"Remember Pearl Harbor!"

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1925 Touring
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"Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by 1925 Touring » Wed Dec 07, 2022 9:03 am

While it does not have much to do with the Model T, today is an important day in history, Pearl Harbor remembrance day.
Anyone have any stories they would be willing to share regarding Pearl Harbor?

Links regarding Pearl Harbor
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/70 ... 1512620536
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/41 ... 1418070812
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/11 ... 1291864337
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/25 ... 1355026593

Here is an interesting link...
http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/25 ... 1355023390
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Rob » Wed Dec 07, 2022 9:20 am

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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Moxie26 » Wed Dec 07, 2022 9:25 am

Some of us have cherished memories of those who lost their lives at Pearl Harbor that day, and even more in my mind have personal memories of surviving veterans of Pearl Harbor who were there that day, that we worked with in our own lives. Thru the years afterwards , some chose not to share their experience but showed positive ways teaching their friends and family of survival . I worked with a part timer, a Pearl Harbor survivor, who passed 10 years ago, a great friend who shared the events privately of that day and days after. ... he was a true survivor.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Scott_Conger » Wed Dec 07, 2022 9:39 am

Not Dec 7, but sometime in late March and early April, my grandfather became a guest of the emperor. He was treated to a Death March, confinement, torture, a Death Ship to Japan and more torture. Because he was a Doctor and could slow down the inevitable deaths of thousands of prisoners so as to get just one more load of coal out of the mines, he was not used for bayonet practice. After his hosts got through going through the Red Cross packages every month, he was left with a few bandages and a little morphine. He'd read the Bible to the wounded and ill, and every night decided who was well enough to benefit from sleep via morphine, and who was too far gone and would have to be left to suffer in agony until they died. The fact that POW's were used as slave labor in their mines was officially denied for over 60 years until 2008.

Despite being a religious man, he never went to church again after his release.

I learned these things from long hidden, highly censored letters my grandmother kept hidden away...letters that took years in some instances to arrive, and kept arriving after the War. Post War correspondence from Chinese and Dutch soldiers who he treated and saved, sang praises of his courage and kindness. I had a hard time balancing these old letters against the man I knew, as he had obviously been changed over that experience. He went on to have a practice as a Pediatrician and was well loved by parents and patients alike, but he was rather aloof with his family. Only years later did I realize why he had several wounds on his scalp and forehead which never truly healed even up until his death in the 1970's. I now also know why I was never allowed to watch "Hogan's Hero's" on TV when we visited. There was nothing funny about Prison Camps, but how was I to know?

40% of POW's held by Japan, died.

40%.

These experiences played out again, with a new cast, in Viet Nam, (and many other places every 10 years or so) and we are all too happy to eventually reward them with our business and our dollars.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Original Smith » Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:05 am

I just put my flag out this morning.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Norman Kling » Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:19 am

I was too young to actually realize what had happened. But this I remember of that day. We did not have a working radio at our home but my aunt and uncle came to our house. They had a 1939 Plymouth with a car radio. We all went for a drive while listening to president Roosevelt giving a speech. Then came rationing and war stamps and bonds etc. and some family members going into the military, others becoming air raid wardens and Auxiliary police.
When I was in 9th grade my history teacher was the widow of a man who died on the Arizona. She watched from shore the attack. I guess their daughter was there looking too, because she was in my grade at school. Many years later we visited Pearl Harbor and went out to the Arizona Memorial and saw oil still coming up from the ship. My teacher's husbands name was on the Plaque. I am not a person who sheds tears easily, but seeing his name actually brought tears to my eyes.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by kmatt2 » Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:21 am

My late father John G Matthiesen was in the US Navy in 1940 at the age of 17, but he was discharged due to bad teeth. In Jan 1942, with USN fixed teeth, he was recalled and spent most of the war in the Pacific in many big battles. When the movie Tora Tora Tora came out I saw it with Dad and a Navy friend of Dad’s that was at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th 1941 and was told much about what happened that day from his first hand account. What a mess it was for the US on that day at Pearl !
Last edited by kmatt2 on Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:44 am, edited 3 times in total.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Jerry VanOoteghem » Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:41 am

Thank you for posting this Austin. Though it's from the post WW1 era, I think the words "Let us not forget" are appropriate here, today, and always.

