Book World

I interviewed my maternal grandfather, Andrew Charles Holup, about his experiences in WWII. I call him "Grandpa." Grandpa was born on November 28, 1920 to Mary Mali and George Holup. He was born in Cainbrock, Pennsylvania where his father worked in the coalmines. George Holup was not a very big man and had severe asthma so the mining was bad on his health. The family moved to northwest Pennsylvania to try farming, but the farmland was not 'good.' Making a living was difficult. (See the additional interview on the Great Depression.) The family survived by everyone, young and old, working and working long hours. His grandfather, who was an alcoholic, lived with them. They had a few dairy cattle, a vegetable garden, chickens, and fruit trees. They also grew hay, wheat, corn, and beans, but these crops where for the livestock or were sold. At times during the year there wasn't much food for the family, but they never starved. (Grandpa told me about some of his experiences during the Great Depression. I will talk about this in a later section.)

Andrew Holup had several brothers and sisters: Mry, Betty, George, John, Anne (Anne was killed on their street by a car when she was nine years old.), and Margaret. There were other children that died in infancy (or were miscarriages). Grandpa was the only one of the children to get a college education even though he dropped out of high school for a few years. Because he was big and strong for his age, he quit school to work as a hired hand on neighboring farms. His high school coach paid him to play football so he was able to come back to school. He workd on his family's farm and as a hired laborer until he joinde the Navy in August of 1940.

He began his nveal creer in the Boston area of Masschusetts where he ws being trained as an electrician. "After basic training I ws assigned to the battleship USS West Virginia . From the start I wsn't sure that being assigned to this ship ws the best thing for me. My fellow shipmates were supersticious and they said 'that the West Virginia was going to be the first ship sunk if we went to war' and it turned out to be true. In December of 1940 we were assigned to the Pacific fleet in Hawaii. From that time until December 7th we did mostly training and wartime exercises. And every time we would go exercising the horizon would be full of Japanese fishing ships watching us."

For recreation Grandpa played catcher on the West Virginia baseball team. When baseball season was over he joined the West Virginia rowing team. With the rowing team he won a bedal and a "great big sweater." The sweater was blue and yellow, the USS West Virginia colors. My grandfather still h as his rowing medal because it was returned to him a year after it was found at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. But the sweater didn't survive the sinking and was destroyed during the December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor. When other items were salvaged from the sunken ship more of his personal belongings were returned to him. A tightly packed bunch of letter was also found; they "were all good and readable but black with oil."

He told me more about his life in the Navy during World War II. "For libery we'd go to Waikiki Beach or downtown Honolulu. The transportation to Honolulu was a little narrow-gauge train (it looked like the small open-air trains they have in parks.) The train stopped at the Dole Pineapple Factory. The factory had a fountain where they served chilled pineapple juice and we'd have a drink before we went on into town."

Around September 1941 Grandpa said they noticed that the Japanese ships from the horizon were gone. Also the Japanese shipping companies stopped carrying the soldiers' mail from the mainland. These changes caused a lot of suspicion! "A lot of us feared the worse, that we'd soon be in a war with them."

Grandpa does not usually talk openly about the war. I did not expect him to be willing to talk about his experiences, but he surprised me and told me his story. He described what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 better than I could ever hope to. the following few paragraphs are his account of what happened that day.