Quortations from video, "IN THEIR OWN
WORDS"
© 1998 Blue Canyon Productions. All rights
reserved.
Sabine Ulibarri, B-17 ("Flying Fortress") ball turret
gunner
I enlisted in the Air Forces...because I was not going to
walk in the war, I wasn't going to freeze. I was a ball
turret gunner because I was the smallest one in the crew,
and it was very cramped in there, even for me.
I flew 35 combat missions. There was a custom in the Air
Forces that you could pick your last mission. So for my last
mission I waited, and I'd go to orientation in the morning.
And if it was a risky one I wouldn't fly. And I kept putting
it off and putting it off. But in the meantime I was getting
more and more stressed, more and more nervous. So finally I
said I'll go tomorrow whatever it is. It turned out to be a
wicked one...
We decided to drop the bombs (from our wounded B-17) in a
fancy neighborhood. It is something none of us would think
of doing now, but it seemed to be the right thing then. We
came upon an avenue of trees where a platoon of German
soldiers was marching, and we played our machine guns on
them, and I remember I was laughing insanely, because I had
the feeling that they were puppets, and that they would fall
when I'd cut the strings off. I didn't think of them as
people. We never thought we'd make it back to the English
channel, it just didn't seem possible.
And you know, you think that when the hour of death comes
that you get a certain kind of clairvoyance, that maybe you
find answers to things, that you're going to think deep,
philosophical thoughts. It didn't happen that way at all. I
kept thinking of stupid, silly things--a hamburger, a
milkshake, a song that was popular--nothing deep, nothing
philosophical. Then I heard the most beautiful words in the
English language: "Little friend to big friend, don't worry,
we'll see you home." And there were six P-47's, our own
fighters, and one of them parked itself on one wingtip, the
other one on the other wingtip, and a third one right above
us. And the other three went on to tangle with the six
Germans that were coming. We never saw that fight, but we
owe those guys our lives.
But you see I never got to hate the Germans, because I
never fought them hand to hand. I never even saw them. I was
fighting machines, not people. I abhorred the very idea of
human beings killing human beings. I did then and I did now.
But there was a wave of patriotism that came upon the
American people. It was overwhelming, it absorbed us all.
When we came back from the war we were met by parades and
banners flying and bands playing, and fireworks. That is an
experience that the Viet Nam veterans didn't get, and it was
unfair. Because they put their lives on the line just the
way we did.
Keith Little, Navajo "Code Talker"
It made all of us very mad, very upset, very frustrated
that a great country like Japan would do such a thing
(attack Pearl Harbor). Some of our friends enlisted in the
Marine Corps. We were told that they were the greatest
fighting outfit in the world, and you have to be tough and
you have to be mean to be a Marine. And some of us, that's
what we wanted to do. It was a great challenge to see if we
can become a Marine like some of these great big white men,
husky white men that put on a uniform and they look tough.
We wanted to be like that.
I was fifteen years old and it took some very anxious,
frustrating time to get to my 17th birthday so I can enlist
in the Marine Corps. I was really sorry that I entered the
Marine Corps because the training was so tough. They shave
your hair off and you can't talk to anybody without saying
"sir", and you were given orders that you gotta carry out.
They made you do certain things that were difficult to do
but you did it. You learn to like your weapon, treat it as a
real good friend of yours, like your wife, your girlfriend.
During the course of our training my Drill Instructor
asked me if I was an American Indian. I told him I was, and
then he says by any chance are you a Navajo? I said yes, I'm
a Navajo. Well, he says, the Navajos are needed by the
United States Marine Corps for special duty...
The commanding officers protected their Code Talkers
because they were very important, and they put a guard on
them, somebody to stay with this Navajo all the time. And
many of them looked like a Japanese, also, could easily be
mistaken for an enemy. People made sure that I was in a hole
somewhere, guarded, where all possible harm, you try to keep
it out of the way because you were needed to send secret
messages.
When we left the service, entered back into private life,
nobody ever mentioned Code Talkers. It wasn't known, nobody
was aware of it. The code was never declassified until when
the Fourth Marine Division had one of their annual reunions
in Chicago, I believe in 1968, the cloak over the code was
never lifted until 20, 24 years after the war ended.
