Jim Regan and his wife Norma live on Sauvie Island. Mr. Regan went to Vanport College and participated in rescuing people and books from the college during the Vanport Flood. He recalls working as a welder in the Portland Shipyards as a teenager during W.W.II.
Oral History
Narrator: Jim Regan
Interviewer: Keith Dobler
Date: August 16, 2000
Place: Portland, Oregon
Edited by Donna Sinclair
KD: This is Keith Dobler interviewing Jim Regan at his home in Portland, Oregon. This interview is for the Columbia Slough Project at Portland State University. . . . Begin — go ahead and state your name, and date of birth.
JR: My name is Jim Regan and my date of birth is December 4, 1926.
KD: And where were you born?
JR: Hamilton City, California.
KD: And what brought you to Portland?
JR: I really can’t answer that. I was young and my mother brought me up to Portland, and her mother lived here and so we stayed.
KD: Can you tell me where you went to school, grades elementary school and…
JR: Okay B. . . [?] Elementary School and Benson High School in Portland.
KD: And when did you first attend Vanport College? Was that your first college?
JR: . . . It was when I got out of the service. They had a huge flux of people wanting to go to college and they set up Vanport and I went there in 1945.
KD: Did you attend Vanport College under the GI Bill?
JR: That’s right.
KD: Um, Can you remember when you graduated?
JR: Well, I didn’t graduate from Vanport. I took a lot of classes and I did a lot of work in the graduate courses, and I did a lot of my schooling in the service in California — San Francisco State and San Diego State. Both of those schools.
KD: Did you graduate from…?
JR: No.
KD: What was your major?
JR: Engineering.
KD: Can you tell me what kind of people attended Vanport College?
JR: Men and women both, and they were all mostly all ex-GIs that I came in contact with.
KD: Did you know anybody from the service that went there?
JR: Oh yes. A lot of my classmates at Benson I knew, and they attended Vanport.
KD: What was the campus like? Can you describe it, how was it laid out, spread out?
JR: It was in the town of Vanport and it was buildings scattered all over. There wasn’t any campus or anything like that, it was just a hodge podge of [buildings].
KD: Did they have the traditional deans and department heads, did they have those on site, or were they located somewhere else?
JR: No, they were on site.
KD: How were the classes taught? Were they taught more in a conservative type of teaching style or were they more liberal in their ideas, or?
JR: Just depends on who you had.
KD: Did you have any, well how were your teachers?
JR: They were good. A lot of them were teachers that taught in other colleges and universities, like Pacific out in Forest Grove. There was two math teachers that I had that were absolutely tops, and one of them was from Pacific, and one was a lady, I forget where she taught, but she was excellent too.
KD: Was the campus a dry campus?
JR: Dry like no booze or anything?
KD: Yeah.
JR: Well, yeah, there wasn’t much campus life. These were GIs that wanted to get an education and were there for that purpose there wasn’t much social life.
KD: So people just pretty much went home after class?
JR: Yeah.
KD: Um, were there any college housing, dormitories or…?
JR: There was housing out there, there wasn’t any dorms or anything like that because of the type of housing that was there. Let’s see, I think there was one, two, three, four, five, six of the biggest units and they were scattered all over the area, the town of Vanport.
KD: What types of classes were offered there? Were there any specialized classes, were there just general education…?
JR: Well they had engineering classes, science classes, math, english, the whole run of the mill.
KD: Were there any separate schools? Like at Portland State there is a Business Administration School, a Liberal Arts school.
JR: Yeah, they had engineering school, liberal arts, they had pretty much the whole thing that you could get now. We studied chemistry in the dental school over in Northeast Portland. In the old Lincoln High School, we took science classes there, so they were scattered all over Portland where they had equipment and expertise. A lot of them were held at night because the teachers and professors were teaching in high school and other colleges around, so…
KD: Were there any support services, such as advisors, or tutors that you know of?
JR: No, none, we just asked questions of the professor and we’d get together in study groups and it worked out really fine that way.
KD: Were minority peoples allowed to attend class there?
JR: Yes, but I don’t recall any really. They weren’t barred from it, I don’t believe, but… Daisies [?] were all GI’s and there was very few branches of the service that they were involved in, so maybe that was the reason they weren’t there.
KD: The city of Vanport itself — how was the construction? Did you live there?
JR: No.
KD: Do you recall the city of Vanport?
JR: Yeah, it was built over night and it was built to house shipyard workers, and it was laid out with streets and cross sections, and they had a store, and caf��. And it was built very flimsily, it wasn’t built as permanent — the buildings or anything. Of course they were all busted up in the flood, but some of the construction wasn’t up to code or anything. They were just very flimsy and were just a temporary thing. I think there were plans were to demolish it afterwards. I’m not sure, but it got demolished anyway. . .
