 |
| Narrator: Robert Gaston (talking about World War II) |
| Interviewer: Dr. Mildred Pratt |
| Date: July 22, 1988 |
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| Side A |
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| MP | I'm speaking with Mr. Robert Gaston. He is going to discuss his experiences in World War II. |
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| RG | The most important thing that I remember about World War II is riding across the United States with tears in my eyes and heavy heart simply because of the fact of all the discrimination and the treatment that the Black soldier was receiving at that time especially in the South. And that seemed to be the place that they sent most all the northern men that were enlisted or who ended up in the services. It seemed like they had gone to the South instead of the North or East. Some of the treatment I received-I can remember, for instance, one day going from Joplin, Missouri to Tulsa, Oklahoma which at that time was maybe a twelve or fourteen hour ride by bus because of all the stops that they made. They wouldn't even let us off the bus, the Black soldiers. Most of the Black soldiers had cars that knew about that South, but a few of us people from up here, we didn't know that much about it. Even though I was born in the South myself, I had never lived there that much to know what the conditions were down there as far as race relations. And I can remember riding the bus from Joplin to Tulsa, and what made me so bitter against our government is that they gave the Black soldiers no protection at all in the South. White people could walk over you, could stomp you, could kill you, could shoot you, could beat you, could humiliate you. They could do anything to you and get away with it, and you had no protection and no one to turn to. I remember telling my captain about it once. He wanted me to serve duty downtown in one of those cities as a military policeman, and I told him I would rather not because I didn't want to be exposed to the Southern traditions or whatever you want to call it. And I went on to tell him about what happened, and he said, "That's the way it is down here, and there is nothing we can do about it." And that was the US Army telling me they could not do anything about it. Yet they could go and conquer other countries and do whatever they wanted to, but they couldn't change them Southern traditions, I suppose. Okay, they wouldn't even arrest a person if he did something to you it seems to me because they got away with everything. I can remember we rode all that time, fourteen hours, and I wanted to get off and use the restroom. I was hungry. I wanted a sandwich, and there was just me and one other Black soldier on the bus. |
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| MP | Now, where were you seated-how was the bus arrangement? |
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| RG | I was seated in the rear of the bus. That's the only place we could ride. They had a
seat back there marked "Colored." |
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| MP | And this was an army bus?
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| RG | No, no. This was a regular civilian bus. The bus companies contracted all this stuff.
The come on the post. Sometimes they used army buses, but even then we was segregated. Back in the segregated army, which I protested as soon as I went in the service here, and they separated me in Chicago and sent me to an all-Black unit rather than to an integrated unit that we left with. I protested right there. I wanted to know why all my friends who were inducted here in Bloomington with me were going one place and I was going to another. They said, "Well this is the way it is in the army." So they sent me to an all-Black unit which I didn't like right from the get go. |
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| MP | When were you conscripted? Were you conscripted or did you volunteer?
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| RG | I volunteered really because I wanted to go. Everyone had left, and I was here. I was
married, and I probably could have stayed here. But I went anyway. |
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| MP | In what year did you enter?
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| RG | It was in 1940.
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| MP | Would you describe-you left with a bus of people from Bloomington.
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| RG | with an integrated group. |
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| MP | An integrated group, and where were you going?
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| RG | We went to Fort Sheridan in Chicago. When we got to Fort Sheridan, we were separated
immediately. The whites went to their area, and they sent the Blacks to their area in Fort Sheridan. That's right outside of Chicago. And right away, I realized what was going on. I had no idea it was going to be this way, but that's the way it was. |
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| MP | When you left Fort Sheridan, where did you go?
