Johnson

=Josefa Johnson=

Podcast
media type="custom" key="13966740"

BIOGRAPHICAL/GEOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Germany is located in central Europe. From the North and the Baltic Seas in the north to the border with Austria and Switzerland in the south. Germany has a temperate marine climate. Mrs. Johnson lived in the region of Bavaria. Bavaria is hemmed in by the mountains and so is much less marine like. Their government is a Federal Republic and uses a parliament and a prime minster. Germany is part of the Eurozone. This means that they share their currency (the Euro) with other European nations and have common trade and environmental laws. Although they are part of the Eurozone, they strive to maintain their traditions and national identity.

Mrs. Johnson was born in Germany in the early 1930’s. Since this was only a decade after WWI, Germany was in depression. Inflation was high, there were no jobs. In addition, the Nazi regime was in control of the country. In 1939 when WWII started there was little change. However as the war continue the Allies (America, Great Britain and Russia) began a bombing campaign. For their own safety, Mrs. Johnson and her family moved to the countryside. After the war ended, and they moved back to the city, her aunt came from to America to visit family. While visiting, her aunt convinced Mrs. Johnson to move to the United States. Once she got to the U.S. she met her husband, who was in the military, and married him. They got transferred to Washington state (where Mrs. Johnson became a citizen) and then to France. While in France, Mrs. Johnson took a trip to Germany to visit and so her husband could meet her family. She came back to the U.S. and lived her life.

=Creative Writing= The Boat By: Anne Paquette

I walked to the building: tall and big. I ran to the front. “Where is the boat?” “Where am I? “No ocean, No boat?” I was confused and lost. I looked up past the sun; I only see one thing, a gigantic cylinder with smoke rising up. Is it the boat? The boat with its big walls confused me. The boat: the **beautiful luxury** boat. I see food so much food! Tante Annie, **an angel** for putting me in this **paradise**! I loved it there, there is food with no rationing. There are **just dreams**! Lived the life of luxury for four days, but everything has to end. They told us to get ready. A green lady **welcomes me**. **I feel loved**. I come in, I saw Grand Central Station. It’s so busy, where do I go? My Tante greets me. We traveled and traveled. Next **city of dreams and hopes**; Columbus, Ohio.

COLUMBUS I live with girls’ at a home for Christian girls. Those kind girls, show me **kindness and love**. They help me with my English, while we play cards and talk. English was hard, but in the evening I watch television. The shows help me learn, and remember new words. We have **plenty of food**; no one is hungry from rationing. There is no rationing. I **marry**, I **love**, and **live my life**, **the life I want to live**. A life where I can **do what I want when I want**, not having to worry that I am not **perfect**. America: **opportunities and options**. I’m **living my life, wild and free**. **I choose who I am**!

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
This is an interview with Josefa Johnson. The interview was conducted on November 28th, 2011. The interviewer is Anne Paquette representing the Dayton Regional STEM School.

Paquette: What is your full name?

Johnson: I have three first names. It starts with Paula Josefa Maria Meier (maiden name).

Paquette: Where did you immigrate from?

Johnson: From Germany.

Paquette: Where in Germany?

Johnson: Bavaria, a small town near Munich.

Paquette: What was it like before you immigrated in Germany?

Johnson: I grew up into the war time and when the war was over was still in school. The after years, I was over there still there. There was as bad as the war times, because it was hard to find a job. The money was devaluated. My parents had no money, nobody had money. It started out with the new money and so everything was so tight. Couldn’t afford nothing to buy, but food and what was necessary.

Paquette: Do you have any hobbies?

Johnson: Yeah, I was six years old, I learned to knit. So, when the war was going on I couldn’t buy anything anymore. We had the money but the shelves were empty in the store, I couldn’t get wool or anything. So we took something old, dresses or skirts or whatever and we rolled up the wool and then I started knitting gloves and socks and hats from this old clothes which were was actually wool knitted, the machine ones.

Paquette: Was it really useful having extra gloves and hats?

Johnson: We didn’t have extra gloves and hats we just needed them because three children in the family and we all were growing. We always needed new things.

