History
297W
Professor
Stave
December
5, 2001
1. CK: Do you think dropping the atomic bomb was
the right thing to do?
FM: I hate to see so many people killed. People against war said we shouldn’t have
dropped the atomic bomb. O.K. We killed approximately two hundred fifty
thousand Japanese. Which I am
very, very sorry for. I was one of the so to
speak million that was supposed to invade Japan, which we didn’t
go. Two
hundred fifty thousand of those people would have been killed or more
and how
many
more hundreds of thousands Japanese would have been killed. So, we killed
two
hundred fifty thousand and we save a million and a half. You don’t have to be
very
smart to figure that out. Yes it was
right to drop the war. They started the
war,
we didn’t start it. Better kill them
than kill me, and my people in this country.
Do
you think for one minute they would hesitate to use it if they had the power to
do
it? No. Come on it’s just easy.
People are going around saying war is bad. Yes
it’s
bad but it’s better we carry the big stick and hold them down. Don’t let them up
because one day you will regret
it.
2.
CK: Do you think World War II was a good war?
FM: No war
is a good war. Nobody wins a war. We had to do what we had to do and if
We
didn’t who know what would have become of us.
I believe a person should be
free, to speak his mind. If we
were in some of those countries could I said what I
just
said and feel free about it? We have to
talk about what we think is right.
Somebody is going to listen and somebody is not going to listen. So, who’s going to
be
the people who said well we shouldn’t have done this we killed a lot of
people.
How
about the wars over there in Afghanistan?
How about seeing so many people
Killed? How about the
towers? They have no fathers, no
mothers, no cousins, no
brothers no sisters. Who’s feeling
sorry for them? I’ll go back to the
same story
Patton said, kill the son of a
bithches over there before they come and kill us.
3. CK: Do
you think interviews with people like yourself help educated people that don’t
know
about the war.
FM:
Yes. If more learned, I say more
learned because I only had a high school
education. But more people with
better education should get interviews.
Maybe
some
historian will pick up on it and write about these things. So some of the
younger will know what happened to their uncles and aunts and cousins in
the
service. It wasn’t always
peaches and cream. There were good
times and the bad
times. The lonely times and the
happy times and the crying times. And I
know of
no
serviceman, that I personally knew, that didn’t cry at one time or another.
Maybe it was for the holidays being away from home. Maybe because they lost a
friend. Or they went to a
funeral. I saw many of them crying in
churches.