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| RG | When we left Fort Sheridan, they sent me to Camp Carroll in Texas. On the ride down to
Camp Carroll-let's see, what happened to me on that ride? Something happened to me on that ride. Oh, when I left Chicago, the first place we stopped-we were riding on the Southern Pacific line, and when we got to Fort Worth, Texas that night, I got off the train and went into the station and walked up to the counter. Two girls were behind the counter. Some guys were standing over there talking, MP's or whatever, you know. I walked up to the counter, and they looked at me and didn't' say anything. So I tapped on the counter. I wanted some information as to what I was supposed to do, or where I was supposed to catch my next train or whatever. What time it was coming in? And they just stood there and looked at me instead of them coming over. Finally, I guess they rang for an MP or something. He came over from somewhere. He came over and grabbed me and wanted to know "what the hell" I was doing in that station. I said, "Well, I just got off the train out there." He said, "Well, you can see that you're not supposed to be in here." I said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "This is a white station." And I looked around the room. I wasn't thinking about people, and the whole room was painted white. So I said, "I see it's white." And he thought I was trying to be smart. I wasn't thinking about people. Especially since I was talking to another soldier, I really wasn't thinking that he was going to. Boy, he got mad at me, and he was getting ready to jump on me when at that very moment some other [white] soldier stepped in, and he walked over and got in between me and this guy. He said, "Just a minute. I'll handle it." He was talking to the other guy. The other guy was infuriated. He wanted to jump on me. I said, "What's going on?" He said, "Well, I must explain this to you. You're down South now. Things are different down here. I know you just came from the North." He said, "Where are you from?"I told him I was from Bloomington, Illinois. He said, "Well, things were different down here, and these people down here have all kind of crazy customs down here, and Blacks have to stay in one place and whites in another." He went on an explained all this to me right there in a few seconds it seemed like. He said, "They got a room around back for you people, for the Blacks." And he said, "That's where you'll have to go." He said, "Now, don't blame me because I didn't make the laws. That's just the way it is." He took me out of that room, the big room, and took me around by the baggage room in the back, and back there was a little nasty, dirty room. It hadn't been cleaned for months in my estimation. You know it might have been cleaned yesterday, but it was dirty. |
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| MP | And you were the only Black soldier in this room? |
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| RG | Yeah. I was the only one there. This guy took me around there and stayed with me for awhile-this white MP. And he talked to me about the South and tried to orientate me on what was going on. Then he walked across the street with me and said, "Well, you're going to have to be here all night so I'll take you over here and try and get you a room." I said, "Well, I don't have any money because someone stole my money off me because it
was an all-night ride from Chicago to Fort Worth. I went to sleep in the berth and somebody took my money. I don't know whether it was one of the Black porters, Pullman porters or what, but they took my money, what little bit I had." So he took me over to the "Y" which was all-Black in Fort Worth and signed for me a room. So I spent the night there. And the next morning-he told me where to go. I had to go clear across town from the Southern Pacific lines to some other lines over across town, and he told me when I got there what I was supposed to do, which I did. I got over there, and I got to the MP's and told them I was in town, and I was broke and didn't have any money. And I told them what this guy told me to tell them, and they took me upstairs, some stairs that said for "White Only" on the stairs. Blacks weren't supposed to walk on the stairs. It said, "For White Only." I distinctly remember that. So he took me up these stairs, and he took me up in this room above this station. And there was a big cafeteria up there and nothing in it but white soldiers, and they was all eating. I walked in there, and the white man was in there. He got talking to me. He said, "Well son, you come to the right place. You want something to eat, but you ain't got no money. And he gave me two or three dollars and had me sign a slip, and I signed the slip. He told me, "You go on out there and sit down somewhere and get you something to eat. One of the girls will wait on you." So I went out there and sat down, and when I walked out, a lot of white soldiers called me to come to their table. "Come on over and sit with us. Come on over, soldier." So I went over and sat with somebody, and one of the Black girls or Black guys-nothing but Black people serving up there-came over and brought me a plate, fried chicken, black-eyed peas, cornbread, and candied sweet potatoes. You know real good. I got to talking to some of these guys, and they said, "Do you stop here very often?" I said, "No." But I noticed one thing-that all the Black people were looking at me. They had all come out of the kitchen, and they were looking at me. |
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| MP | There's a Black man sitting. (laughs)
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| RG | On my way out when I was leaving, they took me down some other steps. They had a Black guy take me down the steps because the MP was gone. They took me down some steps through the back, and this guy told me-on these steps it said "Employees Only." This guy told me, "Who are you?" I said I'm so and so.
