Oral history interview with Alex Mayer Hitz

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview with Alex Mayer Hitz
Creator:: Wallace, Fredrick C.
Hitz, Alex Mayer, 1921-2006
Publisher:: Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center, 130 West Paces Ferry Rd., Atlanta, GA 30305
Date of Original:: 2004-04-15
Subject:: Lightning (Fighter plane)
Mitchell (Bomber)
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, American
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Burma
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--China
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--India
Emory University
Washington and Lee University
United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944
United States. Army Air Forces. Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, 9th
United States. Army. Forces in China-Burma-India Theater
People:: McGill, Ralph, 1898-1969
Location:: Burma, Mandalay, 21.9812746, 96.082375
Burma, Myitkyina, 25.38327, 97.39637
Burma, Rangoon, 16.7967129, 96.1609916
India, Bengal, 22.9964948, 87.6855882
India, Jammu and Kashmir, 33.5574473, 75.06152
India, Kolkata, 22.5677459, 88.3476023
United States, Colorado, Denver County, Denver, 39.73915, -104.9847
United States, Colorado, Denver County, Lowry Air Force Base (historical), 39.72306, -104.89194
United States, Colorado, Peterson Air Force Base, 38.81667, -104.73333
United States, Florida, Miami-Dade County, Miami, 25.77427, -80.19366
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Fort McPherson, 33.70733, -84.43354
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
Hi-8
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/mp4
Description:: In this interview, Alex Hitz recalls his time in the China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater during World War II. He recalls his education, enlistment and training, traveling to Fort McPherson by streetcar. He describes his voyage from Los Angeles aboard the unarmed SS Uruguay, dodging Japanese submarines, south of Australia and up to India. He relates how the odors of Bombay could be detected while they were still far from shore. He describes details about life in camp, including bomber attacks and flying supplies to the Chinese over the "Hump." His camp was beside the Ayeyarwady river. He describes his job as an aerial photograph interpreter in detail and remembers the greatest risks were disease, snakes and spiders. He praises the medical corps for keeping them healthy. They regularly took atebrin, which tinted their skin yellow. He reports that Japanese bombs were duds and had to be detonated by the Americans. He relates watching the first reel of a movie three times, but never seeing the last reel because of the interruptions of the bombers. He recalls one instance when a bomb destroyed his desk, but he was unharmed. He cites mistakes as the biggest cause of casualties in their unit, including an incident where a pilot buzzed the camp, took a nose dive into the river, and was killed. He describes the seasons in the region and the heat. He gives an account of a trip to Calcutta and recalls cobras and rats. He ate at the palace of the maharajah and attended parties hosted by the Red Cross and by British civilians. He describes the conditions in society, where Indians were hostile to Westerners, influenced by Mahatma Gandhi and the Quit India movement. He relates hearing of President Roosevelt's death and describes a correspondence he carried on with Ralph McGill which ultimately led to a job with the Atlanta Constitution. He describes using the GI bill to study in Paris and describes his world-wide travels, including surviving two more bombs, one in Havana, Cuba, and one in Manila, Philippines. After retirement he worked at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. He also describes several Atlanta landmarks which he knew when they were private homes, such as the Swan House, Callanwolde and Rhodes Hall.
Alex Hitz was in the U.S. Army in Asia during WWII.