May the innocent souls of our Pearl Harbor heroes forever rest in peace.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by KMcoldcars » Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:50 am

After Pearl Harbor was also bad for many Japanese-Americans.
Yesterday I had lunch with a few school classmates, all of us born in 1941-1942. My friend Ted Masumoto was there. We talked with him about the years after Pearl Harbor.
In the relocation of Japanese-Americans his father, a farmer, was given 2 days to sell his property and his family was allowed one suitcase each for the move to a camp in Idaho. They stayed there until 1945. Upon returning home they had nothing. All their property was gone. Mr. Masumoto worked hard and finally bought 5 acres to farm. The family all worked on the farm and eventually they were able to buy more land and became very successful.
We went to school in Puyallup. The fairgrounds in Puyallup were used as a holding place for the Japanese-Americans before they were shipped out to the concentration camps. I never knew about any of this until I went to college. Ted never talked about it. A great injustice was done to people just because they looked a little different from white Americans and came from a different culture.
Nothing like this should ever happen again.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by TMiller6 » Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:53 am

My sewn cotton 48 star flag is out today. While none of my relatives saw duty in Asia, they spent plenty of time fighting in Europe.

What surprised me is my son in law. In spite of a very good education with two degrees he claims he was never taught about the stars on our flag. It’s been at 50 since 1959 so his younger parents probably never mentioned it to him. For me, it’s the flag I was born under and for which my uncles and aunt (WAC) fought.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by TXGOAT2 » Wed Dec 07, 2022 11:56 am

I don't think most Japanese-Americans would have been safe on the streets after December 7. War is HELL.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by KMcoldcars » Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:26 pm

Here on the west coast some Japanese -Americans sold their property to friends who took care of it and then sold it back to the families they bought it from for the same price. Most interred people lost everything they had.
Ted says he and his family suffered discrimination after the war. He said some of our classmates even discriminated against him in high school. I guess you can not fix stupid.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by ModelT46 » Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:55 pm

I remember Dec 7, 1941. I was in my father's 1938 Packard and we were on Snelling Ave. In St Paul, MN. My father turned the radio on and we heard of the attack. I was 9 years old at that time.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by jiminbartow » Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:56 pm

Scott, instead of Doctor, your Grandfather sounds like he should have had “Saint” before his name. The Jewish people have a title they award to the greatest hero’s who did extraordinary things under the most dire circumstances: “Righteous among nations”. That is how your Grandfather should be referred to as and presented with “The Medal of Honor”. Our nation’s highest award for saving so many and easing those he could not save into the next life. Those letters and your Grandfather’s harrowing story should be published and made public to teach everyone the truth the Japanese still deny. Jim Patrick
Last edited by jiminbartow on Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Scott_Conger » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:00 pm

My grandfather was especially loved by his ex-captors and professed so in their requests for favorable testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes trial. During the War, they showed their love for him by beating him less severely than they did the enlisted men.

They got the testimony they deserved, not necessarily what they wanted.

The vast majority of Japanese-Americans got a horribly unfair, illegal treatment from the American Government. But not all were treated unfairly. In a world without satellites or aerial reconnaissance, every map of Hawaii and Pearl Harbor were hand drawn maps with precise and accurate intelligence of which ship was where and was highly accurate and up to date...that information did not appear out of nowhere, and the Japanese Language Schools were rife with Old Country Loyalists. I would imagine that it is and was, difficult to remain dispassionate and level-headed when you were worried that your own home was about to be bombed in an attack that had no prior historical precedence in your country. Hindsight is much clearer and certain than prognostication.

Japanese Relocation Camps are a unique history all of their own. I live near one of the largest, which has been turned into a living museum. The stories range from heartache and suffering through winter in inadequate housing, to that of friendship and continued loyalty to America. The nearby town of Cody created a Boy Scout Troop just to include the kids, and many of the internees volunteered and served in the Military. A Memorial stands in the camp in honor of those who served and to those, by name, who died fighting for the US.

Senators Alan Simpson and Norman Mineta were two such Boy Scouts who met and maintained a life-long friendship. Alan being a resident of Cody, WY, and Norman, an internee in the Relocation Camp.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Mark Nunn » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:17 pm

My great uncle Cy was stationed at Pearl Harbor. He survived the attack because he was on shore leave on December 7. My great grandfather was too old to enlist. But determined not to let his son fight alone, he shaved a few years off his age and also served in the Navy.

