Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: With news from Minnesota Public Radio, this is Karen Louise Boothe. US Senator Paul Wellstone is hoping to draw attention to poverty and the plight of the nation's children. Later this week, he embarks on his much talked about poverty tour with stops first planned for Mississippi. During congressional debate over welfare reform last year, Wellstone, who was the only Senator up for re-election to vote against it, promised to shed light on issues of economic justice and the government's role in helping create it.

PAUL WELLSTONE: And if we really wanted to do this the right way for children and make sure that all these kids are prepared for school and prepared for life, here's what it would cost. And I'm going to take it to the Congressional Budget Office and get it costed out. And so now if you say you don't want to do it, I'm not going to let you say it's because you don't know what to do. You're going to have to say it's because you don't want to spend the money.

KAREN LOUISE BOOTHE: Wellstone is also planning similar visits in Minnesota this summer. President Clinton is prodding the nation's corporations and businesses to help move people from welfare to work, following national and state reform. But so far, none of Minnesota's Fortune 100 companies has implemented a program like that.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe hopes to have one of two tracks reopened today in Pepin, Wisconsin, where a train derailed. 32 cars carrying wheat and corn syrup rolled off the tracks yesterday. It's a main route between Chicago and the Twin Cities.

A Minneapolis refuge for people with AIDS will open a second home this fall or early next year. While the Agape Home is not excluding anyone, its focus is on serving Hispanics.

We have some nice weather our way this holiday weekend. Partly cloudy, still breezy around the Twin Cities area, although we have a high expected in the low 60s. Around the state, it's sunny and 47 in Duluth. Rochester, cloudy and 47. Brainerd, partly sunny and 50. In the Twin Cities, partly sunny and 50. That's news from MPR.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Today's programming is supported by 3M, who generously matches more than 900 employee contributions to Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Joe Gomer left his hometown of Iowa falls, Iowa, during World War 2 to become a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. The all-Black group of army Air Force pilots was kept separate from white soldiers. Today on our voices of Minnesota interview, we hear Gomer talk about this little known chapter of American history. Segregation was the military's policy during most of World War 2. The success of the Tuskegee Airmen prompted President Harry Truman to end the segregation after the war.

About half of the more than 900 Black pilots who earned their wings at the Tuskegee Army Airfield in Alabama flew fighter aircraft missions in Europe. Joe Gomer lives in Duluth now and talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Kelleher.

JOE GOMER: The Tuskegee Airmen, that was the great experiment. There was no place for Blacks in the military, particularly in flying. And it was because of the pressure from 14 million Black Americans and the Black press, and a few congressmen that they finally established a program for Blacks. That was kind of accelerated.

Eleanor Roosevelt visited what was to be Tuskegee Army Airfield back in '43 and she got a chance to ride with a Black pilot. The individual who set up the program, flight program down there, he just died last year. He had landed and she said, I want to go for a ride. And I guess that was consternation, but she insisted.

And Chief Anderson took her up for a ride and flew around the area and came back down. And she got out and she said, now I know he can fly. And I think that her pressure on Franklin after she got back to Washington helped get the Tuskegee program off the ground.

BOB KELLEHER: The Tuskegee base was sighted in-- was in Alabama, Tuskegee, Alabama.

JOE GOMER: Right, just outside of Tuskegee, Alabama.

BOB KELLEHER: And there's some speculation that that was intentional as well. There was a reason for that.

JOE GOMER: Well, absolutely. No other airfields wanted the traffic, so we ended up with our own private airfield.

BOB KELLEHER: So a special base was built for the first Black flyers in World War 2.

JOE GOMER: It was carved out of the cotton fields.

BOB KELLEHER: Did they ever expect, these people, your flying mates, to succeed?

JOE GOMER: Well, they knew we couldn't do it. That was the whole idea. They just wanted to prove it. And even after we succeeded, some people didn't believe it.

BOB KELLEHER: What was your first experience? How was it that you came to be a member, and what was your initiation into joining the group in Alabama?

JOE GOMER: I had applied for the aviation cadet program. And after some difficulty, I passed a physical. They were using every kind of an excuse to keep you out. And I know at one time, they sent me back. They said-- the flight sergeant said I had a deviated septum. So I came back home and had the country doctor undeviate my septum. And I was-- the next time I passed. So eventually they had an opening and I was in the first group to go from the Midwest, three of us: Morris Evans and Luther Smith, and I.

BOB KELLEHER: And you travel by train to the south?

JOE GOMER: Right.

BOB KELLEHER: What was that like?

JOE GOMER: Well, that was my introduction to segregation. The first breakfast we went to, the conductor seated us at the end of the car and pulled the curtain on us. And I never had a curtain pulled on me before, so I got up and I pulled it back.

BOB KELLEHER: So he was hiding you in the car.