Tony Hillerman, infantryman (France)
I guess I'd have to say from the beginning I was a war
lover. When I was a teenager I was fascinated by the war in
Spain between the fascists and the communists, and I could
name you all the Italian and German aircraft and tell you
how many destroyers the Italian navy had and their armament,
I was really interested in military affairs, even when I was
a kid. And the second thing that roused your interest was
being born and raised way out in the boondocks, in a farming
community where I think any sensible person's goal was to
get away and see the world, and World War Two offered a
chance for that.
I was draft-proof because my mother was a widow, I was the
only son left to run the farm, my brother being gone. So I
had to talk my mother into signing the proper papers to let
me go. She did, she was a wise lady and we shut the farm
down and auctioned off the horses and the equipment and away
I went.
I was scared to death they'd get it over with before I got
there. So if you love war where do you get the action? You
get the action in the infantry, you know, up close and
personal. And what a thrill for a kid like me, 18 years old
and never out of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma hardly. The
idea, you know, when you're 18, you're absolutely immortal.
Being in a foreign country, being in France, being in a
real war, it was on a wonderful, beautiful autumn day I saw
my first guy killed...
I had one clip with four rounds in it left (in my .45) and
just as I got to the asphalt, the German coming the other
way got to the asphalt. I got there first, I was settled
down, I had my pistol out and cocked, and he came scrambling
up. It was dark, it was just getting to be good dawn, and
there he was with his white stuff on, with a dark
background. Some of these things leave absolutely indelible
memories. I wasn't a very good pistol shot, but this was
almost point-blank, it was about, I'd say, the width of a
one-lane asphalt. And I shot low at him, hoping to hit him
in the abdomen, and I hit him right in the face, which
doesn't say much for my marksmanship, but it knocked him
backwards, so one of his feet were on the asphalt. And here
I am, how many years later, more than a half century later
and I still remember that as vividly as if it happened
yesterday. I always regretted it. Probably some kid, 19, 18
like I was, and now he's dead.
Bob Lawrence, "Tuskeegee Airman"
My dad said listen to the news. And the news announcement
was that the Air Corps was going to accept colored enlistees
for the first time. This whole thing came about from the
pressure in the black community and the black press, giving
blacks the opportunity to participate in all branches of the
military. They took a selected group of 75 to go over to
Tuskeegee and form the nucleus there, and I was among that
first group...
There was a range of feelings in that area. One was
because of being a black unit in the South, the whites
didn't appreciate the fact that we were being trained in--at
that time--the elite area of the military, the Air Force,
and so there was some resentment on that part. There was
resentment on the part of the community there, which they
projected onto our instructors, resenting the fact that
those guys were out there at the base, teaching those
niggers how to fly.
But among the group itself there was a different feeling,
because we didn't at the time generally feel segregated, but
more as a community coming together to do our bit and also
to show that we could perform like anyone else. They brought
in a group of what we called draftees, and these were the
black soldiers, some of them were what we used to call Old
Soldiers, who had actually enlisted years ago and had very
little or almost no education, and the Army was their life,
and they were brought in to do the grunt work while we went
to school. They were interspersed in the barracks with us.
And we had fellas that would come to you and ask you to read
a letter or to read a newspaper or to write a letter for
them, and also in many different ways express their pride in
the fact that you guys are really going to do something and
make history.
I was assigned to a fighter group whose primary mission
was to protect bombers as they flew on their missions. The
bomber groups would refuse to have us escort them, until the
war situation got such that they didn't have a choice, and
we were given the assignment. We were the only Air Force
unit that never lost a bomber to fighters in the whole war.
And then the bomb units would ask to have the 332nd, the Red
Tails as we were called because of the airplane marking,
would ask for us to escort them.
Which was great. We had a great camaraderie
in the air, but it didn't exist on the ground. Many times
they were very cordial and we had good interaction socially,
but as soon as we came back to the States after the war,
things reverted to the racial attitudes of, well, they were
so glad because we had protected them and chased the
fighters away, and so we had drinks, we had a jeep to use,
anything we wanted, but that was it because they had their
girlfriends there (at the Officer's Club) and they didn't
want to have anything to do socially with us when we got
back to the States. But overseas it was a different
situation, it was open arms.