KD: Now, as the waters around it started to rise did people have their suspicions or their fears that the dike would fail?
JR: No.
KD: That any of the dikes would fail?
JR: No, because, well to begin with, there wasn’t any people there that day. It was kind of a three sided dike — one side was Vanport, and a freight train went through and dislodged the sand and that’s where the break in the dike occurred. It happened pretty rapidly, it filled up the whole area.
KD: And that was on the West side of the city?
JR: Yes.
KD: Were you there that day?
JR: I was actually on the island here. My mother and father-in-law owned property out here and we were out mowing the tops of the dike with mowers and looking for weep holes and so forth, when we got the word that the Vanport dike had busted. They urgently were calling for boats. So we had a small boat and we took off in the car and went down there with it. By that time the water was up into the buildings and we were rowing around helping people out. . .
KD: Did you actually rescue anybody?
JR: In that end it wasn’t deep, it maybe was chin deep or so forth, and yeah we pulled people into bigger boats, and got them off roofs. They were in those buildings when that water came in, just took them right off their foundations and shoved them all to the east end of town and so people were still in them, or on their roofs. No, we didn’t save anybody from drowning or anything. We heard a lot of stories about somebody who had a bunch of them in the morgue over there or something. I don’t know how they got them all over there. . . And I don’t recall, there was some people lost, but it wasn’t like you wouldn’t expect it. The thing that saved it was the holiday and most of the people were out of town.
KD: How did you originally hear about the flood?
JR: On the radio.
KD: Do you know or know anybody who lost a friend that day?
JR: No. We knew some of the students who were living there and they lost all their belongings and everything, but I actually don’t know of anybody, or any friends that knew of anybody that lost a friend.
KD: And were you still attending Vanport College at that time?
JR: Uhh-huh.
KD: And how did that change your life after that?
JR: Well, then the college didn’t exist so they hustled around and they moved it down to Oregon Shipyards — some old abandoned buildings down there. And it started up down there in Oregon Shipyards.
KD: Did they just make like a makeshift classroom?
JR: Uhh-huh. Because the Oregon Shipyards was a big shipyard and all the buildings and everything were shop buildings, most of them. There was some office buildings, administration buildings, and we used some of those, but that’s what the conditions were down there. It was a very relaxed sort of an atmosphere [laughs].
KD: Did they save textbooks, or did you have to go out and get new ones?
JR: Right. People that lived down there did and the ones that were stored in the various places in Vanport Bookstore. The textbooks were shot.
KD: Okay and uh, we’ll go ahead and move on to the Columbia Slough. Do you have any experience with that?
JR: Yeah.
KD: Tell me about it. . .
JR: Well growing up in North Portland I had a real interest in boats and all that stuff, so I explored probably one end of the slough to the other many times. I built my own boat, and actually moored it right across the slough from over here at Burlington Court. The ferry that came across the island was the Burlington Ferry, and the guy that piloted the ferry was a father of a friend of mine that I went to school with and so he let me moor my boat down there. I used it a lot to fish and row around all over the place on the slough. It was a wonderful place to explore.
KD: Was it a little dingy boat?
JR: Yeah, it was an eight-foot boat, very small.
KD: That’s pretty small.
JR: Held two people very nicely — cramped but we kept dry. Most of the time I went around by myself. A lot of fishing down there. Just opposite of there’s a big lake, and it’s connected to the slough and that was a favorite spot of mine. It was a couple three miles rowing to get over there, to get in the inlet and back inside but it was neat. There was beavers, a lot of bass and lot of fishing, just a pleasant, pleasant place to spend a day.
KD: With the fish, was it just a recreational thing, did you eat them?
JR: It was recreational. I kept some of the big bass because different people liked them, and I’d bring them fish, but I wasn’t there to sink the boat with fish. I could have I guess if I didn’t turn them loose. It was a lot of fun.
KD: Was there a lot of fishing, did they get a lot of bites, catch a lot of fish?
JR: Yeah. The first time that I ever came across this it sounded like a great big boulder being thrown in the water, just kerplunk, like that, and I thought somebody was on shore. I was looking around, and looking around and pretty soon it kerplunked again and it was a beaver and he would splash his tail like that [claps] on the water and make this sound. I never heard it very often, but every once it a while they would do that, I don’t know why.
KD: It scared you?
JR: Yeah. I though somebody was pitching a boulder or something at me, pretty good size [laughing] — it made a pretty good racket.
KD: Have you seen the slough change over the years?
JR: One thing, there was a lot of log rafts that were stored in the slough, and they took the oxygen out of the water so they outlawed that, except they still store some here on this side and then they move them out. I don’t know how they get around that but. . . That was one thing that changed a lot — all of them log rafts that were moored in here and moved around.