JOE GOMER: Oh, yes. We were to be isolated. And later on in the war, after our troops had started coming back home, I had one acquaintance. He and his wife were on the dining car and a white Colonel objected to being on the car, dining car with him and ordered him out. He was escorted out by the military police.

BOB KELLEHER: You'd experienced racism in Iowa growing up, mostly I think when you visited the larger communities. Were you aware the way things were in the Southern United States in the early 1940s?

JOE GOMER: We were always aware of it. It was in the press. There were lynchings. When you traveled, you never knew where he could get a meal or where he could get lodging.

BOB KELLEHER: When you joined the Tuskegee Airmen and you made that trip to the south, were you out to change anything? I mean, were you seeking your own personal glory or were you out to change something bigger?

JOE GOMER: I was out to fight for my country.

BOB KELLEHER: And kind of demanding the right to do that.

JOE GOMER: That we had to fight to fight.

BOB KELLEHER: You were telling us that the officer that played such a key role in the Tuskegee Airmen.

JOE GOMER: Well, that would be Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. He came along at the right time and he was an excellent leader and the only one available at the time.

BOB KELLEHER: What was special about him?

JOE GOMER: Well, his father was an army officer. He rose from a private and later on to the first Black general. He also wanted to fly. And having completed West Point, he had all the character traits that were necessary. Plus, having weathered West Point, he could conquer just about anything after that.

BOB KELLEHER: They shunned him essentially.

JOE GOMER: They subjected him to the silence treatment, which was normally reserved for cadets who had broken the honor code and refused to resign. So no one spoke to him except in line of duty.

BOB KELLEHER: And in general, when somebody is treated that way, they can only take it so long and normally would leave West Point. But he didn't.

JOE GOMER: He stuck it out.

BOB KELLEHER: Was his role vital in bringing about the success of the airmen?

JOE GOMER: Well, he was an excellent example for everyone. And everyone admired and they did their best for him.

BOB KELLEHER: How did this great experiment finally get into action?

JOE GOMER: In early '43, they finally sent a squadron, a token squadron, the first, the 99th to the Mediterranean theater. Windham sent them to North Africa. And that kind of broke the ice. But they had been training for seven months before they finally utilized all of this skill. That was a terrible waste of resources. Being as pressing as they were. a white pilot would have been in combat.

BOB KELLEHER: We were landing troops, though, in Africa by this time. And the first group sent over, were they sent to protect the troops in Africa or what was their role?

JOE GOMER: The 99th, they performed mostly interdiction missions and bombed targets.

BOB KELLEHER: This wasn't considered the glory work of a pilot.

JOE GOMER: That was the grunt work.

BOB KELLEHER: What is it that a pilot wants to do?

JOE GOMER: Well, he would like to get up and shoot down enemy aircraft. However, one reason the bomber crews liked the 3/32 was that Davis made it very clear that our primary objective was to escort those bombers and we were not to take off and chase bandits so that we were always there for the bombers. And they really appreciated that.

BOB KELLEHER: There was allegations after some time that the group wasn't performing up to par, that they weren't scoring the successes of shooting down the enemy aircraft.

JOE GOMER: They didn't have opportunity to shoot down enemy aircraft. The first time they had an opportunity, they scored well. I think it was Lieutenant Hall shot down the first one and [INAUDIBLE] with 190 and then over Anzio, it was in early '44 they had their first successes. They shot down five enemy aircraft one day and seven the next without a loss.

BOB KELLEHER: Well, that was really the turning point. The first shoot down with Lieutenant Hall was the first-- I mean, the first German who shot down by the group. And as I recall, General Eisenhower even came over to offer his congratulations.

JOE GOMER: That broke the ice. But we were accepted after that.

BOB KELLEHER: But still, there was a moment where there was actually a hearing in Washington to try to determine if this group was--

JOE GOMER: Well, that was just prior to their successes.

BOB KELLEHER: When did you join up with the Tuskegee Airmen? Were you in one of the first groups? Did you join later?

JOE GOMER: I went overseas with the 332nd fighter group.

BOB KELLEHER: So this was after the initial, what, the 99th was--

JOE GOMER: The 99th was already over there.

BOB KELLEHER: Yeah. And what was your role then?

JOE GOMER: I was a fighter pilot.

BOB KELLEHER: You were based in Italy at the time.

JOE GOMER: Right. We landed at Taranto and our job over the first couple of months was escorting-- not escorting, but convoy patrol.

BOB KELLEHER: Convoys of ships.

JOE GOMER: Right.

BOB KELLEHER: The aircraft flown by the Black airmen had a red tail, each different wings, I guess, had different colored tails.

JOE GOMER: With the 15th Air Force, each fighter group had a designated color for the identification. Ours was the red tail. The 52nd had yellow tails, the 31 had candy striped tails, and the 325th had checkerboard tails.

