Meat, War, and Marilyn Monroe

Meat, War, and Marilyn Monroe

Al working in the meat shop.

This is an Oral History of Allison H. Ittel.  He was born on July 24th, 1931 at 6 p.m. in the family’s house on a farm.  He was the 2nd child of 4 born to parents Henry and Eleanor.  Al is still living at age 84 with his wife of 58 years, Lorna Ittel.  They have four children, two sons, and two daughters as well as 10 grandchildren.

“I was eight years old when we got into the meats”

I was eight years old when we got into the meats. After coming from Fairfax, my dad had bought a meat market and meat locker for twenty-eight hundred dollars in 1940; of course, the second World War started in ‘41 and lasted till ‘45. Things were hard to come by. We had food and so forth. We didn’t waste it. You took what was on your plate. You clean it up. When we were on the farm we had plenty to eat but once we got to town, things were different. My mother had to, well, she bought a pound of hamburger, she put bread in it and mix it up. Make it go further.

Al as a youth working in his father's meat shop.

I was required to go down to the shop and work a lot, usually seven days a week. I started when I was about nine years old going with my dad to the shop. Actually, I started when I was about ten. I remember curing bacon, being shown how to rub it in and so forth. To dry rub the bacon, that was my first job and it just progressed from there. By the time I was thirteen years old, I slaughtered my own beef alone. Shot it, stuck it, bled it, skinned it, quartered it. The whole works. All by myself, thirteen years old. Of course from there I slaughtered a lot of animals thereafter.

Al's Junior Legion baseball picture.

[During my times off], my passion was to play ball. Baseball. We had a good team in my high school. My team, Junior Legion went to the state championship.  We went 24-2 that year and both games that we lost were by 1 run.

“We’ll wait for the draft”

Me and another friend of mine, we were gonna volunteer and go into the Coast Guard or the Navy. We went down there and the officers in the recruiting place were playing cards and finally looked up at us and said, “Well what do you guys want? Four years or you want the short six?” We kind of looked at each other and said, “We’ll wait for the draft” which we did.

I was drafted. I served from fifty two to fifty four. Two years.  I was inducted into the service in August of fifty two and put on a plane. We had orders to go down to the military police at Camp Gordon, in Georgia.

The Korean War started in 1950 and ended in 1953. I was finally shipped out on the Marine Adder(1) to Sasebo, Japan.  Within 36 hours we were on the largest ship, the General Gordon. We had 6,000 troops on the ship and ended up in Incheon(2). Of course, it was a big deal there during the war. We crawled off the LST(3) in full field gear and drew our rifles and ammunition.

Al in his service uniform.

It got to the evening and they sent us out on rail-cars. The destination was Yong Dong Po(4). On the way over there you could hear the kids and people hollering at you. They were begging for stuff and so forth. We ended up with the 142nd MP Escort Guard Company where we processed all prisoners of war. We would pick them up and bring them to what used to be a factory, three miles from Seoul.  We deloused them and gave them haircuts. The CIA would interrogate the prisoners and then they were sent by rail to Koje-Do where they kept all of the prisoners that they transferred.  We provided oversight for the Republic of Korea soldiers.

From there I was transferred. They needed a file clerk up at Company headquarters which was about two miles from where I was. The mailman there went to Japan and he got injured or something so he didn’t make it back. They found out I had typing experience.  They had me be the mailman and also the courier. For the morning reports, I had to take them into the 8th Army headquarters in Seoul every day.  I was driven by an armed guard.

Bombshell

When I was up at the Company headquarters I got elbowed in the face playing tackle football. [From the same incident], a small tumor about the size of the eraser of a pencil bled from under my lip. It all healed up and sutured but one morning I had some coffee and boy I had pain like you wouldn’t believe. The kind of pain that would knock you down to your knees. So I knew something was wrong. I went to the dispensary and they took a biopsy of it. They found out I had cancer. They said that they’d do what they could for me. I was told to pick up my stuff and they were gonna take me over to Tokyo Army Hospital in Japan.

Al (right) with Marilyn Monroe (middle) during her trip to Japan.

They flew me over to Japan and then of course there was the exam and so forth. They told me what they were going to do and had me sign a release form saying they could take pictures during the procedure to show during lessons for other doctors.  The day before I had the operation, Marilyn Monroe had happened to come in and be up at the Red Cross Center, up on the fourth floor. They knew she had gotten her hair done there, through word of mouth. The people, or fans were holding each other up to see through the windows on top of the doors. People were going crazy.  The paparazzi was there too and they were all excited.

So, I went up there and met her, along with some other guys. I congratulated her on her marriage to Joe [DiMaggio]. She made some kind of a real quick little gesture; like a little dance. It was really great. She was beautiful. No doubt about it.

She had grabbed me by the arm and I was a little nervous of course and she grabbed me and hugged me, hugged my arm, and you know like cooled me right down. She really knew how to take care of guys. She had the experience I heard. But anyways, she asked me what my name was and where I was from. So, I told her my name and Minnesota and she says, “Oh” she says, “My best friend Jane Russell(5) was there. I visited her in Bemidji.” I said, “Oh great.” The way she talked, it felt like you knew her for years. It was great. So I asked her where Joe(6) was and she looked disgusted and she said he was down in Tokyo, promoting his baseball stuff.

Homecoming

I had the operation in the morning. It was an eight hour operation and the doctor said I’d never be able to pay for that operation if I worked all of my life. I think the army surgeon general also took part in it. They wanted me to sign a paper where they would use pictures from the operation in their classes. In about a year they said that I would probably want another operation. But, then after three months they said that my heart was so strong that they said, “We can give you the second operation.” It was a cosmetic operation, to straighten up my lip. I was in the hospital for six months and after three months they assigned me to Owada receiver site about twenty miles west of Tokyo. It was where all the top secret communications went through. So, I worked in the office over there and the lieutenant says, “How bout’ I make you the sergeant?” He said, “I’ll give you another stripe if I extend you for a year.” Of course, I said, “No thanks. I wanna go home.” So, I took off in Tokyo on a C-97(7), I believe it was and went to Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii.  I spent three days there overlooking Pearl Harbor.

Al working at Kurtz Market during meat cutting school

I was discharged on August 18th, 1954.  Later that year I bought a 10 acre farm that I still own.  I married my wife Lorna on April 27th, 1957 and for our honeymoon we went to Toledo, Ohio and I went to The National School of Meat Cutting.  We left right after we got married.  It was an 8 week course at place called Kurtz Market.  After those 8 weeks, I graduated from meat cutting school and Lorna and I went back home [to Minnesota].  When I came home I started working for my dad again and I put on an apron and never took it off.

Al and Lorna on their honeymoon standing out front of Kurtz Market, the National School of Meat Cutting in Toledo, OH.

Footnotes:

1.  USNS Marine Adder, a troop ship in the 1950s.

2. Incheon is a city in South Korea, the Battle of Inchon was a amphibious invasion.

3. Landing Ship, Tank.

4. A village in South Korea.

5. American film actress in the 1940s and 1950s.

6. Joe Dimaggio, baseball player for the New York Yankees, married to Marilyn Monroe from 1954-1955.

7. Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter is a long-range heavy military cargo aircraft.

Story Facilitators: Bryant Brakke, Gita Misra, Frank Medina

Images from Al and Lorna Ittel's photo albums.