Jump to: Tape 02
WWII Veteran Transcript
Subject: Jacob (Rand) Ranofsky
Interviewer: Bobby Alan Wintermute
Tape Number: 01 of 02
Interview Date:
Transcriber: Matthew McCann


Transcription Date:



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Interviewer: Test, Test, Test, Jacob Rand Session.

[Recording pauses]

Interviewer: June fifteenth, first session for Dr. Jacob Rand.  Doctor do you 
want to state you name and address for the purposes of the interview?

Rand: Jacob S. Rand, R-A-N-D one-five-five east Seventy-Sixth street, New York 
City, One-Zero-Zero-Two-One.

Interviewer: Dr. Rand when did you first come to Queens College?

Rand: I came to Queens College in September 1938.

Interviewer: How old were you when you came here?

Rand: I was-

Interviewer: Speak-

Rand: I was seventeen

Interviewer: Speak up for the-

Rand: I was seventeen.  Seventeen years of age.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: I remember it was, want me to tell you about-

Interviewer: Yeah, sure.

Rand: The first day of school, it had been the great hurricane of 1938 and 
coming from the bus that runs from Flushing, Main Street Flushing to the campus 
had to reroute itself it couldn’t go in it’s franchised area because of the 
flooding between, between Flushing and here, where there’s now a lot of apartment 
complexes and everything but it was just open field and it was totally flooded, 
and we had to take a tremendous detour and that’s what I remember, but it was 
right after this tremendous hurricane of 1938 which was devastating to Long 
Island and to New England.

Interviewer: Do you remember the name of the storm?  Their generally named the 
hurricanes.

Rand: No I don’t.

Interviewer: Where were you living at the time?

Rand: I was living in Astoria at the time.

Interviewer: Okay.  Why did you choose Queens College?

Rand: Well, the situation was I couldn’t afford to go to a Ivy League college or, 
or a paying college of any kind, I was ready to go to a city college.  Living in 
Queens and Queens College was, was new and beautiful and seems a great place to go, 
so I applied here rather then a city college. College of the city of New York.

Interviewer: Right. 

Rand: City College which was the college of the time.

Interviewer: Nineteen Thirty-Eight was the first year Queens was open, right?

Rand: Nineteen Thirty-Seven.

Interviewer: Nineteen Thiry-Seven

Rand: Yeah okay.

Interviewer: Okay, so you were in the second year.

Rand: So there were four hundred students here prior to nineteen thirty-eight, 
and then four hundred new students that entered in September 1938.  So that made 
eight hundred students on campus.

Interviewer: Wow, that’s a good, that was good sized classes for that period.  
How many, well first of all what was your major, what was claimed major.

Rand: Well when I started I majored in Language.

Interviewer: What Language?

Rand: French and Spanish.  And then I decided to go into Psychology, I majored in 
Psychology.

Interviewer: Why the shift?

Rand: Well I just was interested in being in Psychology. I thought I’d go into 
that.

Interviewer: What was the state of Psychology in the United States in-

Rand: Well it was sort of a new specialty so to speak.  And they believed that 
environment was the cause of everything.  Everything, it was your parents fault 
or it had something wrong with you, or the environment in general and they 
thought little of heredity.  It happened in a period the nineteenth century and 
early twentieth century when everything was important this guy Jung and so forth, 
but at that point they thought that environment was the big thing.

Interviewer: Were there, was there still a Eugenicist movement at the time?  
Eugenics movement.

Rand: Oh Eugenics!  Well, I guess Eugenics existed from the point of view of 
Germany, yes, but here too apparently there was some Eugenics movement but, I 
don’t remember discussing it in psychology at all.  It did a lot of work with apes 
and so forth down in Florida they did studies with apes trying to make humans out 
of them things like that.  It was interesting.

Interviewer: I guess so, yeah.

Rand: Because they figured environment was the most important thing, and they 
tried to teach them how to eat with utensils and they tried to set up experiments 
to see if they could use tools like a human could and so forth, and this is what 
they were interested in those days, and of course testing.  Intelligence testing, 
personality inventories, things like that.

Interviewer: Does this, I mean still during like the introduction of the beginning 
of the psychoanalysis heyday as well?

Rand: Oh yes.  Yeah, but, we didn’t go into that much we were more interested in 
psychometrics and in intelligence and things likes that more then psychoanalysis.  
It wasn’t much I don’t recall studying Freud very much in the, in our classes, I 
guess, he was just about being recognized I suppose in nineteen thirty-eight, 
thirty-nine or forty.  He was just coming out of being left, Austria, I guess.

Interviewer: Yeah, Vienna, Right.  What was life like at Queen College well, tell 
me what the campus was like.