BOB KELLEHER: But the red tails earned a respect among friends and foes alike.

JOE GOMER: They did. And when I talked to these former bomber crews at this bomber reunion, they came up and thanked me on behalf of the red tails that had saved them. I was invited to this reunion of the 459th heavy bomber group at Saint Paul, their 30th annual reunion. And they invited me as a representative of the red tail group that had flown cover for them. And at the banquet, got a standing ovation. And some of the crews, they had tears in their eyes. They said they'd waited 51 years to thank us.

PAULA SCHROEDER: World War II veteran Joe Gomer, a Tuskegee airman, a segregated group of Black pilots during World War 2, talking with Bob Kelleher. You're listening to our Voices of Minnesota interview on Midmorning. It's 17 minutes past 10 o'clock. I'm Paula Schroeder. This is a special Memorial Day broadcast of Midmorning.

Joe Gomer served 22 years in the military, starting with World War 2. Let's return now to his conversation with Bob Kelleher.

BOB KELLEHER: To be in a bomber was one of the most hazardous jobs in World War 2.

JOE GOMER: It wasn't the best place to be. I had one friend who had a-- he flew a B-17. And they have a reunion every year, but he told me about one mission where they lost a crew member and barely made it back home. And the bombers, of course, had to fly across the target. And I've seen him get hit with a full bomb load and they'd just be an orange flash or the plane would catch on fire and they'd bail out and pull the chute too soon, the chute would catch fire. It was not the healthiest place to be.

BOB KELLEHER: Did the Germans come to know the red tails as well?

JOE GOMER: The Germans, in talking with some of our POWs, the Germans knew more about the 332nd fighter group than the American units did. Their espionage was such that they knew all about us when they interrogated our prisoners.

BOB KELLEHER: That's an interesting point. If we backtrack a bit to Tuskegee, Alabama, part of the speculation is that putting the group there would keep it quiet, that the South was not a place where nosy reporters would care much about a Black group of airmen. And was that the case as well as the war went on, that this group was kept kind of hush-hush among the popular press?

JOE GOMER: In the Black press, they took-- they made it pretty well-known. In fact, we represented 14 million Black Americans. We were the shining light. We undergone second class citizenship for years and they finally have some representatives up there. So the Black pilots were really at the top of the heap. But you have to remember now, there were 10-- at least 10, 12 people behind every Black pilot, crew members and maintenance people and civilians.

BOB KELLEHER: In a segregated air group, are the backup people Black as well?

JOE GOMER: Our group was Black from top to bottom.

BOB KELLEHER: So the people loading the bombs and working on the engines and fueling the airplanes.

JOE GOMER: And the way it was kind of unfortunate. I know that when the 99th went overseas, they were attached to a white group. And I think they did fly with white pilots, like for a mission or two. But we had to keep reinventing the wheel because we weren't integrated. So all the experience that the white pilots were getting, we had to learn on our own.

BOB KELLEHER: What about when off the field? Were there times-- surely you were stationed near other white air wings. You must have shared airports. Was there any mixture of the races.

JOE GOMER: No, there was no mixture. We had our own clubs.

BOB KELLEHER: Was this institutionalized within the service or was it just the social constraints of the time?

JOE GOMER: Both. In fact, we were completely segregated even in the States. We might have white commanders. And even on Tuskegee army airfield, it was segregated in that the white instructors that they had their own club and we had our own club.

BOB KELLEHER: When you finally decided it was time to leave and you'd asked to be shipped home and when it became apparent to you that you were really going back home to the United States, why don't you tell me about that?

JOE GOMER: Well, I left my unit on Christmas Day and they drove me over to Naples. And I spent several days there while we were waiting for a ship to take us home. And there was no segregation or discrimination in that replacement depot. And I wasn't aware of any and I was the only Black there. But when it came time to go home, we were lined up to get on board ship. And that troop carrier, of course, transported thousands.

And I was with the other pilots and there was this redneck, fat redneck captain on a little box. And when I got up to him, he just looked at me and ordered me to the end of the line. And then I realized I was coming home, back to second class citizenship, back to the end of the line.

BOB KELLEHER: There was obviously troops are welcomed when they come home to America. Did you feel the same kind of welcome that you might have expected or that other--

JOE GOMER: From the Black population, yes, but there were no parades for the Blacks. In fact, German POWs had it better than we did.

BOB KELLEHER: You were telling a story of German POWs getting the place on the train.

JOE GOMER: Right. They would displace Black troops to transport German prisoners. And if the German prisoners had Black guards, they could go in a restaurant and eat and the Black guards couldn't.

BOB KELLEHER: The guards had to wait outside the restaurant while the Germans could go inside.

JOE GOMER: And eat.

BOB KELLEHER: There was a town where German prisoners were based and they could move freely, the Germans could.

