“The thing that to this day shakes me up [is that] I could kill a person. They gave me a gun and told me to kill. I’m 18 years old, what do I know about killing?
We wanted to get even. Someday we’ll find out why it started but … it’s a terrible feeling, and when you sit down and think about it, the lives [we] have lost, the dropping of a bomb that could blow up a whole country … We didn’t realize what we had let loose. The atomic bomb — it was too much. I have no way of explaining myself. We didn’t know what had happened with the atomic bomb but we found out when the war ended. What have we gained? We lost plenty. And no one has ever explained anything to me. It makes no sense why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor … I don’t think you can ever get over a shock like that.”