Rand: Well it was most unusual for a City College because this, we had this 
wonderful Quandrangle, physically, the physical status was that we had this 
wonderful triangle [sic] with a beautiful view Manhattan in the distance and, I 
mean it was unusual because City Colleges were then known to be within the 
boundaries of Manhattan or Brooklyn which didn’t have campus, real Campuses but 
we had a country like campus here right in the heart of Queens and it was, it 
was really very nice atmosphere, relaxing atmosphere, and we had relatively small 
classes the managed to get some terrific teachers and so it was a good atmosphere 
here and I wasn’t much, I wasn’t involved in sports, intramural sports or whatever.

Interviewer: Was that big here?

Rand: I wasn’t big because this was new, a new school, never get involved in it 
too much.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: I wasn’t involved too much, I wasn’t involved to much of a, we had gym as 
part of our thing, I remember we had social dancing that was a big deal. 

Interviewer: Really?  Was that Co-ed or?

Rand: Co-Ed Social dancing oh yes of course.

Interviewer: Scandalous.

Rand: And we had our clubs and our interests as I said I had extracurricular, which 
I realize now was off-campus.  That I was involved with Gilben and Sulliven Operettas.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: And that was off-campus, absolutely off-campus there were people from, from the 
college but, we rehearsed in Jamaica.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: That was another thing, now Jamaica the Library was place where we went to 
study, we had a lovely library here on the top floor of Jefferson, and in those 
you had to have absolute quiet in the library they were very at that time.  It 
wasn’t a bad place to study but if you really wanted to spend a lot of time 
studying we went to Jamaica Library on, main library in Jamaica I don’t remember 
what it was called and across the street from that was a YMCA and I used to stay 
there when I had some tough exams and I wanted to put in a lot of, cause by the 
time, the last two years I lived in Brooklyn, I’d moved to Brooklyn.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: So that I would stay at the YMCA if I had to do some heavy studying.  Between 
YMCA room, which was about two dollars a night and a library, did some heavy studying 
there.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.  What prompted the shift to Brooklyn why did you move to 
Brooklyn?

Rand: Well because I mean, my parents moved to Brooklyn, my grandfather was 
rather old and he moved in with us, he had real estate in Brooklyn in apartment 
couple of apartment houses, he need care.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: He was getting on in years, so he moved into an apartment there, pardon me, 
in Brooklyn, took him in with us my, my father was good son he took good care of 
his father and my mother was a great daughter in law she did the same.

Interviewer: Was your grandfather the first generation?

Rand: Yes, he was the first generation, came to the United, in my old age I admire 
him thinking how, they didn’t just fly in, you know didn’t just get in on an 
airplane fly into the United States.

Interviewer: No, no.

Rand: They came across Europe, with their families, came across in steering, and I 
admire them for that.  My other grandparents also my maternal grandparents did the 
same thing.

Interviewer: Where did both sets of Grandparents come from?

Rand: You know, I never, since I was the baby in the family I never got to question 
them too much when I was old enough to question them, it was too late.  They were 
never interested in talking about where they came from, but they came from somewhere 
in the Middle of Europe, and they probably in the Russian, what they call the Russian 
Pale I suppose.  Probably came from there.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: But I didn’t know of any, any specific place or anything like that. They 
never spoke Russian the only spoke, well my parents spoke English and my 
Grandparents spoke both English and Yiddish. You see, so, but they never spoke 
of where they came from.

Interviewer: What did your grandfather do when he came here again?

Rand: Well that particular grandfather was in the, well of course he got involved 
in real estate but, but early on, I mean, he was first a laborer and he was 
involved in from what I understand in coal and things like that.  Coal delivery 
things of that sort, but then went on to Real Estate.

Interviewer: What about your maternal grandparents?

Rand: They, they lived in Brooklyn also, what’s now considered Bedford-Stuyvesant, 
but they had a beautiful apartment there.  And, and they were in, they, they were 
in the rope and twine business or something like that you know nothing, retail stuff, 
and that’s that’s all I recall.

Interviewer: Recall about your parents?

Rand: Pardon me?

Interviewer: Tell me anything about your parents.

Rand: Oh my parents? Well my father worked with his grandfather well, I can’t go into 
it in too much detail but, I’ve been around this and at one point we lived in the 
Bronx and my father and other members of the family involved in the Laundry business.  
Now Laundry Business was probably different then it is today, before the advent of 
washing machine, people sent their laundry out Monday,

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: And they were delivered back to them everything pressed and everything on a 
Wednesday or a Thursday, sheets never had a wrinkle in them they went through a press, 
rollers and this and it was just amazing, [?] washing machines, and dryers of course.  
There were no dryers with no washing machines.  People if they did their laundry they 
hung them out on the line you know but most people, middle class people sent their 
washed laundry if they couldn’t afford to have it pressed and everything they had what 
was called wet wash.

Interviewer: What was that?