He said, "Where are you from?" I told him.
He said, "Man, I thought you was a general or something because you are the first Black
man ever ate up here. How did you get up here?" I said, "Well, I don't know. I just ran into some guys, and they told me to come up here." He said, "Man, I ain't never seen this before. We thought you was a general or something."
I said, "No. I'm an ordinary person." That was one experience. |
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| MP | Now, when you rode down on the train, you also rode in the Black section of the train?
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| RG | No. I rode in the regular section of the train.
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| MP | It was integrated then? |
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| RG | Yeah. |
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| MP | All the way to Waco, Texas? |
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| RG | All the way down to Fort Worth. I remember when I was walking across town to this other station, I passed this place, and I was walking real slow because I didn't know where I was going, and I saw this Colored guy-Black guy or whatever they want to call it. And he was talking to his boss. I heard him say, "Boss, I just got back off that five hundred mile trip last night, and I drove all the way because I knew you wanted me back here at a certain time." The man said, "Yeah, but that don't make no difference. They just called for another load down here at so and so, and you're going to take that."miles, and I ain't had no sleep." Boss said, "I don't care. You better be there, and you better be there on time." I could hear them talking. I said to myself, "What kind of place is this." |
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| MP | It was quite a new experience, right? |
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| RG | Then when I got on post. |
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| MP | When you left Fort Worth, you went to.?
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| RG | I went on to Camp Carroll right near Abilene, Texas. Right in the heart of the
panhandle. That was all segregated at that time. So, I had some terrible experiences out there. I never left the post simply because most of the guys there didn't go to the little towns surrounding the post because of the conditions. Every time they'd go downtown, there'd was a big fight. Can you shut this off for a minute? (tape is shut off) |
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| MP | So now you're at Abilene?
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| RG | Yes, Abilene, Texas.
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| MP | Was this the training base now?
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| RG | Yes, we was there doing our basic training which was segregated. We didn't know what
the white people were doing. We didn't know nothing. All we knew was what the Blacks was doing which was very complicated. We'd go downtown, down to a little town. What was the name of that little town down there? I went down there once, and I never did go back because they had a riot down there with Black and white soldiers, and it was about a Black woman. I don't know what the incident was, but I was there that night. We were at a little old place where soldiers hung out. Nothing going on. Not even a lot of people there-girls, you know. Some place to go to break the monotony of being on post all the time. But, after that one incident, I never went down there again. And during the length of the time we was there there was a lot of incidents on post. I can remember one night when I was in Chicago before we left Fort Sheridan. I had only been there about four or five nights, and one night about three o'clock the MP's and soldiers, white soldiers, came out of their area and routed us all out of our army bags and lined us all up outside. And while we were lined up out there, two white women walked though the lines and looked at all of us. And they picked some guy out. The officer of the day knew that this boy had been on the post all night, so this woman picked him out and said he had raped her. And the MP's took him away, and the officer of the day knew that the boy had been in post all night, but he let them take him on away. Then, they started investigating the women and found out they were connected with a German Bund. And they was trying to 'cause dissension among the Black and white soldiers, I think. That's what the whole purpose of the thing was. They was working out of some Nazi organization. They called it the German Bund. I don't know what the outcome of that thing was because before it was over I had been shipped out to Texas. While I was in Texas, I know several Blacks got killed down there just acting normal. They wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. I remember one night I went to this little town, Abilene, and I was on my way back to camp that night, and I was going to get on the bus in Abilene, and a white man shoved me back off the bus. Even though the bus driver said all servicemen first, this white man shoved me anyway and got on in front of me. And the bus driver shoved him back off the bus. He said, "Hold it, you're not a serviceman."And the man said, "I'm Mr. so and so." So whoever he was, he must have been some big
