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MIKE MULCAHY: It's 12:00 noon now. Here's Greta Cunningham with an update of the latest news.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: Thanks, Mike.

Senate Democrats today are back and down from a veto fight with President Bush over their $35 billion anti-terrorism plan. They're putting together an alternative $20 billion package, the size Bush had initially demanded. Bush had said he would veto the entire $318 billion defense bill if the anti-terror package attached to it went above $20 billion.

A Federal Trade panel today recommended a range of tariffs and quotas on steel imports. The panel's proposals fell short of what the US steel industry wanted. The panel earlier ruled foreign steel imports were unfairly subsidized by foreign governments.

The new interim leader of Afghanistan says he thinks the Taliban leader and what's left of his fighters are headed for mountain hideouts northeast of Kandahar. Hamid Karzai says if the Taliban leader is found, he'll be arrested.

The nation's unemployment rate climbed to 5.7% last month. That's the highest level in six years. The Labor Department says 331,000 more Americans lost their jobs in November. The government says nearly every major industry lost jobs.

In regional news, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta is continuing its national investigation launched after three Minnesotans died following knee surgeries last month. The state epidemiologist says a 23-year-old Minnesota man died from infected cartilage from a cadaver that was used during his surgery.

Cartilage and tissue is routinely used from cadavers during many knee surgeries. A total of nine patients received body parts from the infected cadaver. Dr. Robert LaPrade is an associate professor and orthopedic surgeon at the University of Minnesota. He says there's no way to make the fresh cartilage implants completely sterile.

ROBERT LAPRADE: If we were to try to irradiate these tissues, we'd basically kill the cells. Some tissues we can make sterile by irradiating them and killing the tissues and having the body grow into them. But cartilage does not have a blood supply, so you have to put in fresh cartilage in a [INAUDIBLE] just like you would if you had to transplant a heart or a kidney.

GRETA CUNNINGHAM: LaPrade says many of his patients are concerned about the procedures. He says knee surgeries are safe, and he's confident the labs have a high quality of quality control.

The forecast for Minnesota calls for mostly cloudy skies with a chance of rain or snow showers in the far South. Highs today from 25 in the North to 38 in the South. Now in Rochester, it's partly cloudy and 33. Ely reports fair skies and 21 degrees. And in the twin cities, overcast skies, a temperature of 30. That's a check on the latest news.

SPEAKER 1: Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Design Stein providing full service web solutions since 1994. On the web at designstein.com.

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MIKE MULCAHY: Good afternoon. Welcome back to midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Mike Mulcahy. Until he came out of nowhere in 1984 to buy the Minnesota Twins and keep the team in Minnesota, few Minnesotans had ever heard of Carl Pohlad. But with all the publicity surrounding the Twins two world championships and the ongoing battle over a new stadium, Carl Pohlad has since become one of the best known men in the state-- best known but seldom heard from.

Today on midday, we're going to hear an extended exclusive interview with Carl Pohlad. Later, we'll mark the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. But to begin, a conversation with Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad about the Twins, his roots, and his career. Minnesota Public Radio's Mark Zdechlik spoke with Carl Pohlad this week at Pohlad's downtown Minneapolis offices. Here's Mark.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Sitting in a conference room just off of his office high above the streets of downtown Minneapolis, Carl Pohlad spoke at length about professional baseball and the prospect the Twins will fall victim to Major League Baseball's plans for contraction. With his son Jim intimately involved with Pohlad's businesses listening at the other end of the table, Pohlad first talked about his decision to get into baseball.

You were known up until the time that you bought the Twins as, sort of, a behind the scenes businessman, very successful, but not out in front of everybody all the time. And then you bought the Minnesota Twins. Why did you decide to do that?

CARL POHLAD: Well, everybody knows why I bought the Twins. Calvin Griffith had signed a contract to move the twins down to Tampa. I never was particularly interested in baseball. I didn't see maybe in my entire life before that, maybe 8 or 10 baseball games. I had no, particularly, desire to be in baseball, having never played it.

And on the other hand, I tried to put together a group of people to buy the Twins, and I got appointed by the group to negotiate the deal, which I did. And come time to write out the checks, well, it seemed like I was the only one there to write out the check. So rather than see the Twins move, I made a decision to buy them myself.

MARK ZADECHLIK: How did you react to the notoriety that came with becoming all of a sudden such a high profile person in the community?

CARL POHLAD: Well, I've always been low file. I don't care much about getting my name in the paper or my picture in the paper. I've always stood in the background, and I'm very happy that way. And that's just the way I've always been.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Did it make you uncomfortable?

CARL POHLAD: Yeah, because I had no really experience in dealing with reporters and, particularly, sports reporters. Entirely different set of reporters in baseball than there is in business.

MARK ZADECHLIK: You mentioned sports reporters. You've been the subject of a lot of criticism in the media among the general public for what's going on with the Twins right now. How has that affected you? How do you react to that?

CARL POHLAD: Well, you say, how do I react to it. Naturally, I don't want to see the Twin Cities without a baseball team. And I, certainly, have proven that I want to keep it here.

For the last 10 years, we've been trying-- working hard to get a stadium. We spent millions of dollars in that effort. Every year, there's been a legislative session, and we never were able to get it done. And as a result of that, you finally get tired of underwriting all the losses that we've had in baseball. And it wasn't fair to my family or our business.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Will Major League Baseball contract?