Rand: They sent their wash, laundry on Monday and it was returned to them clean, you 
know washed but, wet and then they hung it out on the line.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: And they ironed whatever they had to iron.  But everybody wore white shirts the 
men only wore, and they, white shirts before the hand iron and five cents or ten cents 
a shirt.

Interviewer: Wow.  So your parents-

Rand: So that was yeah, well.

Interviewer: They owned the laundry or?

Rand: Well yes they part ownership in Laundry but then when the, with the advent of 
washing machines and everything the business kind of went down.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: Now there were other members, you know, uncles and so forth, that really had 
big laundries, even, even some of them had horses and wagons in the early days I 
can remember in the late twenties, when I was about nine or ten years of age in 
the early thirties, and they had horses and wagons in the Bronx going up those 
hills, I tell you just-

Interviewer: Wow, that’s, that’s, amazing that’s, wow.  What was in terms of living 
in the city both in Manhattan.

Rand: Well I was all over the city.

Interviewer: Where you went, what was the ethnic makeup of the city.

Rand: Ah, that’s interesting.  The ethnic makeup of the areas where I lived were 
all white, Jewish, and then certain neighborhoods were mixed with Italian-Americans 
and certainly Irish-Americans, and so forth and we never lived in a Black Area, 
never, Harlem or something.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: That was, it was a real separation in those days you rarely saw a Black 
Person outside of Harlem.

Interviewer: Did you encounter racial prejudice at all?

Rand: Oh yes.  Oh we, we knew that there were quotas for example, in other words 
if, to get into medical schools there were quotas for Jews they would allow only a 
certain number of Jews into medical school.  And that’s why so many Jewish boys 
went overseas to go to medical school.  Switzerland, England, Scotland, 
Philippines, they went all over to any recognized Medical School because it was so 
difficult to get into American Medical School.

Interviewer: It just seems so alien to us today.

Rand: Yes.  Yes that’s true but,

Interviewer: What about other, other aspects of life, I mean were there other areas 
of New York culture did you, encounter-

Rand: Well.

Interviewer: -Prejudice or [?] against others.

Rand: Well the, the prejudice well definitely there was prejudice against blacks 
that existed there’s no question about that. But I guess I was fortunate, I didn’t, 
I lived in different kinds of neighborhoods and we seemed to get along pretty well 
with no problem in the mixed neighborhoods I mentioned, Italian-Americans and 
Irish-Americans and so forth, Astoria was a lot of Irish-Americans, there were 
Greeks, there were Greeks too you know.  We all kinda, we got along pretty well, as a, 
as a child playing you know in the street and so forth.

Interviewer: [?] were [?] the Irish in the community-

Rand: Yeah.

Interviewer: [?]

Rand: No we didn’t have a problem and as child, you’re talking about a-

Interviewer: Well child, teenager -

Rand: Teenager, oh and in those days, as you can such variety as far as the student 
body in Queens College, but very, [?], and very few blacks.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: Or Hispanics for that matter, it was mostly, white anglo-saxon protestents, 
Jews, Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, a few Greek Americans, very few Blacks, 
I can’t, just can’t remember, any Black Students [?] college, I just can’t remember.

Interviewer: Yeah and despite the fact that they were the large, mass segment of 
the population.

Rand: There wasn’t a large population, certainly not in Queens.  The only place was 
South Jamaica, where there was a black population. And but there wasn’t any, I don’t 
remember any, isn’t it interesting?  I thinking back I can’t remember, there must 
have been a few blacks that went to college here, but I can’t remember any.

Interviewer: I don’t think until the nineteen fifties. Or the late forties certainly, 
yeah.

Rand: There were Blacks living in, in Queens-

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: -South Jamaica, but that was about it.

Interviewer: Right.  What was your thoughts about the quality of the education you 
received here?

Rand: I think it was great, the quality of education was very fine.  We had good 
teachers.  Good professors and it wasn’t easy, it was tough.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: It was difficult.

Interviewer: Were there any courses that stood out as being like you know, very 
difficult, or almost too tough or?

Rand: Well not too tough, I mean I, I’d stick my nose to the grindstone, I was not 
a genius and therefore, I didn’t have photographic memory. So I work hard I wasn’t 
a top student, but I wasn’t the, worst student by any means. 

Interviewer: You were had left school early.

Rand: Yes, I was-

Interviewer: -talking about other things, to pursue a career at first in the 
military in the signal corps, when exactly was that?

Rand: That was, in the fall of nineteen forty-two.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: Let me see, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, [?], 
yes well it was in actually occurred somewhere, I was, no, I was in the, it was 
early in the year nineteen forty-two, that’s right, yeah, I was in the second half 
of my senior year, when I was called as a civilian to the Signal Corps to work as 
an inspector in the Signal Corp, and so I was scheduled to graduate in June of 
Forty-Two but instead in the last six months I was in the, I worked as a, an 
inspector in the signal corps, then returned to the college in the fall of forty-two 
and graduated in the February of forty-three.