INTERVIEWER: Today is Thursday, April 15th, 2004. This is the beginning of an interview with Mr. Alex Hitz. Mr. Hitz is a veteran of World War II where he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He served during the period July 1942 to December 1945. Mr. Hitz, as I explained earlier, this is your story and I want you to tell it in your own way. From the beginning, tell us where you were born and give us a little bit of the background concerning your early life. And then take us to the point where you entered the service and tell us why you entered the service. And then take us from the day you enter – to you boot camp or basic training and then step by step throughout your military service to your date of discharge. This is your story Mr. Hitz. Will you begin, please? ALEX HITZ: Thank you. I was born in Atlanta, Georgia in July 1921. I went to Emory University for two years and then transferred to Washington at Lee University in Lexington, Virginia and graduated from Washington and Lee in June of 1942. We were already at War, of course, at that time, and they had set up registration booths all over the campus. Everybody was automatically enrolled in the Army of some sort by the time we graduated and the president of the student body had already been killed when we graduated, which put a damper on the senior banquet. He was in the South Pacific in one of the early battles of the South Pacific. So, I came home after graduation. I was in Atlanta for maybe two weeks and I decided to enlist, and so I went down to the old post office downtown on the 4th of July – I thought that sounded very patriotic – and I enrolled in the U.S. Army, and they gave me a street car token to go out to Ft. McPherson and turn myself over to the soldier out there on duty. And so, I went out, and that was probably the hardest time of my whole Army career, was Ft. McPherson for a week. It was exceedingly hot that July and it rained all the time and we were given shots and tests and finally on a train down to Miami Beach, Florida for basic training. And at Miami Beach I find out that Denver, Colorado had an Army school, photo interpretation, and I qualified for that and there I was on another troop train headed for Denver and fell in love with Denver and Colorado the minute I got there. I became 21 in Denver at Lowry Field. And my whole year in Denver was absolutely amazing. I loved everything about it; I did a lot of mountain climbing and hiking, and I studied photo interpretation for a year, first at Lowry Field and then down to Peterson Field Colorado – Colorado Springs. And after that we went to a staging area at Camp Anza, California. We were headed for India, and we got on a troop ship in Los Angeles and it took 40 days to cross the Pacific on an un-armed troop ship. It was the SS Uruguay of the Moore-McCormick line. We had two meals a day for 40 days and we were dodging Japanese submarines all the way across the Pacific. We went below Australia and we arrived in Bombay on Christmas Day of, let's see, 1943, and you could smell Bombay way out at sea. INTERVIEWER: Mr. Hitz, let me ask you a question, please. At the time that you went into the service – ALEX HITZ: Yes. INTERVIEWER: -- did any of your friends go with you? Were you in this together? ALEX HITZ: No. We all – some went in the Navy, some went in the Marine Corps. I had two very close friends who became Marines, but I went into the Army Air Corps, which was a part of the Army at that time. INTERVIEWER: And this is at your request? ALEX HITZ: Yes. INTERVIEWER: Okay. Very good; go ahead. ALEX HITZ: When I volunteered I told them I wanted the Air Force and they said fine, so that's what I was doing there. INTERVIEWER: Why did you volunteer? ALEX HITZ: Well, you know I was feeling very patriotic. We were at war and we weren't doing too well in the early days of World War II, and I really wanted to do my part, simple as that. INTERVIEWER: Very good. ALEX HITZ: And there were thousands of people in the same situation as me, volunteering all over the country. So, when we arrived in India, as I said, we could smell India far at sea, and the permanent party – the Americans on the pier at Bombay were small and skinny and yellowish and they squatted on their haunches and they spoke gibberish and they looked more like monkeys than people. Then two years later there I was yellowish, squatting on my haunches, speaking in Hindi, and I looked exactly like them. But India was quite an experience, and we went from India up into Burma. We took the train to the northern part of Bengal where I was stationed, and then by boater convoy down the Ledo Road, and I noticed not long ago an article in the National Geographic about the Ledo Road and what it looks like today, and they mention every place but Tinkcong [phonetic]. I spent two weeks at a little town called Tinkcong on the Ledo Road headed from Myitkyina. Myitkyina was a railhead of Burma. All transportation in Burma was north/south. There was no east and west transportation. The river ran north and south, the Irrawaddy River, and in the old British days they had boat service up the river and also train service to Myitkyina, and that's where I stationed, in Myitkyina, for a year. And Myitkyina was beautiful. I really liked it. And we had the Irrawaddy River was right outside my tent. And we had to wash our clothes in the Irrawaddy, which is a very fast river fed by mountain streams coming off the Himalayas, so it was cold and clear and full of shoals where we