by Studs Terkel
The next day there are Americans coming up the road. It was an American reconnaissance column. I took my coat off and waved, I said, “I’m an American, I’m an American, don’t shoot.” The Russians were just in the forest, sticking their heads up. They were glad to see us, and then we got the British boys down and then the Russians came down. I gave them my coat and I asked the Americans if I could throw the Russians a bunch of Spam—“Because they helped us,” I said. The guy said, “Sure,” so we threw the Spam out, and there was some extra clothing too. They were really tickled pink.
Then they took us back to a little town and, since we were POWs, they sent us back to Camp Lucky Strike. And from Camp Lucky Strike, we went down to USS Marine Devil, and from Marine Devil to Boston Harbor.
I was always interested in being a physician, and so I knew I would see death. To me death is a part of life. I know that sounds contradictory. Death is only a portal, an opening to another type of life, a life that we can’t explain or understand.
I know a P-51 pilot from World War II who, when he died, had his ashes scattered in the Pacific. You put yourself in the elements of the world a lot quicker. You become a rose, a tree a lot quicker. It doesn’t make any difference once you’re dead. Somebody asked me, “What would you like to come back as if you were reincarnated?” I’d like to come back as an eagle. I would like to soar. I could see the earth from a far-off distance. When I’ve had dreams of flying, it was very enjoyable. And if I wasn’t a physician, I would like to be a flier.
Haskell Wexler
A seventy-eight-year-old cinematographer, sometime director and producer, winner of two Academy Awards and nominated for three more. His commitment to socially conscious causes is reflected in many of the films he’s worked on—Medium Cool, Matewan, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Bound for Glory.
I tried to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, way back when I was too young. My Freedom of Information file refers to me as a “premature anti-fascist.” Later, I worked with the Spanish Republicans. I was on one of the first ships that went into the Mediterranean. It was right after we invaded Italy, after the second front, after what Churchill called “the soft underbelly.” It could have been ’43, I think.
I WAS IN the Merchant Marines and saw a lot of combat.* I remember being torpedoed in the Indian Ocean, and actually seeing friends of mine dying in the explosion and later from the exposure in the boats. Slim Houston, Cisco Houston’s brother,† and I were shipmates on a number of trips. I saw him die. But even when death was around me and discussion of getting hit, as we called it, was there, I never felt I would die. I had a very strong belief in myself and in my ideas.
I know one time for a film I interviewed some Brazilian revolutionaries who were tortured. We tried to get at the sources of their strength and how they could withstand such brutal treatment. Every one of them ultimately came to the thought that their commitment, their ideas, their dedication gave them strength that far exceeded that of their torturers. I don’t want to dramatize but I do think that, to this day, my own feelings or commitments make me feel, if not invulnerable, at least protected.
I ran mostly the North Atlantic, all the way to Murmansk, the Soviet Union. [Laughs lightly] About three years ago I got a medal from [Russian president] Yeltsin for being one of the defenders of Murmansk. See, the Merchant Marines were not considered veterans until a law passed about four years ago saying that if you were in combat zones as a Merchant sailor, you could have the benefits of veterans. Of course, you had to state what ships you were on and where you sailed. Fortunately, I had my Freedom of Information file. It was a very positive thing for me because I was able to look up what the FBI had recorded on me—so I knew what ships I was on, where the ships sailed, and not only that, but what books I’d been reading. And I find that I was a very well read young sailor because they had “The Brothers Karamazov written by a Russian.” I was able to present this information. So I’m a certified veteran thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and many thanks to the FBI for their surveillance.
It was in the Indian Ocean when we were torpedoed Friday, November 13th, 1942. I celebrate that day every year. I was the last one to leave because I was on a 20mm machine gun. As the water was coming up around the gun tub, I pushed off. During that time, the periscope was circling. They didn’t surface until I came off. Then I was able to swim to one of the lifeboats—it was very heavy with oil. When the submarine surfaced, there was a guy on there who was taking a movie with an Eymo, a little handheld 35mm camera. In later years, I often wondered where that footage was, ’cause they were filming us. The German commander was shouting questions to us. Ultimately my crew members hauled me into the boat. The sub kept circling us and they wanted to know what our cargo was and where the captain was. Everybody was just screaming. I was wounded in my left shin. A lot of guys were vomiting from swallowing oil.
The submarine just left. They didn’t shoot us down. There were two other ships, the Alcoa Pathfinder and the Pierce Butler, sunk in the same area. Our ship was called . . . what the hell? . . . American Fisher. It was a ship made during World War I in Hog Island. So there were eighteen of us in the boat, and a lot of the really tough guys turned out to be less than tough. [A small laugh]
We had our organization on the ship. We had had to struggle to have mixed crews. Our ship was a checkerboard crew. The stewards department was black. In fact, the head steward had been an officer in the U.S. Navy in World War I. They had black officers in the navy in World War I. It was only in World War II that they didn’t. Anyway, Milt McCord, a black guy, and I were the only ones who were together enough on the boat to help try to navigate it. The other guys are wounded and sick and we were taking a lot of seas.
