Janice Evenson was born in August 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. They had to walk a mile and a half to a country school. Later, they walked a mile up the road and a bus took them to high school. If they butchered an animal, they shared it with their neighbors. They lived on venison and potatoes. Her father farmed. They had milk cows. They sold cream. He did logging. No one had much money. They did not have fancy groceries. Their dresses were made out of flower sacks. The girls did not do much on the farm, but the boys did. Evenson would help in the kitchen, wash the clothes, and make the beds. Her family is from a group of pioneers [Annotator’s Note: a person who is among the first to explore or settle a new country or area]. In high school, they were country kids. The city kids did not like the country kids. She was a good student. She went on to college. The start of the war changed everyone’s home. They were getting gasoline when someone came out and said the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Many of the men in college went and joined the military. The world changed that day. Evenson knew she would be part of the war. The college got her a job as a government inspector of thousand-pound bombs and other ammunition. They could not tell people about what they did.

Janice Evenson was shown how to do her job. [Annotator’s Note: Evenson worked at a munitions plant]. She looked at a rack with bombs on it. The filling of the bomb had just been poured in and was still warm. She would look at car after car full of bombs. They also inspected hand grenades. Now and then, they would find out someone had been there and done something. They looked to see if they had the correct amount of explosives inside. They watched the other workers to ensure they were serious about what they were doing. They could take a bus to Burlington, Iowa if they wanted to shop. She worked for eight hours a day five days a week. She felt like she was wealthy. Her youngest brother volunteered for the Air Force. She worked there until she was almost 21 years old when she knew she wanted to enlist. She enlisted with the women Marines in Minneapolis [Annotator’s Note: Minneapolis, Minnesota].

Janice Evenson returned home. She got on the railroad and joined a group of women who were going to boot camp. They learned in a hurry. It was difficult, but they did it. It was harder for the women who lived in the city. Evenson thought it was easier for her because she grew up in the country. They took several tests. This is how she was put into the Marine Air Force. She would teach pilots how to use flight instruments. They all wore the same uniforms. They learned to march. They were put in order by height. They sang songs while they waited. Their hair had to be a certain length. They did not get paid if their hair was too long. They had to wash their uniforms and hang them on the clotheslines. She went to work in the mess hall. She worked from four in the morning until ten at night. If they got a 15-minute break, they slept on the cement floor. She was sent to Marietta, Georgia to a Navy station to be trained on a Link trainer. [Annotator’s Note: a type of flight simulator]. They trained in a flight simulator. It was intense. It was like a plane. She had all the instruments. The instructor spoke to them over a speaker. As the instructor, she would tell them in which direction to go. They could simulate the weather. The pilots would come out of there exhausted from trying to do the right thing. Some pilots thought they knew more than the girls. On one end of the base, there were 2,400 women and they did not interact with the men on the other side of the base. Most of the men were officers.

Janice Evenson thought the food was good. [Annotator’s Note: Evenson was stationed at Marietta, Georgia.] She had her friends. They had movies and dances there. There were many men there. They never went on a date at the dance. There were about 100 women in the room. They had to keep their bunk made and do their own laundry. It was double bunks. They had to clean the bunks and then go to breakfast. Most days, she would be training pilots on the simulator for eight hours a day. Each pilot had about an hour in the simulator. Some did well, but others needed a lot of help. One pilot cried because he got lost in the sky. Evenson put on her friend’s husband’s Navy uniform and went into the shower room. Four women screamed and ran for their clothes. On some weekends, they would go lay on the beach all day. One weekend, Evenson and four other girls rented a small cabin near the beach. Germans were their enemies. Her brother was stationed in Italy in the Air Force. She would write him two letters a week. He was a fighter pilot going into Italy and Europe from North Africa. She got a letter from her parents that her brother was killed. All the other girls helped her get enough money to go home for the services. She caught a ride to Washington, D.C. on a bomber. When it was their turn to land, the landing gear would not go down. The navigator had to pull the landing gear down by hand. Then she got on a train and made it home for the funeral. Her brother was buried in Italy. A few weeks later, she received a bundle of letters that her brother had never received. When he was killed he was engaged to a girl from Baton Rogue, Louisiana.

Janice Evenson was proud that she could teach the pilots. [Annotator’s Note: Evenson was stationed in Marietta, Georgia.] They felt they were responsible for how much they learned. Her brother was shot down over Italy. She does not think he had as much training. The pilots she trained were sent to the Pacific. One of her friends was engaged to a Marine who had been shipped to the Pacific. She had not heard from him for many months and thought he had died. When she was training in the Marine Corps, she got a letter saying he was alive and coming home. When she met him he was a walking skeleton. He had been in the Bataan Death March [Annotator’s Note: the Bataan Death March was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000 to 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war; they were forced to march until they died in April 1942]. He told about how they marched to a new area every day. If people died, they were just thrown to the side. He would get broth to eat and that was it. They had bad feelings toward the Japanese. They were cruel and heartless, so the more Japanese they could kill, the better. Her brother was part of the scientists that split the atom bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. Thousands more people would have been killed if they did not drop the bombs. War is terrible. She did not know about her brother helping with the bomb until after the war. [Annotator’s Note: Evenson talks about visiting her brother]. Her brother was intelligent and experimental. He was good with chemistry. He was getting his doctorate degree at university when the government put in atomic studies. When the war ended, a horn sounded for two days and two nights. The base was a mess. It was a celebration. It was a wonderful feeling. She was still training pilots until the end of the war and just after the war was over.

Janice Evenson wanted to go back to college. When she returned home, the high school asked her to teach math. Then a banker asked her to work there. That is where she met her husband. Her most memorable experience was losing her brother. She thinks back on the men who wanted to save America. They had the patriotic feelings to do what they needed to in order to save America. She does not think Americans have these feelings anymore. She volunteered because she felt like it was her duty. She thinks she is more patriotic after the war. When she was in the service, the other women in her hometown told rumors about her having babies. They also said she was a drunk. She wanted to know why they would do that because she was honorable and in the Marine Corps. She admires people who are in the military. We should appreciate people who are there because they are protecting us. World War Two is nothing but history to people today. Losing her brother changed her. Her other brother had died younger than he should have because he was exposed to the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. She thinks the museum is important because people need to know what those men and women went through. Sometimes the war seems surreal. Her sister's husband was in the SeaBees [Annotator's Note: Members of US naval construction battalions]. She is glad she joined the Marine Corps.