were, lots of rocks. But it was an interesting thing, we didn't see any combat but we had a bomb attack every week by the Japanese that wanted to stamp out our air base. The reason we were there was to fly the hump, supplying China with goods because the Japanese held the Chinese Coast. China at that time was our friend and ally and we had to keep China alive, so we had planes from northern India flying over the hump, which is the base – the bulk of the Himalayas, into Kunming and Chunking in west of China taking supplies to the Chinese to keep the Chinese soldiers alive. That was our purpose. INTERVIEWER: What was your specific job –? ALEX HITZ: I was in what was called Squadron Intelligence S2. My job was to brief and interrogate pilots that flew over Japanese air territory. I was actually in photo interpretation, so what – I was in a photographic squadron, so what we did, we would send a plane to take a picture of the Japanese building a new airfield somewhere, we'd make a photographic run, and then I would alert the fighter squadron next door and they would send a bomber over and drop a bomb on it, and then we'd do another photographic run to see if the bomb hit the target, simple as that. And so, they would bring the wet prints into me, and I'd look at them very quickly and see if we hit the target. If we didn't we'd have to send the bomber back to do it again. So it was sort of fun, you know, when we had something to do it was a lot of fun. Most of the time it was just torpid. We were fighting heat and fighting disease. We were fighting snakes and spiders and things like that. We didn't do much fighting with the Japanese per se, just the weekly bomb attacks, and most of their bombs were duds. We had to detonate their bombs, clear the area and detonate the Japanese bombs. INTERVIEWER: Did you have a warning when the bombers were coming over? ALEX HITZ: No. They usually came in the evening when we were just about to show a movie. I remember we saw the first reel of one movie three times because we had to cut off the projector and hit the fox holes when the Japanese bombers would come over. So we would play the same thing the next Friday and the next Friday, and we saw the first reel three times and never saw the second reel at all. But one day I was at Burma; I was working in my tent filing a report and a Japanese bomber came over and dropped a bomb that destroyed my tent and my typewriter and my report and the table, and there I sat in a camp stool right in the middle of all this carnage totally untouched, although there were pieces of red hot shrapnel going past my head big enough to take my head off, and I didn't get a single bruise or scratch, anything. I did think I was going to be permanently deaf, but that went away after maybe two days. But I led a charmed life there, because people were dying right and left, and we were always in the little cemetery burying another friend of ours. And most of the deaths were caused by mistakes on their part not action of the Japanese directly. We had pilots that failed to heed what we had told them and they would sometimes crash into the river on return. We would try to get enough of their body to put in a shoe box, which we then buried in the coffin. One day I remember the photographic squad had a day off and they went across the river in a Japanese motor boat that we had commandeered and instead of tacking up the swift flowing river they went straight across in the current, knocked the boat over, and we could watch them bombing in the rocks and shoals for miles down the river, and we never found any of the three. They were totally lost. It was that sort of thing that brought us back to the cemetery so many times. We would stand on the banks of the river waiting for all of our planes to come in. We couldn't go in the mess hall until everybody was in. And I remember one time there was a pilot that I had briefed on his mission. His name was Blackie and he was from Arkansas, very nice fellow, and he buzzed the area, which is strictly against all military regulations. We were amazed; we were standing on the banks of the Irrawaddy and he came in low and buzzed us, and then he took a nose dive into the swift Irrawaddy River and died that way. I really missed him very much, and that was a terrible thing for all of us. He was the last plane in and crashed on arrival. But as I said, most of the accidents really were due to our own errors and not to the Japanese action. INTERVIEWER: So most of the deaths that occurred to individuals in your camp were as the result of nature or errors made by the individual? ALEX HITZ: It was partly nature because the weather was always terrible in that part of the world, and partly by pilot error, or you know, poor judgment on the part of the GIs. INTERVIEWER: What kind of airplanes were they flying? ALEX HITZ: Well, my squadron, which was a photographic squadron; it was the 9th Photo Squadron had P38's, and another squadron next door to us had B25's, but most of my old squadron P38's, which is a little bundle of nerves. It was built, I think, by Lockheed, and it was a one man plane, and it was a beautiful little plane. I loved the P38's. They were wonderful to watch. INTERVIEWER: But they had twin engines, right? ALEX HITZ: They had twin engines, uh-huh. INTERVIEWER: Yes. ALEX HITZ: It was a nice plane. INTERVIEWER: Give me some idea if you would please what life was like in the camp. You said that you could not go to the mess hall until all the planes had returned. ALEX