Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Roger Daniels Interview I
Narrator: Roger Daniels
Interviewers: Brian Niiya (primary); Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: April 22, 2013
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-414-12

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TI: And Roger, how did you get to Platteville? I mean, how did you get that job?

RD: It was advertised. It was a Wisconsin job, Theo Saloutos grew up in Milwaukee, had degrees from what was then -- not what it is now, now it's the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, but it was something separate. It was a state school, but it did not have anything like the prestige of the Madison campus. It still doesn't, but it's up higher now. And he had all sorts of connections and it turns out he knew people there. And wrote a letter, made a telephone call. Was I interviewed for that job? That was in the old days where old boys networks placed people, almost always boys, in ways today that would seem unethical, but it was standard procedure then.

TI: And during this time, did you continue with research?

RD: Well, the first task I had there was to deal with the proofs of my first book, and I had a big fight with the University of California Press over several things, but that's another story. Yeah, I continued to do research, there were summers, I was reading, I always went to historical meetings, I used to go to a minimum of two a year every year, except when I was in Europe, and being in Europe was almost like a historical meeting. Yes, I was already, I was working very, very hard at that time on one book, the Concentration Camps book. But when I got to UCLA, Irving Bernstein, in that same conversation where he told me to talk to Harry Kitano, talked to me about the papers of Pelham D. Glassford that UCLA had. Glassford was chief of police, general in the army, had been the youngest general in the AEF, but retired early and became chief of police in Washington. Title wasn't chief of police, but that's what he was, in Washington, D.C., which didn't have a city government then but was run by district commissioners appointed by the President. And he was in charge of the Bonus March. Irving Bernstein had written about the Bonus March, was the first person to use his papers, but thought that there was a fuller story to be told there, and told me about him and said that that was a good idea. And I looked at the papers, and my initial thought was that I would do an article for a historical journal. It was going to be called "A Policeman's Lot: Pelham D. Glassford and the Bonus Army."

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.