Fishing was a big thing, you know, salmon fishing in the spring, and there were a lot of boats trolling the slough. That’s increased more today than it ever did. There’s a lot of moorages that exist now that didn’t exist then. And there’s a lot of docks that exist now that didn’t exist. When you wanted to go ashore you waded through the pucker brush and everything to get ashore. But there’s a few more commercial establishments associated with the moorages like boat shops, engine, you know, outboard motor repair and so forth. Couple of restaurants, they really catered to the fisherman. Other than that its pretty much the way it was. Its more crowded obviously.
KD: Have you seen a big impact from industry?
JR: No.
KD: You stated earlier that you were a part of the Citizens Advisory Committee for Multnomah County. Uh, can you please tell me generally what that does?
JR: Yeah, its a taxpayer supported thing for the people that head it up. The members of the committee come from various districts as volunteers. And they give their input on action that’s pending, or problems. It’s a general oversight group that keeps the politicians in check, if you know what I mean [laughing]. We were set up with a number of committees that functioned in that envelope and it was just an oversight committee that supposedly would solve all the problems.
KD: Did it? Solve any?
JR: Well a few I guess.
KD: In the committee did you deal any issues concerning the Columbia Slough, Sauvies Island?
JR: Yes, we did. I was very interested in the pollution and, there is a big farm out here just this direction from us, I’m pointing north.
KD: North?
JR: Yeah. And it was about two hundred acres of property that some California concern wanted to buy and make a big golf course and then put in fancy houses all the way around it. And there were several problems — you don’t have any sewage on the island, so you have to have a septic tank, and you don’t have any water, it has to come from a well. And you can imagine dumping that many people in an area that couldn’t possibly satisfy those two needs. Water and sewage. And they were all set to do it. The third thing that was against it was that in a wet winter there was anywhere from four inches to a foot of water over that whole area. And so how are you going to build stuff out there? On stilts? And then the other thing was with all those people living out there, you know, how are you going to get them on that little road and back over that little narrow bridge morning and night? It was just an idiotic developer and there was a lot of talk that they were going to change the code and everything to allow these people to do it, so that was one thing that I was real hot on.
KD: So ultimately?
JR: It was scrapped. I’ll tell you how they did it. They changed the [code]. Lets see, I’m on a two acre lot here — my house — and that was the minimum you could build on if number one, your ground was potable for a septic tank, and number two, if your well was okay. So they changed the code — the county — and they made it, I believe 132 acres if you satisfied those two needs. Portability of the ground and water. Well there wouldn’t be many places that could. You know, 132 acres, if that figure is correct, it’s close, the price and everything, it was just out of reason that they could do it, that anybody could afford to do it, or want to do it. So anyway, that put a big screeching halt to the project. That’s one of the things that I worked with.
KD: Have you uh, worked with any issues concerning the slough?
JR: Well, I was involved in certain ways in that lake and all that ground over there. Its not a bird sanctuary, its something else, but in getting that designated that way it will preclude anybody from going in there and developing or anything on the land, and putting up buildings and parks and one thing another. Then we worked on the city dump, you know it filled up, so they were scouring around to find a place to put it. And we had some meetings and the county said oh no they have no use in putting it here next to Scappoose where the golf course is. They assured us that that wasn’t in the agenda, but yet they came out and said it’s approved and that’s where they are going to put it. So we really got a little miffed at that, and pointed out that there’s a fault, an earthquake fault that runs right through that area that the dump was going to be put in. And we pointed that out.
KD: And this is the Juan de Fuca fault line?
JR: I think it is. Anyway, that immediately changed their minds, and now the dump is over in Boardman. But I worked a lot on that too. . .
KD: Can you tell me a little bit about the shipyards and the shipbuilding business in Portland?
JR: Yes, there was a number of shipyards here, of course the largest being Kaiser. They had a shipyard in North Portland and they built Liberty ships.
[End Side A, Begin Side B, Tape 1 of 1]. . . Liberty ships there and they built tankers in Swan Island and they built baby flat tops in Vancouver. And of course that’s why they set up the City of Vanport — the Kaiser yards. They started with nothing there and then they brought all the stuff in and cut and precut everything and those buildings just flew. So they were not code by any manner of means, but they served the purpose. Until the flood went through there and tore them all up.
KD: Did you actually work for the shipyards?
JR: Yes, I worked in the summertime with Gunderson Brothers who have a yard over here in Northwest Portland. They built navy craft. We went to welding school when we were in high school, at night, and we were certified journeyman welders at sixteen. You had to be sixteen to go to work, and actually we fudged a little bit and but you know, making journeyman’s pay was really something. And then the next summer I worked at the shipyards over in Swan Island, the tanker yard. And then I worked there until I went in the service.