HITZ: Returned. INTERVIEWER: Why was that? ALEX HITZ: It was just a rule of the part of the own Major in charge of our squadron that we had to wait until everybody was in. We couldn't just wander in whenever we wanted to. And it was a good rule; we liked that. So we'd all wait until everybody was in and then we'd all go in at once. Not bad at all. We had fun here and there. We had dammed up – in the rainy season, we had dammed up a creek for a swimming hole in Burma very close to the camp and it was wonderful. You see, India and Burma don't have the spring and summer and winter that we have here. They only have three seasons in Southeast Asia. They have the hot season, which is roughly from February, March, April, May when it's over 100 degrees every day and every night, too, and you can't do much work in that period. Everything dries up, everything is brown and hot, just a torpid heat for four months. And then the rains come in the middle of June, and it rains every day lightly, excuse me, about 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. a light rain for four months. And so, after the rain starts everything turns green, there are millions of insects and bugs and frogs all over the place and flowers every where, and that's the danger season because anything that can propel itself in any way will come into the tent to keep from drowning. So you have to not only shake your shoes out every morning before you put them on but hit them against the wall to dislodge anything that's bad that's crawled into the shoe at night. So you have to watch out for snakes and scorpions and spiders galore at that particular time. And then there's four months of the cool season, and that's the pleasant time because it's about 85 degrees in the day time and 70 at night, and so that's four months of pleasant weather that we would enjoy. Anyway, one day one of the captains was swimming in our little swimming hole and he went to the infirmary with an ear infection. And the medical officer was actually a corporal from Minnesota, a young Scandinavian guy and he treated the captain and then another day another captain came in with the same ear infection. So the corporal went down to the swimming hole and put a big sign “Out of Bounds.” He wouldn't let anybody go in it because the rains had stopped and the water had turned stagnant and he was afraid that the diseases would – and so, the commanding office went down to go swimming one day and the corporal turned him away, and since the medical officer, in the case a corporal, had great authority in India like that in Burma, he had to acquiesce to what the corporal had told him. So he simply closed up the swimming hole for another year. That was it. No swimming. But I thought that was a very funny incident. INTERVIEWER: Yes, it is an incident, something that is unusual in the military. ALEX HITZ: It really was unusual, uh-huh. INTERVIEWER: Did they ever find out what was causing the ear infections? ALEX HITZ: Yes. It was a germ that had spread because the water was then stagnant, you know, we didn't have the running water in the swimming hole, so the Corporal did right to condemn it. That was it for that swimming hole, so we had to give up that. INTERVIEWER: So your entire cap area was composed of tents – ALEX HITZ: We had what we call bashes. We built a foundation of a hut, the bottom part was wooden. We had wooden floor and the top part was tent to let in whatever breeze there might be. You know, we needed that too. We couldn't have the wooden houses because it was too hot. Mind you, this was before air conditioning came in so it was very, very hot. We would have to get up when it was dark in the hot season and go to work. We worked in the dark for a long time, and then it would get to hot and we'd go back at noon. All the work was over by noon. We could go back and try to sleep in the tent. But in order to sleep you had to wet towels and put them on your head to cool down enough to go to sleep, and you'd wake up in a pool of sweat, because we had mosquito nets. If we didn't have the mosquito nets we would have been killed by mosquitoes. So everybody had these thick mosquito nets that had to be down and tucked in under the blanket by 4 p.m. because mosquitoes would come out at dusk and at dawn. That's when they would really attack. So, you know, we had a very, very good medical department. I never knew of an American GI getting any of those horrible diseases that kill the British soldiers constantly. I never knew anybody to get malaria, and I never knew of anybody to get leprosy or leach maniasis, or any of those things. And I was amazed that some of my – we made friends with some of the British. The British were there not to fight the Japanese but to keep India down really. So the British were stationed all over the country. We were only in northeast India in two provinces, Bengal and Assam, because our job was to fly over a Japanese held territory and also over the hump. But I did meet some British here and there especially in Calcutta, and I was astonished at how frequently they would die. You know, the British would die all the time and the Americans never did. INTERVIEWER: They died of diseases? ALEX HITZ: They died of everything mostly, because they lived in such primitive conditions. I remember Kipling, who had lived in India, wrote many stories about India and one of his lines was the newly made recruit has come to the east and he wonders why he is frequent diseased. And I would always think of that little