crown Prince Olav that was the Head of Defense in Norway in England during those years.

Gordon : [3:55] Excuse me, this was Dundee in Scotland?

Jan : [3:58] Dundee in Scotland, yes.

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[4:03] You know, we are here at the museum, and a museum is a collection of things, and these artifacts are tokens and history. It's important that things are preserved, and that's why I, for the family has preserved, and we as a family, treasure these things because they represent who we are as a family.

[4:43] From the early days, it was somehow conveyed to me through my family and the navy, you can say, what was expected of me. I can say it has been the thing that has held me in the years after, including when I came to the United States. Failure was not an option.

[5:33] In England, on one of these minesweepers...This is a story of Bamse. It's a most famous ship dog. The history is that, when Bamse...He was on board one of the ships. Here is a picture of Bamse. It's a statue of Bamse at the navy museum inHorten, as well as in England. It was buried just after the war, and it's featured there. And this was a picture that was given to my father by the crew of that ship.

[6:40] Bamse's job on board was, when they came, having been out...Minesweeping is a dangerous job. The Germans came and mined the harbors around Dundee and other cities in England. Picking them up, they had to cut the anchor, and they floated up, and then they just shot at them and sank them that way.

[7:15] So when these sailors come in, they headed for the bars up. Bamsa's job, self-appointed job, in the evening, every evening when they were ashore, he went and took the bus. He went to a bus stop. He had a ticket around his neck, a pass, and he went to the bars, rounded up the sailors, and brought them on board again.

[7:54] Somehow, it's a symbol, what...It's a small story. But when the anniversary of Bamsa came, Norway sent a submarine from Norway to Dundee to honor Bamsa. Here you can see the pictures of it. Bamsa once fell overboard. Seven men jumped into the sea trying to save Bamsa, because it was so loved and so cherished.

[8:44] So these stories has a human interest, and they held them during those difficult days, you can say. It's called "maskot" in Norwegian.

[9:00] Anyway, let me take you to Sigdal. We've a [leilighet - two rooms] on the farm, and that's them. The farm was called Skogheim. Not only was it in Sigdal that was hard to get to, but Skogheim was off the main drag and so on.

[9:38] I can remember, as the war somehow went on...Up in the barn, there was a steeple with windows, so we could see to all four sides. You had fields around the place. You were not allowed to have a radio, and if you get caught, you could be put in prison or you can be sent to Germany.

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[10:27] There we listened to...the farmer had that radio. And we listened to BBC. And the sign of BBC in sending the news to Norway was the letter “V” [for victory], one [makes knocking sound] , two [makes knocking sound] , three [makes knocking sound twice] , one [makes knocking sound], two [makes knocking sound], three [makes knocking sound twice]. We heard that, and after that came special messages from England to the resistance movement in Norway.

[11:12] I don't know what it was, what we had in code sentence, but shortly after, the farmer saddled up his horse and headed for the woods. During the night, I could hear the airplanes coming from England, low over the farm, and headed in [for the drop zone].

[11:42] It was so that in Norway we had a prescription [draft]. Every young man had to report for military service. The war came. The Germans kept that up, but they didn't dare to give them a rifle and exercise. They ended up in exercising the spades. They knew, these young fellows, 18 years old, that it was just a matter of time before they would be sent to the Eastern front, and they will be at the front line, and there was no hope for survival on that.

[12:33] So they came and they were called gutta på skangen [young men in the woods]. They came and stayed in the woods in the logging cabins, up in the woods, and when the snow fell and you use skis, every day they walked out in every direction from that cabin, just so if they got surprised that the German couldn't follow the tracks of them.

[13:10] Towards the end of the war, this was in [winter]'45, it became intolerable for the Germans to have armed regimental group and military force up there. So they decided to flush it out. I happened to be with my mother in Oslo, and when we came back, we were denied entry to come back up to Sigdal.

[14:07] My brother and sister, they were up at the farm. They [were taken care of by] somebody else while we were in Oslo. My mother, she went to the local doctor and said that her brother was a professor at the university.

