Betty Soskin was born in September 1921 in Detroit, Michigan. She was invited to be a panelist at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] and she met some cousins she did not growing up. She learned that her grandfather was a millwright [Annotator's Note: high precision craftsman] and an eminent man in the Creole [Annotator's Note: person of mixed European and Black descent] community. She also learned that her father once called a white man by his first name. Because of that, her parents had to leave New Orleans right away. They went to Michigan where relatives lived. Her father worked there until it was safe to return several years later. Her grandmother was blind and Soskin's mother took on the household. In 1927, there was a flood. Her family lost everything and moved to Oakland, California. Soskin graduated high school. She later married and spent most of her marriage as a suburban housewife. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer backs up the story.] The situation in Asia with the Japanese, was not a topic of conversation when she was growing up in Oakland. She did not know much beyond her city and her block. She was not politically aware until she was an adult. She does remember the Sudetenland [Annotator's Note: historic German name for areas of Czechoslovakia; annexed by Germany in September 1939] and that the Germans occupied part of Europe. [Annotator's Note: Interviewer asks Soskin if she recalls what she was doing when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] She was at home and a neighbor ran over and told them to turn the radio on. She was very fearful. She was 20. Her father volunteered to be an Air Raid Warden.

Betty Soskin remembers the blackouts. She worked in San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] in a large basement area processing score cards of people who had taken Civil Service examinations. There was color coding being used to identify people who might be suspect. There were hundreds of people doing this work. Her family was concerned about her safety and she transferred to an Air Force installation in downtown Oakland. They discovered she was colored [Annotator's Note: an ethnic descriptor historically used for Black people in the United States], and she could not work for the Air Force. Three days later, her husband who had volunteered for the service was made a cook in the Navy. He was horrified and refused as he wanted to fight for his country. He was given an honorable discharge and sent home. He was told they did not doubt that he would be a fine sailor, but a Black man could not be a leader. He never spoke of this. Soskin only spoke of it after he had died. They had grown up in California under informal segregation unlike the South. They knew bigotry existed, but it had not been much of a problem until the migration of the war workers. The war was a dramatic departure from her previous life. Her plan after high school was to get married; that is what women did then. She has no recollection as to having an opinion as to America entering the war then. She was not aware of the Holocaust at the time. She did not have strong feelings towards the Japanese. She was horrified in 1945 at the dropping of the bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. She felt shame that her country would do that. She did not realize the internment camps occurred; she has learned this history over time. Her Japanese friends' families were not affected by this as she recalls.

Betty Soskin worked in a shipyard in a Jim Crow [Annotator's Note: Jim Crow laws; state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern United States; often used as a term for segregation in general] union hall. Henry Kaiser [Annotator's Note: Henry J. Kaiser Company] was pro-labor and ran a union shop. The Boilermakers [Annotator's Note: now International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers, labor union] and unions were not racially integrated. They created auxiliaries to get Black workers [Annotator's Note: Boilermakers A-36]. They had no vote but paid dues. Soskin was a file clerk. The union hall was in Richmond [Annotator's Note: Kaiser Shipyard Richmond, California] and nowhere near the shoreline. She never saw a ship being built. She had no sense of the magnitude of what was going on. Henry Kaiser did not care about the color of his workers, he knew the greatest sources of labor were coming out of the South and the Dust Bowl [Annotator's Note: period of severe dust storms in American prairies, 1934 to 1940]. They built 747 ships in three years and eight months. The railroad was bringing people in to work both day and night. It was the ship building capital of the world at the time. The SS Robert E. Peary was built in less than five days. She did not learn about this until she went to work for the National Park Service. The world did not know about it until 2000 when the Homefront Park [Annotator's Note: Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California] was established. The park incorporates the history of the interned Japanese-Americans, women's transition into labor, the Kaiser ship explosions in Port Chicago [Annotator's Note: Port Chicago Disaster on 17 July 1944 at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California], the mutiny trials of the dock workers who were found guilty of treason. The times were complex. [Annotator's Note: Soskin speaks at length on the design process of the Park's development.]

In 1942, Betty Soskin was a clerk in a segregated union hall in Richmond [Annotator's Note: Richmond, California]. She spent over 20 years as a suburban housewife. The G.I. Bill helped create the suburbs. She returned to Richmond as a field representative for Dion Aroner [Annotator's Note: Dion Louise Aroner, California State Assembly member 14th district, 6 December 1996 to 30 November 2002]. Her trajectory professionally represents accelerated social change that radiates out from the Bay Area [Annotator's Note: San Francisco Bay area, California] to the rest of the country. It is no accident that Silicon Valley is where it is. The seeds for what was to happen in the Civil Rights era were born there. The Park [Annotator's Note: Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California] became important to her for that reason. She went to one of sites being planned in the shaping of the park. Soskin was interested and realized that no one in the room remembered the segregation of the areas in history. She became a consultant to the National Park Service. She became a National Park Ranger at the age of 85 [Annotator's Note: 2006].

