reflections

reflections I want you to realize how different the coutry was in the 30s. We were an isolationist country, epitomized by the likes of Senator Vandenberg, Mich., Henry Ford, and my then {not now}, hero Charles Lindberg, who actually praised the Nazi to the skies. The vast majority of we Americans had no idea of what was going on in the world. I never heard of the Holocaust until after the war was over, and yet I was in it, and flew 44 missions in B-24s in 1945!
This helps to set the stage for some thoughts I want to try and get across about the attitudes regarding race. We Northerners thought the Southerners were really bad racists, but maybe the way they handled " the Negro problem" was not too bad. We had a fes bloacks in the early 30s, and more after Henry Ford but a whole generation of southerners, mostly Black, to Detroit for wages of $5.00 an hour. Unheard of then! As I was a teenager, I heard my parent's friends speak of Blacks, and Jews, to the extent that they, my parent's friends, could live with this situation as long as they all stayed in their place. Of course we realize now what an insidious way of bigotry this was. As an old man, 82, I can't deny this happened, and shaped our thinking as we grew up.
I can only say I'm sorry, and try to live a good Chrisitian life: Even though consider myself an agnostic/atheist.
Sortof on the subject, when I was in about the 8th grade, I had 2 friends, brothers, named Noble. Their father had a small, successful, camera shop. He traded it for a large, very successful, photography business, and the mansion that the owner, Jewish, had in Germany. The families literally traded lifes. I got to know the German boy a little, but soonafter I started High School, and lost touch with him. I did however, receive mail from my friends the Nobles right until we went to war! Each letter praised what Hitler was doing, and applauded the switch the family had made. One of the last letters I received informed me that both brothers had joined the military. I didn't hear of the again untilafter the war. Then I read that both brothers had returned to America, and sought assylym and citizenship, claiming they had been forced to join the war on Hitler's side. They even managed to get a feature story in True magazine. When I read this, I called the FBI, and told them of my thoughts about this. They assured me they were aware of the history, and I never heard about them again.
I hope this long dissertation somehow shows my mind set in these, my growing up years.