CARL POHLAD: That's what's being reported. And that's what's going to happen if it can possibly be done. It remains to be seen whether or not it's going to be successful.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Commissioner Selig said that contraction began to be discussed about 10 months ago. When did you hear about it, and did you hear about it in the context of the Twins being a likely candidate as a team that might disappear?

CARL POHLAD: No, I happen to be on the executive committee of baseball, and the economic future of baseball is being looked at very carefully and how to improve the game and as a result to get more and more competitive environment in baseball. We worked real hard at doing it. But every team is a different team. Every team has a different set of rules that they follow financially and how much they want to spend for players. And generally speaking, there's no two teams that run their business alike.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Are the Twins one of the teams that are being considered very seriously for contraction?

CARL POHLAD: Well, as I know, that's true.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Why the Twins?

CARL POHLAD: Because the market tests. Baseball didn't go into this blindly. They did a lot of market studies, and they had a point system, the performance of baseball teams in a given town, and they developed a lot of statistics that said that Montreal and Minneapolis or Minnesota is simply-- doesn't meet the test of being able to field a winning team and because of the economics.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Are you personally in favor of that? Do you support the idea?

CARL POHLAD: No, our family doesn't want to get out of baseball. When you say, will you support it, but sometimes what you want to do and what you end up doing can be driven by a number of factors. Basically, there's no future in what we're doing. We have to have a stadium. To be healthy in baseball today, you've got to have the machine. The machine is the stadium.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Is there anything your family's willing to do right now at this point in the process to try to keep professional baseball on the Twins in Minnesota?

CARL POHLAD: We've been trying to keep professional baseball for 10 years, and we're going to keep on. And it depends upon what develops.

MARK ZADECHLIK: You know that it could be successful with a new stadium. But some other people think that even if you had a new stadium with the right kind of luxury suites and better seating, in general, that just the very nature of the economics of large market versus small market baseball would very soon lead to problems again. Do you agree with that or not?

CARL POHLAD: Well, of course, I think the economy today speaks for itself. And once again, you find yourself in a position to where just because you get a new stadium is no guarantee that a market will support a team, particularly, in view of economic conditions as they exist now. And as you know, come 9/11, everything in the world changed, including all businesses.

MARK ZADECHLIK: But I guess I'm talking about maybe revenue sharing and the idea that if you have a team you're fielding in New York city, you're going to be in a much better position than you would be in Milwaukee or Minneapolis, for example.

CARL POHLAD: Well, you have the age old story of large markets and the small markets, the mediums. And so once again, naturally, if you're in New York, you got more revenue, and you can afford to spend more for players.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Does baseball need to do something similar to what football does and share revenue more and make it-- allow smaller markets to field competitive teams.

CARL POHLAD: There's a lot of things that baseball-- and you certainly read them in the paper. Naturally everybody would like to see some type of revenue sharing. The system needs some improving now. But more than that, baseball has to reach an agreement with labor.

MIKE MULCAHY: Salary caps?

CARL POHLAD: Salary caps are part of the things we'd like to get done.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Pohlad also talked about congressional hearings this week about baseball's immunity from antitrust regulations.

CARL POHLAD: That business of has been discussed ever since I've been in baseball, this whole business of antitrust and so forth. And is a team, a baseball team, a public type of quasi organization, or is it a private business? Baseball, in my opinion, it's a private business.

MARK ZADECHLIK: That's what a lot of people are having a hard time understanding that it's a business, and then people feel that it's more than a business and that somehow people with more resources should do something, in your case, to keep it going, even if it doesn't make traditional business sense. How do you react to that, that argument?

CARL POHLAD: Well, certainly, there's not anybody I know of that would put the money-- invest the money in the team that we have for the last 10 years just to keep baseball here when there's absolutely no support or reason to do it, other than the fact that we had hoped that we could change everybody's mind, that we would get a stadium and be able to make baseball a profitable venture, which in turn furnishes entertainment for the whole Midwest area.

MARK ZADECHLIK: And that prospect has been a rather unthankful task for your family, has it not?

CARL POHLAD: Well, you've read all the articles, you've read all the publicity that we've gotten. And judge for yourself. There wouldn't be any baseball in this town if I hadn't stepped forward in the first place.

MARK ZADECHLIK: How soured are you personally to the whole situation because of what's gone on?

CARL POHLAD: I'm not soured. I mean, the situation has developed because the Twin City area just has chosen to not support a stadium, public help for a stadium. Whereas other cities, their stadium has been supported by some public financing. Our state just happens to have at this point never voted to give any assistance to baseball to build a stadium.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Is it in your mind at all a salvageable situation? Could it be turned around? Could something be done at this stage?

CARL POHLAD: I don't want to speculate. You know what the situation is. So does everybody else because everybody reads the newspaper. I don't know what's going to happen.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Would you consider selling the team to someone?

CARL POHLAD: If anybody wants to buy the team, they're certainly welcome to come in here with a check, and we'll sell it to them.

MARK ZADECHLIK: How much would it cost to buy the Twins, do you think?

CARL POHLAD: Speculate on that number.

MARK ZADECHLIK: It just seems to me that it would be very difficult to come in, as you say, in the early 1980s when the twins were about to leave Minnesota, not even have--

CARL POHLAD: You got to remember, they had signed the contract. When we took over the team, we had to buy out the people in Tampa. So we made a big sacrifice, not only to take the team on, but we had to pay money to take the team. We never were able to get that money back out of earnings.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Having done that and now being held up as this villain in baseball, I would just assume is personally a difficult thing to endure.