[14:33] She said, "I know you know my brother, and I have my children up in Sigdal. I need your help to get up there." The doctor wrote a prescription to me. The doctor looked at my mother and said, "I can't give you a prescription. You look too well." But I had to fake it, and we were able to get past the Germans and get back up to Sigdal, where we lived. Of course, that was the beginning of “Haglebue Slaget” up in Eggedal, where they battled it out. Germans fell. Norwegians were also killed in that.

[15:32] Anyway, my mother, the house that we had in Horten when we left was confiscated by the Germans, because they knew my father had escaped. My mother, she, at the age of 18 was sent to finishing school in Dresden, Germany… as part of her upbringing and so on. So

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she spoke German fluently. And when the house was confiscated, she was to meet with a German officer.

[16:40] She let him have a piece of her mind and what she thought about it, because it was totally illegal, what [the Germans were] doing, and she lectured him. So he said, "Madam. You can be [executed] for saying a thing like that." So my mother replied and my brother was there, and he was the one who told me, that she replied to the German officer, in German, "A German officer does not execute the wife of a Norwegian naval officer." And she walked away.

[17:39] Then, 1945; war has a cost… the war's separation, and I ended up with my father and my older brother. I lived on military installations, first in Bergen, and then in Trondheim. My sister stayed with my mother. That was many, many people, who had fought abroad. When they came home for some, and what had gone on at home and the differences, it's a cost of war. Today, there are no winners in a war.

[19:04] My brother, he was more intellectual or had much better brain, you can say than I had. I had to go several times over in the class, it also was a question of "What do we do with Jan?"

[19:32] It was during the Berlin blockade, that was Eisenhower era, and my father was the Station Chief in Bergen, and they had a boat gassed-up. They now thought that Soviet again was going to [invade] north of Norway. He at that point expressed to me that, "You need a vocation, where you can go anywhere in the world and earn a living. You might not be able to live in your own country as a free man."

[20:38] I went one year to school in Bergen then I moved to Trondheim. My father sent me, at the age of 17, sent me to Stockholm, and I was trained as a cook.

Part IV

Gordon Strand : [0:00] ...OK.

Jan Brekke : [0:01] OK, back to the life in Sigdal. In a way it was, I was young, the war was 1940 to '45, I was eight when it started, 13 when it ended.

[0:30] We lived on this farm and the only way we could get to school every other day, and we had to go on skis across the water. The school started at nine-o-clock, we had to start from home at seven in the morning. My mother felt pretty good about it, because we went towards day break. We had a light on the farm. He was milking over on the other side. We navigated with that, because it was pitch black. Of course, coming home at night we could see our trails.

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[1:26] In the summer, we rowed in a boat. We did it with two other girls, and it was my brother and me, to school. It was hard to live in the country, because the farmer had the food, and they had to deliver to the Germans. Their harvest, as you can say, as well as their meat. When they killed their animals, the Germans confiscated it. In those days, you didn't send away the cattle to be slaughtered.

[2:29] It was a local butcher who went from farm, to farm, to farm. When you [slaughter] an animal, you cut them along the back bone. The Germans knew how many animals they had and they were taking so many of half carcasses.

[2:58] One of the delicacies of a steer is oxtail ragout, and you can get them in the best restaurants today in Norway or in Europe. Well, that animal only had one tail, it was never clear which half had the tail, and so he cut the tail off and we, our main course, we eat during that time was oxtail, and he cut them higher and higher up the backbone so that we would have enough food.

[3:50] The other delicacy, is that the calf has some sweetbread, and there again, it's a delicacy in any restaurant, and the Germans didn't want any inside of the animal, we lived on sweetbread and oxtail ragout. Of course, we had our vegetable garden, and so on.

Gordon : [4:23] How did your mom get...you said she got support via Sweden. How was it delivered to her then?

Jan : [4:38] We don't know. It just appeared in her bank account.

Gordon : [4:42] Oh, OK.

Jan : [4:43] Yeah, and it was organized from Sweden. It was deducted from my father's salary, and he was in England at that time, but that happened to all the military where they had escaped to England or in Sweden during the war. They were supported that way.

Gordon : [5:09] Were there any in your area of Sigdal all collaborators or people that were suspected of being?