shot.And the bus driver told him, "I don't care if you're the governor because I said all
servicemen first. So you get back." And he let me on first. Now, that was the only incident that I can remember where. |
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| MP | Now, you got on first, but did you have to go to the back of the bus? |
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| RG | Oh, yeah. I did have to go back to the seats. This civilian wanted to get on the bus,
too, because he was going out on the post or something, I guess. I don't know where he was going, but he was trying to get on. That was the only incident. Another time-maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. Another time-I believe it was that time or the time before and they wouldn't let me on. And the bus left town and started out to the post, and the cows were in the road, and they tried to miss the cows, and they went over the embankment and killed a whole bunch of them. That really happened. |
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| MP | That was good luck for you, right? |
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| RG | I don't know whether it was good luck for me or bad luck for them. I never thought about it. I just said it was fate that something happened and they wouldn't let me get on the bus that night. But, after those incidents I stuck pretty close to the post, and I started protesting. I became an activist because I got so bitter in the army because of the way things was happening. |
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| [. . . text omitted . . .] |
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| MP | So you started protesting. What did you do, would you describe what you did?
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| RG | Well, first of all, I devised a plan of how I was going to get out of the service.
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| MP | Mr. Gaston let me just. (tape is shut off) |
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| MP | That's not a part of the story, but you can talk. You can say it to me. |
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| RG | I just started protesting. I wrote letters to the commanding general of the post, and they had me on the carpet three or four times, and I just voiced my opinion. I said, "When I came into the service, I came in with a willing heart with the thought in mind that I would try to defend my country and do whatever I could to defend the country or defend anybody in the country. But, since I've been here I've become so disillusioned with the service simply because of the fact that I'm nothing in this man's army. Who am I? I'm just a Black man, just a tool for them to use anytime, anyway they want to, and I don't have any rights whatsoever. I can't travel freely over the country. I can't do anything." In fact, I met two white women on the bus that I was traveling on that time that I told you about traveling fourteen hours without getting off the bus. I did get off the bus like a chump. When they opened the door, I ran off the bus and ran over to a restaurant and got my butt kicked all the way back to that bus with a pistol in his hand. And I was in uniform of the United States of America, and some poor constable white deputy in some little hick town kicked my butt from one side of the street to the other with a cocked pistol on me. And made me get back on the bus and threatened to kill me. All the people on the bus witnessed this, the women and the men alike. And when I got back on the bus, this one Black man was sitting back there. Two ladies was sitting way up in front of us, and there were four or five seats empty between us and them because they was all reserved for Blacks, but we were the only two on there. I guess Blacks knew they couldn't ride that route, but we didn't. These ladies-when we got on the bus, they sat down and they looked back at us and caught our eye and did this to us, and we didn't know what was going on. Then they put a sack over the back of the seat and slid it down the floor to us. It had some hamburgers in it. It had four hamburgers in it. I guess they felt sorry for us. So we ate the hamburgers, and this boy that was with me had a bottle of whiskey in this bag that he was taking to Oklahoma because be drank whiskey. He said, "I heard you couldn't get no whiskey over there." He said, "So I bought me a bottle of whiskey while I was in Missouri to bring over here for the weekend." So we poured the whiskey out the window and used it to urinate in while they were off the bus eating. Now that's a fact of life. |
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| MP | That is really. That is. |
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| RG | That's a fact of life. So all this protesting that I did. I wrote letters to the surgeon general and all them people. |
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| MP | Did you ever get response from them?