Betty Soskin works at the Visitor Center [Annotator's Note: she became a National Park Ranger in 2006 at the age of 85 and works at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California]. She does a one hour presentation that talks about the history of Richmond. At age 94, she is still having first time experiences. She did a Skype [Annotator's Note: telecommunications application] session with high school students in Eugene, Oregon. Life is still opening up for her and that is enviable. She has lived her whole life in a constant state of surprise. [Annotator's Note: The nterviewer asks Soskin what her most memorable experience of the war years is.] Very difficult to answer. There are not many people of color who look back on that period with any sense of nostalgia. That is a period of rejection. When she was first a Ranger, on a Veterans Day, she was on the SS Red Oak Victory, named for Red Oak, Iowa which had the greatest percentage of casualties per capita than anywhere else. The ship sailed all the way through Korea [Annotator's Note: Korean War, 1950 to 1953] and Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975]. It was given to the Park. She had duty above the ship and only two veterans of color attended. She remembered that they would have been part of the segregated armed forces; a period of discomfort. Soskin remembers a lot of events but can barely remember anything about the war. Most of what she knows now has come through studies that she connects back. She had a lot of friends who joined the service. Many were Tuskegee Airmen [Annotator's Note: African-American airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group and 477th Bombardment Group, US Army Air Forces; that nickname also applies to all associated personnel]. One of her friends was in a tank battalion with Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.]. They never discussed their experiences. She had moved away, and the connections were broken.

Betty Soskin saw her work as being part of the war effort in some way, but it carried little significance. She was being bombarded by the social system of the South that arrived with the migration of the African-American workers. She saw lines being drawn that she had not grown up with. She was thoroughly confused; it was hard to be sure who the enemy was at times. Pullman porters were distributing news through the Black [Annotator's Note: African-American] press. She was learning of lynchings in the South; sometimes Black men in uniform. Fred Reed was a radioman in Italy. When the war ended in Europe, he was sent to the South Pacific. No port would accept their ship for three months. That is who the United States was in 1942. If there is no sense of that history, there is no way to know how far we have come. The importance of that history is not to be confrontational, it is to give a sense where we were and be honest about it. The myth of the Greatest Generation [Annotator's Note: term applied to veterans of World War 2; inspired by the title of 1998 book by American journalist Tom Brokaw] is not as powerful as the truth as it was lived. The first vote Soskin cast was for President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States]. She got to introduce this President of the US [Annotator's Note: Barack Hussein Obama, 44th president of the United States] on PBS [Annotator's Note: Public Broadcasting Service]. That is how far we have come. That measures that time, and it is stunning to her. She wants to communicate that as much as she feels it. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is important for teaching future generations about the war.] Absolutely. Helping to tell the story and teaching the future generations is absolutely important. World War 2 planted the seeds for what was to happen in the Sixties [Annotator's Note: 1960s Civil Rights Movement].

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Betty Soskin how she feels about accepting the Silver Service Medallion at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana on 10 June 2016 as part of The American Spirit Awards.] She has learned how to accept the award because she is aware of her great-grandmother, Leontyne Breaux Allen, born in St. James Parish, Louisiana [Annotator's Note: born 6 February 1846; died 31 January 1948]. She was enslaved until she was 19 when she was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation [Annotator's Note: also called Proclamation 95, issued by Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, on 22 September 1862]. She married George Allen who was a Corporal in the Louisiana State Colored Troops [Annotator's Note: 1st Louisiana Native Guard, 1862-1865] fighting in the Civil War [Annotator's Note: American Civil War, 1861 to 1865]. Allen died in 1948 at age 102. Soskin's mother was raised by Allen and she lived to be 101. That means that all of that American history occurred within the lifetime of three women. Soskin knew her slave ancestor as a full-grown adult. She raised all of the adults who were the influences on Soskin's life. Soskin accepts awards in her name [Annotator's Note: Allen's name]. In that context, the awards are important. Soskin feels that not many can feel the connection to American history that she does. This is her country despite the differences that her life has held. She has not traveled widely but sees America as a magnet for the world. She has given the Nationalization Day Speech for three years annually. The first time she wondered how she could do it as an African-American without compromise. The words "forming the more perfect union admits that we are not perfect." The new Americans bring what is with them to add to what is here and they are part of making it more perfect. She is moved by the hope she sees on their faces.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Betty Soskin how the values of World War 2 shaped her personal values and her career.] She is not sure she can answer that. She spent a lot of years trying to forget the truths that she had to work through in those years such as being the only Black [Annotator's Note: African-American] family in a White [Annotator's Note: Caucasian] community, subject to death threats. She blew hot and cold on the idea of Patriotism. She sensed the futility of war. Her determination was shaped by many things and anything traced to that time would have been negative. Now she is able to go back and work from inside the circle of acceptance which is a very different perception. During the war years, she felt outside the circle. She is not sure when the transformation happened. Maybe the awards are saying yes to acceptance. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Soskin if her great-grandmother, Leontyne Breaux Allen, a slave until she was 19, ever talked about being a slave.] She did not. She only spoke patois [Annotator's Note: common dialect of a particular group] French. The stories about her came to Soskin. It would have been painful to talk about it so it likely was not. Allen had been a house slave with her mother. When she received her widow's pension, the War Department took down her stories [Annotator's Note: Allen's husband had been a soldier in the American Civil War, 1861 to 1865]. Her great-grandmother had been the local midwife and would provide signals to the local doctor of where help was needed. When Soskin received an award from the National Women's History Project [Annotator's Note: in 2006], she did not feel worthy in accepting it. She realized that she had never aspired to public office, she pointed out where help was needed. She realized that she had lived the model of her grandmother's life.