Born in Hartford, Connecticut July 2, 1926. 89 years old.
Volunteered for U.S. Navy as a musician. Served on battleship in the Pacific where, along with being in the band, he loaded ammunition during conflict.
Father-Moses A. Berman (attorney)
Mother- Bernice Toby Corellas (house wife)
Father and mother were traditional Jewish, grandfather was Orthodox and the next generation was more Conservative and my father and mother were Reformed.
Father and mother were mostly Democrats
Was 16 years old when Pearl Harbor happened
Talking about FDR
In those days radio was the main focus of our information, so I used to listen to a lot of radio. Every time FDR spoke I used to listen to his speeches. In the early 30’s FDR came to Hartford, Connecticut, and my father wanted to hear him speak. He took me, I was about eight years old and he put me on his shoulders so I could see above everybody’s head and I saw Franklin Roosevelt on the back of a train giving a political speech
In comparison to today, I have lived under many administrations and many presidents. Franklin Roosevelt was able to unify the country. Whether you agreed with his policies or not, he was the great unifier. Through the depression he brought Americans together and especially after WWII started when we were bombed at Pearl Harbor. The whole country united behind FDR. He was magnificent. I used to listen to every speech I could. That man spoke so fluently. If you study him you would recall he rarely if ever made a mistake speaking.
Compared to today’s administration which I may say is kind of a divisional administration in which they pit groups against each other, Roosevelt had the knack of unifying everybody together by always reminding the American audiences, “we are all Americans first; rich or poor, black or white, labor or management, we are all Americans,” and that’s what he always stressed. As they say, he was the right man at the right time for our country in a time of crisis.
Talking about The Great Depression
Everything was different in those depression days even though I was a little boy. Money was so scarce among people that many people bartered. My dad was an attorney and many of the fees that were owed to him he was able to go to a gas station. I’ll never forget I went to a gas station with him and the gas station owner was a client of my dad’s and when my dad drove in, my dad probably purchased 5 or 6 gallons. The owner said, “Ok, Mo write it off, take that amount of money and just take it off the bill I owe you.” He also did that with farmers. When he was representing farmers I used to go to farmers and they would give him food or produce. He didn’t have to pay because he took it off the bill that they owed him. So those days’ people did not have money. A dollar then was probably worth twenty-five dollars today.
Do you remember Hobos? They used to call them hobos and surprisingly enough there weren’t many crimes committed by hobos. They were just down and out people who didn’t have funds, and they didn’t have jobs.
Did the Great Depression affect you for the rest of your life? I think it subconsciously did. I saw a lot of poor people, everybody in those depression days, struggled and tried to budget whatever they had. It was a very tough time.
FDR
Totally different then the present administration, FDR gave confidence to people. People respected him, people admired his enthusiasm and his confidence that he gave people. He gave confidence to the American people. He united us in such a way that I’ll never forget that his unification was the greatest period of my life in politics. He was able to bring people together! This administration divides people.
It was wonderful; he gave artists opportunities and he gave creators opportunities. He believed in the free enterprise system. He brought us out of the depression.
WWII was a big impact on the life of the United States.
About the Jews
We used to listen to broadcasts on the radio, I glued myself to the radio and heard Winston Churchill many times speaking to the House of Commons, and he, too, was one of the greatest speakers I have ever heard.
Some of the intellectual Jews knew what was going on, they were very conscious of the tragedies in Europe, not everybody did though.
Pearl Harbor
I was attending a concert, and I was waiting for a bus after I got out of the concert to go home and someone said, “Did you hear we were attacked by the Japanese at
Pearl Harbor? “ In those days no one knew where that was. I said, Where is Pearl Harbor?” They said, “Someplace in Hawaii” and, of course, as soon as I got home off the bus we turned the radio on and we got the full report.
Everybody was united to do what they could. We were under stress and people were worried. They had blackouts in those days on both coasts and it was a very stressful time for people. Men were running to the induction centers. They volunteered right away to join the service. Women got employed immediately in factories. You know “Rosie the Riveter” was coined in WWII because a lot of wonderful women went right to the factories and learned mechanics and riveting. It was a great time for unification.