And let's not forget the other side of the world. I have only one remaining family member who was held in a concentration camp in Poland. He does not talk about those times.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Scott_Conger » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:18 pm

Jim

thank you for the kind words. He is mentioned in a harrowing book "Barbed Wire Surgeon" just briefly. It was during a voyage in an unmarked Japanese warship (Death Ship). The surgeon/author mentioned "Gentle Dr. Bxxxxxxxxx ministering to the ill, who lay 2-3 deep down in the hull of the ship, which smelled of death and diesel fuel."

Letters from a Dutchman after the war have more information as he corresponded with my Grandfather after the War. Grandad and he swapped Tulip bulbs for cigarettes. Both were breaking the law doing this.

Another letter after the war from a Chinese private that he had treated while in a prison camp somewhere in the Philippines, sent to the State Dept., translated and then sent to him in Canton, OH read like the poetry that it was due to being that the Chinese language is a series of symbols meant to convey ideas in the absence of words and went something akin to this: Many deep sorrows; days past; friendships made; bright days ahead. Still brings tears to my eyes. Whether my grandfather ever returned the kindness of a letter is unknown.

Sadly all I recall of him is that he believed ripping a band aid off fast was the best way to do it, and that he enjoyed shopping for aircraft models for me when we visited...probably to keep me quiet and busy! The best model was was the one where he got a Buffalo Nickle back in change and gave it to me...what a thrill! Such are the memories of a child.

I'm told that though he was religious when he was called up (40 years old!) and read the Bible to the wounded, he never stepped into a church again with the exception of the wedding of his daughter, my mother.

That was a tough generation, and it makes me want to gag when I see what we've become.

Mark Nunn

my grandfather spoke not a word of it and neither did my grandmother. I so wish I had had the opportunity to at least know how he had served his Country. Being a physician, and comfortably upper-middle class after the War, he belonged to a club. When we ate once at the "Canton Club", I remember almost all of the men would leave their table and come over to ours to shake his hand and say "hello". I of course had no idea why.

Everything I know about him came about in my 30's when my mother dug out a large box of correspondence that her mother, my grandmother had sealed up around 1949. We were the first to open it and were amazed, shocked and saddened by the contents.
Last edited by Scott_Conger on Wed Dec 07, 2022 3:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by TWrenn » Wed Dec 07, 2022 1:28 pm

Scott...I can't expand more on what Jim said.
God bless him. His story brought me close to tears. May he rest in peace and God bless America. As we sit here and enjoy our freedoms and cars, there are plenty of evil forces out there doing everything in their power to take it away from us. Don't think for one minute the oil pipe shutdown months ago and now this TERROR attack on that substation wasn't just a "practice run". Get your generators ready my friends, we're gonna need 'em. I'm still building up my solar generation system. Gas won't be around long enough.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Scott_Conger » Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:02 pm

Something that is not found in history books is the fact that so many servicemen "knew" war was coming. My grandfather was called up at age 40 and was shipped to the Philippines with only a side arm. He and his entire company had nothing but standard issue sidearms. His first letter to my grandmother was mostly redacted but still contained the phrase "prepare for war". They and the rest of them on the islands were criminally ill-prepared for a major conflict that both he and my grandmother were certain was coming. I think but for his very German name, he would have ended up in Europe and not the Pacific. Who knows?

Interestingly, she swore to her dying day that the cartoon, "Steve Canyon" I think, contained hidden messages relating to large populations of POWs moving from one camp to another. I've never heard of anyone else coming up with such a wild story, but in retrospect, she was correct in a general way, on 3 of the 4 moves he was actually involved in when prisoners were transferred (one being his last transfer to Japan). Maybe hopeful or fearful guesses of a terrified wife, but she believed it with her entire being. Again, I had to learn this years later from my mother...no mention of it from my grandmother.

