James Hardwick Oral History Interview JERRY WALTERS: Today is February 17, 2015. My name is Jerry Walters. I’m a volunteer with the Oral History Unit at the National Museum of the Pacific War. Today I’m interviewing Mr. Jim Hardwick, who was a Navy veteran during World War II. This interview is in support of the Center for Pacific War Studies, Archives of the National Museum of the Pacific War, Texas Historical Commission for the Preservation of the Historical Information related to this site. Mr. Hardwick, can you tell us where you were born and when? JIM HARDWICK: I was born about three blocks from where I sit now in Baylor Hospital, December 5, 1923. JW: East Dallas, huh? JH: That’s where I was born. But I was raised in south Dallas. JW: What were your parents’ names? JH: Walter and Gertrude Hardwick. JW: Did you have brothers and sisters? JH: I had a brother two years older and a sister two years younger, Walter and Thelma. JW: Can you tell us where you went to school? JH: My elementary school was Colonial Hill Elementary in south Dallas on Pennsylvania Avenue. My first year in high 1 school was at Forest Avenue High School down on Madison. And I learned that they had technical courses over at Dallas Technical. So after a year at Forest, I transferred to Dallas Technical High School and stayed there until I dropped out of high school as a senior and joined the Navy at age 17. JW: And where did you join? JH: I joined at Downtown Dallas, Ervay Street Post Office on the second floor. We call that the “new” post office. And you want me to just to continue with the narrative or -- JW: Let me ask you first of all, what date did you join? JH: I joined on my birthday in 1940, December 5th, the day I turned 17. But before that, when I was in high school, I was -- I lied about my age, and I joined the Texas National Guard, 112th Cavalry, Troop A. We drilled out on the side of what is now the Southwestern Medical School -- Harry Hines was just a red dirt road. But these troopers, we were paid a dollar a drill. Every Sunday I’d put on my uniform and go out there and get on an Army horse and ride around the neighborhood up and down Harry Hines, if you can visualize Harry Hines as a red dirt road. The [side?] of that 112th Cavalry Troop A was in World War I, hit by smallpox. The death count -- there were hundreds of graves 2 for smallpox victims out there on [Summit?] Hill. But that’s where we maneuvered every Sunday. In 1940, prior to the beginning of the war, there was a big military maneuver in Louisiana. And we were ordered to active duty for two weeks in July 1940. And we packed up our gear and horses and got on a train and went through the Kisatchie National Forest down in central Louisiana at the site of Fort Polk. Fort Polk didn’t exist. For two weeks, we were road rattling through mosquito-infested jungles and ate hardtack and -- JW: Now were you in the Navy at the time, or the -- JH: No, I was in high school. JW: You were still in high school? JH: Yes, 16. I never had handled a .45 before. They strapped a .45 on me and put me on guard duty. I was sitting in a squad tent by myself. I was holding a .45. And I pulled the chamber back and released it, and that thing fired and shot a hole right through the roof of the tent. Out on the tent row, there was soldiers, one of them saying, “Who fired a shot?” “Hell, I don’t know.” (laughter) But they - - I later qualified with a .45. They didn’t even ask me if I’d ever held one before that, you know. So that was an adventure. 3 JW: I’ll bet. JH: And I keep telling -- you know, the Army was still eating hardtack back then. JW: What is hardtack, exactly? JH: Well, hardtack is a loaf of bread about like so, you know, maybe a foot (inaudible). And it lasts forever. But I remember a squad tent that had hardtack stuck to the ceiling, like this. They were our rations. We got it every meal. And it wasn’t bad if you soaked it in coffee for about a minute -- you could chew it. Our uniforms -- the boots we wore, I’m sure men [have sewed up?] was at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the federal prison. They must have had a boot shop there. But those boots were worn by somebody in World War I, I’m sure -- the ones I wore. Anyway, that was in the summer of ’40. We got back off the maneuvers. And I never will forget where I was when -- that year [to the?] beginning of World War in Europe. I was thinking of that September the first of 1939, when I was a kid standing at the corner of Lamar and Forest Avenue in Dallas. If you know the area, that’s where the old city dump was. And that cotton compress warehouse (inaudible). And that compress caught fire. It was the worst fire I had ever seen in my life -- that the news came out that Hitler 4 had invaded Germany, vivid in my memory, first of September, 1939. But anyway, I’m going to jump ahead to Kisatchie National Forest. Two weeks on maneuver, I was told that Dwight Eisenhower was on the (inaudible) me. And we had make-believe tanks. They had trucks. And they had signs up the sides of the “tank.” (laughter) Anyway, two weeks of that was enough to convince me I didn’t want to be in the Army. (laughter) And shortly thereafter, the Selective Service Act passed, I guess. I wasn’t even old enough to register for the draft, wouldn’t be 18 by then. So I never registered for the draft. But the 112th got orders to go on active duty at Fort Bliss. And here I was a 16-year-old [bastard?] kid. God, they’re putting me on active duty? But President Roosevelt was well aware they had a lot of underage kids. And I was certainly one of them. He put out the order that proof of your true age if you’re underage -- get it on [the list first?]. So I got it on an enlistment. And all of my old troop went to Fort Bliss. And my older brother joined it. And I got out. He was 18, so he went with them. And there I sat at home. That was September and October, 1940. And I read in the paper that at age 17, you could join the Navy on the Kiddie Cruise -- the minority enlistment -- until you reach your 5 minority, age 21, it really starts. I thought, it’s a wonderful place to be learning a trade and escape the Great Depression. We were extremely poor. JW: I think most people were in those days, weren’t they? JH: Mm-hmm, ’30s -- terrible [time?]. Looking back then, I don’t know how we existed. My dad never went home. [Bill?] never went home -- three kids. And he didn’t take much interest in our education. And I left the house in the morning. He didn’t know whether I was going to school or playing hooky. And half the time I was playing hooky. It’s not that I didn’t like school. I wasn’t, like, a bad guy. I was ashamed of my clothing. I had no car fare to get to school. I had to walk. JW: How far was it to school? JH: My God, at that time, you know near Grand Avenue in south Dallas. And you know where Crozier Tech is down on Bryan. JW: Yeah, I do. JH: One time I was gifted. I had an old bicycle; I rode it back and forth. Of course, car fare on the Dallas street was only, like, three cents. But three cents was a little bit of money. Anyhow, that was my last -- in 1940 until I learned that you could join the Navy at age 17, with your 6 parents’ consent. And my parents readily gave consent. (laughter) “Get rid of the kid!” JW: That was one less mouth to feed, wasn’t it? JH: Yes, so on or about my birthday -- well, I never will forget going to the physical that you had at the Old [Bryan?] Street Post Office on the second floor. Medics had all these recruits from Oklahoma and Texas up there stark naked in a line. And they were doing this preliminary exam. I was praying I would pass it, which I did. But I never will forget the boy in front of me had dirty fingernails. And the doctor said, “You have filthy fingernails. Get out of there. You can’t go in the Navy.” (laughter) I thought, “Boy, these people are strict.” But the next thing, I found myself on the train headed for San Diego. I never had been that far away from home. They put some little sailor in charge of three or four of us in Texas and Oklahoma. We made that ride to San Diego. And, of course, you were in the Navy. You know what that’s like, the first experience, they have you strip bare-ass naked and issue a uniform and package up your civilian clothes and mail them home to your parents.