After WW II service as a Navy Doctor, Joe’s Father settles in California
Editor’s Note: Joe’s grandparents, James Francis Hart and Anna Dolores Canavan, were both from Des Moines and raised their seven sons there. Some of the boys stayed in Iowa; others, like Joe’s father, scattered west for jobs. Joe’s father, a pediatrician who graduated from Creighton in Omaha, met Joe’s mother, Mary Rita West, there, and in 1948 the family moved to Long Beach, California, where her parents lived, before going on to Portland. I asked about his father’s Navy service in the Second World War: he served as a medical officer aboard ships in the Pacific, spent time in New Caledonia and in China, a country he returned to later in life.
Transcript
Speakers: WJB — William J. Bowe; JH — Joseph Hart. Transcribed from the recording; punctuation added and obvious mis-hearings corrected.
JH: And so they were both from Des Moines, and raised their family there. And then the seven sons, a few of them stayed in Des Moines, and some of them scattered to the West.
WJB: Yeah. Now what brought about that migration west for some of the seven boys?
JH: I think it was just jobs. Of course, that’s the case in my father’s situation. He was a pediatrician, graduated from Creighton in Omaha. That’s where he met my mother. And ended up —
WJB: And what was your mother’s maiden name?
JH: Her maiden name was West.
WJB: Okay. So that was Rita West?
JH: Right. Actually, her first name is Mary.
WJB: Okay.
JH: But she went by her middle name, which was Rita.
WJB: Okay.
JH: And so my father ended up traveling from the Omaha, Des Moines area to Long Beach, California, where my mother’s parents were living at the time. And I think that he was probably in search of a position as a pediatrician in a clinic someplace. And so we were in Long Beach for about a year before we moved to Portland, Oregon.
WJB: And what year would that have been, roughly, in Long Beach before they moved to Portland?
JH: 1948.
WJB: Okay. So immediate post-war period.
JH: Right. And I don’t know whether some of that might have been connected with his service in the Navy.
WJB: Going to Long Beach, that would’ve been a center for Navy operations on the West Coast at that time.
JH: My next sister, my next —
WJB: Well, and let me just stay with that for a moment if I may, about your dad. So he was in the Navy then, obviously, during the second war.
JH: Right. He served in the Pacific.
WJB: Okay.
JH: He was aboard ships, and was medical officer and so on.
WJB: So, in the Pacific island campaign, the island-hopping campaign? Or was that a little off in years from his functions?
JH: I don’t know exactly. I know that some of his time on board was spent in New Caledonia, and ended up spending some time in China as well, which he found particularly interesting, and went back there a couple of times later in his life. So, I’m not sure what kind of action he might have seen in his service in the Navy. I don’t think he was in the middle of some of the operations, but he certainly spent lots of time on board.
