TRUST
THEN
DELLIE HAHNE
The OWI, Office of War Information, did a thorough job of convincing us our cause was unquestionably right. We were stopping Hitler, and you look back at it and you had to stop him. We were saving the world. We were allied with Russia, which was great at that time. Germany had started World War I and now it had started World War II, and Germany would be wiped off the face of the map. A few years later, when we started to arm Germany, I was so shocked. I’d been sold a bill of goods–I couldn’t believe it. I remember sitting on the back porch here, I picked up the paper, and I read that our sworn enemy was now our ally. The disillusionment was so great, that was the beginning of distrusting my own government. Russia was the enemy form the time I was born right up to ’40. Then Russia became our ally. It’s funny nobody stopped to think that this was a complete turnabout. As soon as the war was over, we dropped Russia. During the war, I never heard any anti-Russian talk.
…
There were some movies that we knew were sheer bullshit. There was a George Murphy movie where he gets his draft induction notice. He opens the telegram, and he’s in his pajamas and bare feet, and he runs around the house and humps over the couch and jumps over the chair, screaming and yelling. His landlady says, “What’s going on?” “I’ve been drafted! I’ve been drafted.” Well, the whole audience howled. ‘Cause they know you can feed ‘em only so much bullshit. If a guy in a movie was a civilian, he always had to say–what was it? Gene Kelley in Cover Girl? I remember this line: “Well, Danny, why aren’t you in the army?” “Hell, I was wounded in North Africa, and now all I can do is keep people happy by putting on these shows.” They had to explain why the guy wasn’t in uniform. Always. There was always a line in the movie: “Well, I was turned down.” “Oh, tough luck.” There were always soldiers in the audience, and they would scream. So we recognized a lot of the crap.
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The good war? That infuriates me. Yeah, the idea of World War II being called a good war is a horrible thing. I think of all the atrocities. I think of a madman who had all this power. I think of the destruction of the Jews, the misery, the horrendous suffering in the concentration camps. In 1971, I visited Dachau. I could not believe what I saw. There’s one barracks left, a model barracks. You can reconstruct the rest and see what the hell was going on. It doesn’t take a visit to make you realize the extent of human misery. I know it had to be stopped and we stopped it. But I don’t feel proud, because the way we did it was so devious. How many years has it been? Forty years later? I feel I’m standing here with egg on my face. I was lied to. I was cheated. I was made a fool of. If they had said to me, Look, this has to be done and we’ll go out and do the job, I’d understand. If they didn't hand me all this shit with the uniforms and the girls in their pompadours dancing at the USO and all those songs–“There’ll Be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover”–bullshit!.
I met my future husband. I really didn't care that much for him, but the pressure was so great. My brother said, “What do you mean you don't like Glenn? You’re going to marry him, aren’t you?” The first time it would occur to me that I would marry anybody. The pressure to marry a soldier was so great that after a while I didn't question it. I have to marry sometime and I might as well marry him. … I knew Glenn six weekends, not weeks. They began on Saturday afternoon. We’d go out in herds and stay up all night. There was very little sleeping around. We were still at the tail-end of a moral generation. Openly living together was not condoned. An illegitimate child was a horrendous handicap. It was almost the ruination of your life. I’m amazed and delighted the way it’s accepted now, that a girl isn’t a social outcast any more.
In her interview with Studs Terkel, Dellie Hahne mentions the popular WWII war song "There'll Be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover" as an example of romanticization of the military at the time. Click below to listen to a recording of WWII singer Vera Lynn sing "The White Cliffs of Dover"
I think of all the atrocities... I think of
the destruction of the
Jews, the misery, the horrendous suffering in
the concentration
camps... I was lied to. I
was cheated.
NOW
MECCA LEWIS
Well, thousands of people were killed, so I don’t think anything is really worth that. I think I read something that over a hundred thousand people died and I can’t say that they were all people who were part of the war. Maybe thousands of innocent people died just because–you know–a war in their own hometown.
Do you think it is honorable to be a soldier?
There needs to be somebody if we are going to continue fighting in wars, somebody has to do it, but personally I don’t think it’s brave, I think it’s a waste of your life. But if you want to dedicate your life to an outdated way to solve problems, then good for you. If you don’t, that’s also a good use of your life. You only live life one time, so if you waste it on something that wasn’t actually worth fighting for–like fighting over commodities–then you just killed yourself for nothing.
I don’t think I’ve been affected by war enough to have a concrete explanation, because I’ve never known anybody who fought in a war, so I’m not personally influenced by that. War, for some, is necessary–I mean I really don’t know, because… If you’re fighting a war over territory, like unclaimed territory, then I guess that’s the only way to settle that dispute, but if you’re fighting over something intangible, it’s kind of stupid.
Both of my parents do not support war, just because they feel that it isn’t worth all the lives that are lost and they aren’t really national gains, because the same problems will eventually come back, and it will be a never-ending cycle.
I think that war was worth it in historical times, like the civil war, for example. That was all that people really knew of and there wasn’t the technological advances that we can use today. Or people just didn’t understand problem solving in general, and the way to settle disputes was to use your hands, and doing everything in a DIY manner, so war was a reasonable way to settle problems. But today it’s not really worth it because we can use our inventions to solve problems.
I think that many people today, with the technology, are used to being softies, with every problem you see is online. Many people live in this completely other world of the internet, so everyone is very sheltered with technology. So I think now that it’s not something that’s necessarily second nature to want to fight people, but it’s something that older people believe in.
It really depends on what the fight is for. If it is for the Black Lives Matter movement, I would, because we’re supposedly equal. Fighting for my own...Now this contradicts what I said before because I guess you could say, “I’m an American, and I’m going to stand up for my country,” but I can’t stand up for American values that don’t support me as well. If I was fighting for a certain group or demographic that pertained to me, and that contradicts the Constitution, then I would fight for it. I would not fight for my country if it was something that had to do with, essentially, white supremacy or things that really don’t pertain to me at all.
I don’t really find interest in foreign affairs most of the time, but from what I do know is that that US does things for it’s own benefit. So they might join an alliance with some other country for the benefit, rather than for the moral reasons, but I wouldn’t say I know enough about foreign policy to really comment on it.
The people that I associate with normally are more democratic and against that type of thing [war], and are activists. I am acquainted with many people who are conservative and they believe that America is the best place on earth and they would jump into war at the snap of a finger if need be.
I don’t think dropping a bomb on anybody is necessary, because, again, too many innocent people could be killed in the mix of all that. I would say that I do equate war to murder. Here in America, when we’re fighting wars, there are many people who do not support it and I’m sure that there are plenty of people in other countries who don’t support it, but are seen as the enemy just because they are associated with those other people. There are just too many people, too many mishaps in the mix of war.
Do you think that your government has actively deceived you or kept information from you in your lifetime?
Everyday I believe that. I’m slightly okay with the privacy issues that people are just now trying to bring up. Everything about yourself is somewhere stored on the internet, no matter who you are. Your social security number is in some government database somewhere, nothing is ever really private. People who then turn around and start to read the Terms of Agreement and get all upset that they’re not getting the privacy they deserve.
In a very selfish way, I do trust the government. They will do very shady things to make sure that everybody here is safe, even if that is violating laws, or doing things under the table. There are some elected official who I trust and others who I don’t. In a way I guess I do and I don’t.
Click below to hear a snippet of Mecca's interview.
I guess you could say, "I'm an American, and I'm going to stand up for my country," but I can't stand up for American values that don't support me as well.