And if it took bombing civilian cities, so be it. And I was determined, as we all were, that we were gonna end the war. I just, at the time, had an animosity towards the German or Japanese war effort. Words of Paul Montgomery: One of my son’s married a Japanese – she’s from Hawaii – and she’s the best thing that ever happened to him. Laurence Rees: Unlike a number of other veterans I met from the Pacific war, Paul Montgomery denied that he possessed, at the time, any racist feelings towards the Japanese. It’s kind of like conducting a war through a video game. It’s not like going down and sticking a bayonet in somebody’s belly, OK? You kill them from a distance and it doesn’t have that demoralizing effect upon you that it did if I went up and stuck a bayonet in somebody’s stomach in the course of combat. And if they told me to go bomb cities, I went and bombed cities. And I really was wanting to get the war over and I wanted to go home. I was twenty one years old that summer of the firebombing. I didn’t have any regrets, to put it bluntly. Complete one hundred percent obliteration. We started with Osaka and Tokyo and Nagoya, and all the major cities, and they were firebombed to nothing left except steps and chimneys. And so that brought about the firebombing missions of the major targets. Words of Paul Montgomery: It was felt that we had to reduce not only their ability to wage war, but their desire to wage war. And it wasn’t long before he and the rest of his crew were told that they would now be required to firebomb Japanese cities. Laurence Rees: Paul Montgomery joined the United States Army Air Force and was trained as a radio officer on one of the giant B-29 Superfortress bombers that operated in the Pacific. The Japanese had surely damaged our property and I wanted to confront the Japanese more than the Germans. Words of Paul Montgomery: I began to develop a hatred for the Japanese for what they had done in such an underhand manner. And, like most Americans, he was outraged when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Laurence Rees: Paul Montgomery grew up in the 1930s in a teetotal, God-fearing family in the midwest of America.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |