Leo Krziza Oral History

So we're here today with Mr Leo, Jake Aziza, who's currently living in Ocala. My name is Paul Ortiz, University of Florida. First of all, Mr Chris is a thank you. So much for taking time out of your busy schedule toe to talk with me today. E could tell by the walls.

Well, Mr Crazy. So I wonder if we could start by. If you could tell me about your early life before the Panama Canal, where you're from a little bit about your parents. Your background? Well, that's simple because, uh, my family I was orphaned at 15. My mother was killed in an auto accident with a drunk driver.

She was not driving, of course. And, uh, I just had urging Thio see the world because I see airplanes. Four try motors that would fly from New York to Detroit, where they were made. And then they go to Chicago and they come over our house and I thought, by God to get into a narrow play in one of these days.

But I said it's gonna cost me some money and I gotta get in education. And so I was thinking about that, And, uh, so I was 15 years old. Well, I got the time. I got to get educated and I see how much money I have saved up.

And I went and checked in my little piggy bank, and I had 15 cents s o That was that was how much money I had, say, one cent for every year? Yeah, one for every year. So that's where I started. But I kept going and going up in orphan.

There was five other kids in my family. We're all, uh, left. Dad went to Detroit to catch more money. Mother was gone. Couple of sisters were in college, and so lives up to Leo to do it. And so I remembered what, uh, that you just if you have a goal or you have something that you really want to do, go for it because nobody else is gonna help you.

It's up to you. So eventually I thought, Well, Michael's airplanes, this world must be great. So I studied geography and so forth and kept going on and going on it. And then my sister two of my sisters had gotten jobs with Panama Canal. So when I got almost finished with college.

I went to Notre Dame and then weighing University of Detroit, University of Wisconsin. And then the war coming on, Well, I tried to get in the Army, my ears wouldn't work and so forth because I had been swimming so much in the lakes and they have a lot of water log.

So my haring was down, so I got a deferment they wouldn't take me. So okay, I'll go down to Panama, visit my sisters and play golf for ah year and so forth and have some fun. And so I got down toe Panama on the united fruit boat And, uh, I, uh, the next day I went for some, uh, interviews to see if I could find a job of some sort there that help support myself.

And 12 hours later, I had a permanent job with the Panama Canal. Permanent job is if you're on parole or on practice on and for 30 days and then after 30 days, they will say, Yes, they'll take you or No, I'm sorry. Well, that 30 days came up and so forth, and they didn't say anything to me.

And so I just kept on working and 32 years later, I retired. Wow. As simple as that Mr Causey's. How had your, you know, your sister has proceeded? You Panama? Do you know how they got their jobs? Did they just go down or they know that was funny.

Wow. Well, the older sister, she was a teacher and she was teaching in there and wind that That's right. Detroit Airport. And this boyfriend that she was supposed to have a date with, stood her up. He called her up. Oh, you had another day and see?

So she got shoved aside. Well, she said, the hell with this. She didn't want this kind of stuff. I'm going to do something. So she goes down to the post office and there's a forum 57 Earth, I guess. 57 up there. Employment's available and so forth.

Federal government here with one there. So she thought that sounds good. So she sent in the application that she was a teacher. She was at her degree and so forth from when university. And so my God, they said, Yeah, we'll take you and so forth and they give her a ticket to the on the ship of New York.

So she went down to Panama while she gets down to Panama and holy smokes. This place is great. This is a lot better than the war, Jack Michigan, where it snows. Yeah, three months. Uh, winner and nine months. No, summer something. And it was awful in the way.

I'm not awful, but it was bad. So she gets their board, she gets there, gets the other sister. Hey, this is great. There's a lot of men down here. This is great summer time. All the time things were cheap and so forth. You get paid every month.

No deferments on the payment. You get it. So, poise, come on down. So she gets that sister down. Well, they got two of them down there. Well, here's Leo now. I got summer vacation here. Uh, deferment. They can't get in the army. That's when I go down eso bank.

I went up So there was three of us out of the cuisines of family down. There s So it was great. So hell, we had a good time and so forth. Paychecks coming in all the time. And now you had tried to get into the military Mr Crazies.

And were your other friends trying to get in at the same time? Nobody. Because they didn't have any other friends. Let's say, but I was trying to get it. Yes, I was. I was trying to get him because if you had two years college, you could get into the cadet Flying Corps, Okay?

And that's what I did. Well, yeah. By that time I had three years in, but I had poor hearing on. They said, Well, no, you could. You put this on there and you couldn't hear what the other guy was saying. You might do the wrong thing, make the wrong turn and your p 40 and so forth.

And so they kept pushing me off, pushing me off. Well, of course, by that time, I was working for Panama Canal anyway, and I had money coming in my pocket for the first time in my life. And so I just kept on and on until eventually the got to the bottom of the barrel evidently and says Hello.

Hey, Buster, you gotta come and work for us. They come and join the army. The war started by then. Si eso I had Thio get in. But the Pan Canal says, Well, you sure you're on a war project here? They differed me for a long time.

Finally they let me go and I went and spent about four years in the Army and so forth. Well, the ironic thing on this thing is that just a ship went to the canal and without a Cristobal there on went out there and the little for United Fruit Bowl that the U.

S. May have on it going up to New Orleans. Will they go out there and and there's a German sub sitting out there. Now that German sub is in Honduras. You know, they they had a base. They had a base in the United States, knew all about it because Germany had that base and everybody kept quiet because But that base, it z deciphered the code, the German code that they were using C.

So everybody was quiet about that. The Germans didn't know that our little, uh, office down there in the bushes and Honduras was taking all of their codes and decipher him and giving it to all the ships out on the Atlantic oceans. And so that was this?

He's so that was where they were doing. Well, the submarine. He was a new captain on that sub. Paul. Here's a boat. So he takes his to torpedo the torpedoes. That boat. Okay, bang down. The little book goes down the bottom of the Caribbean potion does a male all the mail and everything that he's got down there.

That's it. Well, through this priest Italian, that thing with a lot of finance offices, the army payrolls from the army. So all of that stuff was down the bottom of the ocean. Now, how you gonna justify $25 million expenditure in all the papers? You're down there?

There's no Xerox machines? No nothing. So, uh, what you gonna do? Well, the only thing you do replace them. Well, Finance Office knew which offices had their payrolls done at Cora's L office and so forth. So they started. But what they did, they need it. Type.

So where you gonna find enough type is to, uh, replace all of those? Well, we just gotta do it until it nothing is $25 million we got account for We know where it is's down there. So we got to replace those things. So they did. So they found all the people were not founded.

Check the 201 files so forth and found out who could type. And so forth just happened. They come along with mine. I was in the training for to be a paratrooper and a black Bushmaster group. I see. Okay, I was gonna be in the bush man to the Philippines in the Philippines.

That's correct. They were training me for that s O, but they come along. And so I get my training and Bush matches trying all that stuff there because I was a good shot and so forth physically, all right. And I could speak Spanish. And in the Philippines, they speak Spanish because that was, um, the protectorate from the Spanish from the Inquisition is way, way back there.

See? Well, they looked at mine, special abilities and so forth. Leo Crow Azizah Typing 50 words a minute. And I could type 50 words a minute because I learned to type before I went toe Wisconsin to school so I could do that in the head. Private, right?

A portable typewriter. So bang, They grabbed me put me in a truck. So they run me around. Teoh. I don't know where I'm going. You don't ask the army anything, so you know You know That's right, you say? Yes, sir. That's all you do.