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- Description:
- In an oral history interview, Jessie Melis talks about her service as a teacher in occupied Germany from August 1950 to July 1953. She recalls the devastation in German cities, socializing with German citizens, German customs, her living quarters in Munich, taking meals in the officer's mess, her experiences with the black market and the depressed German economy. Melis also talks about meeting former Nazis, the differences between teaching in Germany and the U.S., the differences between American and German students and traveling to Berlin through the Russian Zone. Melis says that she traveled to Palestine and Jerusalem before finally returning to the U.S. to help her family and re-establish her career in East Lansing, MI. Melis is interviewed by Elsie Hornbacher.
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project
- Description:
- Elsie Hornbacher talks about her overseas service as a teacher in Japan, Italy and Austria after World War Two. Hornbacher talks about going to Japan in 1949, her ocean voyage to Yokohama, shipboard life, riding out a typhoon, the destruction still evident in postwar Japan, Japanese culture, and how life for the Japanese gradually began to improve. Hornbacher discusses the school where she worked, the curriculum, her students, visiting Hiroshima and about the Korean War and American dependents evacuating from Korea to Japan. Hornbacher says that she was reassigned to Naples in 1952, and that the city was unsafe and controlled by the mafia. After "enduring" a year in Italy, she says that she was next sent to Austria which she found both colorful and interesting and was finally sent back to the U.S. in 1954.
- Date Issued:
- 1983-04-27T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Michigan State University. Libraries
- Collection:
- Women's Overseas Service League Oral History Project