It was the beginning of a changed culture.
I was about 16. In those days everybody tried to participate in making bandages or raising food supplies and preparing packages for soldiers that were going overseas. And women would get together in their homes and make gifts for soldiers. Everybody was gung-ho about the war. Everybody was very patriotic.
Meat was in short supply. Certain food items were in short supply. They had rationing in those days. I think the administration instituted rationing because most of the supplies had to go to the services, and they didn’t want the general public to have that. So there was a shortage of a lot of things in the economy.
I was too young to get in the service, so when I graduated high school I immediately enrolled in the University of Connecticut. I was about 18 years old. I wanted to get a little college in because I knew that I would be getting into the service, and in December 1944 I was called to service. In those days the draft was huge and a certain percentage of inductees were either placed in the Navy or the Army. I was very fortunate when they asked me which branch would I like I said, “the Navy” and luckily 10% of the group that I was in went to the Navy and 90% were in the Army. The Army was very dangerous at that time. The Navy was dangerous, too, but I felt more comfortable being in the Navy.
Dad WWI
My dad by the way was in WWI and he was in the Army. He was one of the early soldiers. He was in the Air Force. They called it the air force in WWI and he was a sergeant, served about 18 months in France during WWI. That was the Army Air core that’s right, it was changed afterward. (to the Air Force)
Drafted in the Navy in WWII
Other than a little college, this was my first time away from home although I did go to camp a few times when I was a little boy. So I experienced some time away from home. It was a huge change and it was in the winter and we were sent to upper New York State in the blistering winter. Camp Samson in New York. It was very cold when I went to boot camp, 10 weeks of boot camp and then I was shipped immediately to a music school because they asked the sailors, What can you do? Can you drive a truck? Can you type?” I said, Well, I play the saxophone,” so they tested me. They wanted to make sure so they got a saxophone and one of the officers had to listen to me play. I had to audition and he said, “Yes, you can play. We’re going to send you to the Navy school of Music and there you will be organized after your term there, about 8 or 9 weeks. We’ll put you on a base or a ship or something somewhere in the United States Navy.” I was assigned after graduating the School of Music. They shipped me right away to a big aircraft carrier called the U.S.S. WASP and this is the ship that I served aboard in WWII.
When I first saw the WASP it looked like a monster. It was huge, the biggest ship I had ever seen in my life. It was massive. We were boarded right away and after a few runs down the coast of San Francisco under the Golden Gate Bridge, we were shipped out to the Pacific to join the Third Fleet, which we did in 1945. Our ship was the sister ship of the Hornet, another huge aircraft carrier. The Wasp and the Hornet were the largest ships as far as aircraft carriers are concerned. We carried 105 airplanes and those pilots were my heroes because they risked their lives every time they flew off the ship. And, of course, I saw a lot of them crash. I saw them come in after a fight with Japanese planes. A lot of the boys were lucky to get back on the ship. They crashed on the ship. Some of the boys in taking off stalled, and I saw many planes go into the drink. And we would stand over the side of the ship and just hope they would pop up, because if they popped up, then our destroyers behind would pick them up, but some never popped up and they just were gone. Those were unbelievable boys.
My Role on the Ship
We had two roles. Of course, the band played when we pulled into port. We entertained when we weren’t in battle. We would play music for the sailors. We had our battle stations, and they put musicians on the gun stations, so I was assigned to some big guns at first. And then I was loading ammunition on the antiaircraft guns. And you’ve heard of the word “adrenaline.” When a Japanese plane got through our security, the alarm bells went off in the ship and we knew that we were under attack. I recall they said, “Okay, there’s a Japanese kamikaze coming right for our ship” and then the guns started to blaze. The whole ship exploded with fire, and I will never forget I pulled up the clips to pass to the next man who would load the antiaircraft gun. At that time I can still recall the adrenaline rush that I experienced knowing that it was life or death, and we better get this fella or he’s going to destroy us. So I know what it means to have an adrenaline rush. I never had one before. I think my hearing was impaired from the big shells that exploded when we fired off some big guns, because we were right near those guns. In those days they wouldn’t protect the sailors like they would today. They’d give them earmuffs or something to put in their ears, but in those days we just had to put our hands over our ears. It was horrible. When I started to lose my hearing back about eight years ago the doctor said, “Were you in the war?” I said, “Yes.” “Well that was probably the cause and it doesn’t show up till later in life.” So that’s what happened.
