Located between Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on the southern end of Lake Pend Oreille, the historic Farragut Naval Training Station was a first stop for many fresh recruits during World War II. During its thirty months of existence, more than 293,000 sailors received basic training at Farragut. As the base grew, a city emerged from the land and permanently impacted the environment. The inland naval training location, the unique land attraction, a short but eventful life, and the park that remains all celebrate Farraguts rare and complex history.

Farragut added jobs, houses, and people to lands that were once used by early tribal affiliation and pioneer explorations. In 1941, the U.S. government purchased the 4,160 acres from two private owners: Kootenai County and a small railway company. The unique inland naval base is 300 miles away from the western coastlines. Walter Butler Construction Co. employed approximately 22,000 men to build libraries, living quarters, mess halls, chapels, recreation facilities, and other buildings for the base. Neighboring communities, including Sandpoint and Coeur d’Alene, still struggled from the Great Depression. Farragut provided jobs, higher wages, and more opportunities to these communities.

The groundbreaking for Farragut took place in March 1942. By September 1942, the base population reached 55,000, making it the largest city in Idaho at the time. Farragut was also the second largest naval training center in the world. Recruits left home for the first time, came to Farragut, and learned how to march, row, swim, and use firearms before either heading to the Mediterranean Sea or the South Pacific. The base also contained nearly 900 German prisoners of war who worked beside American soldiers as gardeners and maintenance men.

The land was attractive to the navy for many reasons. Lake Pend Oreille provided natural aesthetics and raw functionality. The lake’s deep waters, large size, and cool temperatures, along with the steep, tree-lined shores and quiet conditions all created an attractive land-locked location that could closely mimic the ocean without the risks. The base allowed for ground and water training and effectively taught sailors how to take care of themselves in war. The base supplied economic benefits and a textbook location for training; however, the rapid urbanization created pollution and habitat loss to the land and water.

The once naval training station is now Farragut State Park and remains a tribute to the base. It now caters to tourists with outdoor activities. Bikers, runners, horseback riders, and swimmers can enjoy the land traveled by World War II naval trainers and trainees. Although the land has been transformed and the environment has changed, the natural beauty of the land is protected and maintained by the state.

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America experienced heightened nationalist ideology during World Wars I and II. As hysteria over the broader conflicts in Europe increased, xenophobia in the United States created strong inter-ethnic stress. In Utah, tension already existed in the industrial labor forces between Greeks, Americans, and other Eastern European immigrants at the start of the century. Lynchings were not widely publicized but nevertheless occurred in response to immigrant culture in the Salt Lake Valley. Greek immigrants were particularly targeted as un-American because they did not immediately desert their language and customs (often due to foundational religious beliefs), were involved in domestic labor strikes, and sent large amounts of money home. However, many Greeks were at the forefront of purchasing Liberty Bonds. Though criticized for not knowing English, Greek Newspapers (like O Ergatis) provided a resource to Greek-speaking immigrants to stay updated on war efforts in the United States.

Greek-Americans held an invested interest in World War I and II, regardless of their position on the conflict. Not only was America involved in the war, but so was their expatriate country – Greece. While many Greek Utahns joined the military by choice, others were drafted. The fairness of the draft was called into question when 221 of the 801 people in the Carbon County draft were Greek. Other members of the Greek community wanted to enlist, but were unable because they did not speak English. While many enlisted in the military to show their support for the war, others supported it through the Greek Orthodox Church. A parade was held from Price to the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox church where speeches of patriotism were given and loyalty was pledged to the United States.

The wars significantly impacted Greek communities in Salt Lake City. Economically, the wars pushed copper miners and other industrial workers toward the city and into the middle class. This was partially due to the smaller number of more highly educated immigrants that came to Utah to be with family or friends who had already immigrated. Marriages decreased during the war (though they increased once the war had ended), and the Greek school located in the basement of the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church became less important than Orthodoxy itself.

To honor the history of Greek Utahns that fought in World Wars I, II, and the Korean Conflict, as well as the resulting effects of the war, the Hellenic Cultural Association (HCA) erected the Hellenic Historic Monument. The monument names the thirty-eight Greek Utahns that lost their lives in World Wars I, II, and the Korean Conflict, including Private First Class Theodore C. Dimas. Dimas was honored both in the community and by the Holy Trinity Orthodox church after his death. The HCA continues to hold Memorial Services for Greek servicemen and women at the monument each year.

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Executive Order 9066 placed over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry into internment camps like the one at Kooskia. Signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, it went into immediate effect. Along with internment and work camps like Kooskia, there were concentration, isolation, and prison camps where the government kept Japanese people from the rest of the U.S. population. The camp of Kooskia, however, was different from other interment camps.

