Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
This is Aaron-Paula Thompson, Programs Coordinator with the Library of Virginia.
Today is February 29, 2012
and I am interviewing
Elizabeth McIntosh.
Good morning. [McIntosh:] Good morning.
[Thompson:] For the record, can you share with us where you were born and when?
[McIntosh:] I was born in Washington D.C.
on March one, tomorrow,
nineteen-one-five.
[Thompson:] Excellent.
What are your fondest memories of childhood?
[McIntosh:] Of what?
[Thompson:] Of childhood? Of being a little girl.
[McIntosh:] I think
I use to
like to
write in little notebooks and I'd write all kinds of
stories and things and then hide them so nobody would would find them.
It was kind of expressing myself even in those days, with writing and it
was kind of just fun.
I'd go sit up in a big tree,
perhaps uh...
banyan tree or something
in Hawaii, and write things and hide 'em.
But they were just fun to do then
but other things happened too, but I I remember this story more than
anything.
[Thompson:] That's a great memory.
What were your favorite subjects in school?
[McIntosh:] I liked english, literature, and history
[Thompson:] What did you like about those?
[McIntosh:] I guess just
reading these
wonderful
books and things
that sounded so good. I liked the sound of them--
of writing.
And history, I was also interested in that,
because I was
fascinated with what had gone on before or
what might be coming up.
How did you become a journalist?
[McIntosh:] Well both my mother and father were journalists
when they met,
and then dad continued to be. He was a sports editor
for his whole life.
So I was sort of in the
news
racket, as it were,
very early on and I get to meet all these interesting people that might drop by
the house, especially dad's sports family.
Walter Johnson would come and
dad said that he use to
put me on his knee
and uh...
sit there and talk
baseball at me. It was just
fun growing up that way.
Never got out of that
millieux.
[Thompson:] You stuck with the journalism? [McIntosh:] Yes.
[Thompson:] How was your experience as a journalist
different from your male counterparts?
[McIntosh:] Well it was
I guess the same thing
with any woman trying to make her way
and uh... I was,
when I when I got a job on the Honolulu Advertiser
through my father--he put me in the sports section.
My salary I think was fifteen dollars a week and
I noticed that
we never, women never got much
raises--many raises--in their salaries.
That was one thing that kind of annoyed me because I worked there for quite a
while before anybody...
Well, I just felt like we weren't getting anywhere.
That was about the only
main thing. Otherwise,
in newspaper work you're pretty much
on par with the men.
And you could write things that they can't.
[Thompson:] What was it like to cover the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941?
[McIntosh:] Well, see I was
married then
and my husband was in the Navy, he was Navy Reserves, but he was also a newspaper reporter.
We had been to a big party the night before
uh... I had gotten up early and he was still sleeping.
And uh...
I started to make breakfast and I had the
radio on. It was the
Mormon
Choir singing. All of a sudden, there was a break
someone came on and said "The islands are under attack!" and then went off the air
again.
And I thought "What in the world is this? Is the army is doing something?"
About the same time
my photographer called and said
"Hey, we've got to go into Honolulu." and we lived outside the island, out of Honolulu.
"You got to go in there.
Something is happening there. Pearl Harbor's been attacked."
So he came and picked me up and we drove in on this
sunny Sunday
and it was like people were still on their way to church maybe, or
uh... walking their dog, even playing golf.
We were going by,
and as we got
closer into Honolulu
we began to feel the tense there.
People were, the cars were kind of..
so...
though uh... well there was
just
tense feeling.
And we passed a
kind of a marketplace which had been
bombed,
and there was Christmas stuff all over the place.
In the middle of it, this little kid playing with it having a wonderful time,
a little Japanese boy.
And my cameraman said,
"Hey, that would make it wonderful picture,
but the kids laughing. Why don't we do something about that?"
And he said, "Go and see what you can do."
So, I went over and I tried to talk to him
he wouldn't pay any attention to me.
He was having a great time, so
so I pinched him gently and then he started cry.
And then we got a great picture,
which I think made Life magazine.
That uh... that was the beginning of Pearl,
but they wouldn't let me go out the first day,
naturally, women and all that.
But the next day I was able to get out and uh...it was awful, terrible.
The way the ships were
upside-down rolling in the...
You knew that all these men were in there
they all...
just forever and they still are.
It was the saddest, terrible day.
I covered the hospital
that
December 7th
and talked to people who had been
hurt. There was one little girl who was,
she was just dead, she was just lying there in the
hospital.
She had a little jump rope
and she was holding the little wooden things,
but the rope had all been burned off
and she...
and it was kind of a touching and terrible thing to see.