JOE GOMER: Right. That happened down in Louisiana.

BOB KELLEHER: But the Blacks couldn't go where they wanted.

JOE GOMER: Native Americans could not.

BOB KELLEHER: A lot of the people you served with, Black people, found it better to stay in the service for opportunity after the war.

JOE GOMER: Well, they had already desegregated the military. We kind of led the way. And it was, in fact, it was a success in the military that helped expedite desegregation outside the service. We broke down the barriers and opened the doors.

BOB KELLEHER: We hear of the Civil Rights progress over the decades of Rosa Parks and not giving up her seat on a bus and Martin Luther King and all the progress over the years, but a lot of people will point to the Tuskegee Airmen, to the great experiment as the real turning point.

JOE GOMER: That was the beginning.

BOB KELLEHER: Something that you must take a great deal of pride in.

JOE GOMER: Well, I hope we accomplish something. We lost 66 heroes overseas that never came home.

BOB KELLEHER: Well, you stayed with the military for some time after that, didn't you?

JOE GOMER: I stayed for 22 years.

BOB KELLEHER: And served in Korea as well and up until the Vietnam era.

JOE GOMER: Well, actually, I'm a Namara vet too. Although, when I visited in Indochina, it was not Vietnam then. The French were still there.

BOB KELLEHER: In the service, there doesn't-- you don't have the feeling of a racial society, that it's easier to be a person in the service, a Black or white person. But when you come out, you can face the reality of what our society is.

JOE GOMER: That's pretty much true. In the service, your ability-- you're measured by your abilities and not your color.

BOB KELLEHER: Well, the Freeman Field incident, can you tell me about that? It was after, I think after the war, wasn't it?

JOE GOMER: Well, I wasn't a participant in that. However, that was our bomber group and they were at a segregated base. And the commander tried to keep it segregated. And what they did, they tried to enter the white officer's club and they were denied entry and they were accused of a number of things. And it was-- I think it was just last year that they finally wrote all that off the record and, as you say, kind of pardoned them. It was too late.

BOB KELLEHER: So they were disciplined for this action.

JOE GOMER: Right. One was court martialed.

BOB KELLEHER: One of the leaders of this insurrection. It was even, I think, called a mutiny by some.

JOE GOMER: Well, I'm sure they did. But only one of the officers was really punished.

BOB KELLEHER: And just in the 1990s finally were--

JOE GOMER: That they corrected all that.

BOB KELLEHER: What's the experience of a Black man in the military today? We touched on that some, but it's been 50 plus years since these events began and, obviously, a lot of things have changed. Are things still changing to the benefit of Black people?

JOE GOMER: In the military, I think so. You're strictly on merit there, an ability. And we have high ranking men and women in the service.

BOB KELLEHER: And how about outside the military? Are things still changing to the positive?

JOE GOMER: On a slower basis. I don't think it's as completely integrated as the military.

BOB KELLEHER: You got to know some white men from the South. You said they're as good a group as you could run into. I was curious about that. I'm wondering if we would presume that white people from the South would be more racist. Are they more open? Maybe racism is more overt in the South and elsewhere it's a little quieter.

JOE GOMER: Well, in the south, you know where you're standing. In the north, you wonder. And it's more economic than in the North than I'd say it is the South. It's social, more social in the South. They would live next door to you in the South, but they wouldn't share anything. In the North, they didn't want to live next door to you. The disparity between the haves and the have-nots is expanding and the have-nots are getting less and less and the haves are getting more and more. And that can only go on for just so long. And pretty soon, the poor will rebel. So unless we help the poor and pull them up, they're going to pull the haves down.

BOB KELLEHER: What do you take away from your experience with the Tuskegee Airmen? Was it just a grand adventure for you or were you something of an activist by taking part?

JOE GOMER: Actually, at the time, I didn't think too much about it. I was an American citizen fighting for his country. But there was an awful lot of history that never got recorded. And hopefully, the barriers that we broke down and the doors that we opened up, we'll find people flowing through them.

BOB KELLEHER: Joe Gomer, thank you very much.

JOE GOMER: Hey, you're welcome.

PAULA SCHROEDER: World War 2 veteran and Duluth resident Joe Gomer, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the segregated group of Black army Air Force pilots. He talked with Minnesota Public Radio's Bob Kelleher. Our Voices of Minnesota interview series is heard nearly every Monday during Midmorning. The producer is Dan Olson with help from intern Becky Sisko. Next Monday, a conversation with Minneapolis neurologist Dr. Ronald Cranford, who is a national figure in the right to die debate.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER: Because you're listening right now, we know that Minnesota Public Radio is important to you. Don't forget, your financial support is important to Minnesota Public Radio. Call 1-800-227-2811 today and make your contribution to support the news and information you can't find anywhere else. That's 1-800-227-2811.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Today's programming is sponsored in part by Mary van Evera and her family in appreciation of MPR's world news coverage, which reminds them of our global connectedness. It's just about 10:30. You're listening to Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks for joining us today.