Interviewer: What were you looking to do in the Signal Corps?  What were they 
looking to offer you, in the signal corps?

Rand: Well, they needed inspectors to go into factories that were producing signal 
corps things like for example, intercoms, in the factory that I was inspector they, 
they were manufacturing intercoms for tanks.  And he we had to watch the assembly 
line, pardon me to see that everything was the way it was supposed to be.  And we had 
it was quite a responsibility because if we saw something that wasn’t right we had to 
stop the line, and we used to shout out ‘Stop the line!’ and everything stopped.  And 
we saw that the copper wires were properly attached and so forth, and then the line 
could go ahead.  And here I was a kid, I was twenty-one, I guess, young, twenty-one 
and I had this responsibility, and it was a, it was an awesome thing in that sense but, 
we did a job, you know they were, they trained us and whatever.

Interviewer: Where was the factory at?

Rand: That was in Illinois.  It was, I don’t remember the name of the town, but it was 
in Illinois.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: And, it was a well paid job and it was.

Interviewer: Did you have an exemption, because of it?

Rand: Well, for the time being I did have an exemption the draft board understood 
that I was a civilian working for the signal corps, and I was exempted but there 
came a time when they needed…

Interviewer: People.

Rand: They needed people, so my draft board said I no longer had a deferment so I 
told them I had six months to finish in college, would they let me finish and they 
said, well if I would enlist in the army reserve, they would let me finish, so I 
enlisted in the reserve I returned to Queens College and graduated in January of 
forty-three and then had, directly had orders to go out to camp Upton and I was 
went into active duty.

Interviewer: In you first years of Queens College, please take time to look at it, 
you’re obviously aware of the gathering storm in Europe and-

Rand: Oh yeah.

Interviewer: Was there a sense that you know, the United States would join the war?

Rand: Oh yes there was a sense that, eventually they might go into war.  I remember 
specifically September first, nineteen thirty nine.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: When Germany attacked Poland, invaded Poland, I remember that, because I was 
up in, up in what was called the Borscht Belt up in, Catskills working as a waiter 
you know?  Working my way that summer, through college I can remember being in the 
cellar, I can remember this coming over radio, and, of course, I mean there the 
Idea we assumed that we might get involved in it of course, sure.

Interviewer: Was there a lot of…how to describe it, isolationist sentiment?

Rand: Oh definitely, there was Isolationist Settlement mostly in the, in the Midwest 
there was less, in the East, and in the West Coast but in Midwest they were 
definitely very Isolationist.

Interviewer: Why is that?

Rand: Well because it seemed so far away to them, you saw the war seemed far away 
and whereas it didn’t seem I guess to those of us on the East Coast.

Interviewer: Right, okay.  What about New York City proper I mean what was the 
general mood in the city, in New York-

Rand: Well as I say I think a lot of people probably, expected, eventually we might 
have to get involved in it.  New York City had a large Jewish population, and they 
recognized that their brethren was suffering.

Interviewer: But they also had a large German population too.

Rand: Well, yeah.  They had, oh yes of course, we had area, well certain areas of 
where German people settled in Yorkville and so forth, and even in Astoria there 
was good German population, and my mother was very curious about them and she went 
to a meeting of the Bund.

Interviewer: Really?

Rand: They had a Bund in a, German Bund.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: And she wanted to see what was going on. She went to their meeting.

Interviewer: So what did she describe it as, she came back what-

Rand: Well, she said there was lot of talk and so forth and so on but she wasn’t 
it didn’t frighten her or anything yeah.

Interviewer: Wow.  So you say you remember September first, nineteen thirty nine.

Rand: When?

Interviewer: You remember September first.

Rand: Yes.

Interviewer: Other dates before December seventh nineteen forty-one, that stood 
out?

Rand: No.  No.

Interviewer: Other events associated with the war?

Rand: Well of course the Dunkirk situation I remember that.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: And of course, there were headlines that said Jews were being deported.  
The war had, people, they just didn’t know what to do about it.  There was 
deportations-

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: We didn’t know what to do. At it was early, early on.

Interviewer: When did you first hear about the, the issues effecting Jews in 
Germany?

Rand: Well immediately I mean, we, we didn’t have television in those days but we 
did have news reels every, every week the news reels changed and so forth, and 
they showed the burning of the books, and the, and the, and the Krystelnacht and 
so forth we were aware of those things.

Interviewer: What was the general sense amongst students at Queens College towards 
Nazi outrages.

Rand: I think that Queens College was a very liberal kind of place, in that sense, 
it was never, you know there wasn’t any activity no, certainly no Nazi activity.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: At Queens College at all.

Interviewer: No I’m not implying that, or anything but, but the the student body was 
generally well informed.

