Cream of the Crop Students

I had so many nice students when I was through. They were smart kids. We got the cream of the crop. I think we got better students than the pilots. Don’t say it. We had really nice ones, and they were good. After teaching high school, it was a real pleasure. Interviewer: And about half of them were killed? Yeah. After doing it for a year or so, I really felt guilty. I should be with them. So I applied to re-muster to air crew, to the CO, but he turned me down. He thought I was needed here. So I hung in. I got over it, eventually, but, so, yeah … all those young men getting killed going over. Well, people ask you how you feel about the atomic bomb. That’s a big deal these days, isn’t it? There’s an implication that we shouldn’t have dropped the atomic bomb. That we were being pretty callous and cruel to wipe out all those civilians. But if you’re out in the Cocos Islands, and your family was home, you were pretty glad to see the end of the war. So, I didn’t worry as much at the time. But since … I don’t know. I guess they claim they saved lives by doing it. The Americans claim it, anyway. It was probably right. They said it would take a million men to defeat Japan.