Paquette: What was your education like in Germany?

Johnson: The home town I was born, I went to a school and I had a nun and I had it three years and I think she was the best teacher I could have had because when I was ten my father was transferred out in the boondocks to some farmland a farmers and the school was very bad we had a bad teacher my classes we combined like fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth in one room. One side was the girls the other was the boys and we were really taught not much and when I arrived there when I was ten I was the best reader. I was one of the best if considering that some of the farm boys and girls were being 6th and 7th grade. They could hardly read or write by then, but I could.

Paquette: Do you feel like that gave you an extra step ahead in your life, being able to read better than the other kids?

Johnson: Uh, what saved me was that three years, the first three years, first three grades and the good education I got from this nun. And then I like to read a lot, there wasn’t much to read, there were no books. We couldn’t buy any more books really. So I asked the teacher at the library and really he gave me all kinds of books to read and I really read a lot. I guess that is the way that I learned a lot. Historical stuff and mainly about the area where we lived and so on.

Paquette: Do you have any friends that you still speak to in Germany?

Johnson: Now? Yes, I still have some. It is going back to the 3rd and 4th grade when I started to move out to the country. There are about, those three girls that I know so well are still alive and we call each other sometimes. Even in my home town and was only about 10, I was in (still in) touch until about three or four years ago when they had a schools got together for a meeting. Every 10 years or so they have a meeting. I got an invitation, but I was never able to go there. The way that they told me, those three girls, said that there was hardly anyone there left from my class. I think we had over 30 girls when we started out in first grade. They always remember me and my sister and my family. Because their parents were friends of my parents too.

Paquette: What was your family like? Did you have any siblings?

Johnson: Yes, I was the first born, two years later, my sister and eight years later was my brother. He was my little brother. I remember him more as a baby and such. Because at the countryside I never really had girlfriends. The country girls had to go home to their farms and they had to babysit because their mother had to go work outside in the fields. When there was the little one or the children of ten years old or on had work to do. They always had a lot of chores to do. A lot of farmer wives, their husbands were gone and called to war. So the wives were alone and so everyone had to help, even the grandparents of those friend that I went to school with. They had old grandmother and grandfather, they worked and it was hard on them, but they helped out in every way. I found them long hours of work. So we had a garden and an orchard which was a blessing because food was so scarce. So we had apples, and plums, and fruit. There was a beekeeper and we had to help out there for three days usually, all day long to get the honey out. So I was stung a lot too. But we were glad to have the honey because there was no sugar any more. So we didn’t actually starve. It was pretty one sided, the meals, because my Mama always made soup, lots of soup. Every day, it was an easy way to fill our stomachs. Then there were potatoes and beans and whatever. Meat was very scarce. We were allowed to have six chicken in wartime everything is rationed. They even sent a person out twice a year and wrote down that we have six chicken. They said well, you could have a half more of a chicken because you are five persons in the house. So we had seven chickens because we couldn’t cut the chicken in half you know. They laid eggs and this was very helpful, but it was never enough you know. I liked eggs to eat, sunny side up, but I didn’t want to ask because my mother had to use them for cooking. She would make a cake or something. Seven chickens laid very well around December, January, and February and then during the summer they didn’t lay so well. One time a chicken disappeared and we thought that a fox got it or something and one day she walked out from somewhere, we had a lot of bushes in the back ground of the garden, and there followed 10 little ones. She had laid her eggs in a nest and when she came out she was there clucking at the 10 little ones following her. So we were very glad that she wasn’t eaten up by somebody else and was now a mother chicken.

Paquette: What do you remember most about Germany?

Johnson: Really, bad times, it was war. And then even in the country when we moved out there in ’42 it got worse and worse bombs were coming. I remember the summers, especially ‘43 and ’44 and early 1945. It was wonderful weather summer time, I was reading my books somewhere under the tree outside and suddenly I heard the drone of a whole squadron of planes coming. I usually ran inside the house and said “Mama, the planes are coming.” And we knew by what direction they took, they were either going to Munich or Stuttgart or Augsburg and we heard the bombing, even when we were from far away. They did it even in the night time too. We saw the glow in the sky. Sometimes there was a glow in the east or west and we knew what city was bombed that night.