CARL POHLAD: Well, certainly, it is. Nobody likes to receive an adverse publicity, but the facts are the facts. And I'll have to be judged upon getting no credit at all for bringing me here baseball here in the first place.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Are you entertaining any offers to from anybody right now who might be interested in buying the Twins. There's some people talking in the media about having interest.

CARL POHLAD: I haven't had anybody approached me about buying it.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Will you talk at all about how much money your family has lost in this effort to keep baseball in Minnesota?

CARL POHLAD: I wouldn't speculate. I wouldn't want to throw out a number because every time I throw out a number, people say, oh, you're kidding. No. Just put it like this for you. We've been never been able to generate enough revenue to make the investment to keep a team here. And the public have never seen fit to help the effort by supporting a stadium.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Is there anything business leaders could do right now or governmental leaders to turn the situation around at this stage noting that so many times over the past decade efforts have been made and they've failed.

CARL POHLAD: I wouldn't know of anything, but we'll listen to anything that might help keep the team here.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Is there a timeline in terms of making a decision on contraction, at which point it will simply be too late.

CARL POHLAD: There's no timeline that I know of.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Do you think the Twins will play in Minnesota next year?

CARL POHLAD: I have no idea.

MARK ZADECHLIK: When do you think we might know?

CARL POHLAD: As time goes on. I wouldn't have any idea.

MARK ZADECHLIK: You're listening to a voices of Minnesota interview with Carl Pohlad on Minnesota Public Radio's midday. I'm Mark Zdechlik. Baseball aside, Pohlad has had a remarkable life. The billionaire grew up poor in a large immigrant family in West Des Moines, Iowa. Despite hardships, he says he has happy memories of his childhood.

CARL POHLAD: Well, my parents were immigrants. And we, of course, lived down in a different section. There was more segregation in those days than there is now. In other words, you had the immigrants, and then you had the other people in the other part of town.

And I remember that, kind of, generated a class distinction. You might say I developed somewhat of an inferiority complex. Which is, I think, stayed with me through my life. I tried constantly to overcome that.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Do you have fond memories of that time, or was it a real tough time?

CARL POHLAD: No, I have very fond memories because every little thing meant something. In other words, nickel or dime really meant something to us. And I had, of course, seven brothers and sisters.

And in those days, we always-- we did a lot of working together as a family. And we took in laundries for everybody else and delivered them and generated some income as a result. And we used to clean people's houses, and all the kids pitched in with that and did their part. So we lived a pretty good life doing that because it educated us a little bit too, about the value of money and worth ethics.

MARK ZADECHLIK: What do you think has made you such a successful business person, a tremendously successful?

CARL POHLAD: Well, I don't know when you say tremendously successful or not. We've always, more or less been, you might say, in a modified way, entrepreneurial minded. And you generated back in the depression days that desire to make a living.

MARK ZADECHLIK: You're still working here in downtown Minneapolis at your office. Why aren't you retired? Why aren't you playing golf? Why aren't you sitting on a beach somewhere?

CARL POHLAD: Well, because I worked all my life, and I wouldn't be happy sitting on a beach someplace. I wouldn't be happy retiring. I can retire if I want to, sure. But my life has always been busy, and I enjoy what I do. I enjoy meeting people. I enjoy working with people and on a personal basis, and some people like golf-- retire and play golf and do other things, but I like to work.

MIKE MULCAHY: What is the allure to you in business and doing business deals and making things happen?

CARL POHLAD: Well, I don't know. This is naturally allure. Allure is a financial incentive and also to keep busy and keep your mind occupied. And my mother always used to say-- she lived to be 106 or 7, as you know, and she says, you have to-- to have longevity, you have to do two things, exercise physically and keep your mind occupied and busy.

MARK ZADECHLIK: What is it you like about business? I've read accounts where you, sort of, characterized just the thrill of being involved in deals as really being a driving--

CARL POHLAD: There's a thrill and accomplishment. And that's true whether you're talking about $1 or $1 million, the value insomuch as the allure of being a success at whatever you start out to do.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Your net worth is estimated by Fortune magazine in September prior to the second Marquette sale at in the neighborhood of, I guess, it was $1.8 billion. And now people are talking about it being closer to maybe $3 billion. Are those accurate estimates?

CARL POHLAD: I wouldn't care to speculate. I've never counted it, so I don't know what I'm worth.

MARK ZADECHLIK: What is it like to have as many resources-- monetary resources as you have and to have come from where you came, someone in a large, poor immigrant family and now to have so many things right now?

CARL POHLAD: Well, you can only spend so much money. And as I say, some people like to have a second and third homes, and it depends on what you like to do. That's all. I just happen to work. I like to work and do two things that my mother taught me, exercise and keep your mind active.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Could a lot of people benefit from going through the depression type of experience you went through because they would view the dollar maybe a little bit differently?

CARL POHLAD: Well, I, certainly, think that everybody's been through a depression, a couple of them, matter of fact, three or four of them. You'll learn something by every depression. First of all, you learn never to borrow more than what you have assets to pay back. And that's a very simple rule.

So people get their credit stretched out of whack, so to speak. And that's exactly what's happening to the economy today is the consumer is buying power, is saturated. He's now realizing that he has reached a limit, and he has to someplace along the way live within his means.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Carl Pohlad recently sold most of his remaining bank assets. He talked about how technology has dramatically changed the world of financial services. He also talked about his World War II service and his legacy.