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| RG | They sent me to a psychiatrist. They thought I was crazy-for consultation because I
guess they thought I was different type of Black person. |
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| MP | Now did you organize and talk to any of the other Black soldiers about this to try to
get it organized? |
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| RG | Everybody kept their distance from me. As soon as they found out I was anti-military,
they just kept their distance from me simply because some of them wanted to get along. Some of them had ranks. Some of them sided in with me when no one was looking and told me I was right, but they would disassociate themselves with me when anybody was around with any authority to see them. So I [thought], "How can I get out of here." So, I started having nightmares. I'd jump up in the middle of the night while everybody was sleeping and almost tear the barracks. |
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| MP | (laughter) |
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| RG | I was running and knocking over things. I'd do it every night or every other night. I
did it so much they put me in the hospital. I seen I couldn't get out just being militant. So I said, "Well, I'll do it some other way." So I kept doing it. So they sent me down to the hospital for consultation, and they sent me down there to talk. The only person in there that was sympathetic with my whole cause and sided with me was a Chinese captain, a woman. And she was the one that recommended that I be discharged. After being in there just about one year, I got out. There was guys in there when I got there trying to get out and couldn't. I got out and left them there. They were there when I come, and they were there when I left. They said, "Boy, we don't know how you did it." And I said, "Well, I don't either." |
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| MP | So she recommended that you be discharged?
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| RG | She said that I was detrimental to the mentality of the other soldiers because I was
advocating anti-army regulations and anti-army ideas. She said, "He's detrimental to the other soldiers. It would be better to get rid of him for the convenience of the army. Give him an honorable discharge and let him go." |
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| MP | So you got out. |
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| RG | I got out, and I've seen my country come a long way since then, but it's not as far as
it should be over the years. You take people like Reagan that turn it all every thing back. We were making good progress until he came in office. We found out about all these things anyway with [Harold] Washington running Chicago. We found out about all these loving Democrats that had been hugging us all these years. They wanted a Jew instead of a Black man, but fortunately he won anyway. |
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| MP | Yes he did.
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| RG | But the country's coming around-maybe in the next fifty years. I don't know. It might
get further back. I don't know, you never know. It's hard to give up power. |
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| MP | In the what?
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| MP | And they all volunteered?
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| RG | Yeah.
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| MP | Not volunteered, but they were all conscripted.
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| RG | conscripted from high school. Soon as they were out of high school, they went to service. |
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| MP | Now, they all went to Vietnam. |
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| RG | Four of them went into Vietnam at the same time, and two of them stayed in for twenty years. One of them works out at ISU right now. He's going to school and working in the veteran affairs office. He's a counselor in there. My other son is in Tampa, Florida. He works for the City of Tampa. |
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| MP | Your saying your son works for the military? |
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| RG | Yeah. He works for Eileen and the counselors. He's a counselor in veteran affairs. He was a twenty-year veteran, and he was a first sergeant for maybe ten years. |
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| MP | What positions did you other sons have in the services?
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| MP | Did he go to Vietnam eventually?
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| RG | No, he never went. When he went down to be inducted in the service, he got off the train
somewhere and wouldn't go. He came back home and at that time, I had a pretty good pull in town with a lot of people. They could have sent him to prison, but I got him back down there. I talked to him, and I got several people that I knew and some of them was on the board down there to be lenient on him and let him have another chance to go back, which they did. He went on in the service and tried it, but he couldn't handle it. He couldn't adjust to it. He didn't stay very long-maybe a year or so and he was out just about like me. |
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| MP | Your sons who went to Vietnam, did they have any problems of adjustment after they came
back like some of the others? |
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| RG | Yeah, this one, Ricky. He was the Marine. He fought over there for twelve months in the
jungle. He's had problems. He's had working problems. He'll work awhile, and he'll quit. He's got a family, and his little boy is all messed up, and they think it's from Agent Orange. |
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| MP | Is he getting any help at all from the veteran's administration?