Paquette: Was it scary being so close to the bombing?

Johnson: No, not for me because we knew that we were so safe. We were on a hill, there was a church and a school. There was an inn where you could eat and there were acres where they would work. It was a guest house more or less where farmers came in on the weekendsfor a beer and discussion, usually politics, or whatever. (When) there was a funeral they would make a dinner and everyone would go to the house and everyone who was invited to the funeral was invited to a dinner there. It wasn’t scary because I felt so free out under the trees that I felt that even if they throw a few bombs I saw the wide fields around me and so on, I thought that they never will bomb us because the distance that they were they would hardly see us and our villages.

Paquette: How did you come to America? Did you come on a plane or a boat?

Johnson: I came on a boat. It was very new and it was supposed to be quite a luxury boat at that time and it was called the United States. Now years later, maybe only 8 years ago, I saw suddenly the USS United States because it was already put in mothballs and but suddenly I was it again. They were talking about the big boat and my aunt, my mother’s sister, she came in the 1920’s to Columbus, Ohio because she had some relatives there. She met another German there and she married him. And my Uncle Peter was from the same area that my mother and sisters grew up and when she met him. She said, “Oh, I remember the name and I think I know your father.” So that was before he courted her and they got married. It was depression time in the 30’s it was very bad. He was a carpenter and he started building houses. He built a little house and he had to go to work. I remember that when I came to the states that he made $0.50 an hour. It was just keeping them with enough food and everything. My aunt after the war in 1950 came the first time to Germany to visit her sisters and brother. There were 7 girls and one brother. She visited one right after the other. I think she flew TWA. I had English in school for three years and said to Tante Annie, her name was Anna, “Tante Annie, will you please talk English? I would like to learn more. I am trying to learn more anyhow. ” She talked to me and said that she was impressed. She said “you talk so good; I think you should come to the United States. Would you like to come to the United States?” I said that yes, I would. She said o.k. When she went back she gave an affidavit. She sent a letter to the embassy saying that she and my Uncle Peter would be responsible for me. At that time to make a citizenship, you had to work and wait 5 years. So when I came over here by the boat the USS United States, which was like a dream that boat, it was wonderful. And the food, I had never seen so much good food. It took 4 and a half days. I had to go by train from Munich to France and then to LaHarve. In LaHarve we went into a huge building. We took the train all the way into a huge building. Someone said that the ocean was right out there. We had to wait until they called us to board. But I wanted to go first to see the boat, so I went outside, but was terribly disappointed. There was a huge wall. I couldn’t see the ocean or the ship! So I looked around and then up and realized that the huge wall was the ship. It was the biggest surprise I ever had. I thought where is the ocean, where is the boat then I looked way up; it was such a big ship. Funny!

Paquette: Did you have any troubles becoming a citizen?

Johnson: That happened very quick. Because when I met my husband I had to bring him to my aunt to introduce her. She interviewed my husband, my future husband like you interview me now. She said to him, you know what? Her mother is in Germany and I am her aunt so I will treat you like her mother would treat you. She asked him questions about his background and everything else. And Uncle Peter said to me “do you want to marry him?” I said, “I don’t know him well enough.” So she said “Well you have to get to  know him better.” Because my husband immediately wanted to marry me, he didn’t want to wait that long. Then my Uncle Peter said to me, “I think that you will regret it. “ I said, “Why?” and he said “because when you get older, the older you get the more that you will miss your family in Germany.”

Paquette: Do you really miss your family?

