Carolyn Dimmick Final PDF.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Hughes: Do you recall vividly December 7, 1941— Pearl Harbor Day.
Dimmick: Not vividly. I know it happened, and I know that people were running around
in the streets; and I knew some bad thing had happened. But as far as my feelings at
the moment, if that’s what you’re asking, it’s not like when Kennedy got shot. Everybody
remembers then. The war was just the war.
Hughes: So you had just turned 12?
Dimmick: Yes.
Hughes: And was your father too old to be in the service?
Dimmick: Yes. He had been in World War I. He was piloting ships during the war.
Hughes: The Merchant Marine, of course. And was your brother involved in the war?
Dimmick: No, my brother was 4-F. He had very bad eyes. In fact, he used to say if he gets up
and it’s foggy he knows he’s forgot his glasses. (laughs) And that’s when I started working at
the P-I because he took another job, and I got his job.
Hughes: Were you conscious, working at the Post-Intelligencer during the war years, of the
war headlines…
Dimmick: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Hughes: Was there a lot of anxiety and fear?
Dimmick: You know there wasn’t as much of that as there was later on in some of the other
wars we’ve had. Oh, I should mention that during the war – it must have been the summer
of 1942 – I worked in a Youth Farm Aid camp in Auburn. We picked berries, beans and peas.
We were paid daily and lived there in a tent at the camp. We paid 60 cents a day “room and
board.” By the end of the summer, after buying daily treats, I remember having cleared $10.
When I went back home, my folks bought me a $25 war bond for $18.75, and I went to Sears
and bought some dresses with my earnings. Later, I received a certificate from Governor
Arthur B. Langlie thanking me for my work “in the war effort”!
Hughes: What kind of girl were you in school?
Dimmick: Average.
Hughes: An average girl who likes to do average things?
Dimmick: Average, average, yes.
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