Temperatures will be mostly in the 60s, some upper 50s possible in the northern part of Minnesota today. Mostly sunny skies in the North and East with some cloudy skies in the Southwest.

Well, it's been more than 50 years since the end of World War 2, but the memories of those years remain fresh for many veterans. Many discovered the importance of the bonds of friendship in times of stress and over the years have grown to appreciate the discipline instilled in them during their military years

Among them is Walter Benjamin, a now retired professor of religion and applied ethics at Hamline University in Saint Paul. In his role as a medical ethicist, he reflects on the role morality plays in practical decisions. As a young Navy seaman, he was faced with the same dilemmas. He writes about his experiences in the Navy and the impact it had on the rest of his life in a newly published book called War and Reflection. Walter Benjamin says he was prompted to write the book after discovering more than 250 letters his mother had saved, written during his two-year stint in the Navy that began with his enlistment in September of 1944, one month before his 18th birthday.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Yeah, I wanted to join a movement which was not ambivalent. I mean, it was a clear situation in which the forces of good were arrayed against the forces of evil.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Here you go. You had a just war to get into.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Yes, it met the criteria. We were attacked and the foundations of Western civilization, both religious and civil rights, were being attacked. We didn't know quite how much, I guess some of us, until the death camps and the Holocaust was laid bare.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Did you have visions of glory in a sense, or did you just feel like this was something that you needed to do as a citizen of the United States?

WALTER BENJAMIN: I think both. I didn't really have visions of glory. I, in a sense, went back, I suspect, to all anthropologists talk about rites of passage and testing where a young, brave boy is put out for three weeks to test his mettle against the forces of nature and bring back games so that he's a contributor and not somebody who is somebody who cannot contribute to the tribe. So in a sense, the war was symbolic of a time of testing, of bravery, of proving one's manhood.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Did you have the support of your family and your community? You were pretty young to be going into the Navy.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Yes, I did. The weekly scandal sheet, as we called it, The Pipestone Star, was full of letters and memorabilia of people who had preceded me. Now, I know that my parents knew that my older brother, who was two years older, had to serve. I think that they kept their apprehensions to themselves about me.

One of the memorable experiences I had the morning that I left on a bus to go to Minneapolis and be sworn in was my father, who usually said the table grace and read from a upper room, a little spiritual booklet, could not continue. He was a very strong, masculine man. That's the only time I saw him out of control. But that followed me the rest of my life as a kind of lodestar of his love for me.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. At the same time, you were pretty happy to be getting away from your father.

WALTER BENJAMIN: That's right. That's right. I mean, my father was quite an authoritarian. I was raised in a paternalistic family, which was the norm at that time. And I was happy to get away.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Once you got to Minneapolis, what happened to you then? Where did you go?

WALTER BENJAMIN: Well, I think I was put up at a small hotel. There were about 12 of us being mustered in, and I was terribly disappointed. I was quite a good athlete in basketball and track, less so in football. I was rather small for my age. I grew incredibly in the first six months. I put on about two or three inches and about 30 pounds. But my brother and I were in a kind of serious competition athletically and I knew that I could be a pilot and fly circles around him.

And then I realized that the Navy had said the war is winding down and it'll be over within a year and you will not have time to complete your pilot's training, you will become an air crewman. So I lost my chance to receive salutes and I wasn't an officer by act of Congress.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You went to boot camp.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And this was near Memphis, right?

WALTER BENJAMIN: That was in Memphis.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Right. When you go to boot camp, of course, you get to meet a lot of young men who didn't grow up in Pipestone, Minnesota.

WALTER BENJAMIN: That's right.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And this was kind of an eye-opening experience for you, wasn't it?

WALTER BENJAMIN: They were spread across the United States. They had different accents from Boston and Flushing, and Brooklyn, and the South. And we were alphabetically put into bunks and into our barracks. And as a result, most of my friends had last names, either A, B, or C.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Right. One of the things that you write in your book is, "My mate's fixation on sexual intercourse, real and imagined, was a central ingredient of every conversation." Now, was that something that shocked you?

WALTER BENJAMIN: Well, it was heightened a little bit. Of course, I wasn't that disconnected from that kind of world. After all, I'd participated in high school sports, but I had a semi fear and attraction of the opposite sex. And when I got in the Navy, when you put thousands of men together, enforced confinement for three months, I mean, they're like raving lunatics on their first furlough, or leave, as we would call it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah, right. So you were looking for the women when you went on leave.