quatrain that Kipling wrote because they didn't have as good a medical department as we did. We had to take an Atabrine a day, a little yellow pill, to keep down malaria. And the medical officer found that just outside of the mess hall there were lots of little yellow pills on the ground. Atabrine was bitter and people didn't want to swallow it, so they would spit it out. They would give it to them but they would spit it out. So once he discovered that that was the end of all that. We had to open our mouth, he would put the pill in our mouth then we had to close our mouth and open again and he would see that the pill had disappeared before we could go into the mess hall. That was the only way that he could maintain this and nobody ever got malaria. We followed our directions very well. But I was amazed – INTERVIEWER: In other words, he ran a real tight operation. ALEX HITZ: He did and it worked. And I was just amazed at how well it worked. We had an excellent medical department. INTERVIEWER: You said that you led a charmed life. Why do you think that? I know there were other people that were dying but – ALEX HITZ: Yeah, but this bomb attack when I didn't get so much as a scratch just amazed me. That was actually my first bomb. I have survived three bomb attacks in my life. The other two were not service related. They were after the service. One was in Havana Cuba and the third one was in Benola Phillipines, and each time I wasn't touched by the bomb and didn't get some much as a scratch or a bruise, but in all three cases I thought I would be permanently deaf because of the noise of the bomb. INTERVIEWER: But that was after you were separated from the service? ALEX HITZ: That's right. INTERVIEWER: We'll get back to that. But let's go back to India again. In the area where you were stationed, approximately how many personnel were on that base? INTERVIEWER: In Burma we had about 40 members of my squadron in – but we were at Myitkyina north strip. We had built the small airport a Myitkyina. Myitkyina was a very important town. It wasn't a real city, but it was a large village at the north end of the railroad and the boat service in Burma, so it was a very important little town. It's M-Y-I-T-K-Y-I-N-A, pronounced michinaw. And it was a very pleasant place, and although I was not interested in plants or flowers at all at that time being a GI, I was amazed at the tremendous numbers of poinsettias, the Christmas plant, which was all over the place, apparently planted by the British in the gardens and it had escaped to the wild. And there were poinsettia plants as big as a house all around us. They were magnificent, all over the place. INTERVIEWER: Other than your squadron were there other Americans? ALEX HITZ: Yes. We had several – we had the fighter squadron next door, also at Myitkyina north, and we would play them in baseball. And we also had volleyball going. We had played the various squadrons up there. And then there was another one in Myitkyina south strip on the other side of the town, but I never knew any of those people at all. The ones I knew were the ones right around us. See, the Americans were in tiny pockets all over Burma and India, and it's very hard to actually meet anybody unless they happen to live in the town next door to you. We had no meeting ground except in the baseball diamond that we had created there. INTERVIEWER: Other than baseball, what other forms of recreation were available to you? ALEX HITZ: We had the movie once a week. We didn't get many movies. And now down in India we had a Red Cross Club and a very good one. So we could all meet at the Red Cross Club. INTERVIEWER: In the city – town? ALEX HITZ: It was in Bengal. Bengal is a very large province of which Calcutta is the capitol. And Bengal is rice paddy country. It grows an awful lot of rice, which means an awful lot of rats because the rats eat the rice. And it also means an awful lot of cobras because cobras eat the rats that spoil the rice. So cobras are consider sacred and are protected. They do kill people every once in a while but there are a lot of people there so it doesn't make any difference. But the purpose of the cobra was to kill the rats which spoil the rice, that's the main crop from the people, so they protect the cobras who kill the rats. INTERVIEWER: And you had an opportunity to go to this city every now and then? ALEX HITZ: I would go into Calcutta every now and then. Up in Burma we had – INTERVIEWER: How far was that from the location where you were based? ALEX HITZ: It was about 10 or 15 miles from the place – I was stationed at the little town called Kushagra Bengal and that was about 15 miles outside of Calcutta. And our plane would fly into Dum Dum Airport Calcutta, which is now the Municipal Airport of Calcutta. Calcutta had been the capitol of India at one time before they created New Delhi as the capitol. So it had many government buildings. It had all sorts of amenities that the British had put in in Calcutta. We had a swimming club. We had a big park in the middle of town, we had movies and one really good restaurant that we would all go to when we could possibly get off and that was called Firpo, F-I-R-P-O, and they had decent food at Firpo, and it was quite pleasant to be able to go into town and eat dinner at Firpo. I remember that very pleasantly. But there weren't many recreational advantages really, not at all. There were very, very few. Besides the movies, there weren't many. We couldn't date any. There were no women to