Jan : [5:18] Oh yes. Oh yeah. You need to be careful...Anyway, I was sent to Stockholm and I somehow used to say that I had the privilege of raising myself since I was 17. I lived quite a drifting life there. I did well in cooking school because I started to have a vocation. I started with my personal life, and it was alcohol. I didn't smoke. I had once a cigar, but that settled me, I got so sick.

[6:30] Anyway, I spent time there. Having finished in Stockholm, I went on Venus of Bergen. I was then trained as a cook, I took a job there. I sailed from Southampton to the Canary Islands with cruise passengers. Ten times I made that, and I did smuggle. Also, when I was

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placed on one restaurant in Sweden, I used to steal food, because I didn't have much to eat on the days off, I thought that was [justified].

[8:00] As a young person, I was really adrift, and my mother, after having come back from Sweden, and I was in the military in Norway, I spent the year in the military . She introduced me to a group of people called Moral Rearmament, MRA.

[8:45] Being me, I didn't like morals, and I didn't like armament, but I was interested because they invited me to a place in Switzerland called Caux. I had never been south in Europe, I thought this was fun, and I knew how to drive a Jeep from the military.

[9:19] I was handling all the luggage, and I had a fabulous time at this conference center. I met people from all over the world, and they opened my eyes to the ideological battle that was going on, the battle for the hearts and minds of people. I had experienced Nazism. I had seen what that can do to me, to my family.

[9:57] We have seen fascism and I had also seen Communism, which was the threat that I couldn't live in my own country as a free man.

[10:15] What I saw there was these leaders from around the world come. Moral Re-Armament had come to Norway in 1936. Carl Hambro was the one who invited them. He says, "Where we have failed in changing policies, MRA has succeeded in changing lives."

[10:58] I was interested somehow. Anyway, after that, I came back to Norway, I took my hotel school at Sola, and I took other jobs at sea. But it was a core in me that responded, and, at a certain point, this group invited me to come to Sweden.

[12:11] I got the invitation to go to Stockholm because there was a group of young people there, Swedish. They were staging a play. Plays have through history, if you are to convey ideas, you can go to the Greek, the Romans, a lot took place on the stage. This is a play called "We Are Tomorrow."

[12:52] It's all Swedes, and I was somehow supposed to play the free-wheeling. It was an English play, and I was dressed like fox-hunting. You had a red coat and...

Gordon : [13:13] An aristocrat, yeah.

Jan : [13:14] ...fine yellow pants, and so on, and a top hat. We played that up and down Northern Sweden. We went also into Denmark. But we came back to the place up north in Kiruna, because, at that point, it was, those iron ore minds were controlled by the communist labor unions. It was a lot of disturbances.

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[13:54] Part after having been in Kiruna, we stayed in people's homes, we had the chance, because I recognized a change needed to come into my life. We had this play, it came to Luleå, and there was a British Admiral Phillips. He spoke in connection with this play, and he said, "We won the war, but we will lose the peace if something new doesn't come into our hearts."

[14:43] I said to myself, "I want that." The next thing I felt I needed to do is to clean up my life. I went and I paid back to the hotel what I had stolen. I went to the custom. When I had been on Venus, I smuggled liquor and other things. I was kicked around from department to department at Oslo custom office because they didn't know what to do with me, because that had never happened before.

[15:31] Anyway, as a group, we were invited to come to the United States. But, before we left, the Swedish King Gustav Adolph asked us to come to the castle and tell him what had happened up in Kiruna as a result of this play. I did have the privilege, when I want to impress my next generation; I try to say, "Well, with my skills, I also played on the Drama National Stage in Stockholm." There are we, the Swedes and me, we came and saw King Gustav and told him about it.

[16:41] The invitation to come to America was to bring Germany back into the family of nations. Young people, because Germany was in totally ruins at that time. A delegation was coming from Germany as well, and also a delegation of 100 Japanese was invited to come to a place in America called Mackinac Island, in Michigan. This is a Japanese that came to this place here in Michigan.