CARL POHLAD: As in all businesses, the way of doing business changes. And the financial services business has changed, particularly, the last two or three or four or five years. And everything is moving into a full service type of financial business. And the days of standing in line to open up a checking account or going up the counter and writing out a check, they're all-- that's all over. Everything is driven by technology.

MARK ZADECHLIK: And does that make it a less attractive business to you or?

CARL POHLAD: No, but you have to make a big investment to support the technology to compete in this world today financially.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Is it harder to add value to banking than as well in that environment?

CARL POHLAD: We just simply made a business decision that we were privately owned. We were the largest, I believe, privately-owned group of banks in the country. But at the same time, we didn't have the capital to support what it takes today to compete with the technology that's taking over the business. And as you read the paper, every day, mergers are-- well, we'll drive the financial business with the advent of internet and all the other technologies. We just didn't have the money to invest.

MARK ZADECHLIK: What areas are you looking at now in terms of acquisitions and this sort of thing. I believe you were quoted as saying that now with the resources from the sale, you will be doing some shopping at some point. Any ideas of what you're particularly interested in now?

CARL POHLAD: We intend to-- we are still in business. We still have some banks out in Arizona, and we have some in California. We are still in the financial services business here in town, but we just confine it to private type of financial service, which includes any facet of money management that you can think of.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Very few people in the world have achieved your level of success in business. What advice would you have for someone who is interested in business and wants to succeed and is making their way right now and maybe where you were 50 or 60 years ago?

CARL POHLAD: Well, it's hard to say. First of all, you have to recognize opportunity and do something about it when it comes by. And you have to be lucky. Your timing has to be just right for whether it's banking or anything else when you go into business.

And it's the old story. It's hard work. And once again, I have to point out recognize opportunity when it comes and, as I say, be able to do something about it. What does that mean? That means if there's an apple orchard out here and there's a lot of apples on it and there's nobody to pick them or sell them, you'd like to go in and start an apple business the same way in the banking business.

MARK ZADECHLIK: What are your views on philanthropy and corporate giving and responsibility of a company to a community?

CARL POHLAD: Well, I think every business, every individual has certain responsibility to support the social issues of community. And we have, as a Pohlad family, a Pohlad foundation. Why I think we have more than made our-- well, we have been very active in all facets, particularly, for instance, one of my daughter-in-law's is very active in affordable housing, and that happens to be her one of her pets.

And I've been very active in starting and building the Methodist Hospital some years ago when it was built. And we were very active in that effort, which took a lot of doing. And all the other Community Chest and Salvation Army and every part of the social is what makes America great.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Do you view yourself as, sort of, a Twin Cities Business Insider or as someone who is, as some describe you, someone who's kind of been on his own with his business ventures and is not necessarily hanging around most of the other big business people in the Twin Cities and is somewhat of an outsider to what some people would maybe call the old boys club or something?

CARL POHLAD: The problem is, is when I came here, I used to know every banker in town, the big ones and the small ones. I used to know everybody. As I grew older, people retired, companies merged out of-- banks merged, and all at once, independent banks increasing merged into bigger banks. And today businesses, younger people run the businesses today. It simply changed the whole area of business. It changed in the bigness.

MARK ZADECHLIK: What do you remember about World War II?

CARL POHLAD: I served in the infantry. And I believe I outlasted two or three complete turnovers in our company. And I think I'm very lucky. And that's-- I served my country because our country needed it. And being an infantry, why naturally you are just what you were. You were a foot soldier, and you were directed by officers. And if they say charge across that field and take the enemy position, you charge across that field, take the position, and somebody is going to get killed on the way.

But I'll say I'll comment this. Here's point A and you want to-- point B is being held by the enemy, OK. The only way you're going to be able to take point B is to attack. So when you attack, you have a bunch of guys running towns, point B's, and you know somebody's going to get killed. And that's really simply what the infantry is all about.

But everybody thought the other guys get killed, but they wouldn't. I read a book where they interviewed 50 guys and talked about just what I'm talking about. In an attack if you knew that the survival rate was going to be 40% out of 100, you had to go ahead and do it. But you never thought you'd be the guy to get shot. Unfortunately, people got shot, and you had to be lucky to survive. That's what I remember about the army.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Did that leave you with any lessons that you were able to apply to your business dealings and your career post World War II?

CARL POHLAD: No, not particularly, other than the fact that kill or be killed leaves a, particularly in the infantry, leaves an impression upon you, the emotional part of war and how difficult it is to understand why there is a war.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Are you concerned about your legacy? And given what's going on with the Twins that after all these things you've done, fought in World War II, employed a lot of people, done a lot in business-- the list is long, and I'm not privy to the whole thing-- that people will remember Carl Pohlad as this billionaire Scrooge who somehow drove baseball out of Minnesota.

CARL POHLAD: Well, I can't help that. Does that mean I have to now go out and spend millions and millions of our own family's money to keep baseball here? How much shall I pay for a legacy? Should I pay a couple hundred million dollars just for the privilege of showing baseball in the state of Minnesota? No, you wouldn't do it. Neither would anybody else.

MARK ZADECHLIK: Minneapolis businessman and Minnesota Twins owner Carl Pohlad. This is Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota Public Radio.

