 And I'm James Milan, welcome to this very special episode of Talk of the Town. Every once in a while, we get to go outside of the studio and go to interesting places to talk to the fascinating people we get to talk to on this series, and we have one of them here today. In fact, he's invited us into his house. I'm going to be talking with Jack Johnston. Jack is a non-agenarian. That means he has made it to 90 years old, and you will not believe it when you see and hear him, because all I can say is I hope I get to 90, and I hope I'm like Jack if I do. I lie a lot. I don't think so. Anyway, what we want to do is talk. Jack's been a long-term resident of Arlington, including World War II memories that are personal memories for him, and stories that he is willing to share with us here today in his lovely living room. That's what this episode of Talk of the Town is going to be, and I have been looking forward to this for a while. First of all, Jack, really, we really appreciate just your hospitality and your willingness to do this. Thank you for coming into the house. Thank you. Absolutely. We hope to actually do it some more, as I was saying before we went on camera to talk to you about, you have so many things to talk about. We're only going to be able to fit in a certain amount in this half hour. We do want to concentrate again on what you can tell us about what Arlington was like in that particular era, and the stories that you have to tell, and the things that you have to show us, et cetera. I'd like to start by just asking you to tell us a little bit about your time, your life, and your time here in Arlington. Okay. I was born and raised here in Arlington. I went to the Pierce, the junior high west, which is now the Otterson, and graduate of Arlington High School, class of 50. After high school, I went through BU, College of Liberal Arts. And then after that, I went into the Air Force. Following my service in the Air Force, I played professional baseball in the Dodger organization. Then when I suffered an arm injury and there was no such thing as Tommy John surgery back then, I returned to this area and got my master's degree in social work at BU and later picked up my doctorate at BU as well. I had a career as a scout for the New York Mets, 34 years. Before them, it was the Colt 45s. They're now the Houston aspirants. And that's about as much as I would say about my baseball career. I really would like to talk about the things that happened during World War II that I can recall, and there are no particular order. Yeah. We are not going to hold you to any particular order or chronology or otherwise for what you want to tell us about. Instead, we are hoping that you'll just kind of be able to give us a picture of what this town was like and what people were dealing with in a time that is receding in our collective memory and that we really need to rely on folks like yourself to let us know. I want to begin by saying that the neighborhood that I grew up in, Blossom Street area, was essentially immigrants. There were Armenian, lots of Irish, Dutch, German, Italian, Scottish. I was thinking back about who was in the neighborhood and what their backgrounds were. But a lot of people were just plain immigrants. And they had a very patriotic view of the United States. They realized what they had come to and really patriotic people. I grew up in 9 Blossom Street. My family lived on the first floor. The second and third floor were occupied by the Downings from Ireland. My parents were from Ireland. The Downings had four sons. What I'm getting to is what Downing Square represents here in Arlington. For those of you who don't know where Downing Square is, it's at Lowell Street, Bow Street, Park Avenue, Westminster. A collision corner, we used to call it. If you go there today, you would see a sign probably with a wreath that says Downing Square. And this is the background that I wanted to give to you. The Downing Brothers, there were four of them. And they all went through Arlington schools. James was the oldest, followed by twins Cornelius and John and the youngest Edward. And they all graduated from Arlington schools. When James graduated, he went to West Point. When the twins graduated, they went to work. And by the time Edward graduated, he went from high school. He went to Harvard. When James got out of West Point, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Not the Air Force, there was no Air Force then. It was the Army Air Corps. And he became a fighter pilot. The twins enlisted, Cornelius enlisted in the Army and John enlisted in the Navy. When Edward graduated from Harvard, he got a commission. I don't know if they called it ROTC then, but he got a commission. And he went into the Army. James was killed. He was killed in an aircraft accident in California just before he was going to be shipped into battle. Cornelius was a sergeant. He was killed in combat in Italy. For compassionate reasons, John was taken off sea duty. By then, he was a seamen first class, as I recall. And the same for Edward. For compassionate reasons, he was kept stateside. I think he served in Washington in the Army. I'm not sure on what capacity. But anyway, the two of them were spared. By then, their mother was a widow. Wow, tremendous, tremendous sacrifice from this family. One of the things I remember, I don't know if people know what a service flag looks like, but it's about a foot by 10 inches. And you could see them all around town. They hung from the lock on an inside window. And if you had a blue star on that flag, it meant you had somebody in the service. Well, the Downings had two gold stars. One was for people who died and two blue stars. And the only one I could find on the internet that came actually more were the Sullivan