Whereas other camps contained both Isei (first generation Japenese immigrants) and Nisei (second generation Japanese-Americans), the internees of Kooskia were not American citizens but all resident aliens. Therefore, the United States government treated them as prisoners of war and their conditions and treatment were governed by the Geneva Convention. The internees also displayed a healthy amount of knowledge concerning their rights under the Geneva Convention, surprising the administrators at Kooskia. The internees there had more freedoms and privileges than any of the other internees in the other camps. For instance, there were no barbwire fences or guard towers because the location was quite remote, allowing the workers to walk about freely.

The Kooskia Scrapbook held at the University of Idaho documents these men working and building a life for themselves. The men not only worked, but they also played, relaxed and had plenty of leisure time and activities to fill that time. They could participate in several different sports available to them. There was softball, wrestling, foot racing, and table tennis. Other non-physical competitive activities were board games like checkers and go, a Japanese version of chess. Other recreational activities included boating, fishing, hiking, and more cultural activities like drawing, woodworking, stonecrafting, and weaving. They also read books and magazines, wrote letters and poetry to their families and each other, and they had access to movies. A last part of recreational living was the mixture of musical instruments available to the internees to play. These activities attest to the internees ability to make the best of a bad situation. What is not pictured in the scrapbook, however, are the pain, suffering, and inherent injustice that these and other internees faced.

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On February 19, 1942, in response to Pearl Harbor and rising anti-Japanese sentiments in the United States, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which allowed the creation of military exclusion zones and to relocate all persons who were to be excluded from such zones. This meant that all Japanese Americans living in places like California were to be forcibly removed from their homes and sent to special camps created throughout the United States. One such camp was created in the middle of Idaho. Named the Minidoka Relocation Center, this camp housed approximately 10,000 people throughout the course of the war. It cost over $5 million to construct.

Before being relocated, each family had to report and register themselves. Tags identified families and luggage alike. Suitcases stretched, filled with entire family histories and traditions. Tarpapered barracks and a landscape of dust and sagebrush welcomed the first arrivals to Minidoka, remembered one internee at Minidoka. The executive order only required the most basic essentials be provided.

The camp itself was kept in better condition than many other camps of the sort. It served as a pseudo-town, with a small governing body (comprised of military personnel), two elementary schools, a high school, a gym, a skating rink, many baseball diamonds, farms, livestock, stores, a hospital, salons, a library, a fire station, and various other types of employment. Internees generally got along well with their captors, though as the war continued, tensions rose as the reintroduction of the draft troubled many residents. Sports were popular to help relieve stress, especially baseball and basketball. While not as luxurious as their previous homes, the Minidoka camp provided for most of the basic needs and the camp administration attempted to create an environment that still felt like a normal town.

Suspicions festered and discouraged “enemy language” journalism. Paranoia surrounded any individual with Japanese heritage without regard to their civil liberties. To attempt a semblance of normalcy, the camp produced a weekly newsletter, the Minidoka Irrigator, to inform and update detainees on camp activities. Detainees performed weddings, graduation ceremonies and created their own sports teams inside barricaded walls topped with barbed-wire. War hysteria played a dominant role in the actions of camp authorities in charge of producing camp newsletters.

Baseball provided a popular distraction, and helped to maintain a sense of normalcy in the unusual circumstance. Children attended school, often taught by people who had attended college, and teenagers graduated from high school. Adults worked and farmed, though almost always for much lower pay than the accepted minimum wage of the time. The internees farmed and tried to help end the agriculture shortage. Coupled with Mexican braceros, they comprised the majority of the labor force in the state of Idaho during the war. Most of the people living there were US citizens and had lived most of their lives in the U.S. This contrasted to the older generation, called the Issei, who felt betrayed and humiliated by the country that they had grown to love. However, the Nisei, the first-generation Americans, felt obligated to prove their loyalty by joining the armed forces when called to fight against the land of the fathers. Thus, in 1944, the War Department began the draft and allowed interned Japanese Americans to serve. Many of them would form the 442nd Regiment, which would become an “all Nisei unit.” 1,000 people from this camp served in the World War and 87 died in combat, representing one of the highest rates of service in the various internment camps and the highest number of casualties from all the internment camps. These soldiers generally served exceptionally, and were valuable assets to the US military corps.

