Michael Bess > Quotes

“I just could not understand why our surroundings had changed so greatly in one instant…. I thought it might have been something which had nothing to do with the war, the collapse of the earth which it was said would take place at the end of the world.”
― Michael Bess, Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II

“Destroyed, that is, were not only men, women, and thousands of children but also restaurants and inns, laundries, theater groups, sports clubs, sewing clubs, boys’ clubs, girls’ clubs, love affairs, trees and gardens, grass, gates, gravestones, temples and shrines, family heirlooms, radios, classmates, books, courts of law, clothes, pets, groceries and markets, telephones, personal letters, automobiles, bicycles, horses—120 war-horses—musical instruments, medicines and medical equipment, life savings, eyeglasses, city records, sidewalks, family scrapbooks, monuments, engagements, marriages, employees, clocks and watches, public transportation, street signs, parents, works of art.”
― Michael Bess, Choices Under Fire: Moral Dimensions of World War II