[Annotator's Note: The interview starts mid-sentence.] Alice Howie was born in February 1925 in Barrineau Park, Florida. Her family moved around a lot. There are seven children, all born in different places. Her father was a sharecropper and would go where it was best for the family. Her father died when she was 12. [Annotator's Note: Howie mentions someone she calls R.L.] Her mother and R.L.'s mother both died in February 1942. Howie met R.L. in high school in Cairo, Georgia. Her mother raised her and her younger sister. Howie had graduated from high school when her mother died. She moved to be with her sister in Colorado Springs [Annotator's Note: Colorado Springs, Colorado]. She began to work in various places. Colorado was cold and she walked to work. Her sister's husband was a captain in the Army and went to Oklahoma so they both moved there. Howie had been married on 30 January 1943. Her husband was in cadet training and they married when he got his wings. Her earlier life was not much fun. Her mother had cancer and died at 52. They did not have much money. Howie met her husband when he was a senior and she was a freshman. The war started and he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. She graduated just when the war was starting and did not think much about the war until he started writing her. The mail was censored. Her brother and her brothers-in-law were overseas. All the men were gone. She did not read the papers. All she was concerned about was living day to day. She thought the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on 7 December 1941 was horrible. They did not talk about it too much.

After war started, Alice Howie went to Arlington, Virginia to work for IBM [Annotator's Note: International Business Machines Corporation]. She decoded Japanese messages. She got word that her husband was missing in action so she left and went to live in Tallahassee, Florida. Someone came out to tell her he had been killed. After that, she went to California to help her sister. She had not believed that her husband had been killed. It was terrible, but she had to go on. She went to work for the telephone company. Soldiers who found his dog tags wrote her and let her know where he was buried. A French man found him and buried him. They started corresponding. Her husband's plane had gone down in a field near a church. The French man was a prisoner of war who talked the Germans into letting him go to the downed airplane. Her husband had been in a dogfight. Both planes went down. He found her husband already dead. He built a coffin and buried him. He took care of the grave until he was exhumed and sent to France to be reburied. Howie was 18 when this happened. She kept everything about him so that it would be known about what a wonderful man he was. [Annotator's Note: Howie gets emotional.]

Alice Howie did not get involved in anything in the war effort other than in Arlington, Virginia. She worked for IBM [Annotator's Note: International Business Machines Corporation]. IBM came to her town, recruiting women for the work. She worked on machines, decoding messages [Annotator's Note: from the Japanese]. She was only there a few months when she got word that her husband was missing [Annotator's Note: missing in action in Europe]. She quit her job and went home. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks her about her correspondence with a French man that had found and buried her husband.] She does not remember details. She could not believe the man had done that for her husband. He told her he did it out of a Christian heart and that she could not repay him. It made her feel that there are wonderful people all over the world. It took her a long time to get over the Germans. She eventually felt it was the German's dictator [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] who brought this all about. She thought the Japanese were bad. As she matured, she realized it is not always the people. She had no knowledge of either country [Annotator's Note: Germany or Japan] before the war. She was not aware of the Japanese internment camps [Annotator's Note: in the United States] until later. She felt sorry for the ones interned.

[Annotator's Note: Alice Howie's husband was killed in an aerial dogfight in Europe and was buried by a French prisoner of the Germans who later corresponded with her.] Howie just moved on and took care of herself. She hoped to find somebody nice and have a family. She got married again and had one child and two grandchildren. She met her second husband in California. He had been stationed at Pearl Harbor when it happened [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He spent his entire war service there but did not want to talk about it. They divorced. Much later on, she met a man who had been through World War II, Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War], and Vietnam [Annotator’s Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War]. Her son spent his service during Vietnam in Spain. Howie did talk to other war widows at work. She felt sorry for them that they never knew what happened, but she did. They had been through it, it was horrible, and they wanted to forget it. They wanted to move forward with their lives. She started getting letters to donate to the museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. That started her thinking about what she could do for her husband. She did not want him to be forgotten. They married before he went in the service. The principal of their school called her in to talk to her. Her mother had died and the principal wanted to know if she was going to marry her boyfriend because he was a nice boy. She was not sure.

Alice Howie cannot remember what dress she wore for her wedding. She got married at a minister's home in Selma, Alabama. There were no pictures or flowers. Her husband had to leave the next day. Had he made it back [Annotator's Note: from World War 2], they probably would have had a nice ceremony. She imagines there were a lot of weddings like that. He could only get married after he got his pilot's wings. A typical war wedding. She never regretted it. They enjoyed the six months they were together. She never got to visit his grave in France. She knew he was in heaven and it was just a body. Had his mother been living and wanted him back here, she would have brought him back. She put a monument for him where his parents are buried. He had told her he knew what he wanted to do after the war, but he wanted to tell her in person. She never knew what it was. [Annotator’s Note: Howie gets emotional.]

[Annotator's Note: Alice Howie's husband was killed in an aerial dogfight in Europe.] Howie was very sad when the war ended. She was happy, but she was sad because she could not join the feelings of so many people. [Annotator's Note: Howie gets emotional.] She tried to ignore it. She was happy for other people but did not want to be involved. She does not recall talking to other widows in detail. She dreamed about her husband coming home, many, many times. No nightmares. Her brother and brother-in-law made it home. They had wonderful stories. Her brother's wife and daughters would likely share some stories [Annotator's Note: with The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana]. He was in the infantry and went through a lot of bad battles. Their family doctor calls her brother his hero. Her brother's oldest daughter went to Iraq at the request of Bush [Annotator's Note: George Walker Bush, 43rd President of the United States] after Saddam [Annotator's Note: Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, fifth President of Iraq]. She was a brave one. Howie does not know what the impact of the war was on her life. The war happening took her to California and she never went back. The world is in such a mess right now, she does not know what to think. She would rather be back the way things were then. People do not respect their president as they should. It is not a picnic. She feels it is important [Annotator's Note: for there to be The National WWII Museum]. She would not be here [Annotator's Note: doing this interview] if she did not feel that. People have to be taught this information.