Rand: Yeah but you have to realize that, with all due modesty not every young person 
was interested in politics, or the war I happened to be yes, I was interested, but 
not everybody was you see, they just ignored all of these things.  Youths in those was 
not as much interested in world affairs as they are today.

Interviewer: Right, it’s interesting.

Rand: Yes, they were, as-

Interviewer: [?] That’s one of the standard’s we hear about the old generation that 
they were more interested and aware of the world.

Rand: We were?  In those days?

Interviewer: That’s what we were told.

Rand: No.  I don’t think so.

[END OF SIDE A]

[BEGINNING OF SIDE B]

Interviewer: Continue

Rand: I mean after all this was a campus where there were, they say, there were 
people who started fraternities and a lot of these young people were involved 
with fraternities weren’t interested in current events and world affairs they 
were interested in every day-

Interviewer: Mundane life.

Rand: Parties and so forth and mundane things and.

Interviewer: Who were these fraternities, I mean I hear you talk about the 
Dead-End Boys-

Rand: Well the Dead-End Boys were something unusual, you could call them 
fraternity but not, it wasn’t a Greek Fraternity anymore it was just a, it was a 
group of young men, I wasn’t one of the Dead-End Boys but I knew the Dead-End 
Boys they were friends of mine.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: They came from areas of the city, you see, when Queens College first opened 
you could, you only apply to Queens if you lived in Queens, and then after a few 
years they allowed people to come in from Brooklyn and from the Bronx and so forth.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: And so you had a lot of people, came in that had, accents, that…that…

Interviewer: Dese and Dose.

Rand: Dese and Dose and so forth.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: And so they called them the Dead-End Boys. They were, just as intelligent 
as any of the students at Queens College but they had these ways about them.  
They were mostly Jewish in background maybe one or two Italians though.

Interviewer: What about there’s another one I hear about the Pipe-and-Ball.

Rand: I don’t know too much about that, I wasn’t, I wasn’t involved too much with 
fraternities you know?  Didn’t interest me that much.  I was interesting in, I 
was in Chorus, I was involved with Gilvan & Sullivan-

Interviewer: Right.
 
Rand: -and writers and so forth-

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: -but I wasn’t too interested in fraternities.

Interviewer: December Seventh-

Rand: Oh yes.

Interviewer: Nineteen Forty-One. What’s it like here in Queens College. During 
the…

Rand: It was devastating and very quiet, I can remember, I had an Automobile, and 
I can remember sitting in the front seat with my friend Irving Woods and we had 
the radio on, and heard President Roosevelt’s speech about day of Infamy, and we 
took it very seriously.

Interviewer: Right.  Right.  Is that, what did you do, what was your immediate 
response?

Rand: Not a very saddened, upset about it.  I wasn’t if I would have been a 
hundred percent patriotic I probably would have enlisted. I didn’t feel like 
enlisting at that particular time.  I was waiting drafted, as the vast majority of 
young men, just waiting to be drafted.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: Well they announced the draft already, the draft in place.

Interviewer: Oh yes, oh yeah.

Rand: Since nineteen-forty.

Interviewer: They had it since nineteen-forty yeah, OHIO.

Rand: Over the hill in October.  Did I mention that?

Interviewer: Describe that for the, for the interview process

Rand: Well these, these people who were drafted there wasn’t a war on yet at 
least the United States was not involved in the war so nineteen forty when they 
were drafted they assumed they were going to enter the service for a year and 
therefore it was called OHIO, over the hill in October, in other words the 
drafts done in October 1940, and they thought they’d put in a year and that was 
it.  Unfortunately those men served for at least five years in the service as 
draftees not as, not as somebody who enlisted in the service and they probably 
suffered the most [?] combat and so forth.

Interviewer: Take a break, one second.
 
[RECORDING PAUSES]

Interviewer: Okay so picking up from our break, and our prior discussion, 
December seventh nineteen forty one. It’s indicated you could have enlisted but 
you waited for conscription. But then you also told me that you entered Signal 
Corps in nineteen forty two, as a civilian contractor.

Rand: As a civilian contractor.

Interviewer: Explain to me the process how this occurred.

Rand: How did I get to that point?  Yeah, okay, as a young man in those days 
it was the depression was not over and everybody went out into the world, 
young person that went out into the world was looking for security and a job was 
security and so forth.  So even though, I was in college and don’t remember 
exactly when I took a civil service, a federal civil service examination I don’t 
remember whether it was my later years of high school or the first years of 
college, I took a federal service exam for clerk, so that if I graduated from 
college and had nothing else to do, didn’t have a job, I could fall back on the 
civil service which was, you’d get great security, for a career, so I took a test 
for clerk and then while at Queens College I get a telegram from Washington saying 
‘We’re interested in, in having you, we know you took a civil service exam, we’re 
interested in having you become an inspector in the signal corps’ and about, I 
think about a dozen other students here at the college got that and took it up, 
and went, and that’s how, that’s how I got into it.