MIKE MULCAHY: And this is midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Mike Mulcahy. This hour, we're featuring two interviews from our voices of Minnesota series. We just heard from Carl Pohlad. And this is December 7th, the 60th anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. We're going to hear from a Minnesotan whose life was changed forever by that event, Bloomington resident Eva Schorer. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson reports.

(SINGING) Once I built a railroad, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

DAN OLSON: The United States was emerging from the Great Depression as the war in Europe was expanding. Eva Daggett raised on a farm in Iowa, was 22 years old. She had completed nurse's training in Des Moines and had signed on with the Red Cross. The job included a pledge to serve her country in a national emergency. Daggett, who later married and is now Eva Schorer, says she worried the US would enter the war.

AVIS SCHORER: I didn't want any part of the war, but there was this one hand where they said there was this great need for nurses in the service. And then I just didn't want to be involved in it.

DAN OLSON: Did you have an inkling or did the other young women have an inkling of what war duty, war service, taking care of soldiers might be like?

AVIS SCHORER: No, I think a lot of them thought what a lark, you know to be surrounded by all these men. This is going to be a great opportunity to find a husband if they didn't have a boyfriend or something like that.

DAN OLSON: Schorer had no inkling she would be called up and assigned to an Army medical field hospital unit that would eventually land at Anzio, Italy, where Allied forces were trapped in one of World War II's deadliest battles.

LINDSEY BROWN: Through the dark days of the depression, I heard President Roosevelt assure us the days ahead would be better. Now, he was telling us we were at war.

DAN OLSON: 55 years after the war, Schorer has written a book about her experience. She recounts how on December 7, 1941, a neighbor pounded on her door, telling her to turn on the radio to hear the news of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.

LINDSEY BROWN: Conflicting reports about the number of killed and wounded filled the airwaves. Each report was worse than the last. I wanted to run home and talk to mother and dad. I felt an overwhelming need for the security of family and home. Deep down, I knew our lives had changed on December 7.

DAN OLSON: Avis Schorer was ordered to report for Army nurse training at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. She spent a year there and at other US bases.

AVIS SCHORER: When I arrived at the camp, it was a few scattered wooden barracks and gravel roads. It didn't look like my mental picture of a military installation. And when I left there a year later, there was about 100,000 troops there and a 1,000 bed hospital. It just seemed to come up overnight.

LINDSEY BROWN: The atmosphere throughout the camp was restless and changing. New nurses arrived so often that I no longer try to become acquainted. Transfers to other army posts came without warning. Old friends from my earliest army days were among them. Every one was powerless to change military orders, and the transfers often brought a flood of tears before resignation and acceptance.

DAN OLSON: At Fort Sam Houston, near San Antonio, Texas, Avis Schorer and other medical personnel became the 56th evacuation hospital. In the spring of 1943, orders came to board a troop ship bound from New York but with no word on their destination.

LINDSEY BROWN: We learned that we were aboard the Mariposa, a luxury liner that had formerly sailed from San Francisco to Honolulu. The ship, built for 1,000 passengers, had been converted to a troop ship for 5,000. All doors padded with pink satin, attested to the luxurious quarters and peacetime.

Bathroom fixtures were made of marble. Two passengers had shared a stateroom that now held 15. The gleaming white ship had been painted battleship gray. We were under strict blackout conditions, and no one dared light a cigarette on deck at night.

DAN OLSON: Schorer and the others in the 56th evacuation hospital landed in North Africa in April 1943.

AVIS SCHORER: When they were through fighting in Africa, we loaded on trucks, 12 to a truck, and we rode across North Africa. It took us eight days over mountains, through roads that had bomb craters in them and riverbeds that didn't have a bridge. And it was a long eight days.

We were issued-- we carried our own food, and we were issued three cans of food a day. And one can was hash, one was meat and beans about like pork and beans, and the other was stew. And we were given a quart of water a day.

While we were there on July 4-- around July 4, we received some our first battle casualties. We had air raids, our first air raids. They were-- at this time, the troops were gathered there in the harbor for the invasion of Sicily. And the German planes came over, and they were bombing the harbor. But some of them came awfully close to the buildings we were living in.

And from those air raids, I mean, when we first-- our first air raid, we were out there cheering like we were at a football game or something because it was quite a spectacular sight. And then we got about 200 casualties. So after that, we respected an air raid.

DAN OLSON: After the Allies defeated the Germans there, the medical unit was sent to Italy, where their hospital was much closer to the fighting, and they treated many more patients with combat wounds.

AVIS SCHORER: Often these patients wouldn't have just one wound, but they'd have several. And it was rather appalling and sobering. I mean, this war is real, and it's real to us.

DAN OLSON: Was there anything in your training for the kind of appalling conditions you were seeing in war?

AVIS SCHORER: I don't think you could train for what you see in a war. I really don't. We had army cots, and they had a thin mattress. And if they were fortunate, they had a pillow.

But we did not have sheets. We had plenty of army blankets. And to take care of patients in those circumstances is total opposite of what we were trained to do.

LINDSEY BROWN: Soldiers arrived at the hospital caked with mud and unshaven, and they had the appearance of old men. The infantry suffered wounds much worse than those we saw from the air raids in North Africa. Our 750 bed hospital soon swelled to 1,100 patients. The buildings could not hold all the wounded. Our men set up tents to handle the overflow. Most of the casualties did not have just one wound, but suffered multiple fractures from the shrapnel of bursting shells.