I boarded the ship in early spring and the war ended in August so I must have been on the ship for about eight months
I was right there when we were preparing to invade Japan, and we amassed a huge fleet of ships. Soldiers were getting ready to invade; the marines were getting ready. Our ship carried 100 Marines and I was very close to one of the marines that was aboard the ship. After the war ended he was one of the first Americans to land in Japan and he came back and told me that they were prepared to fight to death. If we didn’t drop the atomic bomb there would be more bloodshed among the Japanese and American soldiers than people can imagine. You cant imagine the death and carnage that would have happened, much more than the tragedy of dropping those two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I’ve heard many people say today, “Oh, we should have never dropped the bomb.” Those revisionists have no clue. They don’t understand that Harry Truman did the right thing. He saved thousands of lives, not only American lives but Japanese lives. It would have been terrible carnage if we didn’t stop the war that way. So I’m very thankful that Harry dropped the bomb. He probably saved my life and the fellows that were with me.
We got caught right after WWII ended in August, our ship got caught in a terrific Typhoon and that Typhoon just engulfed our fleet. If I wasn’t on a big ship I wouldn’t be speaking today because two of our destroyers next to us flipped over and we lost 300 sailors on each ship. Our ship was damaged severely. 40 feet of the flight deck was crushed right in. I was very lucky to survive that typhoon. It was huge.
I think the typhoon was the most horrific experience other than the kamikaze attack that I had ever experienced in my life, because nature when it riles up, especially out at sea. We were tossed around like a leaf on a wave. It was just unimaginable.
After the war ended
We went back to Hawaii for R&R. We were assigned to have about a week of R&R which was fantastic. They treated the Navy people very well, and I’m sure they treated the Army too. There was a camp we were sent to in Hawaii and we had the freedom to go into Honolulu. We could go swimming. I’ll never forget the first night when we went to camp getting off the ship after being out to sea and so forth. We ate a nice dinner, and we all were so exhausted. We went to bed, we climbed in our bunks that were assigned to us and I remember going to sleep about 7:30pm. I must have slept 14 hours straight, that’s how exhausted we all were and that was the longest sleep I ever had.
We were out at sea for many months. We used to take on supplies from other ships and that’s when the band would play for the sailors that were next to us. We would get up at 5:30am and play some music so they would hear some American music and then we would do our chores. We played for the officers in Hawaii when they had a dance; we used to play for their dances. And we had wonderful times after the war was over.
We all looked for letters, and mail was a key thing to a sailor or soldier and it took months to get a letter. We relished those letters.
My father being a veteran of WWI, he understood. I’m sure he kept telling my mother it will be all right, it will be fine and thankfully everything worked out.
I was about 19 0r 20 when I came home.
I had a strong faith in God at that time, I always have and I said I’m going to survive this, I believe that everything is going to work out alright and it did. Looking back, it was a terrible experience, but at that time being young, adventurous…
The war changed me
It made me aware that every generation has challenges and every generation has to be on guard. There are evil people in the world as there were in those days and there are evil people now and you cannot negotiate with evil. And I see some big mistakes on the horizon because our country thinks that they can negotiate with evil dictators, a big fallacy in my opinion, only time will tell.
Near death experiences changed me
It changed my life, I was very blessed and very grateful to survive and to be here and to relate my experiences.
Back at home after war
I went back to college. I was enrolled back in University of Connecticut, and I completed my junior year. I recall I had a summer job between my sophomore and junior year working in a real estate office in Hartford and I liked that very much. I was making some very fine money for those days and I said to my mom and dad, “You know, I really like the real estate business.”