brothers. You've probably heard of them. The four in the Navy went down on the same ship. I couldn't find any place in the United States that matched the Downings that had four and then lost two. The Sullivan's were the worst loss. I mean, it's all relative. They're terrible losses. Anyway, they put up this sign and they named it Downing Square. The dedication was held in May of 1946. Edith Norris Rogers was our congresswoman from the Fifth District, and she was a real champion of veterans. She came all the way from Washington. She was the principal speaker at this dedication. There were other speakers too, officials, and there were even bands. It was a drizzly day, about five or six hundred people present. And that was the dedication of Downing Square because I lived with it. James was my hero. He was the oldest of them and a terrific guy. Were these contemporaries of yours, were they older than you, the Downings? Quite a bit older. I was eight and these people had gone into, James went to West Point. And the other two were out of high school, went to work, and Edward went to Harvard, so they were a lot older than I am. So I can imagine that always in a situation like that, those folks would be larger than life in a lot of ways, and then even more with those circumstances. And James was my hero. He did everything that a young kid would want. And when he graduated from West Point, he gave me the cap that goes on their parade. That's from his hat. And he gave it to you? Yes. Wow, what a relationship you guys must have had. He gave me a picture of him in his West Point uniform, which I turned over to Doreen Stevens at the Arlington Historic Society. Rather than have it just languish in a closet upstairs, I gave it to her and told her who he was. Wow. Yeah, I mean, that's what happens, right? Downing Square, we talked about this earlier, Jason Russell House, other spots in this town that have tremendous historical and personal significance for people. But then over time, they just become a place name, right? And you forget about what the actual significance of these folks are. Well, I can tell you that the grief, there was a year between James's death and Cornelius's death, and the grief was palpable. Every time you looked at that flag in the window with the gold stars, I mean, it was awful. Awful for Mrs. Downing, Mary. Awful. Yeah, but also, I would assume, pretty tough for an eight-year-old and nine-year-old to grapple with and grasp. Yeah. I know when James graduated from West Point, he bought a Packard convertible car, which was really the nuts back then. And he'd take me out for a ride in it with the leather interior, and he was like a big brother. Wow. Yeah. And then to lose him, it was awful. I'm very glad, again, to have this opportunity to talk to you about these figures in your life and in our lives, collectively. Yeah, I want to touch on two other fellows that I did not know. One was Eugene McGurl. His family lived down on Grove Street, and the other one was Howard Sessler, who lived up on Fountain Road. I did not know them personally, but I knew what they were involved in and was really taken with it. They were involved in the Do Little Raid on Japan. They grew up together. They went to the West. They went to the Arlington High School. They played hockey together. They enrolled at Northeastern together. And then they volunteered for the Aviation Cadets and then went into the Army Air Corps. And then they volunteered again for this very highly secret mission which we ended up calling the Do Little Raid. It required special training because they had to take these B-25 medium bombers off of the deck of a carrier. They couldn't land back on the carrier. It was a one-way trip. There were 16 aircraft that took off from the Hornet aircraft, and there were 80 airmen that were volunteers from all over the United States, and two of them came from Arlington. Wow, that is amazing. I never met Eugene. I did meet Howard Sessler. He was the Marshal of one of the April 19th parades. And they were both navigators on their planes. General Hap Arnold, he was in charge of the Army Air Corps, said it was the biggest morale boost of this country had for us and our allies because the Japanese were beating us badly at the beginning of the war. And this brought the war home to the people that started it. And they never found out that they had taken off from the Hornet. Hollywood movies about it, books written about it. The most prominent movie was 30 Seconds Over Tokyo. But I had to mention them. I also want to mention, too, that there's a memorial plaque for Eugene at the intersection of Brattle Street and Summer Street, a little island. I went and begged the selectmen unsuccessfully to put up a symbol marker for Howard Sessler. And it's just never happened. Okay. Well, there's another reminder right here. You've spoken about the downings, and you've spoken about Eugene and Howard as well. But I know that you've got even closer, more direct connections to what was going on during World War II. Yes. Because your mother had a particular role, right? She was an air raid warden. Her area of responsibility was from Bow Street, Sunset Road, Blossom Street. It included Lennon Road and Sunset, the perpendicular cross. So we had the air raid siren on top of one of the utility poles. And it was incredibly loud. The air raid drills always happened at night. Cars were not allowed to move. Every house had to turn the lights off. And that was her job to make sure that there was no light that would guide aircraft. And she had a British-style helmet, white with civilian defense logo on it. She wore an armband on her left. She had this whistle, which I salvaged. It had a lanyard at one time, but I guess I tore that up as a kid. And she