Johnson: Actually, I never missed my family because I was able to go over. What happened was that my husband was in the Air Force. When we got married and we were married in Greenville South Carolina where he was stationed. He put in for Europe again because he wanted to go with me to Europe to meet my parents and my family. We got it. But first from Greenville South Carolina we had to go to Washington state. And it was called Bosis Lake (spelling?) and was about 2 hours from Spokane, Washington. In Spokane, when we got transferred there; we were about a year in Washington state. Which reminded me a lot of Germany with the colder climate and the beautiful fir trees. So he got a transfer to France and I said, I want to be a citizen before I leave, because I had to go through a lot. I had to go to doctors and had to get shots for, I forgot what it was, but everybody had to  get shots for it, because you could die from it. I still remember. So then I said that if I go back with you I have to immigrate again because I knew that a marriage I could not go  back easily even if I was married. Because I found this out through another lady who had trouble. She was Canadian. All her life lived in the states with her husband and when she was in France she developed a lung ailment. She had to go to Canada and was not allowed to come back here. It was very strict at that time. I was 2 ½ years in the states by then and my husband found out that because of the circumstances, I was allowed to  make my citizenship earlier. So I got the booklet and learned all the questions. I learned the answers to the questions, particularly about the United States and certain dates. Then I had to go to Spokane Washington. I was babysitting at the time and helping cleaning a house. The lady liked me very much so she said that her girlfriend and her would go and be my 2 witnesses and we will go shopping anyhow. She liked Spokane because there were just tiny towns around. So I went in front of a judge. He asked if I spoke English and I said yes I do. By that time I was very fluent. He said can you write a sentence? I said yes, so he said ok write “the car in the street”. It was so easy you know. I said you know that I had 3 years of English and I was trying to not to speak “English” you know the “king’s English” later I found out that Kennedy spoke that way. You know the “r” in afternoon was different. I was really laughing because I said that I want to blend in and don’t want to speak this “king’s English” and I think he liked it a lot and was laughing and joking with me. So I made my citizenship. A little later and there were all kinds of people this was in 1955.

Paquette: What was the first thing you saw when you first came over?

Johnson: When I was in New York, New York City.

Paquette: So that was the first thing you saw?

Johnson: Yeah, I was like you see it in the movies. I was standing outside and saw where you came in and saw the Statue of Liberty.

Paquette: Was it a life changing experience to come into New York City, or do you think that it would not have mattered coming into another city?

Johnson: At that time I was 20, of course it was wonderful. Then in Columbus, Ohio I took a train. The lady picked me up on the boat and took a bus in New York City because I wouldn’t have found my way around. I said what is this? My aunt had actually sent the money, she paid for the boat so my parents wouldn’t have the expense. They still really didn’t have much money. Because the money my parents had saved. There was a change in money so. My parents paid for the train of course to LaHarve and I didn’t have hardly any money. I worked in a bank for three years and still didn’t have hardly any money that I couldn’t afford to live, I couldn’t afford nothing really much. Munich was bombed out, so I couldn’t find a room or nothing. So anyhow I used to take a train home all the time to work and back. I said to the lady, “What is all this? I have never seen anything so big inside.” She got the ticket for me to go to Columbus and said that it’s Grand Central Station. I have never seen a building like that. Munich was bombed our Grand Central Station was much smaller, but it was bombed.

Paquette: Is there scent that reminds you of your old country?

Johnson: Not, it was all very well made with all the sky scrapers. I find that I was very elated and very excited. I thought that my life would be more interesting instead of going to work and not making any money to support myself.

Paquette: What is the difference between Germany and America? Are there big lifestyle differences?

Johnson: I thought of the big streets and so much traffic. I was with my aunt for two weeks and moved out into a home for Christian girls and I met a girl from Holland there and she loved it here too. The others were girls from outside Columbus and they found a room there. I was rooming with a girl there and what excited me was that we had a bathroom. I could take a bath every day in warm water. The food was good, we had an evening meal. I could go to work I walked right by the main street. Right by Washington Street which was right by the courthouse in Columbus, Ohio. I ate better. There were eggs. On Saturday and Sunday there was a kitchen and we could eat as many eggs and jam and bread and butter and so on. It was like I was rich suddenly just to have that. And then there was money left over. I got $32.50 a month and I paid $20 a month for the room and there was all the free food and every day we had a nice evening meal too. I had money left over and the very first $5.00 I had, I bought a big dictionary. A German~English, English~German dictionary and started studying more. So I lived 3 months there. All of the ladies came into the parlor to play cards and made me. When I couldn’t talk English hardly, because I couldn’t understand Americans hardly, because of the way they talk. It was different than the “King’s English” and the BBC. When you listen to the BBC London it is different. So I got used to it and before long, after three months they said that you are fluent and they couldn’t believe it. I said yeah, I watched TV in the evening. I watched __DragNet__. There was this guy on there talked so distinctly. Before I knew it, I only had to learn more words sometimes.