WALTER BENJAMIN: I think a lot were looking for the women. That's right. And for many, it was their first sexual experience. And many of them were rather disappointed. But as I indicated in my book, my puritanical and Pipestone, and family, and church morals served me in good stead. And I bonded with quite a number of people who were of like values. And I boxed with a former Golden Glover and we shared a lot of times together on Liberty and had a good time too.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. This was, of course, not the only temptation that you would discover as a young sailor, a member of the Navy. And you reflect a lot on that in your book too, about the whole decision making process that it forced you to go through.

WALTER BENJAMIN: That's right. Yeah. You had to make a decision what you're going to do on Liberty and whether you were going to church or not, what you were going to eat, how would you spend your time. And so there were a lot of decisions to make. It was a time of growing up and maturing.

PAULA SCHROEDER: A lot of people talk about boot camp as a terrible time in their lives, a lot of almost abuse at the hands of drill instructors and, of course, grueling physical activity. But you rather liked it, it sounds like.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Well, I probably am a bit nostalgic. Age is having an effect maybe on those memoirs. But I remember, the Puritans used to tell their people in the pure, if you don't sweat in hell, you're going to sweat-- if you don't sweat on Earth, you're going to sweat in hell. And really drill instructors, although they are perceived by those that hate the military as very sadistic, actually, they know, because they've been in combat, they know that by pushing men to their limits, that they are preparing them for possible being saved or coming through combat. So it's not entirely a negative experience, even though people experience it as that at the time.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. Even though the Navy told you that the war was winding down, you couldn't be a pilot, there was still the expectation that you could see combat.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Oh, yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Of course.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Did you ever see combat?

WALTER BENJAMIN: No. No. Actually, I say in my book that President Truman may have saved my life and that of my brother. We were just about ready to fly our squadron to Okinawa when the bomb went off. And at that time, then we sat on the tarmac and twiddled our fingers for several months before then I went into the Navy Air Corps, into the shore patrolman. But even training was fascinating for a young boy coming out of the small town, agrarian cocoon, and seeing bombers drop make-believe bombs and firing machine guns and going through that whole ritual. It was quite attractive to the eye gate of the soul.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Tell me a little bit more about that. What was attractive about it to you as a young man?

WALTER BENJAMIN: The sense of power, of an airplane, the sense of being bonded with men from all over the United States who were-- it was a kind of a fraternity. It was kind of a family away from home. You're bonded so that, I'm sure the military knows this well, that you're going to suffer, indeed even die, for your mates if it would come to that.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Did you ever think about that?

WALTER BENJAMIN: I thought about it probably way in the back of my mind. But I do think that still it was still quite adolescent. I still probably felt that we had the best planes and we were the only ones that could shoot straight and that the Japanese, who we caricaturized with having dripping fangs and bow legs and so forth, the whole mystique and mythology of a war, even in democratic countries, is built up so that there's very little ambiguity and questioning about your role.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Were you encouraged to think of the Japanese in particular because that is, of course, the group of people that you would be fighting as a member of the Navy, but the Germans as well as somehow subhuman, as you said, not as good a soldier as an American?

WALTER BENJAMIN: Yes. I had come from my maternal side of the family, from German ancestry and prized that culture very much. So it was much more difficult to demonize that side. The Japanese, it was easier. And we used the term "Jap" all the time, and they were of a different culture and a different ethnicity. It was easier to demonize them.

And I suppose that for psychic health, military philosophers or psychologists indicate that either you make your enemy superhuman or subhuman, either they're animalistic or bestial, or they're satanic. And therefore, in combat and in killing, therefore, it's not as quite a psychic threat to the ego, the spirit as it would be if you're killing a fellow human being who just happens to be pushed there by another rival government.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah. So someone who was raised in the church, such as you were, with the commandment to not kill could conceivably go ahead and do that.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Exactly.

PAULA SCHROEDER: As you pointed out, you did not have to do that.

WALTER BENJAMIN: No, no, that's right.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Do you think that that-- certainly you have talked with other men who were in World War 2. Do you think that that is a major difference or do you think that there is, again, this fraternity of everyone who served in World War 2, no matter if they saw combat or not, that there is this bond?

WALTER BENJAMIN: I think that those that have served, whether they've been in combat or not, have a sense of fraternity or a sense of respect for the military that those that don't serve don't have. I suspect, though, the fraternity of those that have been in combat is even deeper. And they get together for certain reunions and certain storytellings and so forth, because these were existential experiences.

These were not simply being members of a corporation or another association that was not existential. That's the reason, I think, for the reunions that are so deep and meaningful for people in the American Legion and the VFW. One must not look simply at the superficialities of the beer guzzling and the high jinks and something. The back behind that in the past is a bonding experience. It was a deep and real.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Talking with Walter Benjamin, who is the author of a book called War and Remembrance. He is a medical ethicist, or has been in his professional career, but more than 50 years ago now served as a Navy shore patrolman and also as a radio man for a time in the US Navy. Joined the Navy in 1944. You're listening to Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Paula Schroeder.