[17:39] My flight, we were flying, and I just was over there. I flew with Icelandic Airlines, and I was reflecting on it. It was 67 years since I left Bergen and came to the United States. We flew from Bergen in a propeller plane. We were asked to leave the plane so that they could gas and service it. It was a DC-4, and we had dinner there in a Quonset hut.

[18:32] From then, four hours later, we flew down Labrador until we saw the Statue of Liberty. In a way, that started a whole new phase in my life. I stayed on there for five years doing volunteer work with Moral Re-Armament in the United States.

[19:11] At a certain point, I was offered, because this conference center in Michigan, they turned them into a college, with my background, I was asked to take a job as part of the administration. I went back to Norway to get my green card, and that took six months before I got it. When I came back, I met Priscilla in the kitchen. That's 45 years ago. That's why I had to bring her here today. Anyway...

Gordon : [20:02] Just tell me what year was that you came back.

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Jan : [20:08] I traveled...

Gordon : [20:18] 1965.

Jan : [20:19] Yeah, 65. I stayed away. You ask yourself, is there anything in your life you would like to have done differently? The only thing, I came home to my father's funeral. I never saw him. I wish I would have a chance to do that. He ended up his career. He was the captain of the royal yacht Norge. He took Crown Prince Olav to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, because they are cousins.

Gordon : [21:32] Did he encourage you in what you were doing?

Jan : [21:46] He thought I was crazy...He thought I was crazy.

Gordon : [21:50] Oh.

[21:51] [laughter]

Jan : [21:55] When I left Norway, in the first place, and that I would not pursue my career.

Gordon : [22:03] It was a cook.

Jan : [22:04] Yeah. But let me come back to this thing here. This is from Dundee, from Scotland. It was made by a Botsman. He's the one who deals with wood and ropes on board the ship. He carved this, and he gave it to my father. In 1968, I got this with an inscription from my mother. She said, "I know your father would like you to have this, because," she said, "it says, '[in Norwegian: All for Norway].'"

[22:57] She said, "I hope that will be the motto of your life as well." I knew that my mother wanted me home. That's why, when I came to this country and the college closed because of the disturbances, you can say, in the Vietnam era and so on, I came to Los Angeles. Then, I thought about all the people who has helped me along the way.

[23:44] I only had realskole and whatever I could pick up along the way. I have had the most remarkable friends. I call them "uncommon friends." Somehow, eventually my mother came to the United States, and it hadn't been easy for us to be married in the beginning and go back to Norway, because she was so against America.

[24:25] She threw us out when we first came there, and the bitterness, and all these things. But then we sat in Clyde Hill, at our home there. She had been here some time, and she said, "Jan, you would never have become the man you are today if it hadn't been for Priscilla." On the top of my list of my uncommon friends are two women.

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[25:19] They are my sisters-in-law. Here's a paper. It says, " [foreign words] ," "It's part of our national anthem ." There is Ada Austagaard. Why she is uncommon? Because, it's one of the most gruesome murder things happen in Kristiansand. Two girls and her daughter was one of them. She was killed.

[26:17] Ada, this is when she spoke in Grimstad in the market square on May 17 th . She took and turned her on that situation, and she has become a spokesman for children's rights and in the nation as well as she is called on to go to Geneva. She was in the Faroe Islands the other day and spoke to judges, because she has seen how much children are suffering.

[27:04] She created a foundation. Just the other day, when I was in Horton, there was the sentence of this mayor in Norway that had abused a girl, and he got 17 years in jail for that. The next thing I saw [foreign words] was Ada's. She said, "What do you feel? Who stands for children's rights?" and she gave her opinion.

[27:54] She's a national voice, but it happened because she knew how to take and turn things around.

Gordon : [28:09] Could you explain? I think I missed something. How was her daughter murdered?

Jan : [28:16] By two drug addicts.

Woman : [28:18] Two little girls, they were eight and nine.

Jan : [28:22] Eight and nine.

Gordon : [28:22] Two girls.

Jan : [28:24] Yeah. In Kristiansand. They were walking through a little park, in the woods. Here is where she was received by King Olav. She received the highest decoration for her work. The other one is my other sister-in-law. She was in the same situation with her father. Her father was Skule Storheill .