date. The Indian women wouldn't have anything to do with us and the Anglo women, which are half Indian and half English, would come to our dances. We would send a truck over there and they would fill it up with these Anglo-Indian women, and they were glad to go to the GI dances. INTERVIEWER: And the dances were held in Calcutta? ALEX HITZ: In Calcutta. INTERVIEWER: I see. ALEX HITZ: We had no other place to go. INTERVIEWER: Okay. It would send the trucks to where? ALEX HITZ: To the apartment houses where the Anglo-Indian women lived. INTERVIEWER: Okay. And then you would pick them up and bring them to the dances. ALEX HITZ: Right. I remember we had – in my section of Bengal where I lived for a while our commanding officer had sent a message to the local Maharaja that he would like very much to meet him and to be entertained at the palace and the Maharaja wasn't in the least interested in meeting our commanding officer, so he sort of rebuffed the note. But I had a very good friend in the Army who seemed to be able to get anything done. He was a New Yorker, and one day he came back to the barracks and he told me that he had spent the day at the Maharaja's palace. And I didn't doubt him. I knew that he had. I didn't know how he had gotten in, but I knew he had gotten in, and he told me that I was invited the next Tuesday, which was my day off. So the next Tuesday we commandeered a jeep and went to the Maharaja's palace, he gave his name at the gate, the gate swung open, we came into the big entrance hall. The Maharaja came bounding down the steps, greeted us both very warmly, and he apologized because he had to go into Calcutta on business. And he said, but the place is yours. I've ordered lunch for you. And the horses, if you'd like to ride, the horses will be ready, and please spend the day and have a good time and thank you so much for coming. And I was amazed. I had never met a Maharaja before, and to be entertained like that for the day. But back at the barracks I couldn't tell any of my buddies about it. They wouldn't have understood at all. And about six months later the Red Cross lady obtained permission to go to the palace with some of the GIs, including our commanding officer, on a tour. And of course I had been there several times by then. And the servants at the palace didn't speak to us, which was fortunate, and I didn't speak to them, but the palace at that time was a very familiar place to me. By the way, I brought some pictures of the palace today to show to you. INTERVIEWER: Why do you think your friend was able to make friends with the Maharaja? ALEX HITZ: I don't know. He was able to do anything. He was a very intelligent, very pushy New York type person. INTERVIEWER: Was he from a rich background? ALEX HITZ: No, he wasn't. He was from an intellectual background but not a rich background. But I'd never met anybody like him, and I was just fascinated with what he could do. He could cope with any situation and that impressed me very much. So I palled around with him a great deal because it was to my advantage to do so. INTERVIEWER: Well, were you able to be friendly with the British? ALEX HITZ: Yes. There were a couple of British ladies in Calcutta that would have very large parties and gatherings and I was on their list. I had gone to the Red Cross Club and signed up for these things, and so it was sort of fun to see that type of Calcutta as well. There was a certain lady that had parties quite often and she was existing on some sort of an American grant given to her husband for research. So she liked Americans and she would have a certain number of British soldiers and a certain number of American soldiers at her parties, and I was on that list and that was very fortunate for me, because it was all a part of the picture and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I remember that lady quite well. She was a lovely lady and a very good hostess. She had an army of waiters carrying trays of gimlets and so that impressed me very much. It was like Hollywood's version of Calcutta almost. INTERVIEWER: Why do you think that the Indian people were not friendly to the Americans? Were they hostile or just not -- ALEX HITZ: Most of them were hostile. They weren't friendly to any westerners. They were occupied by the British and they resented it and this was a time that India was beginning to feel its oats and were demanding independence and Ghandi was preaching in the west, and he started the Quit India Campaign and everybody was taking that to heart. The empire was breaking up around us, because we didn't realize it at the time but these were the last days of the British Raj. And the British were even more arrogant than ever because of that, because they could feel the country was dissolving around them and that they would be out. And I remember when Ghandi told the British Lord Wavell and Lord Wavell said, well, you don't expect us just to walk out of the country and Ghandi says, that's exactly what I do expect, that you will walk out exactly like you walked in 200 years later. That happened in 1947, and I left India in 1945. I left by ship from Karachi, which is now Pakistan, but at that time it was the western most port of India and we sailed from Karachi back to New York City by way of the Mediterranean. INTERVIEWER: Other than the weather situations that you had to deal with, the intense heat, the oppressive heat, did you think that India was a nice country? ALEX HITZ: No. I thought it had some interesting things about