Being Jewish
It was very important and this Marine that I met on the ship happened to be a Jewish guy that was one of the first Marines that occupied Japan. I had some very nice friends that were Jewish. There weren’t many on my ship, maybe a handful out of 3,000. Not an issue, it didn’t appear to be negative
We knew that the United States was either going to live or die, that was the type of war it was. We were either going to speak German or Japanese and the Jewish people wouldn’t be alive in this country if Germany had taken over, so we gave it our all. And regrettably a lot of people forgot those days, and they don’t know about those days. But history repeats itself, I’m afraid, and our leaders today are not like our leaders yesterday. We had tremendous leaders. They were statesmen. Both parties had states people. They looked at the country first; they didn’t look at themselves. Today most of the statesmen are selfish. They are not statesmen; they are politicians. It’s a different world; different culture.
When I was serving, right before they dropped the bomb, I was asked to come up to the radio room in the ship. I had a friend that worked there, and he said come on up and listen to the news, there’s something going on. So I went up and I could hear over the radio that the United States just dropped a secret weapon. They did not call it an atomic bomb. They didn’t say it was anything other than a secret weapon. They had just dropped something on Hiroshima, but it was a secret weapon, and we were dumbfounded. They said the city is totally destroyed and then shortly after, as you know, they dropped the secret weapon on Nagasaki. And then they released the news. We had an atomic bomb that went off and, of course, everybody knew at that time that the war was going to end. They had no idea what an atomic bomb was. So that was a very unusual experience to hear it from the radio room on the WASP.
As soon as the war ended our planes flew over Japanese concentration camps and dropped supplies from our ship to the survivors who were standing on their roofs. I have pictures of Americans who raised their hands. They were on the roof of these camps and they said, “Thank you, WASP.” They painted it on the roof, “Thank you, WASP”, because we sent them supplies, canned goods and anything that they could eat.
The boys took off on prop planes. They were not jets in those days, and they encountered battles with the Japanese planes and antiaircraft fire. They really were courageous heroes.
I came back with a purpose. If I survived, I said, I want to contribute and make something of myself. And I was very fortunate and lucky to be living in the United States, to be a citizen of this great country. And as I said, the people were wonderful; the leadership was terrific.
The training was good. When I was at boot camp they trained us. All sailors had to know how to fire weapons, rifles and how to put out ship fires. A fire is a dangerous thing on a ship.
The Jewish Congregation and being Jewish
They are a wonderful congregation. They’re very concerned with helping people, and outreach, and I think they are doing a great job.
If you know the history of the Jewish people and the commandments, it means doing the right thing at the right time and being kind to people wherever you meet them; in the shops, waitresses, anybody that you contact. To me it means giving them happiness, making them feel better, smile, give them a compliment, that to me is being Jewish.
I wanted to convey that I did feel and I still feel blessed to be able to survive WWII and to recall the experiences that I incurred during the service. I want folks to know that I feel very humble and blessed to be able to recall those days and if I was able to impart some knowledge that people may not have known, I hope that it was effective.
I was very fortunate to meet this fellow from Boston, Ken Shneer. We communicate with each other by phone now, he’s in a rest home and I haven’t seen him for over 60 years. A few years ago we connected and I flew back to reconnect with him after 60 years and it was a wonderful reunion. We met in a hotel and he called the TV people in Boston. They came with a camera crew and filmed us meeting each other after 60 years. They put it all over the news and throughout Massachusetts.
I also want to mention that there was a fellow that was a pilot on our ship, a Jewish fellow. I never knew him while I was serving on the ship, but I connected with him a few years ago and found out that he was one of the pilots that flew off of the WASP. When we did connect he brought his wife up here and we spent a day together, a very nice gentleman. He was an attorney after he got out of the service, so he told me about his life. He’s a few years older than I am.
I had a birthday a few days ago I am 89. Everybody gets older. I think in life if you have a purpose in your life that you enjoy doing, that’s one of the keys in life. If you wake up in the morning and you know you are going to do something, you look forward to something that will enhance the quality of your life.
It’s very difficult to understand that I am 89.