KD: You worked on the Gunderson Brothers, what kind of ships did they make?
JR: Landing craft, LCMs, LCIs, LCMCs, they were all landing craft. They were light steel, they weren’t heavy steel. So it was more difficult to go to work for that yard because the type of material they were using was all small, light stuff.
KD: Can you recall what you got paid when you worked there?
JR: Yeah, journeyman’s wages on day shift was $1.20 per hour, $1.32 per hour on swing, and I forget what on graveyard, but that was the wage.
KD: Journeyman’s wage, how was that compared to the standard of living at the time? Was it pretty good?
JR: Yeah, I always thought it was good, I have no complaints. It was a lot of money for a lot of people. They weren’t used to that kind of money — they were coming off of the depression years, and it was pretty heady stuff.
KD: What were the working conditions like? Were they pretty good? Did they treat you good?
JR: Yeah, because, I suppose if you didn’t like somebody there you could just quit and go to another yard and so I was treated real fine. I have no complaints.
KD: What type of work did you do? You said you went to welding school…
JR: I started at Gunderson Brothers and that was in welding. We came out of welding school and started on the swing shift, and I actually welded about two weeks and the foreman said, “Hey I’ve been watching you. How would you like to swing over to ship-fitting?”
And I said, “Well, I’m a welder and I get welder’s pay, journeyman’s pay so I wouldn’t be interested in becoming a ship-fitter at less money.”
And he said, “No, it would be the same.” And he says, “You could do us a favor because we need somebody that understands things mechanically and puts it together and we’ll give you welders to do your welding.”
So I said, “Okay.” And that’s what I did all that summer. I built raised decks and engine hatch covers and stuff. I made some jigs to jig it up and make it faster, and then they had a blacksmith, and I don’t know cyanide blew up when he was hardening his chisels for the yard. He was all burned, so rather than just sit around when I got it all set up and the welders were doing the welding, why I asked them if I could go ahead and draw the chisels out — you know, chipping chisels and re-tempering them.
And the superintendent, he says, “You know how to do that?”
And I says, “Yeah, we learned all that at Benson.” So then I took care of all their chisels in the meantime. And then I went the following summer to the Kaiser Yard in Swan Island. And they built tankers and with my experience in the piping systems and so forth, putting them together, why I was an inspector of the systems. They put them under hydrostatic tests, and I’d look around and see they were not blowing oil all over and everything and the piping. I did that. I was an inspector and that paid more. I forget what it was, but it was more of a prestige job.
KD: After World War II, was the shipping business lost overnight?
JR: Oh yeah, right. Oh yeah, they closed it up pretty fast. Left a big glut of people unemployed. Basically those people that came from the south and down through that area, they weren’t educated and they were welders or chippers or something like that — why they were a dime a dozen, so it left a big void for them.
KD: Did you serve in the Marine Corp during World War II?
JR: Yes I did.
KD: Did you see any action?
JR: No. I was in training when the Japanese surrendered. I was slated to go to basic engineering school which was four years. Anyway, when the thing wound up, why then they were discharging everybody according to the number of points they had. Of course the guys that were overseas with four years or five years or something, they had the most points, and came on down to my level and I was discharged.
KD: So after you got out you went to Vanport?
JR: Uhh-huh.
KD: Then where did you go after Vanport?
JR: Well I worked as a design engineer for a couple of firms, and all the time I was looking at getting to know a lot of different people because I wanted to design and build automated machinery. And that’s what I did.
KD: How long did you do that for?
JR: For the rest of my life.[laughs]
KD: When did you retire?
JR: Oh about eight years ago, something like that.
KD: We can go ahead and start wrapping this up. With the experience of the Citizens Advisory Committee and everything else, where would you like to see the slough be, and Sauvies Island, what do you see the future of those?
JR: Where I’d like to see it is left alone. I think the laws are pretty much in place, the land use laws and everything and the geography, that we won’t see any changes in our lifetime. They’d have to get sewage and water and enlarge the bridge and the roads and everything if they put a lot of population on the island. I’d be happy if they left it alone. And most of the people here feel that way.
KD: In the Columbia Slough, I just want to get your opinion. A lot of people say if they just re-open the city canal and let water from the Columbia come in, it will fix the problem, do you agree with that?
JR: No. No because its not connected that way. That connects to the Willamette the Multnomah Channel. I think the area you’re talking about would be on the Sturgeon Lake side, and yeah they’ve plugged it up and it would be nice if they would re-open the inlet and the outlets and get water through there because there’s a beautiful old lake over there. And it would help clean it out and keep it more of a useable depth for recreation. Now it’s silting in and silting in, and I guess if you didn’t sink in the mud, you could wade anywhere in the lake. But it takes money to do that.
KD: Well I think that’s about everything.
JR: Okay.
[Interview Ends]