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| RG | He's applied, but I don't think he's gotten too much. The little boy was going to
school out there across from ISU. |
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| MP | At Metcalf. |
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| RG | Metcalf. And he's physically handicapped, and I believe it's from Agent Orange because Rick was very exposed to that stuff over there. Ricky hasn't been able to adjust yet since that time. He'll have flashes from all that. He almost got killed several times. There was a white boy came-me and my wife was out one night in the club, and some guy came in there looking for us. And he was a white soldier. He had just been discharged, and he had just left my son in some battlefield over there. He told us Ricky was okay. We hadn't heard from Ricky for four or five months. We knew that he was in the midst of all the fighting because we knew where he was because the last letters we got, he was in this battle and they were moving on to other battles. We'd read in the paper where half of them got wiped out. So we were really curious and worried. So this guy came through Bloomington and told us Ricky was okay. |
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| MP | That must have been a relief. |
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| RG | He was a young white boy from Mississippi. He spent the night with us and went on his way the next day. I found out later that he saved Ricky's life once. Ricky told me about it. He never mentioned it when he was here. Ricky was on the point. He had to go on ahead and see if there was any [Viet] Cong out there. He was always the point guide they called him. He'd go ahead so the rest of the people could move up. He said he was crawling ahead one night, and this guy was sitting back there watching him as he went through this lane. And he was sitting there behind some bushes. He had heard some Cong, but he couldn't tell where they were. While he was looking another one crawled out of the bushes behind him with a knife and walked up behind him and was getting ready to get him in the back of the neck. And this guy sitting there watching him fired and killed him, and he fell across Ricky's back. |
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| MP | And that saved him? |
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| RG | The guy that was shot fell on his back. The guy was over him, getting ready to stab him, and this other guy fired and hit him. And he fell right across his back. |
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| MP | That was really a bad experience. |
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| RG | Ricky told me about that. I said I would have liked to say something to that fella about that. He said, "He'd never talk about it." |
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| MP | Isn't that true of most of the young men who served in Vietnam. They don't want to talk
much about it? |
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| RG | No, they don't. My sons don't talk much about that war. The only thing I've heard them
talk about is when they met up with each other somewhere along the way, one didn't know the other one was there or something. One got R and R. That's rest and recreation. Instead of going to rest and recreation, he heard his brother was somewhere there and so he went to look for him and found him. I heard about those things, but nothing about. |
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| MP | the battles. The experiences that are too painful. |
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| RG | That's true about most guys I know that was over there. They never want to talk about it. |
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| MP | And also many of them that were in the battles in World War II don't like to talk about it either. |
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| RG | But the thing that really hurts Black men in this country is the fact that they come back home, and they find the same conditions exist that were here when they left. |
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| MP | This is what I was going to say. That must be really discouraging. |
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| RG | It is. I'm sure it is. My son had been walking around here-and so did my son who is down
in Texas. When he got out of the service-he was trained in several fields. He's a systems analyst. That's one thing he was. He had also been a drug counselor, and he's been several things. And when he come out, he had trouble finding a job. And finally GTE hired him when they saw his credentials. They hired him down in Florida, and he went down and bought him a home and worked there for a couple of years. He'd spent twenty years in the service, and he was forty-two. They wanted to get rid of him and get a young white guy, which they did. |
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| MP | That's usually what the case is.
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| RG | They let him go. He could live because he had a little money saved up, and he'd get his
pension, which was close to a thousand dollars a month. He could live, but not like he'd been used to. He stayed off of his job-he didn't finish college. So he went and finished college. That's the thing that he did, and he got a degree, and he walked around the streets down there for a long time. He didn't want to leave Tampa. He finally landed a job. He just landed one about two months ago. He was off of work three or four years. His wife worked every day, but he didn't have anything to do. |
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| MP | But he eventually got. |
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| RG | Yeah. He's working for the city. He got a job now, so I'm told, where he's the head of
personnel for the city. He's over about six hundred people. |
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| MP | Oh, that's good. |
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| RG | He's in charge of placing them in jobs. He's their personnel advisor and everything.
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| MP | So he eventually managed quite well. |
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| RG | Yeah. He got a pretty good figure too out of it. |
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| MP | I have a meeting at twelve unfortunately, but I think this gives us a pretty good
picture. (a bit of parting conversation)
Interview ends (near end of Side A) |