DAN OLSON: Conditions for everyone, Schorer remembers, were dreadful. The troops had the worst of it.

LINDSEY BROWN: The rain and cold brought patients with new problems. We received hundreds of men who had been sitting in foxholes filled with water. Many were unable to walk on their red, swollen feet when they reached the hospital. The condition was called trench foot. We gave them dry socks, rest, and warm foot baths. We sent those that improved back to the front to continue fighting.

DAN OLSON: The medical personnel were coping with rain, which created knee deep mud. Their hospital was in a bombed out building where only the stairs remained intact. One of the biggest jobs, she recalls, was cleaning up the garbage, perfect breeding ground for pests of all sorts.

LINDSEY BROWN: I was lying face down on my cot, hoping to get a little nap. I heard one of the nurses muttering and cursing when she tramped through our quarters. She carried a pail of water.

"what's the problem?" I asked. "Bed bugs, my mosquito net is full of bedbugs," was her curt answer. I thought momentarily I'm glad it isn't mine. I turned onto my back. I looked up and saw thousands of bugs on the olive drab mosquito net. I quickly tore the netting from the cot, ran downstairs, and lit a match to it.

DAN OLSON: January 1944, the 56th evacuation hospital was ordered to pack up and move, once again, destination unknown. Schorer and the others wrote an open trucks in the middle of the night to a nearby harbor where they learned they'd board ships for Anzio. The Allies had landed at the Italian port city as part of their push to take Rome.

Schorer and the others huddled together for warmth. They kept the cold, hunger and fatigue at bay with the hope they'd soon be safe and warm on a big ship. She says they were disappointed to be put on a small landing craft that proved no match for a stormy Mediterranean.

AVIS SCHORER: As soon as we got out of the shelter of the harbor, out on the sea, then there was a terrible storm came up. And this ship was tossed around like a cork. And so we heard this tremendous crash. And what had happened, they had contacted an LST, which is a larger ship. And some of the nurses were terribly sick at that time. I was not sick, but I was sure fighting it.

And they said, we could transfer to this LST, which is a larger ship. So they threw a ladder over the side of the ship, and we went up the ladder to this LST.

Well, when we got on there and we thought, this is great to be on a bigger ship. And it was-- I asked this sailor, well, when are we going to get to Anzio? And he said that this is a pretty bad storm, but we would get there. And then he informed me that they were carrying high octane gasoline and dynamite. And we went up to Anzio, and the harbor was packed with ships. And the silver barrage balloons overhead just blanketed the whole place.

And they did not have any way to get us off of this thing for about 36 hours. And during that time, we just had air raid after air raid. And some of these bombs and planes and everything were just falling in the water all around us and the shells, . And I didn't think I'd ever lived to get off that ship.

Then when we did get off of it, the men along the road would say, what are women doing here. This place is hot, get out as fast as you can, and so forth and so on. We knew that we had sailed into a pretty dangerous place.

DAN OLSON: Schorer and the others had landed in the middle of one of World War II's bloodiest stalemates. Anzio's harbor, beach, and all the roads were choked with ships and vehicles carrying supplies. Sirens blared as German warplanes dropped bombs. The attacks were nonstop day and night. Schorer says the Americans were pinned down by the Germans.

AVIS SCHORER: They would have troops up in the Hill, and they'd have these gun emplacements. And they could. fire at our harbor, the Anzio harbor, where our Navy was-- harbor was full of Navy ships and supply ships. And then the Navy had fire back over our heads towards the Germans.

LINDSEY BROWN: Conditions on the beach had grew worse each day. The Germans sent the Anzio express with its quarter ton shells over our heads with increasing regularity. The enemy detected every move we made from their observation posts in the hills. Everything that moved was a target.

Avis Schorer's book is titled A Half Acre of Hell, a phrase used by soldiers to describe the patch of ground occupied by the hospital. It was surrounded by military supplies targeted by German shells and bombs. The front was literally a few hundred yards away.

AVIS SCHORER: We were close enough to the front that if they weren't seriously wounded, they could walk to the hospital, and the soldiers would often beg to go back to the front because they had a foxhole. They did not feel safe in our hospital. And the title of my book-- while it wasn't exactly the title that I'd hoped I would come up with, our hospital soon became hell's half acre.

DAN OLSON: The Allied stand off with German forces created tens of thousands of casualties on both sides. Surgeons worked around the clock. Shifts for nurses were 12, sometimes 24, even 36 hours. There were no days off. The wounds, Schorer writes in her book, were beyond description.

LINDSEY BROWN: The distinctive sweet smell of brain tissue, which I recalled from days in surgery, hung heavy in the air. The stench of blood was mingled with oily emissions from the electric motor on a suction machine propped in a sitting position, two soldiers shared the machine to clear secretions from their tracheotomies.

Many of the patients suffered wounds of the head and neck. Some had much of their face missing, and others had abdominal wounds. A young soldier with a heavily bandaged head cried for his mother. Two with head injuries thought they were still in the battlefield fighting the Germans and cursed softly. Others lay quiet making only the guttural sounds of the dying. It was clear that many would not have lived to reach the hospital if we had not been close to the front.

DAN OLSON: The furious and deadly standoff at Anzio between Allied and German forces continued with both sides throwing thousands more troops and supplies into the fray.

AVIS SCHORER: I'm sure there were tactical errors. I mean, that battle of Anzio will never be over. A lot of people felt that the troops should have moved inward because they had a great opportunity. Others thought they should stay there on the beach until they had more reinforcements.