So many families have stories to tell or stories forgotten. We tried to get family war correspondence to multiple museums to catalogue or support stories of other service men and women and have been turned down by every one of them, because like the millions of others who served, most remain anonymous and are not of any fame or particular (historical) noteworthiness. Sad in a way, but a sobering reminder that his story is not unique and shared by a multitude of others. Because of this, his history will soon be lost to the relentlessness of time. For better or worse.
Last edited by Scott_Conger on Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by TWrenn » Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:05 pm

I lost track of time posting above as I needed to run and get blood work done. Now, to finish, we also need to take this day also to remember ALL those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for us. But for sure, today is a very poignant day, as so many young and even older people lost their lives in what truly had to be an unimaginable time of horrific terror. God bless them all, and their families. RIP.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by kmatt2 » Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:53 pm

Scott, You should get in touch with Paul Loeffler of KMJ580 radio in Fresno California. Paul tapes a nationally syndicated regular weekend radio show called Hometown Heroes where he interviews veterans and family members to tell their story from WW2 up to present, with the main focus on WW2 before these stories are lost. Many shows have grandchildren telling stories from surviving era letters written during the war. Paul research’s the military history to add back ground to the story. If Paul has already recorded your family’s story, thank you and thank you for posting this on the forum.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by otrcman » Wed Dec 07, 2022 4:21 pm

I was born in 1942, so my memories are of other children of the war years, but also of the older veterans when I joined the workforce as a young adult. Lots of memories of those people of both generations, including my father and three uncles who served during WWII.

But perhaps my favorite smiling memory was of a fellow employee. Both Carl and his wife were natural born Americans of Japanese ancestry, born in the late 1930's in Hawaii.

When Carl and his wife bought their first house in Lancaster, an ugly sign appeared in their yard. The sign warned of lowered property values and ill cared for yards. With a bit of skulduggery, he learned that the neighbor across the street had made the sign. Which neighbor had the nicest looking yard on the street.

So Carl went to work making his yard nicer than the neighbor's. He and his wife worked weekends and evenings, perfecting their yard. Their yard soon put the neighbor's to shame. When the neighbor stepped up his gardening game, Carl worked twice as hard to stay ahead of him. No words were ever spoken.

But I think the neighbor might have gotten the message.


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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Dan McEachern » Wed Dec 07, 2022 6:06 pm

My daughter attended the University of Arizona, and the mall on the campus has a full size outline of the hull of the USS Arizona imbedded in the lawn.
It is a very humbling experience to stand there on the mall and read all the plaques for the sailors that died that day.

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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by 1925 Touring » Thu Dec 08, 2022 11:20 am

It's amazing how much the reaction from such horrific experiences can change. One person may experience something tragic, and be helped, and their name circulated for generations to come. But in large scale chaos and tragedy, like December 7, 1941, all their names are just "mushed" together into one large number. Each person experienced tragedy and horrific circumstances, but they don't get individual attention and care. Pearl Harbor is one of many many incidents where life was lost, and each person has (or had) a story to tell. Some people never get that chance.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Steve Jelf » Thu Dec 08, 2022 1:35 pm

Something that is not found in history books is the fact that so many servicemen "knew" war was coming.

It was not only servicemen. My grandfather, Mom's dad (1865-1941), reading newspaper accounts of Japan's actions in China and the Pacific, predicted that we would end up in a war with them. He died in May 1941, nearly two months before I was born and seven months before his prediction came true.

In 1941 we lived in Wilmington, part of the port of Los Angeles. In those days the nearby Palos Verdes Peninsula was not the highly developed residential area it is today. The towns there were small and the land was mostly agricultural or unoccupied. The areas that weren't too hilly for farming, overlooking the ocean, were owned by Japanese-American farmers. After Pearl Harbor Mom had nightmares in which some of those farmers had tied grenades to the springs of her bed, and she awoke desperately trying to untie the explosives. In 1950 we moved to Lomita, and she met Terry Mitoma, who was working as a checker at Vista Market. They became best friends. History is complex, like the humans who make it.
The inevitable often happens.
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by 20touring » Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:39 pm

After hearing of the Pearl Harbor attack my late father enlisted and served from early 1942-46 in the USAAF stateside as an aircraft mechanic and crew training on B24 & B29 bombers.
The war changed his life forever. He went from farming behind 2 horses before the war to working on then state of the art aircraft. After the war he made his living as a diesel mechanic but still took care of the 68 acre family farm.
He is the reason I am in the model T hobby as he had two on the farm before the war. A touring and a roadster wood box pickup. He paid $7 for one and $13 for the other in the ‘30’s!
It would be almost 60 years before he would drive another T when we brought my 20 touring home in 1996. I have a couple of parts from his T’s in my collection.
Thanks Dad...for everything.
Remember Pearl Harbor !

