The Good War: An Oral History of World War II

by Studs Terkel

Aaaahh, I feel that if countries are gonna fight a war, find yourself an island with nobody and then just put all your men in there and let them kill each other. Or better, send the politicians, let them fight it out.

I was raised in the fundamentalist faith. I was taught that I was nothing. My feeling is if God created me, if God sent his only begotten son to give his life for me, then I am something.

If the Bible says, Thou shalt not kill, it doesn’t say, Except in time of war. They’ll send a man to the electric chair who in a temper killed somebody. But they pin medals on our men. The more people they kill, the more medals they pin on ’em.

I think American suburbs are bound by their antiblack sentiments. That’s the common denominator. They’re into it very easily, it seems. They feel they’ve achieved. But

told the warden at El Reno as soon as I got there, “If you’re interested in reforming me or rehabilitating or changing me, you must explain to me why you got these guys in here who have been convicted of murder and why you’ve got me in here, too, because I refused to murder people.”

It created the Department of Defense. Up till that time, when you appropriated money for the War Department, you knew it was for war and you could see it clearly. Now it’s for the Department of Defense. Everybody’s for defense. Otherwise you’re considered unpatriotic.

In all those films, people get blown up with their clothes and fall gracefully to the ground. You don’t see anybody being blown apart. You don’t see arms and legs and mutilated bodies. You see only an antiseptic, clean, neat way to die gloriously. I hate it when they say, “He gave his life for his country.” Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids.

They don’t die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them.

I went to a church in Champaign, Illinois, about three weeks ago. There’s a plaque in front near the altar: In honor of the men who died, were wounded, and served in World War Two. The left-hand side says, For God. The right-...