The end of the war eliminated the need for the camp, and it was closed on October 23, 1945. The government removed most of the buildings in the camp quickly, and the land was granted to returning veterans in a post war lottery. In 1952, the Soil Conservation District organized a “Farm-in-a-Day” experiment, designed to demonstrate the most efficient farming techniques and to create more interest by homesteaders in the surrounding farmland. The land was used mainly for agriculture for the next few decades before being remade into a historical site, recognizing the poor treatment of Japanese-Americans. Today, only a few remade buildings and some signs commemorate this episode in Idaho’s history.

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World War II took the lives of approximately 3% of the entire world’s population in the 1940s—so it’s no surprise that life-saving efforts became a top priority at the time. Military hospitals were built throughout the war front as well as the home front. Brigham City, UT became home to one: Bushnell General Military Hospital. The hospital impacted Brigham City in various ways, including the lives of many individuals who served and were served there.

Many employees at the facility were locals, which boosted Brigham City’s economy. They needed the skills that varying individuals possessed because Bushnell was innovative in their patient care. Just one of many examples is their developing a new type of prosthetic limb that used plastic instead of metal, which soon spread to other amputation centers and became more commonplace in the medical field.

They were also innovative in their treatment procedures. Bushnell had a significantly low death rate, which is accredited in part to their experimental use of penicillin. Penicillin was new to the medical world and proved effective for many patients, allowing doctors at Bushnell to save many more lives and limbs than they would have been permitted under other circumstances.

Once soldiers were healed, the focus shifted to rehabilitation. They had band performances by amputees, visits from celebrities such as Helen Keller to boost morale, and a general sense of community involvement to aid in all steps of this process.

The hospital also provided facilities for mental health treatment. The psychiatrists were well-trained and used the best and newest treatments they had at the time. However, many patients had already suffered from mental and emotional illness before the war, and seeing combat brought them to severe extremes. The psychological knowledge of the time was not sufficient to help many of them, and they ended up in hospitals for extended periods of time. However, due to many experimental treatments, they made advancements in psychiatric treatment that continued to be implemented afterward.

After the war, the hospital was closed in 1946. The buildings were remodeled and turned into the Intermountain Indian School: a boarding school for Native American children. It was successful for several years but was closed in 1984 and the land was given back to the city. The buildings have mostly been demolished now, but Brigham City has experienced the long-lasting effects of the hospital’s influence. Bushnell brought the community together in a way nothing else could—it was a chance for a small town to band together for a good cause in a troubling time.

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Between the years 1940-1944, the percentage of Utah’s workforce made up of women more than doubled—but where did all those women find employment? Many inhabitants of Sanpete county and surrounding areas worked at the Manti parachute plant, which was built exclusively for World War II and employed hundreds of women.

The plant was created by the Standard Parachute Company of San Diego in 1942, and was converted into a factory from an old armory. Workers at the plant sewed and packaged parachutes for American soldiers overseas, carefully inspecting each one to ensure its reliability.

Whether it was to support their families financially, assert female independence, or support the war effort, many Utah women were employed for the first time at this factory. Some workers came straight out of high school; others came from homes where they were raising children.

One woman who worked there, Maurine Braithwaite Draper, lived on a farm with her husband. Her main reason for working there was “to have something to do.” Aside from a newfound pastime, Maurine left her factory job with increased confidence and independence as a woman. This was helpful when she later found herself divorced and caring for children on her own.

Another worker, Zola Anderson Ruesch, had a different reason for taking a job at the plant. She had previously been working for a family in Ephraim, UT, and discovered she could make better wages sewing parachutes. Aside from financial compensation, Zola felt a sense of patriotism through her contributions to the war effort. “I felt like I was doing some good for the men in the war. This way, we could help out too.”

Zola wasn’t the only one who was financially motivated to begin work at the factory—the Great Depression had left many families destitute, and jobs were so scarce that many Utah inhabitants jumped at the new employment opportunities provided by the war. Alice Frederickson Clark, who hadn’t finished her high school education, was excited at the opportunity for work. She recalled, “I needed the money. We didn’t have lights, water, a bathroom, or anything. I was anxious to get to work.”

Alice didn’t just do the minimum to get a little extra cash—she would spend time on weekends repairing parachutes that hadn’t been sent out due to minor defects. She remembered, “I’d go in on my own time [on Saturday] and catch up on those repairs because it made me sick to see them all piled up.”

In addition to financial benefits and sense of patriotism, these women also enjoyed strong friendships with their coworkers. Alice stated, “I never worked at a place where people got along as well. It just was kind of a happy family.” While most of the young men were off at war, the young women working at the plant would spend weekends and evenings socializing together. Many of them remained friends throughout their lives.

Whether they worked somewhere else after the war ended and the factory closed, or whether they opted to be stay-home mothers, these working women and this factory made an important contribution to the USA’s involvement in World War II.

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