it, some magnificent architecture, and I traveled a great deal in India. I learned basic Hindi. That was a very important thing because that was the language of India and in order to get around, get a taxi, find a hotel and get a meal I had to speak Hindi, so I did it. And I spent one vacation up in Kashmir, which I wouldn't take anything in the world for having done. It was a magnificent trip, but it took me five days to get from Calcutta to Kashmir. I had to take a train part of the way and a tonga, a two wheel cart, and a horse part of the way. I thought I would never get there, and I got there in the middle of the night and I was very cold going up the mountain side. And I remember I had made reservations through an English friend in Calcutta for a Scottish run hotel up in Kashmir. It was a magnificent experience. I wouldn't take anything for it. I love Kashmir, and I love this wonderful Scottish lady that ran the hotel and it was a lot of fun. INTERVIEWER: Were you on furlough at the time? ALEX HITZ: I was on furlough, three week furlough. And the first day at breakfast I was sort of frozen out by all the local people who were British because I had a British Army jacket on, and they didn't know exactly what I was, so they didn't speak to me. They don't want their own enlisted man around. Apparently there's a barrier between them which we don't have in our country. And the next day I had an American uniform on and people came over to the table to speak to me and to invite me for tea or to go riding with them or something like. It was amazing how different it was once they found that I was an American. INTERVIEWER: What was your military rank at the time? ALEX HITZ: I was a sergeant. INTERVIEWER: A sergeant. So the American sergeants were accepted by these people – ALEX HITZ: Yes. INTERVIEWER: -- but British enlisted men were not? ALEX HITZ: A British sergeant would not have been accepted at all. INTERVIEWER: That is interesting. ALEX HITZ: Not in the least. It was interesting to me. But there was no barrier between us at all as an enlisted man whatsoever. INTERVIEWER: Earlier you characterized the people when you landed in India as being yellow and small and looking other than human. ALEX HITZ: Yes. INTERVIEWER: And then you said later on you – ALEX HITZ: That was the American permanent party who would check in the troop ships as they arrived and put us on trains to go to whatever part of India we were going to. But we didn't have the fats. We were all skinny as we could be, and we were yellowish from eating Atabrine, and we spoke Hindi. We had a funny language with a lot of Hindi words. And one or two of those words has persisted in all these years, and I hear it every once in a while, and that's the word “yay,” like yay big. Yay is Hindi for “this.” And every once in a while when I hear a word like that I'm just amazed. We have lots of Hindi words in our language anyway. Bungalow is another one. Cummerbund is another Hindi word and thug is a Hindi word. INTERVIEWER: Well, that's interesting. I didn't know – ALEX HITZ: Those are all taken from the Hindi by the British and then from the British to the American vernacular. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I hear that yay all the time. ALEX HITZ: Yay means this in Hindi. INTERVIEWER: It never occurred to me – ALEX HITZ: This big. Uh-huh. INTERVIEWER: But after a couple of years there then you became one of the same types of – ALEX HITZ: Yes, I looked just like that. INTERVIEWER: You looked just like the others. ALEX HITZ: I had a yellowish tint for several months after arriving home. I finally thought I would be permanent yellow, but finally it went away because I was no longer eating Atabrine. INTERVIEWER: So after what period of time being stationed there were you able to leave and come back to the United States? ALEX HITZ: Well, let's see, the war was over in 1945, and I was in Bengal when President Roosevelt died. Franklin Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia, I think in April of 1945. And there were so many of us over there and so few troop ships going to the far east, most of the troop ships were diverted to Europe to bring GIs home. By the way, they were eligible to come home from Europe after a year of service. We had to take in two years because we were so far away and there were so few troop ships. So finally we were scheduled to sail out of Karachi, which is now Pakistan, in December of 1945. So we spent several weeks at a British base in Karachi and then got on the troop ship there. But all during World War II my liberalism came fairly late. And I was incensed by Ralph McGill – my father always though Ralph McGill was a flaming liberal. To me, he didn't go nearly far enough. And I would read his accounts of what was going on in the war, and I would write him letters. I wrote him many letters from India pointing out the error of his thinking. INTERVIEWER: And who is Ralph McGill. ALEX HITZ: Ralph McGill was the editor of the Atlanta Constitution. Mr. McGill would take the time to write me back a very sensible, carefully written letter and that would make me even madder, and so I'd write him another fiery letter, and this correspondence went on for two years while I was writing to Ralph McGill and finally the war is over and I'm home and I needed a job. So I went down to the Atlanta Constitution and his secretary at that moment was out. So I walked into his private office. He was on the phone and he looked up at me and he was quite annoyed that