[29:16] He became the top admiral, the most decorated war hero in Norway. He was part of sinking German Battleship Scharnhorst . He was one who came home to Norway after the war with his mistress, and the bitterness and the hate that has penetrated through that. He rose to become the top. Here's where a statue was erected where he was born.

[30:19] I happened to be there. I stood...I thought...I was standing there as part of it , because I was invited to come. Because how do we feel bitterness and...Here's the thing that I would experience as a person up in the north there. They talk about the war, endlessly about it. They cannot forget it, because they cannot forgive.

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[31:04] She has been, you can say, bringing that spirit of forgiveness, because we had to talk, we as a family, do we need to go to our graves if we can't forgive?

Gordon : [31:33] You have a remarkable family, that's what it sounds like, a lot of truly uncommon friends.

Jan : [31:43] It's uncommon friends, yeah. I left Mackinac and my job, I had a Volkswagen we took as much as we could, and we headed west. I never knew how big the United States was until you have driven across. Priscilla and I, it was right for us to move on and pursue other things, so I ended up with Priscilla's parents in a place called La Quinta.

[32:27] That is Palm Springs, La Quinta, it's one of the coves ,down there, in the desert. I ended up because a friend who was a bank trust officer had seen us and asked "What are Jan and Priscilla doing"? They said "We have a house in trust for a lady from Beverly Hills, well to do, and she's social, and so when they come, would Jan and Priscilla come and stay in this house, because she was in the hospital."

[33:19] We did that, I was a captain in the dining room, and Priscilla worked in the kitchen. I served shifts, I did breakfast and these were very high business-people from Chicago, many Jewish people. One Jewish man from Chicago, he said to me as a captain "I'm going to be here for five weeks this winter, and I expect you to take care of me, and I like my bacon crisp.

[34:27] You might think it's burned, but that's the way I like it." Then he put a 20 dollar bill as a tip. Boy did I learn something about myself. I have a difficult time remembering names, I remember those and because I saw how much of us motivated by money.

[34:59] Anyway, we were there and the sign outside the house that was known it was going to be for sale, and one day the doorbell rang, and a gentleman stood there and he said "I'm the butler for Frank Capra, and he has heard that this property might be for sale."

[35:35] I said "Yes, would you like to come and see the house"? I said, well, they wanted to come at nine in the morning, and I said "Well as a matter of fact it would be better if it could be 10-o-clock or eleven-o-clock, because of course I couldn't say that I was working as a captain. I had, in the meantime, gotten my real estate license, because everybody in California including my parents-in-law, had their real estate license, they peddled.

[36:20] Mr. Capra came. It had the place for his wife on the fairways, push a button the curtains went up and you were on the fairways. It had the place for him writing his book, it had the place for his butler, and it had the place for his dog. He said "I'd like to buy it." I said "All right." I called the bank and I said "What do I do"? Because I had my license but I had no experience.

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[37:09] The bank said "Well, we will extend Mr. Capra a loan if he wants to." I sat down and had now gotten to know Mr. Capra, he had come around several times. He said, I told him that they would give him a loan, and he said "Jan, my mother picked tomatoes in Sicily, and I would like to pay cash for it." He said "This country is unbelievable." He of course heard that I had an accent and so he was interested in me.

[38:06] The next thing I knew was that he wanted to come up and have dinner in the dining room, and I said wow, no way can I handle that one. Someone was in the fired room, but when we finally closed the deal, it meant that I had made more on that transaction than I had, that took me into real estate, thanks to Frank Capra.

Gordon : [38:41] Frank Capra, how cool.

Jan : [38:44] Yeah. Anyway, our first job was in Los Angeles, and then Grubb and Ellis asked me to come to Seattle and become a sales manager in an office here.

[39:01] Anyway, coming back to our uncommon friends. There is a saying, "I don't care who writes the laws of the land, as long as I can write the music." We have seen the truth of that. You can see what music has done to United States today. Some is good, some is not good. You can say their art has been very important, and what is expressed.

[40:00] This, his name is Victor Sparre, and he's an artist in Norway. He made stained glass windows in the North Sea Cathedral in Tromsø . He made that stained-glass window up there; he is, as an artist, very recognized. He, together with another of my friends, who can same...Leif Hobersen, he came and stayed in our home, we called him "uncle life."