They have a thing like a bicycle pump, which I was in charge of—and Gino, the mess man. I remember I told him just to hold the hose, because it had a curve in it, overboard and I’d pump until my right arm gave out, until my left arm gave out. This was in heavy seas. It turns out that this hose that Gino is supposed to hold over, clears back into the boat. This was the only time in my life that I ever felt like giving up, because I was pumping the water back into the boat, see. Then, God, a couple of the guys were actually in horrible withdrawal because there were no cigarettes onboard.
We were on that boat for fourteen days. You’re talking about death. Our chief engineer was an old Irish guy. They were short on technician-type people to work on the ships, and out of patriotic reasons he joined. He had one leg and a wooden left leg. Finnegan, that was his name. He apparently swallowed too much oil or he was hurt, I don’t know what. We figured he was dead, me and Milt McCord. It was important if he was dead to get him out of the boat because we were so jammed in. We spent something like three hours, like in the movies, when someone dies and someone reaches down and they touch them and say, “Oh, he’s dead.” We wanted to make sure he was dead. So we listened to him, we felt him. We also had a little metal mirror in the lifeboat to sort of signal, to make us discoverable. We put that over his face and then we weren’t sure whether it was outside mist coming on it. Finally, we dumped him overboard. It was a very emotional and unemotional situation at the same time. It was like not really being there, I mean, seeing it happening to someone else, to dump a human being off the lifeboat like that. And it was a guy that we all knew, a marvelous man, a very patriotic man, a very humorous Irish guy . . .
I felt so strong in that boat and on that ship that nothing in the world could move me one way or the other. Actually, looking back, it was the first moment of my manhood, the first moment when I felt incredible strength. I was nineteen or twenty.
When we finally saw land, there were some black people on the beach. We were all white except McCord and a guy we called Cockroach, who was the steward. He and the guys started joking. Cockroach said, “Don’t worry fellows,” because they were afraid they were cannibals. All we knew was from what we saw in the movies. He said, “Don’t worry, they’re my brothers—I’ll talk to
them.” We were landing our boats in South Africa. We landed at the Msubabu River. The coast was heavy, heavy surf, but we saw debris coming out, so we knew there was a river somewhere there, and we headed as best we could for that river. It was an area called Pondoland. That was the tribe. We lived with the Pondos. They looked upon us as curiosities beyond belief. These dark-skinned agricultural people in South Africa. They were fascinated with Cockroach. He tried to talk to them, and they thought it was so funny because they didn’t know what the hell he was saying. And they took care of me, they put leaves and stuff on my leg. My leg had gotten a lot of ulcers all up and down it from the wound, like little volcanoes. [He lifts his left trouser leg and shows off a long scar.] I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. Pretty ugly. As a matter of fact, when I finally got back to New York I had to walk with a cane a little bit, and I wanted to get some official time off and maybe some medical care. I went to the Coast Guard, which was in charge of the sailors, and asked for some help and some time off. I said, “Just look at this.” And the guy said, “Well, so what? What, are you gonna be in a beauty contest or something?” I said, “Well, fuck, you.” I went and I organized on the Great Lakes for the National Maritime Union.
I was also buzz-bombed in the United Kingdom when I was out hanging some clothes up. We were actually in port, and I had just closed this big wooden door and shrapnel went bing, right into the door. It passed my mind, “Gee, that might have hit me.” You have to understand, I would never say, “Gee, I might have been killed,” see—there’s a difference. I wasn’t scared. I don’t know why. I think it could be that I dramatize myself to myself. I just felt that my life was a mission and nobody’s going to fuck with me. [Laughs] Probably good parents give you that feeling. When they fill you with self-assurance, with positive vibes, with reassurance that you can do it, that whole idea that you’re born to be a good person . . .
My father was a successful businessman. You know, “I used to sell papers and look at me now,” I used to kid him. I’d struggled with my father a lot from the time I was a teenager. He owned a chair factory in Milwaukee, the chairs that are used by the Supreme Court. His workers went on strike. I remember sitting at the table and arguing with him and taking the side of the workers. And my father was furious. He said, “After all I’ve done for them. They have all this and they have all that, and how can they go on strike now? All the other factories are moving down South where the labor is cheaper.” It was a very personal argument.
My mom was his conscience. Because of my father being as strong as he was, she didn’t speak strong, but she always got her word in. I think she played a big role in all the causes to which he contributed. At the dinner table every night there were discussions on every subject. My dad never did forget that he came from very humble beginnings. His father died when he was six years old. He had to work to support his mother as a young kid. He went to school at night. He was of his generation, of those young Jewish guys, first-generation guys who really struggled, and he died . . .
I think a lot about death now. I read the New York Times obituaries and I take the average of the ages and I’ve been over the average for a couple of years. Yet I don’t feel old at all. I have some signs of it, like forgetting where I put things and my hearing. And then any little thing that I might feel about my body, I think, “Well, this is it. What about your will? Who’s going to get one of my favorite cars? What about my grandchildren?” The main thing I think about is what I haven’t done that I want to do.