You readily admit that you have some nostalgia about this era. And I think that it is, to a certain extent, glamorized. But at the same time, as you point out in your book, this was a time when the whole country pulled together. There was a common goal. Doesn't seem to be something that we have now. And I wonder if we can ever have that again in this country.

WALTER BENJAMIN: No, I think probably we can't. I think that was a period that was probably unique, as I indicated by book. Now and then I go back and check out a film of that era and the music, the lyrics are wistful and loving, and affirmative, and positive. And now we have the gangster rap and we have all kinds of the jaded stories and screams of pelvic grinds. And all that is so sordid and so depressing and so nihilistic. And so we're really in a different kind of culture.

Also, I think back then, of course, while we knew there were imperfections in the American experiment, we were not traumatized or identified by sexism or racism, or materialism. Those were minuscule. And our union, those bonds that united us, were fortissimo.

PAULA SCHROEDER: There are critics, of course, of that view who would say, well, sure, there weren't problems with race or with the sexism, discrimination, things like that because there were simply-- there was an understanding that there were certain kinds of people who simply wouldn't have the same opportunities as others would, and that perhaps it wasn't as grand a time for some people as it was for others.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Well, I think that's possibly true. We had had a whole decade of the Great Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was really our economic Savior. But in spite of all the social programs, at the eve of 1939, there were still about 27% of our populace was unemployed. And then the Second World War came along. We became the arsenal of democracy.

Men went into the military and the others, Rosie the Riveter, probably better stated Rosie, the welder, went off to fight work in the defense plants and so forth. So we solved a lot of social problems for the short time by a just war at that time.

PAULA SCHROEDER: One of the things that Bob Dole talked about when he was running for president was the sacrifices that people of your generation made, not only through World War 2, but during the Depression and how character-building those times were. And I think there was a sense from a lot of younger people that it was a criticism then of younger generations for not making those same sacrifices, who felt a little defensive saying, but we didn't have a depression. We didn't have a war to fight. Help us understand that a little bit more.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Well, I think that up until the Vietnam War, most Americans felt that with all of our rights, imperfect, though some of them might be, religious, civil, economic, et cetera, went responsibilities. And it was not too much to give up a year or two in the military as a visible payment towards one's obligation as American citizen.

And then in the Vietnam War, that tragedy destroyed that because the military became demonized. Soldiers became baby killers. And as a result of that, the military took on a kind of demonic quality. And you see that in a lot of the boomers, like our president and others, who loathe the military and did everything they could to escape it. And so there's really quite a difference between my generation and that of the boomers.

Although there were high-minded people, for example, such as Vice President Gore and others, Senator Bob Kerrey, who makes a comment about my book, who did serve and served very, very honorably. So I do think that up until the time when the draft was abrogated, there was a kind of quid pro quo with respect to rights and responsibilities, and the visible part of that was service in the military.

I might also add that most Western democracies do require military service, and they see that that is not at all at odds with their democratic heritage, that that is, in a sense, an obligation of citizenship.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You are an advocate of universal service.

WALTER BENJAMIN: Yes, I am. Yes, I am. I think that the benefits-- one doesn't always have to soldier. One can do work. Like the WPA plant forests, do other kinds of social and civic improvements, like the president is pushing for now in the AmeriCorps. The army could do that as it does in Israel. But I think that we are becoming a very stratified society, ethnically, racially, and so forth. We talk about the melting pot, but now we're talking about salad or even separate salads.

So it may be a very positive good in terms of social policy for all of us to have one experience for a year or two of being pulled out of our locale where we bond in common purpose with people of different class, race, and so forth. And I think this would be a symbol of egalitarianism, that we are all bonded together as American citizens.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Other than holding that philosophical view, I know that you have a very personal perspective on that as well and the role that that service plays or played in your own maturation, in your own growing up.

WALTER BENJAMIN: That's exactly right. I was in for two years, but in a sense, I grew psychologically a decade. Had I gone to college at 17, a very good liberal arts college, my Alma mater Hamlin, I probably would have flunked out. But as a result of treading water and getting some distance and having the kind of responsibility that I did, I was much better fitted for college. And I see that in college students today, that some of my best students are students who have worked for a while or have done certain things before they come back and finish out their education in their mid 20s or late 20s.

PAULA SCHROEDER: As we celebrate this Memorial Day, I know that there are some people who are making an effort to return to the true meaning of Memorial Day and not just to look at it as a day off work, but to remember the sacrifices that others have made for this country. And as a member of that World War 2 generation, do you feel respected in this society?

WALTER BENJAMIN: Well, I think I do. I think there are subcultural groups, however, that still think that the warrior or the soldier, or the airman is somehow unclean. I think they as a carryover maybe from the Vietnam war, see the American flag, the stars and stripes, as a demonic symbol. I'm proud to be an American and I think that we live in a very great land.