It was
a
tragic day.
It does...
[Thompson:] It sounds like those are memories that say with you forever, too.
Those are memories that stay with you forever too. [McIntosh:] Yeah, that's true.
[Thompson:] On a different note,
how did you begin working for the Office of Strategic Services?
[McIntosh:] well, see, I tried to get--
I wanted to get overseas
and become a war correspondent,
but again being a woman at the time, it was hard to get that.
And uh...
Oh Scripps Howard picked me up--
this is a news service.
I got a job covering the White House.
and uh... So I was
in Washington,
but in one of those press conferences,
Mister Roosevelt was giving a
little talk and
afterwards we were, I was sort of standing around talking to some of the reporters
and this gentleman came up that
looked familiar and I said uh... he said that:
"Would you be interested in and uh... working for the government?"
And I said "Only if you can promise to send me overseas!" And he said "I can promise
that." It turned out he was a friend of my father's, dad had been telling
him about me and he worked for the OSS
so he got the idea that because I had been studying Japanese and that I was
a newspaper
reporter and they needed some people to
do a certain type of work overseas.
So that's how he
approached me.
[Thompson:] Can you describe what your job was for the OSS?
[McIntosh:] Well they called it "morale operations" and it was a
job where you had to
try to influence the enemies' thinking
by means of pamphlets,
uh... rumors, lies uh...
Any possible way to get to them
so that they would, would
stop fighting or
be disillusioned in their own cause, especially the ones that were so loyal
to the Emperor--we
had trouble with them.
It was quite a job and we all
had to work on it to try and think
different ways of getting to them.
[Thompson:] What were the career opportunities for women during that time?
[McIntosh:] Very good...
well, they were in in different..
I mean, there stenographers and all. And there
people like Julia Child, who had a wonderful job
of coordinating activities and
getting people, sending them overseas. She and I went overseas together to China
and she in a was sort
of a
administrative job.
And then there were others who were doing like I was,and
then also translators. They had
all kinds of women doing all sorts of things. It was quite important.
[Thompson:] Did you feel different from the women who were home in the
United States because of your job?
[McIntosh:] Not really, I didn't have much
really... when we get overseas, we never
had a chance to
meet anybody
because we were behind the lines.
[Thompson:] Yeah. Did you ever feel really
uh... overwhelmed or tired as a woman in your chosen profession?
And if so, what did you do to overcome those feelings?
[McIntosh:] No I never did...I always
had a, they said "gung ho."
I never seemed to
get tired of doing anything... always interested in stuff...
The kind of work I was doing was just fascinating.
[Thompson:] That's excellent.
What would you say is your greatest achievement so far in life?
[McIntosh:] Well, there,
I've done a lot of things to me
were important:
written four books,
I worked for--
well uh... I worked for the C.I.A.too, but I can't talk about that. But
I think...
I keep thinking about it
was the work for
Morale Operations, we did against the Japanese soldiers in Burma.
We were fighting in the North of Burma
and they would not surrender,
but we came across a document
the document from one of their
stations.
And that was uh... a government document that we could revise and
rewrite
and we got some,
uh... we were able to get a Japanese prisoner of war
to help us work on it.
We finally got his this document which was stated that
under certain conditions, like when you run out of the ammunition,
or you're completely surrounded,
if you're wounded, you may surrender and uh... the Emperor will forgive you. It
it was all very properly stated, and that can come right from the
Hirohito himself.
And we were able to get into the,
behind the lines
by putting planting it on
the body of, they killed this man,
but he was a uh... runner for the Japanese--
taking their
material to them--
put it in
in his sack.
Then one of the Burmese soldiers told the
Japanese soldiers
the this man had been killed
that they should go and get him. Then the Japanese soldiers went through his
pack and found it.
We saw them
going through it and talking about and then at the end there,
the Japanese were beginning to surrender at Burma,
northern Burma, so I always thought that that was a
wonderful thing to have done in the war.
[Thompson:] So you kind of gave them permission
to surrender
through document you created?
[McIntosh:] Right.
[Thompson:] That's excellent. That's a great memory.
[McIntosh:] Is was--it is. [Thompson:] If you could give one bit of advice or inspiration
for young women
what would it be?
[McIntosh:] I think..
Believe in yourself.
That would be it.
[Thompson:] What would that look like for young ladies?
[McIntosh:] Don't be afraid to do things that you think are right,
you think you can do it and are able to do it.
and uh... Never doubt your abilities, come through.
[Thompson:] That's a wonderful piece of advice.