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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by Charlie B in N.J. » Thu Dec 08, 2022 7:01 pm

Many years ago Wifey and I visited Pearl. We were on a bus tour and the driver told a small group of us that Japanese tourists don’t come here claiming they weren’t taught about the attack in their schools. I have since been told that isn’t true but I don’t know either way. So in we go and the first thing you see is a film about the events leading up to the attack and it’s not very flattering to the Japanese. True but not flattering. There was a family of what I assumed were Japanese people. Mother, Dad & a small child. They sat a few rows ahead of us. As the movie unfolded I actually saw the guy slip lower and lower into his seat and they soon went out a side exit. Made me think the bit about their schooling was true. The Memorial is a very sobering experience.
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OilyBill
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Joined: Sat Apr 25, 2020 3:51 pm
First Name: William
Last Name: May
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Re: "Remember Pearl Harbor!"

Post by OilyBill » Sat Dec 10, 2022 12:38 am

When I was on a tour of China in 2000, I talked with our tour guide (a young girl who spoke perfect English) quite a bit.
She told me that she never took on any Japanese tours, because of her father's suffering in China in WWII. She said that the selection of what tours to take was voluntary, and she knew several other tour guides who also would decline to escort Japanese tour groups. She herself only escorted American and Australian tours.

I was also quite touched by the AVG museum for the Flying Tigers. I do not remember what city it was in, but there was an entire museum dedicated to the Flying Tigers AVG in China. I had assumed there would be no particular memory of them, but even the Communists were very interested in them, and it was a very popular local museum. They were trying to find a P-40 aircraft they could afford, to put on display there.

Another thing I was surprised to find out about was the heavy toll the Chinese paid, after the Doolittle Raid. They estimated about 500,000 Chinese died because of reprisals after the raid, because the Japanese knew that all the U.S. crews could not have disappeared like they did, without being helped by the Chinese. If Japanese troops found even a TRACE of the U.S. fliers, it could mean the murder of an entire Chinese village. A thing as simple as a uniform button would bring down the wrath of the Japanese, not only on that village, but on all the villages that were adjacent. The U.S. fliers HAD to go somewhere, but no one talked, and thousands of Chinese died.

Near that AVG museum, I stumbled on a machine shop, and decided to just walk in. It looked to me like what a 1930's machine shop in the U.S. must have been like, except all the workers were Chinese. Machinists are the same the world over, so I got a really nice tour. The equipment was old and well used, but they were doing very good work with simple equipment. They had a blacksmith section in the shop, and actual blacksmiths who knew how to forge metal into parts to be machined. One of their larger customers was a local factory that made small motorcycles for local sale. This was in 2000, so there were no new modern digital machine tools. (Those were to come in the 2010s, when Chinese industry made the jump to ISO standards and all the machine plants were improved.) They machined a lot of shafts and cranks, and had dies that they used to stamp out sheet metal parts. They also made sprockets for bicycles, and did a lot of machine repair for local small industries.

Regarding the Hogan's Heroes TV show, my father never missed an episode, and thought it was hilarious. He really enjoyed how the Germans were depicted as idiots. He was a sergeant in charge of a machine gun company from D-Day to February 6th of 1945, when he was captured by the Germans near the border between Belgium and Germany. He and the rest of his group didn't bear the Germans any great ill will, at least not until the Concentration Camps were revealed. He only weighed 86 lbs. when he was liberated. He and the prison guards spent most of their time walking east, to stay ahead of the advancing Allies. They had very little to eat, and never got any Red Cross packages, but he said the Germans with them were starving right along with the Americans. There was no food for anyone. The Germans were not particularly mean to them, as they all just trudged down snowy roads, heading deeper into Germany.

Also regarding Hogan's Heroes, I found out later that the Mercedes G-4 staff car that General Burkhalter used to use, was in fact the staff car that Hitler rode in more often than any other. In fact it was the same car Hitler used to ride into Czechoslovakia and Austria. Also, Col Klink, Sgt Shultz, General Burkhalter, and Frenchman LaBeau used to meet and go out to dinner once a week in L.A. since they were ALL refugees from the Nazis in the 1940's.

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