Interviewer: Where did you go again?

Rand: From here? Originally?  Well originally I went Philadelphia, where we went 
through a course actually we were schooled at night because it was an industrial 
high school in Philadelphia and of course the students went to school in the 
daytime and at night, at night we took at night.

Interviewer: Do you remember where in Philadelphia?

Rand: Yes up in German Town.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: German Town, Philidelphia, And so we took these classes in Electricity and 
so forth things of that nature, you know?

Interviewer: Where did you live when you weren’t in these classes?

Rand: Well I had an apartment down in, in the main part of Philadelphia near 
Rittenhouse Square.

Interviewer: Oh wow.

Rand: And the fact of the matter is I recently passed the building, I’m not sure 
which building it was but I remember, in nineteen forty two, having lived there, 
right near Rittenhouse Square.

Interviewer: Oh I know Rittenhouse Square area.

Rand: What we call here in New York, what we call the, Brownstone, you know?

Interviewer: Wow, yeah there’s some nice brownstones in that area.

Rand: You know?  And then after that, the I think we were treated very well in 
other words, of course in those days we would travel by train, and they [?] first 
class and we had a sleeper and all that stuff. It was…

Interviewer: Oh wow.

Rand: It was, you were treated very well we had allowances for travel and for 
food and so forth, and so on and a good salary, I don’t remember exactly how 
much but it was pretty good for a young kid you know? And it was a responsible 
job and we took it very seriously.

Interviewer: Did you feel that you were doing your utmost for the war effort?

Rand: I thought that as a civilian I was doing something for the war effort yes.

Interviewer: What were the kind of factories you went to?  You mentioned you 
were-

Rand: That’s the [?] which I was in, it was a factory that produced intercoms, 
tanks.

Interviewer: How big of a factory was?

Rand: Oh it’s hard to describe now.  When you say how big.  I guess there were 
a few hundred employees.  It wasn’t a tremendous factory.

Interviewer: That’s a good sized for that kind of work though.

Rand: I imagine there were a few hundred employees. A lot of women were employed 
you know, cause women tried to get into the war effort.

Interviewer: Integrated or segregated?

Rand: I don’t know, what it was, I don’t remember, that never came in to my mind 
whether it was integrated, I remember many blacks in there it was mostly, you 
have to realize in those days.  Blacks lived mostly in the south if they lived in 
the north it was usually in the big city, they had a certain area of the big city, 
this was a town in Illinois where there wouldn’t be any Blacks.  It was, I can’t 
remember the name of it, I’m sorry.

Interviewer: Okay, that’s fine.

Rand: But it was actually, there was farmland surrounding it, it was in a town 
and there was farmland surrounding it.

Interviewer: How were you treated by the people? Were you-

Rand: Oh, very well.  Very well, you know, no problems there. 

Interviewer: But you end up somehow leaving the signal corps then.  And go into 
the, into the service.

Rand: The call of, call of the draft board.

Interviewer: Okay.  Describe what happens here, how did this go forward?

Rand: Well those of us who were, civilians working for the signal corps, the the 
draft board felt that they needed us and so I appeared before my draftboard and I 
told him I’m ready to go in the service but I’d like to finish college.  And they 
said I could finish if I enlisted, in the, enlisted reserve corps, which I did.

Interviewer: So you go back to Queens in nineteen forty two or forty three?

Rand: Forty Two, October of, September of Forty Two.

Interviewer: September Forty-Two you return to Queens finish up your last semester.

Rand: Right.

Interviewer: And then you’re called into reserve, you’re activated.

Rand: Active yeah, I in less then, it was a maybe a week or two after I graduated, 
I had my orders.

Interviewer: Okay.  Before we talk about that, what was Queens College like then 
in Wartime, as compared to your earlier time there in peacetime.

Rand: Oh well it was a much more serious place I guess.  I don’t remember what 
the proportion was but I guess it had fewer, fewer men then earlier on.

Interviewer: I can show you some of the yearbooks there’s like five men to a 
hundred women.

Rand: Yeah I would imagine, I would imagine, so, yeah.  Something like that, 
yeah.

Interviewer: How did the instructors or teachers-

Rand: Well it was a, I mean the college kept up its, its standards and it, you 
know, it was very well done and, oh I can remember we went [laughs], yeah now I 
remember I was in a psychology class and we went to we went on a field trip 
to…what was the name of that?  Mental Hospital?

Interviewer: Oh Bellview or?

Rand: No, no, no in Queens.  I have trouble my memory isn’t well.  At any rate 
we went to this Mental Hospital and there was a scare of that there would be 
an air attack.

Interviewer: Really?

Rand: Oh yeah.  I remember [?] going to take cover and whatever cover you could 
take in this institution.  Begins with a ‘C’ I can’t remember.  Yeah we went on 
a field trip and we went to this mental hospital.