And I think that is a matter of identity, it's very important to have, not an uncritical, but an appreciative look at the American past from our founders to the present and to see that there was a tremendous price paid by people, not only in the revolution, but in the Civil War, in the First, Second World War.

I think America has had a remarkable history of going across the Atlantic on innumerable occasions to on the side of freedom and democracy for battles that isolationists and pacifists might say weren't ours. They're not in our neighborhood. And they quote George Washington and other things. And yet I think it is a form of our world citizenship that we've stood, for the most part, for democracy and the rights of those who have been oppressed.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Walter Benjamin with one veteran's view of an experience during wartime. He is Professor Emeritus of Religion and Applied Ethics at Hamline University and the author of War and Reflection, published by Red Oak Press.

[CHUCK BERRY, "SCHOOL DAY"] Up in the morning and out to school.

SPEAKER 2: September 1957, Little Rock, Arkansas. President Eisenhower sends federal troops to protect the rights of nine Black children seeking to attend the city's Central High School.

SPEAKER 3: Witness history in the next episode of Will The Circle Be Unbroken on Public Radio International.

SPEAKER 4: Today at noon on KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's six minutes before 11:00. Here's Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 26th of May, 1997. It's Memorial Day today, the day when the graves of those killed in wars are decorated in the United States, an observance that goes back to the days of the Civil War.

It's the feast day of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who was sent by Pope Gregory to convert the English from paganism in the seventh century, a work that continues to this day. It's the anniversary of the day on which the evacuation from Dunkirk began during World War 2 in 1940, when 385,000 British and other Allied troops were taken to safety across the English Channel by ships of the Royal Navy and an impromptu armada of 700 boats that sailed from England to help out.

It's the anniversary of the birth of a number of distinguished Midwesterners, and we don't have all that many. James Arness, who played Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke, was born in Minneapolis on this day in 1923. Peggy Lee, the great jazz singer and actress, was born in Jamestown, North Dakota, on this day in 1920. And it's the birthday of John Wayne, who was born in Winterset, Iowa, on this day in 1907.

Actor Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto on the Lone Ranger, was born on the Six Nations Indian Reservation in Ontario on this day in 1919. He was the son of a Mohawk chief. It's the birthday of photographer Dorothea Lange in Hoboken, 1895. She was a photographer. She was operating a portrait studio in San Francisco when the Great Depression hit. And she was hired by the Farm Security Administration to photograph migrant workers. She made that famous photograph of a migrant mother, a prematurely aged woman in a tent with her small children.

It's the birthday of blues singer Mamie Smith in Cincinnati, 1883, on this day. On February 14th, 1920, she became the first Black blues singer to make records. She recorded for Okeh Records. She did That Thing Called Love and You Can't Keep a Good Man Down. And it's the birthday of the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, known as the Russian Shakespeare. Born in Moscow, 1799, on this day. Known for his masterpiece, Eugene Onegin, 1828, Ruslan and Ludmila, and many other poems. He died at the age of 38 in a duel defending his wife's honor.

Here's a poem for today by Lisel Mueller entitled Virtuosi, In Memory of My Parents. People whose lives have been shaped by history-- and it is always tragic-- do not want to talk about it. Would rather dance, give parties on thrift-shop china. You feel wonderful in their homes, two leaky rooms, nests they stowed inside their hearts on the road into exile. They know how to fix potato peelings and apple cores so you smack your lips.

The words start over again. Hold no terror for them. Obediently they rise and go with only a rucksack or tote bag. If they weep, it's when you're not looking. To tame their nightmares, they choose the most dazzling occupations, swallow the flames in the sunset sky, jump through burning hoops in their elegant tiger suits. Cover your eyes. There's one walking on a thread 30 feet above us, shivering points of light leap across her body, and she works without a net.

A poem by Lisel Mueller, Virtuosi, In Memory of My Parents. From her collection Waving from Shore, published by Louisiana State University Press. Used by permission here on the Writer's Almanac, Monday, May 26th. Made possible by Cowles Enthusiast Media, publishers of Historic Traveler and the historynet.com, where history lives on the world wide web. Be well, do good work, keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And have a wonderful Memorial Day. It should be fairly pleasant with partly to mostly sunny skies across the state and high temperatures in the upper 50s to mid 60s. Tomorrow, join us on Midmorning for a conversation with Minnesota Congressman Martin Sabo and we'll test your knowledge of geography.

SPEAKER 5: On Mondays, All Things Considered, witness to a century.

SPEAKER 6: We had to go with the Kaiser.

SPEAKER 5: All Things Considered. Weekdays at 3:00.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 54 degrees at KNOW-FM 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. In the Twin Cities today, it's going to be partly cloudy and breezy with highs from 60 to 65 degrees. East winds at 15 to.