And while they were contemplating whether to move inward or not, the Germans had time to move troops and surround the beachhead. And Hitler gave orders that those troops were to be wiped out at any price. And likewise, the Allies said that the beachhead would be held till the last man, if necessary.

DAN OLSON: You're listening to a voices of Minnesota interview on Minnesota Public Radio with former Army nurse Avis Schorer. Steal fragments from the nonstop bombing and shelling ripped through the canvas walls of the hospital tents. Schorer learned to recognize the sound of approaching enemy aircraft even before the air raid sirens blared. Schorer writes, most of the air raids came at night.

LINDSEY BROWN: I ran to the air raid shelter and was just inside when planes dropped flares over the hospital. They lighted the whole area brighter than day. Planes made pass after pass over the hospital, unleashing a deadly load of anti-personnel bombs. Jagged fragments of metal tore into the flesh of anyone near the explosions. Bombs screamed earthward and landed with a thud. Above the chaos and bedlam, someone shouted, they're falling on the nurses tents.

AVIS SCHORER: My friend from Des Moines was killed in an air raid when there was a dogfight overhead. And the British planes, I think, were chasing the German planes, and the German plane in an effort to get away, dropped their bombs. They dropped it on the hospital. And everyone in the intensive care ward was killed, and my friend was one of them.

DAN OLSON: Schorer says her friend Ellen was the life of the party, a song leader always making a joke. During air raids, she refused to go to the bomb shelters. A fragment from a bomb tore into her lung and damaged other organs. Schorer stayed by Ellen's bedside.

LINDSEY BROWN: Her breathing was shallow and her pale skin ashen. I tried to moisten her parched lips. She waved me away weakly. I could see her life slipping away. She reached to remove the oxygen mask. "Ellen, we'd better leave the mask on," I whispered. She rolled her eyes back and took her last breath.

AVIS SCHORER: You know, we didn't have time to grieve. You had to go on. And I think that, perhaps, that might have been a good thing. We did not have time to grieve. And so we just went on. We knew there was a desperate need for anything we could do.

DAN OLSON: Avis Schorer says desperation hung over the beachhead at Anzio. A huge German artillery piece continued to lob quarter ton shells into the Allied position. Noiseless glider bombs exploded on the beach. Schorer says she was emotionally and physically exhausted.

AVIS SCHORER: Just unrelenting, the air raids and the shellings, day and night, days on end. And it certainly took its toll in the number of casualties and in morale. And I mean, no one wanted to quit. But, we wondered, well, are we trapped here till we're killed. We didn't know, of course, what was going to happen to us.

LINDSEY BROWN: Some cried and others went silent. A condition called the Anzio shakes claimed many victims. Those affected shook uncontrollably during an air raid or shelling. A few days rest, warm clothing, and food usually returned the patient to normal.

DAN OLSON: Schorer says the unrelenting pace of treating the wounded kept many of the medical staff from focusing on the horror they were witnessing until after the battle.

AVIS SCHORER: We did have a few that had real serious emotional breakdowns, but it was shortly after we left the beachhead, and they'd start recalling what they had been through. And I know one of our doctors and one of the nurses had to be evacuated to the states. They had real emotional breakdowns.

DAN OLSON: Besides bombs and shells, the Allied forces at Anzio were the target of German propaganda. The sultry voiced Axis Sally beamed her radio broadcasts at the troops, trying to further demoralize them. Schorer writes that in April 1944, after 2 and 1/2 months at Anzio, Axis Sally began one of her daily broadcasts with the words Happy days are here again for the 56th evac. You'll soon be leaving the beachhead.

Schorer and the others couldn't imagine what she meant or where she got her information. Hours later, Schorer writes, she and the others learned that they were being replaced by the 38th evacuation hospital group.

LINDSEY BROWN: Easter Sunday, April 9th, dawned, dull and dreary, a soft rain fell. We packed a few personal items in our bags and sat on our bedrolls while we waited for the 38th. They arrived on time. I envied their high spirit and fresh look. The strain of the past two months and a half showed in our group.

Clothes hung on many who had lost weight. We looked haggard and unkempt compared to the well-groomed and happy troops of the 38th. I was leaving some of my heart at Anzio. I turned my eyes toward the cemetery filled with marked graves. I said, a prayerful farewell to Ellen, Gertrude, Rita, Nick, and thousands of others who had lost their lives on the beachhead.

DAN OLSON: Schorer and the others had survived more than 500 air raids along with shellings day and night. They had cared for thousands who were wounded or sick. The tide of the war had turned against the Germans. Schorer and the others in the 56th set up their hospital unit in several other locations throughout Italy.

AVIS SCHORER: The trip up to Florence, the very heavy fighting along the way to take the harbor at Leghorn and so forth. And to get across the Arno River in Florence was a big objective. And then the troops stalemated because they couldn't get over the Apennine Mountains.

So we spent seven months there, which is the longest we were in one particular place. And in the spring, then they did get over the Apennines into the Po Valley. And by that time, it was very obvious that the German troops were disintegrating. They were giving up by the thousands.

And we set up a hospital in Mussolini Stadium in Bologna, and we had our last air raid there. Fortunately, they didn't hit us. We didn't think they had any Air Force left, but they did. They had one plane at least because they sent it over. And we thought, well, now we, certainly, will be starting home.