Interviewer: So what happens during the air raid though.

Rand: Well there was no air raid, it was just a scare-

Interviewer: A scare yeah.

Rand: -there was going to be one.

Interviewer: Who’d you take cover with, in this?

Rand: I don’t recall I just know that they said they took cover in the building 
somehow, I mean this just comes to me when you ask me about what it was like and 
I just remember now that we were on this field trip. 

Interviewer: Were these kinds of scares common or?

Rand: No, not very common, no.

Interviewer: People report, I mean it’s legitimate reports of people seeing, 
cargo ships being torpedoed off Long Island, and New Jersey.  So it’s not that.

Rand: Yeah but they didn’t publicize that too much see?  I only learned about 
some of these things after the war was over about submarines out on the eastern 
shore of Long Island and that some of these men went ashore, Germans, went ashore 
and so forth, but it wasn’t publicized too much, when it happened.  Again, you 
know.

Interviewer: What was the civilian attitude towards the Germans and the Japanese 
at that point?

Rand: Well of course, they referred to the Japanese as Japs, and felt that they 
had to be defeated and the Germans of course, I wouldn’t wanted to be a German 
myself, I wouldn’t have wanted to be a German immigrant for this country 
in that era.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: If I had a German and so forth, it probably wouldn’t be pleasant.

Interviewer: Yeah.  What about the Italians, Mussolini-

Rand: Oh the Italians.  They don’t take that too seriously the Italians, they 
Italians themselves didn’t take themselves to seriously as far as the war was 
concerned.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: I saw it when I was in England, I went, from here we went to England as, 
you know and I saw Italian prisoners of war that were walking around the streets 
of the town, you know, I can’t remember the name of the city.  I remember they 
were, they actually had uniforms and they were walking around they’d let them 
free, they were prisoners of war.

Interviewer: There you go.

Rand: In England.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: So.

Interviewer: Did you before you went back into the service-

Rand: Liverpool!  Liverpool was the city, [?]

Interviewer: Before you went back into the service did you, encounter any any 
examples of, how to express this, I guess like race hatred or anger, extreme 
anger toward the Japanese or Germans in the area?

Rand: No, only as it was expressed in the newspapers and editorials and and 
people disgusted you know?  I never saw any bad episodes at any time.

Interviewer: Okay.  So you’re, you’re called up your reserve status is 
activated.  Where do you go?

Rand: Camp Upton?

Interviewer: Camp Upton.

Rand: On Long Island.

Interviewer: Oh Boy, okay.

Rand: February, one of the coldest nights of the year and they put us up in 
tents and all I had was still my civilian clothes. And cold, cold, cold, cold.   
The next day I was issued a uniform which was that wonderful wool uniform.

Interviewer: Needed it.

Rand: I needed it.  It one of the coldest Februaries ever.

Interviewer: Camp Upton was like a collection point, wasn’t it?

Rand: Yes.

Interviewer: How long were you there?

Rand: Not long, matter of days. And then they shipped us out to various places.  
I was, I went into, I went to Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: By train of course you know.

Interviewer: How many-

Rand: By then I was in uniform.

Interviewer: -How many people went with you at Fort Eustis.

Rand: Oh I don’t know how many, not a lot.  But this one fellow from Queens 
College by the name of Paige I don’t remember his first name, I think it was 
William Page…He went there too, I remember him being there. You know I didn’t see 
him in the…

Interviewer: In the yearbooks.  So it could be in a later year book or he may not 
have survived.  Yeah.

Rand: So that you know?  And then we were in basic training in, in Fort Eustis in 
it was coast artillery.

Interviewer: Oh wow.

Rand: We were coast artillery.  And in the middle of it they called us out to go 
into ASTP, there were very few college graduates in those days, compared to today, 
you see, and apparently they wanted to pull out of, that’s what I assume, pull out 
college graduates, and send them to the specialty type of situation.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Rand: Some went to medical school, so went to dental school, some when to 
Engineering, and some went into the Psychology, but only one hundred psychologist, 
in the sense that, I had a B.A. in Psychology I wasn’t a-

Interviewer: Not an M.A. or PHD.

Rand: And but there were a hundred of us, small group, the others were you know 
they wore, I mean medical schools and the-

Interviewer: What was the armies attitude towards you as a psychologist, in the-

Rand: Well First, at first they told us we were an elite group, they needed us to 
classify people and you know?  In the replacement depot, and we would eventually 
go to the replacement depot and classify people.  You know, do you know the system 
that they had with the-

Interviewer: Talk to us about replacement depot.

Rand: It’s hard to describe the, we don’t have computers in those days, but we had 
these cards about, little larger then five by eight and there were punch holes in 
it, and if you took, it’s so difficult for me to describe, if you took a knitting 
needle and put it through those holes, and you were looking for a certain say a 
rifleman, so that the the hole would opened open, you see, so when you put, the, 
the knitting needle through there, you see-

Interviewer: It’s like an early punch card system.