I want to make a film that I wrote called Obit, incidentally. It’s about a guy at a television station who’s in charge of obituaries. He discovers that if you can complete an obituary of a person on film, before the person dies, it kills them—so he has the power of life and death. He has the ultimate moral problem. Since he can kill without anyone knowing who did it or why he did it. When Orson Welles died, the next night they were able to put on television an obituary with selections from Welles’s films, a couple of recent interviews. Immediately! It’s on the air. In my film, after he completes his obit, he presses an electronic thing and that’s it. It’s a black comedy, because this guy doesn’t want to kill anybody, doesn’t want to hurt anybody, but everything in our culture says that control and power is success. Ultimately the CIA wants him to help kill Castro’s successor.
With my growing awareness of death, I have a completely different feeling of time. I have more immediate priorities. In past years, I would say, “Well, so I’ll wait around for a couple of weeks . . .” Now, I’m impatient with things I want to do. Usually it centers down into relations to people, to human things. It’s very hard to do when you’re on the track the way I’ve been: to write this article, to make this little film, to make all those others. Wait a minute. What’s most important? Awareness of death may be liberating for some people, but it makes me a little more tense.
I made a film called The Loved One. I was coproducer and cinematographer. It was very difficult to make because they were afraid of making fun of the death business and exposing the huge racket that existed, taking advantage of people who are vulnerable. Jessica Mitford worked with us on it.
When my wife Rita’s sister died, I was reminded of [James Farrell’s novel] Studs Lonigan, because I also shot the film of the book. I had been at Irish wakes where the stiff is lying out there and people are walking around eating hors d’oeuvres and drinking whiskey. That whole attitude toward death that I’ve seen in the old Irish way, I like that. I would like people to say at my wake: “He lived a hell of a life and he’s not here anymore—let’s get drunk and eat and appreciate each other.”
This may sound crazy, but after my brother Jerry died, I had a number of times where he talked to me. I am a very unbelieving person of anything supernatural. Yet I got like strong messages and all in good humor. He was not saying, “Haskell, you better take care of Mom because I’m gone . . .” It was jaunty, “Now, look, kid, I’m not here now, take care of things.” He was not like the adult Jerry, he was like—since we were only two years apart—he was like the young brother who spoke to me. He has done so a number of times, but never in a negative way except to say of his daughters, who are suing each other, “Jesus Christ, why don’t they cut that shit out.” [Laughs]
When it’s happening, I keep saying to myself, “What the hell’s going on?” I could be scientific about it. But I enjoy it so much that I say, “Fuck it, let it happen.” He died about seven years ago. Even when I’m talking to you now, I feel like he’s listening to me. [Laughs]
*It is believed that the Merchant Marines lost more people, per capita, than all the military forces combined.
†Cisco Houston was a popular folksinger during the forties and fifties.
Tammy Snider
She is a psychiatric social worker at the University of Chicago Hospital. A hibakusha, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, she has written a memoir recounting the moment: One Sunny Day.
I’VE BEEN NOTICING that people just don’t think about Hiroshima very much anymore. If they could mark August 6th on their calendar each year, just to be aware and remember Hiroshima and what it meant to the human race. It has to do with the whole question of death.
August 6th, 1945, was a beautiful day, and it was a happiest day for me because I had just persuaded my parents to bring me back the day before, to be with them, to be home in Hiroshima. I had been evacuated to a remote village. We think of evacuation of the British children, but we hardly think of Japanese children being evacuated. We’re both small islands. My grandfather, who had passed away a couple of years prior to that time, was an industrialist and had a large estate. We lived on this estate, our family and my father’s elder brother’s family, surrounded with beautiful, beautiful gardens, one mile away from the center of the town. So there was this dire contrast of the happy, peaceful, unsuspecting lovely morning suddenly turning into . . . entire destruction of all that was there . . . for me. The fire, the burning, the crushing . . . On that
day, my mother had to go off to take care of business in the center of town. My cousin, who was like my brother, was also in the center of town. My father was away at the harbor of Hiroshima, so he was a few miles away from the center. I was in my room. First there was a warning that a few planes were on their way and then the broadcast said, “Emergency is off, you can go back to work,” or whatever you were doing. So the people who were outdoors, a lot of them even took their shirts off. It was very sunny—a beautiful blue-sky day.
I was ten, going on eleven. I had just come home the night before, so I was catching up on reading that my cousin gave me which had something to do with a Samurai duel—a boy’s book. Then I had a little stomach trouble. My mother left me a little porridge to have. There was this simultaneous flash preceding the humongous sound of explosion, the kind of intensity that I had never heard before or heard since. And then there was the breaking down with the force of the wind and the shaking of the earth and the house breaking up. And then being covered with debris. The thing lasted for, I thought, an unending, infinite length of time. It was pitch-dark and I was just getting hit with all kinds of objects falling down on me. Even as a child it was the very first time in this midst of abyss, I said to myself, “I’m going to die.” When I said that, something very quiet came through, and I wasn’t completely falling apart—that was sort of curious to remember. It didn’t end, the thermal wind and the force. It just went on and on and I thought it would never end. The words coming into my mind saying: “So this is dying in a war. I’m going to die.” I was the one who was most surprised when it all ended finally. Everything became still, I found myself still alive and living and breathing . . . yeah.
