C. B. Ward

b. April 16, 1927

served in United States Army Signal Corps; retired public school principal

"I was um coming out of Sunday school, uh I had to walk across town to go to my church, Methodist Church, and when we came back we heard that uh, the Japanese burned Pearl Harbor. 'Well where's Pearl Harbor?' Everybody wanted to know, you know. 'What's Pearl Harbor?' And they said that some lady 'round here, when she heard about it said 'that's a shame how they done Ms. Harbor, isn't it?' (laughs) They thought it was a woman, you know."

"But I followed Guadalcanal and all that, see. And I said, uh, if it lasts long enough I'll be old enough to go. And sure enough, uh, I got in on the end of it [the war]."

"It [the war] um, hopefully you know, not dealing with racial issues, that hopefully it, it taught us to do what we're doing now. Not to allow uh, uh Hitler to, to become possible again. And I think that at every war, someone has said this, in every war blacks have always gained uh, made some gains if they were small, you know."