Jail Break

  We lived in a small western town called Kalispell, located in the beautiful Flathead Valley, the gateway to Glacier National Park, in the state of Montana. It was one of those towns that almost everybody knew something about each other, good, bad or indifferent.

 

   My dad, Victor Pratt Hundahl, worked as a sheet metal and layout man, which involved drawing up plans to manufacture sheet metal products. During 1941 at the age of 23 he was working on Wake Island for Morrison-Knudsen Construction Company constructing aircraft runway and other installations for the US Navy. Because he had not seen his three-month-old daughter Sharon, he resigned from the company, and by historical circumstance departed Wake Island on the last civilian ship.

  On the way from Hawaii to San Francisco, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Wake Island, the start of World War II.  Upon Wake Island surrendering in December 1941 all of the dad’s friends and co-workers were captured. Some 200 civilians were taken by ship to Japan and China to work in forced labor camps. The remaining ninety-eight Morrison Knudsen construction workers were forced into hard labor building concrete bunkers and fortifications under Japanese direction. When they were of no use to the Japanese, they were lined up on the beach and machine-gunned down in cold blood.

 

   Early in the nineteen-forties, dad's shop called ”Kalispell Sheet Metal Works” had been contracted to manufacture and install three steel bar cages and assemble them in the basement of the old Kalispell City courthouse. As the cages were being assembled by bolting the rods and frames together, the city council changed the work order from the metal bars only being bolted together without the additional welding. Dad, who was supervising the installation protested as it would be easy for some who were determined to break through the bars. To save money, the city officials refused to allow the workers to weld the bars together as per the original contract.

 

   Dad being young and somewhat of a wild rascal liked his Jack Daniels and a good fair fight. On one late night, dad was hauled off to jail for whipping a couple of guys. He was arrested and confined to the same cell that he had just recently manufactured.

   A friend and coworker knowing that dad was locked up went to the Kalispell Sheet Metal Works shop and picked up his toolbox. Going to the outside cell window of the  cage holding dad, he passed wrenches and other tools to him. All during the night, dad worked on the cell cage door loosening the bolts. In the morning, the police opened the cell cage door and released my father.

 

   Later in the day, the police proceeded to arrest and put a wild aggressive drunken man in the same cell that held Dad. The drunk shook and rattled the cage  and door until the rods started falling apart.

 

   The very embarrassed City Council called dad the next day, asking him to come back to reassemble the rods and weld the steel bars together for added reinforcement.  Everybody involved kept this incident secret from the public and the city newspaper to avoid embarrassment, a not so gentleman’s agreement.

Reviews

[Levi Levin]

Great job indeed!!!! True story?