[40:49] They were the one who with Sakarov, who received the peace prize in Norway, and they were the one who went to Russia. Victor Sparre and Leif Hobersen. They kept him alive, they went to his home, they sat in his kitchen, they talked, but they made sure that he was not forgotten.

[41:30] You can there again say a symbol, and this was a Sakarov in association and recognition of a medal that Uncle Leif gave to Kristian Brekke here because they were so. Why that is important is, art and...This is Erik Egeland . He is a known journalist and author in Norway who has written this book of Ernest.

[42:23] He said Russian sculpture, he was persecuted in Russia, he escaped, he came to United States, and he lives in New York. He created many sculptures, and they do find them many places in Russia today. Khrushchev, he was asked when he came to one of his exhibits, he was asked what he thought about it, and he called it “dog shit”.

[43:21] Anyway, when Khrushchev was on his death-bed, he sent for him, and he said "I would like you to create my memorial." This is Khrushchev's memorial, there. Nordic American Voices Page 15 of 17

[43:52] There's his face, and one is black and one is white. Khrushchev, he was buried in the cathedral in Moscow. The memorial has, if you can see, it has a cross in it, also. This book, it was given to me by this artist, and this is kind of his signature, and he said "To Jan and Priscilla with respect and friendship." He signs it, and so that's why I don't care who writes the laws. But the capacity of the artist is all-important as a means to shape the society we live in today.

[45:18] My friendships here in Seattle and those who are my uncommon friends, I made a list of them and I am grateful for them because I, you see because my mother wanted me to come home, but I ventured to say I've been able to do more for Norway living here in United States than I could ever have done in Norway.

[46:05] Priscilla and I, we have a dinner with the King twice, and it all happened because of Kim Nesselquist [46:16] and Loren Anderson, and the Norwegian-American Foundation.

[46:22] The quote that I gave first about history was when I did speak to the parliament in Oslo. We tried to establish expatriate parliament. It didn't come all about.

[46:51] Some of the uncommon friends you can say has been Governor Svein Ludvigsen, Minister of Fisheries . He has come out because he was fiscally minister. He worked very much with the Norwegian fishing people here, and he came out to Sequim because the big battle in Finnmark is what happens to the Sami people.

[47:38] You had lower Elwa, the dam that has been removed. I took him up there because they are going to build a dam for the Sami people, and if you do that it takes away all their grazing land. We have common problems, everybody's reaching for solutions. These are the people that I like to mention.

[48:21] [long pause]

Jan : [48:47] This is a picture that I actually was from when I was speaking, trying to launch that with Norwegian-American, I was one of the speakers in [inaudible 00:49:01] .

[49:02] Anyway, it was very [inaudible 00:49:06] for they think no reason that Finland has a very active, yes. I think the difference between Norway and Finland is that the Finnish government feels that they need the people abroad in support of what is happening in their own country. Norway has taken a different avenue, they don't feel that need.

[49:40] At the same time, we have a hand in Norwegians going out, and you have a fellow like Tom Rawson, he was the one who was ambassador who took the initiative to the Norwegian-American Foundation. He of course traveled and became the high commissioner, you can say, hoping to bring a solution to Rwanda, and so on. We raised a lot of money. Nordic American Voices Page 16 of 17

[50:45] Jan Peterson came here, ex-minister, and we had breakfast and he was talking about Norway's obligation, and he said we have a moral obligation to do around the world what we are meant to do. Somehow for that breakfast, we raised $400,000.

[51:26] I'd just like to give another quote, and this is, "We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give." That's Winston Churchill who said that, and that is true. I look at these uncommon friends. I know they inspired me to be my best, and we did it together.

[52:09] I think we have these people here, this is from [foreign words] . That's why I feel it's so important, our heritage, that's why I'm here. We can do this together, because that's what's meant to happen, also in the future, because a new generation is here that needs to take it on. I think I will end it with that.

Gordon : [53:05] Thank you so much, Jan. That's quite a story, you're absolutely right, it's with the legacy we leave for the next generation, that's the whole purpose of this.

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