Editor’s Note: The Chestertown Spy has teamed up with the C.V. Starr Center for the American Experience at Washington College to share the stories of local residents who experienced World War II, either on the Home Front or as Veterans. Students and staff have already interviewed over a hundred people about their experiences during World War II. Each installment presented in The Spy includes an audio clip of an interview, along with the corresponding transcript. You can find more audio clips and interview transcripts at storyquestproject.com. If you have a story or artifact to share, please contact Deputy Director of Starr Center, Pat Nugent, at [email protected] or 410-810-7161.
Martha Holland: A Peace Treaty Floats By
In 1945, after we were at Fort Davis [in the Panama Canal Zone] about a month or two, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and also Nagasaki, and the war was virtually ended. A peace treaty was signed on the USS Missouri, and they brought the whole treaty back through the canal on that boat, on that ship. We went and stood on the canal lock to watch it go through. An enormous ship, it filled the whole canal. We could’ve stepped from the side onto the boat while it was still level there. Just was lined with sailors, everybody yelling, both sides cheering. The sailors threw all their hats to us, and we had quite a collection. They all say USS Missouri on them. (laughs) It was just, it was a wonderful occasion with the Missouri going through. In the summer of ’46 we came back home. My father was stationed in Washington, and we moved up to New York where my grandfather had a farm. I was sent off to boarding school, and still the war wasn’t over. [In] 1946 I went to boarding school, and we did war work. We were trained to be nurses. I learned how to make a hospital bed and do all this fun stuff. When I went to Wellesley in ’49, they still had the victory gardens that they had used to feed the college. The whole acreage was still spread out there. Then in 1952, I went bicycling in England with two friends around to youth hostels. We had to have a ration book. Britain still had rationing in 1952. So, you know, ’45 was not the end.
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