DAN OLSON: Rumors began flying by April 1945 that the end of the war was near. German troops were surrendering. Schorer writes that German ambulance drivers brought in wounded to their hospital and then turned themselves and their vehicles in at the unit's motor pool. German doctors, she says, worked alongside the 56th personnel caring for patients. Schorer says her hopes rose when shouts went through the camp, new orders had arrived.

We, certainly, will be starting home. But as usual, the army has other ideas for you. So they were having some kind of a skirmish up on the Yugoslavian border. And so we were sent up there much to our grave disappointment. And while we were there, they taught us to fire pistols and take them apart and put them back together.

Because, as I say, it was a rumor that since we'd had battlefield experience, we would be sent to Japan, but we'd get a leave at home first. And that was a pretty disheartening rumor. And while we were there, they dropped the atomic bomb, and then the war was over. But it took a long time to get home. I got home the last of October.

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LINDSEY BROWN: We heard American music that grew steadily louder as the ship moved along. We rushed to the starboard side. A small boat gaily decorated in red, white and blue bunting came into view. A lively combo of accordion, banjo, and trumpet played "Sentimental Journey," "My Dreams are Getting Better all the Time," and "Beer Barrel Polka."

They waved and shouted, welcome back. We're glad you're home. My throat was tight, and I could speak only in a whisper. Tears streamed without shame down every face on board the ship.

DAN OLSON: Why did you decide to write the book?

AVIS SCHORER: Well, I wasn't really thinking of anything except I had gone on a tour, and this lady was writing all the time. And she said, well, she had taken a course in writing. And the name of the course was so my grandchildren will know me. And I thought, well, that sounds like a good idea.

And so I decided, well, I would write about that part of my life because I really hadn't discussed it with anyone at that time. Like they say, veterans don't talk about what they did during the war. And so I took a few courses in writing. I took one at the loft and a few through the extension at the University. And then I joined a writer's group, and they encouraged me to go ahead and write the book. Now, it seems like people are terribly interested in World War II, and I never was aware of that interest until just lately.

DAN OLSON: Do you have grandchildren?

AVIS SCHORER: Yes, I have five.

DAN OLSON: Have they read the book?

AVIS SCHORER: Yes.

DAN OLSON: What did they think.

AVIS SCHORER: Well, there's still some of them are young. I guess, they think that it's great that their grandma could put the words together. I don't know-- I don't know whether they actually the impact of the war because my grandchildren are quite young.

DAN OLSON: What do your children think?

AVIS SCHORER: Oh, they're very impressed? A lot of this they did not know.

DAN OLSON: And starting to write about it, did it, kind of, pour forth, or was it like trying to pull it out?

AVIS SCHORER: It seemed like once I started, so many have said, well, how could you remember all those details. But I think any life altering experience, you notice or you do-- you do remember it. I mean, I can remember some of those conversations, I mean, just like they just happened.

DAN OLSON: There is among some people, perhaps, some who didn't fight in World War II, an attempt to glorify the World War II effort and all of the battles. And, of course, there's an enormous amount of scholarship that goes with recounting as many details as possible. What are your thoughts on war and its reality?

AVIS SCHORER: Well, I just get a chill every time I hear someone say we'll take military action. I think there's got to be other ways to settle conflicts. And there's nothing great about a war. You think you come out the winner, but you don't. The price is too heavy, in my opinion.

DAN OLSON: Allied casualties at Anzio were 4,400 killed, more than half of them Americans. 18,000 were wounded, 6,800 taken prisoner or missing. Historians learned later German combat losses were very similar to Allied losses. After the war, Avis Schorer married and had three children. She became a nurse anesthetist, finishing her career at Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in Minneapolis. The 81-year-old Army veteran lives in Bloomington. Lindsey Brown read passages from Schorer's book, A Half Acre of Hell.

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MIKE MULCAHY: And you've been listening to a voices of Minnesota interview with Avis Schorer marking the 60th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Dan Olson spoke with Avis Schorer. He's also the producer of our Voices of Minnesota Series. And if you missed part of the program with Avis Schorer or with Carl Pohlad, you can hear it again tonight at our 9 o'clock midday rebroadcast right here on the station. 9 o'clock tonight, you can hear the program again.

Also, if you've missed any of our recent programs, go to our website, minnesotapublicradio.org, and you can find them there as well. Midday is produced by Sarah Meier. Cara Fiegenschuh is assistant producer. We had technical help this week from Randy Johnson and Janeiro Vasquez. I'm Mike Mulcahy. Gary Eichten will be back here on Monday. And at noon on Monday, a special about Hanukkah. So you won't want to miss that.

Looking at The Weather forecast for the state of Minnesota, we should have highs in the lower seconds to the upper seconds across the state today. Chance of some rain or snow across parts of the state, especially the far South. Tonight, partly to mostly cloudy, a chance of snow showers northeast and far southeast. Lows in the single digits to lower 20s. Then tomorrow, partly cloudy with highs in the teens to lower seconds and lows tomorrow night from 10 above 0 to near 20 degrees above 0.

SPEAKER 2: Minnesota's lawmakers are facing some tough choices, how to whittle down a projected nearly $2 billion budget deficit. How will it affect you? Find the information online at minnesotapublicradio.org.

MIKE MULCAHY: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. It's cloudy, 32 degrees at KNOW FM, 91.1. Minneapolis Saint Paul. Twin Cities weather for today, mostly cloudy with a high in the mid.