Paquette: Have you visited Germany since you have come over?

Johnson: When I got married, my husband got sent to France. So he sent me ahead to my parents. So I was with my parents for about 2 weeks. He took 5 days off and from France he drove to my parent’s house and that was the first time that he met my parents and every body else. I was married by then 2 ½ years.

Paquette: Do you feel that your immigration was a good idea or a good decision?

Johnson: Yes, I feel so.

Paquette: How has it benefitted you?

Johnson: I was at that age where the German Nazi regime actually included 16 year old boys at the very end and old men. There was a home nearby for veterans. I saw so many veterans without legs or arms or even arm and legs. I saw so many young men in a terrible state. I saw German girls who were engaged and their fiancés never came back. Then we had a lot of widows with children and such. So there were no men left really. At that time, I didn’t realize it or know it. I found that we never went dancing. Just a half a year before that there were Christian dances at church. I was 19 or 20. I thought that they were all boys. I wanted to meet someone who was at least 4 or 5 years older than me. There was hardly anybody. I could have dated American boys, because when I left the bank and I went home by foot sometimes or waited for the street car about 5 o’clock there were a  lot of Americans. Sometimes 10 lined up. They would go up to the girls and even me too and ask if we would like to go for a cup of coffee in German. I guess they learned that phrase or something and I always shook my head and never said anything. Because my father, we had been taught that it is bad manners. You don’t walk off with any one you don’t know. Even if it is day time, you just don’t do that. So I ignored them, even though I wanted so badly to talk English with them, I probably would have learned a lot. At that time if I would have done it. When I got home I said to Papa, I could go out with one of those young soldiers they looked so handsome to. He said you can’t do that. Then I met a girl who worked in the offices and I saw them on the street. I thought that they were not well brought up, then I got to know them through the office. I met them and went out. Then there was a girl who met one and went out, because they always wanted to have girlfriends. And so one of the others I found out got married.

Paquette: Thank you for letting me interview you!

Johnson: Welcome.

ANALYSIS
Immigration generally means that people are leaving someplace that is not very good, or they are trying to go to someplace that is better. People tend to immigrate as a way to make their lives better. This is not always the easiest task. The “American dream” says that if you work hard and you are patient, that you can achieve your goals.

Mrs. Johnson was atypical. She was born in the 1930’s, just before WWII, and married a soldier. However, she was not really a war bride. She came over because her aunt and uncle sponsored her. She worked and lived her life for a few years. Then she met her husband. After they had been married 2 years, then they went back to Europe (when he was transferred). Getting married didn’t save her from the trouble after the war. Her family helped her with that. She also already knew some English and taught herself so she was fluent within 6 months of coming to the States.

Mrs. Johnson was much better off than the typical immigrant. She came to the states by luxury ship, then was guided to the train station and met her aunt in Columbus, Ohio. She immediately had a place to stay and people to watch out for her. She already spoke the language and became fluent within months. She met a man who loved her. After she married, she was able to go back to her home country often and without trouble. This is not to say that Mrs. Johnson had it easy, but it could have been much more difficult.

Immigration is not easy. Even in the best of circumstances you are leaving your homeland, your family and often your culture. You arrive in a new country with new languages, customs and traditions. Compound this with the expenses of travel, issues of discrimination, and overall uncertainty. This can become unnerving.

Hearing about German immigration from another person has been interesting. I came to learn that Mrs. Johnson and my grandmother lived within miles of each other in Munich, but had such different lives that they didn’t meet until their husbands were stationed here in Dayton. Such similar beginnings that resulted in such different journeys and outcomes.