Rand: -It’d fall out see, yes. That particular thing would fall out you see and 
then you had a riflemen, you see?

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: I’m giving you a simple example.

Interviewer: Well no, that works though.  It works, it’s a very good example.

Rand: Do you ever, is there any thing in the literature about that.

Interviewer: There is.  There is.  I want to hear your description of it.

Rand: So that’s what we did.  We were, we worked with files you know and, and we 
sent people to the front in various different categories, and.

Inteviewer: Did anyone engaged in this consider that the, the people you were 
dealing with this weren’t just a card?  That they were flushing-

Rand: Oh of course we did, we knew what we were, that were doing that.  We were 
sending people into combat, and maybe in, you know.

Interviewer: Did you notice any issue of, observation of religion.  I mean, what 
was as you look at these cards to classify in various categories in relation 
ethnicity and such?

Rand: Well there was no discussion about racial ethnicity.

Interviewer: Not even with African Americans?

Rand: No there were none, there were none to consider.  They weren’t there.  As 
far as I was concerned.  They were just whites.  And of course, a few, I remember 
a Japanese what do we call them?

Interviewer: Nissen.

Rand: Nissen, yes.

Interviewer: Cause that’s one of the issues about the draft in World War Two is 
that African Americans predominantly were shuffled into service, supply service 
and, you know.

Rand: That’s very possible but, not, they weren’t shuffled into combat.

Interviewer: Right.

Interviewer: There was only two divisions available.

Rand: Yeah, well I never, I never saw, I saw black a few black people in basic 
training, I remember.

Interviewer: What were they doing there.

Rand: Well we had a certain class, and something about electricity, and it was a 
relatively small class, electricity or something like that, I don’t remember what 
it was, and I can remember there were one or two blacks, for some reason, because, 
there werehad a distinct way of  blacks training in that camp but they were 
separate, I remember they had a distinct way of marching, and, and, the cadence 
call and so forth.  You know, what do you call that?  One two, three-four.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: It’s so, what do you call that?

Interviewer: [?] Ssss

Rand: Sy….

Interviewer: Syncopation.

Rand: Syncopation yeah.  And they were a separate unit, that’s the only thing that 
I remember, that they were separately trained but apparently they were brought out 
for this particular course and there were one or two black and I remember we had a 
break and they took us outside to exercise in the break and we threw some of our 
clothing on the ground and I saw one of these black guys happen to put his foot on 
this guys clothing it was lying on the ground and I said ‘I wonder what’s going to 
happen, is this guy going to be angry or something?’ Didn’t bother me.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Rand: But I wondered what was going to happen, and nothing happened.

Interviewer: Right.

Rand: But I thought to myself ‘Gee Whiz, there’s liable to be a scuffle there’ you 
know?

Interviewer: What was your impression of the training you received at this point?

Rand: I think the basic training was very good. I…no I did.

Interviewer: What about the regular army personnel how much encounter did you have 
with them?

Rand: Well they were the, they were the drill sergeants and so forth and, I didn’t 
have any great problem, I think I was, I was a decent a decent trainee, I was 
neither the top guy, nor the bottom, I was decent.

Interviewer: Didn’t stand out.

Rand: No I didn’t stand out, I was decent trainee I did what I was supposed to do.

Interviewer: Did you have any personal altercations with other recruits?

Rand: No.  I had, I, I did sense some Anti-Semitism in one of the Sergeants and 
he lived, he came from upstate New York, and at least I could talk to him, and he 
said, he told me the only Jew he ever knew was a tailor up, and that’s about it.  
Otherwise he didn’t know any, so we had a furlough, and we took the same train to 
New York and he was going, and he was going to change at Grand Central and go up, 
upstate, and I invited him home.

Interviewer: Did you?

Rand: Yes.  I invited him to stay over, at my place and of course my parents 
welcomed him.  And I can get emotional about it, I’m sorry.

Interviewer: No, it’s fine. It’s fine.

Rand: I took him around New York City, showed him the Garment District and 
all of this stuff you know and this is all strange to him, and I think it 
changed him, yeah.

Interviewer: Really?

Rand: For the better.  And then he went on a furlough and so forth.

Interviewer: Did you ever see him again after that point or?

Rand: No I don’t think I did.  Cause I said I was taken out, I don’t [?] 
after that.  But that was, [?]

Interviewer: Sure yeah, that’s, that is interesting.

Rand: Jacob, we’re going to cut it here.

Interviewer: Okay.

Rand: Because of timewise, stick around we’re to talk with Miriam when she 
comes in-

[END OF TAPE 01]

End of Tape 01 of 02

Jump To: Tape 02