had a baton three feet in length. And I never figured out what that was for. Right. I guess anybody who's too long to turn their lights off, no, just kidding. She blew the whistle. People complied. But the place was in total darkness. And then there was the one time the siren went off. There was a house on Lennon Road, and the lights were just beaming. And I wasn't present. My mother did this route by herself. And I was told by her that he didn't turn the lights off. With the siren, he didn't turn them off. And then when she blew the whistle, she said he didn't turn them off. Well, she put a stone through his front window. That got his attention. He was deaf. Oh, interesting. Wow. So the word got around about my mother. Don't neglect the lights. And I guess I hope the word got around about this guy. The neighbors took care of it. I just assumed that. I didn't get involved with any of this stuff. So, really, what you're talking about is amazing and almost unfathomable for people, I think, because you're saying that the air raid siren would go off. Your mother and the other folks in her position would take off on their roots to make sure that everybody, that all the houses were dark and that people were complying with the safety and security that they needed to. How often did this happen here in Arlington? You know, in Massachusetts, across the ocean, how often? You couldn't predict it, how, when, how or when. Probably two or three times a month. Wow. Yeah. Traffic had to stop because you had headlights. In fact, the headlights from halfway up were painted flat black so that there were no high beams ever. Right, so that nothing could be, again, of making sure that whatever was visible from the air was minimal. Right, exactly, exactly. Wow. And that was two or three times a month here in Arlington. Yes. Throughout those years. Yes. Wow. If you drove a car or lived down in the area, say, of situate, you didn't even have half a headlamp. You had a headlamp with a slit in it. That's so none of your light would go out to sea. And we stayed down in situate one summer. We could hear the guns going off, submarines. And then in the morning, you'd see the debris float. Sure. So, you know, I'm going to show my own ignorance here, Jack, and it's really kind of embarrassing as a high school history teacher that I was for so long. But each time that the air raid siren went off, was that because, in fact, enemy aircraft had been detected in this area? I don't know, but I don't think so. Okay. I just, it was a drill. It was a drill. So that you weren't offering any semblance of earth, buildings, anything. Black. Total black. But as far as you know, they were always drills. As far as I know. Okay. We never knew whether they were real or not. Which brings me to the next point. And that's up on Turkey Hill. You know what Turkey Hill? Forestry. I do. The water tower, there was an anti-aircraft gun and a search light. They were positioned up with sandbag in placement. And there were a couple of tents for the army people. I guess they lived in it. And I got to sit in the seat that controlled the gun. They let me, we used to go up to myself and my playmates, my chums. And the soldiers were terrific to us. They'd give us candy and stuff like that. And then they'd let us sit in the gun and pretend, you know. That's a big toy at that point. Right. For an eight year old. These guys were great. I remember them. They were really good. You guys want Hershey candy bars. We got a lot of Hershey candy bars that hand them out to us, you know. Yeah. It was nice. Yeah. Then where McClellan playground or park is located now. That was the Napoli farm. And Italian prisoners were brought out from Boston daily during the farming season. They had the POW painted on their blouses and the rear end of their pants. And we weren't very nice to them. And we would throw stones until the MPs would drive us off. We didn't like them because they were POWs, right? Yeah. Yeah. So again, these are folks who were apprehended or captured on the battlefields in Europe. North Africa. And North Africa, of course. We learned that most of them came from North Africa. And then they were transported here. Right. About 3,000 of them. I knew that they had about 3,000 Italian prisoners in Boston. And they used them to do our jobs. Right. Road repairs and so forth. Same way prisoners have traditionally been used for a long, long time. Right. But you're saying that also the actual, the real life experience of these folks was that they were dealing with kids and others, Americans, and your hostility as well, right? Well, once my folks found out what we were doing, we were told to knock it off. Oh, okay. They're prisoners. Okay. Oh, it was just us kids. Got it. Yeah. And the MPs, the Army MPs would tell us to get lost. They were there to protect the prisoners. But I do remember them farming at what was once Denapoli's farm. And is now McClellan Park, yes. Again, giving people these current landmarks so that they can really attach this historical significance to the places that they're using, those soccer fields and playgrounds and things like that. Yeah. And the other thing I want to mention too is that my parents appreciated the fact that they had left their own parents and siblings in Ireland. And my mother contacted the USO and the Union Jack Club in Boston. And they invited sailors off of the ships to come out on a weekend, Sundays, they'd have to get there by themselves. They came out on the Boston Elevated trolleys, get off at Forest Street and then walk up to our place on Blossom Street. And they were invited for dinner. And maybe three or four at the most each time that they came out. They would have dinner with us and then a lot of them just lay down on the floor just to get