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BY MALCOLM ANDERSON
Chesterton attorney |
Friday, January 16, 2009 |
I wonder
if all of those Americans who are buying Japanese and German cars realize
they might be giving
their money to those who built war machinery used to kill and shoot
up Americans. I wonder how many
of them care.
Mitsubishi was one of the worst of the Japanese companies. They
built the Zero fighter, Mitsubishi
bombers, trucks, tanks, artillery pieces and many other things
which did kill Americans. I do not know
what Toyota, Honda, Nissan and the other Japanese made to kill
Americans, but I know that they did not
do anything for us.
Every German company that now sells automobiles in the USA went
all-out to build war machinery for
Hitler, much of it by slave labor from other European countries. I
saw them when we liberated them, so I
know firsthand. They were starving while the Germans had plenty of
food.
The first Volkswagen I ever saw was in Normandy in 1944. It was an
imitation of our Willys Jeep and
was driven by one of Hitler's soldiers. After Hitler shot himself,
his parade car came into the possession
of my company. It was a heavily armored Mercedes. We all took turns
driving it. Every German company
was building war equipment as fast as they could.
I was in our Army for about eight months before Japan pulled its
sneak attack, followed by Hitler declaring
war on us a few days later. We had almost no equipment of any kind.
We were helpless. We faced the two
most powerful military machines that had ever been assembled up to
that time. Our American automobile
companies with our steel mills and other factories came to our
rescue.
I drove GMC trucks, Ford tanks and when we went ashore on Utah
Beach I drove a Dodge weapons
carrier pulling a 57 mm anti-tank gun. We got some GMC light tanks
near the end of the war in 1945.
The M-1 carbine I carried was made by General Motors. Thousand of
Ford B-24 Bombers flew over
my head, headed for Germany. Without our American automobile
companies, I am convinced that either
the flag of the Rising Sun or the Swastika would now be flying
here.
Most of our automobile companies have gone out of business because
Americans did not buy enough of
their cars. Now the Big 3 are in distress because of the
ingratitude of Americans. If those who are buying
and thus supporting Japanese and German auto companies would switch
to buying nothing but American
cars for one year I believe that would solve many of the problems
that we are now facing.
The Americans who were killed by machinery made by those foreign
car companies were all my comrades
in arms and some were my close friends. I do not intend to buy any
of their cars and thus support them.
Malcolm Anderson is a Chesterton attorney. The
opinion expressed in this column is the writer's and not
necessarily that of The Times.
...taken from "The Times" of
Muncie, Indiana
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