off the ship away from the war and some normalcy. One of them said it's like a home away from home. I remember him saying that. And the same guys came back, some new ones. We lost one of them when he returned to his ship and went back into battle. And we found out later that he was killed. One of the ones that really stuck with us through the years was Ronald Barnes. And he was the radio officer on board the HMS Rodney, which was one of the two battleships that sank the Bismarck. And the other ship was King George V. But those were the two battleships that took on and engaged the Bismarck. The Bismarck was actually sunk by torpedo planes. And the torpedo planes came off of another ship, but I don't know the name of that ship. But anyway, Barnes was a radio officer on board the HMS Rodney. He would bring stuff out for us from the ship, like cigarettes, players' cigarettes. My dad was a smoker. I assume those weren't meant for you, the eight-year-old. Hardly, hardly. But the friendship with him was lasting. We visited, at their invitation, I guess somebody in our family told him, he had written a letter to us inquiring about what was going on. And we said we were visiting relatives in Ireland. He came from England to Ireland just to visit us. And then he invited us, whole family, to come and stay with his family in Whitefield, Manchester. He was the city engineer for Manchester, England. He made good. He made good. But I think I love that. Again, it's hopefully not a tale of a bygone era, but it's something that can happen at any point and still does. Which is that reciprocity, that the role that you guys played for him at a moment. Well, my parents, other families around Boston did this. You can look this up online and you'll find some of it. There was one family from Foxboro that did the same thing, and they sent pictures that you can see. Their family was the sailors. But then he had an opportunity to reciprocate with you guys as well, which must have made him very happy, I would think. It was wonderful. We stayed at, they had a beautiful home abutting the Strand Golf Course, which is a gorgeous course. It's one of the finest in England. And his home abuts that. We stayed there for a couple of days. And they couldn't have done any more for us. They took us around the Northlands. We were treated like family. And then he and his wife, Marjorie, visited us at our home here when we lived over on Pine Rouge Road. They visited us there. And now we've been getting Christmas cards from their kids as recently as 2022. Wow. I've never met them. Yeah. I mean, that's an 80-year relationship that you have maintained with first this man and then his family. It's amazing. We're running out of time, which I knew we would. I do want to ask you, and I imagine you might have some more to share from that era, but I do want to ask you, as you look back these 80 years or so, how do you carry that experience of being a child and witnessing and being part of in the way that you could, all these things that you've just mentioned? Something that I appreciate is the patriotism of the people that were a lot older than me. That's the one thing I take out of this. People utterly, these immigrants really, I'm calling all of these people immigrants, utterly devoted to this country. I don't see that today. I think we tend to take this for granted in this country in succeeding generations. They take these things for granted. I don't because I saw what these people did and sacrificed. It's a great reminder. Yeah. One of the things that I remember Edith Norris Rogers saying is that we have these days today where they dedicated the sign for the downings, so that we never forget them. Exactly right. We do our best, and you are right front and center with helping with that right now for all of us. We're very deeply appreciative of your ability to share what you remember. I'll end with something that got me in trouble. There were scrap metal drives. Your metal was collected routinely. In other words, let's say that you had a can of string beans in a tin can. You were required to strip the paper label off of it, cut the top, cut the bottom, step on the can and insert the top and the bottom and put it in a cardboard box and it would be picked up with your regular trash. In front of the region theater, if you brought down 20 pounds of metal, you'd get a ticket to see the movie on Saturday for free, 20 pounds. Well, I got in trouble because I took out window weights in my house. I took them out of four windows, so these are counterbalance. You know what I'm referring to? Yep, I know what you mean. They're essential to the window operating. Right. So I emptied out four windows, put them in a paper bag and went down and I got my ticket to the... I hope it was a good movie. It wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it. I'm sure your parents didn't think so. My father had to prop the windows up with sticks after that. That's all. Well, I tell you, this is the reason, again, Jack, that I said at the outset that we do plan and hope to come back and visit with you again. You're welcome. There's so much more to talk about with you, but it's been entertaining, as you can tell from my reactions, but also just educational in a way that we never get, because we don't get to talk to folks like you. But I want to thank you so much. It's really been special, so I really appreciate it. It's been fun. Thank you very much, Jim. Thank you. I have been speaking with Jack Johnston, who we are lucky to have here in Arlington as a resident and a resource, and we plan to make use of that ladder function again, as I said. This has been a really wonderful talk of the town for me. I really appreciate Jack's time. We appreciate yours as well. We'll see you next time.