I'd come into his private office unannounced and he says, “Who are you and what do you want?” And I told him my name and he turned red as a beet. He remembered me in all these correspondence. And I said Mr. McGill, I need a job. And he says “You're hired, now get out of here.” And so, I went back to the man that actually pays the pay check in the office and I said “Mr. McGill has just hired me.” And he said “Do what?” And I said, “We didn't get into that.” He said, “At what salary?” And I said, “We didn't get into that either.” He said, “Maybe you'd better come back at 8 o'clock in the morning and we'll talk about it.” So, I worked for Mr. McGill for about six months after that. The first six months of 1946. INTERVIEWER: So you received copies of the Atlanta Constitution while you were in India? ALEX HITZ: Well, his articles were reprinted in our local Army paper and my father had sent me other articles. And he would discuss the problems – Mr. McGill had a wonderful sense of analyzing the political happening in some part of the world. He knew Atlanta's position in the state, the state in the south, and the south in the nation, and the nation in the hemisphere. He understood that perfectly and he could analyze any political happening any where, and he did it succinctly and intelligently and I became a great fan of Mr. McGill shortly thereafter. I really liked him, and I loved working for the Constitution. It was a great experience for me to do that. INTERVIEWER: But prior to that time you did not consider yourself as being liberal leaning; is that right? ALEX HITZ: No. The two colleges that I went to were bastions of conservatism, and the problems of the British in India with the locals didn't concern me at all. But when I got there, the first year I was there I'd think how could the British exploit these poor suffering people like they do. India, everything they have has been taken from them. They're subject to humiliation by the British overlords, and everything has been stolen from them? The second year I was there it was the opposite. I thought how could the British put up with these hopeless, wretched people like they do? They've given them everything. They put in universities, railroads, a system of government, trial by jury, none of which they had before. How could they possibly put up with these wretched people? So you know, the point of view is a very important thing and one's opinion does change. If it doesn't change then you're in real trouble. INTERVIEWER: So by the time you left then your opinion had changed back again? ALEX HITZ: Totally. INTERVIEWER: And that was due in part to Mr. McGill's articles? ALEX HITZ: Well, I hate to say that, but I guess that's true. Because, you know, as being a flaming liberal at that time I would write him these letters and he didn't go nearly far enough. I would think of the American patriots under the British and the American War of Independence and taking their point of view against the British was quite different. Then later on I became very pro-British, which is [unintelligible] progression I guess. But I love my time with the Atlanta Constitution. That was a lot of fun. And I worked with Mr. McGill in putting the paper to bed at night. We would proofread together. There were about six of us around the table, and I felt privileged to be with Mr. McGill. And then we would have a beer together and bleu cheese and bread, and I thought this was the height of sophistication. INTERVIEWER: Were you an administrative assistant to Mr. McGill? ALEX HITZ: No, I was just a cub reporter on the night shift. INTERVIEWER: Oh, reporter. Okay. ALEX HITZ: But became a friend of his at the time, and I value that friendship. INTERVIEWER: What other correspondence did you receive while you were in India from your family other than the letters from your father? You were not married at the time you went over; were you? ALEX HITZ: I was not married, no. No, I didn't marry until much later. INTERVIEWER: But you received letters from your mother – ALEX HITZ: Yes. INTERVIEWER: -- and your brothers and sisters? ALEX HITZ: Yes. Not many, but I did get some. INTERVIEWER: And I guess that was a big time in your day when you received those letters? ALEX HITZ: Yes. It is for every GI to get letters from home, or every once in a while from a friend of mine in another branch of the service in another part of the world, and that was fun also. I enjoyed that. INTERVIEWER: So, after you got back and you went to work for the Atlanta Constitution, and you worked there for about six months? ALEX HITZ: Yes. INTERVIEWER: What happened after that? ALEX HITZ: I couldn't get out of the night shift, and I couldn't sleep during the day and so something had to give and I had to leave the Atlanta Constitution. I didn't want to, but it's a morning newspaper, and so, most of the work is done at night to prepare for the next morning. So I had to transfer from the Constitution to an advertising agency where I was for a long time. And I enjoyed that. Then I left the advertising agency to go to school on the GI Bill. I wanted to go back to school to study political science, and the school I wanted was in Paris and it was very hard to get into that school but I qualified, so I spent a year in Paris on the GI Bill after that. INTERVIEWER: You indicated that you were subjected to bombs when you were in Cuba I think it was. Why were you in Cuba? ALEX HITZ: Just as a tourist. INTERVIEWER: Oh, I see. ALEX HITZ: I was traveling with two ladies. We stayed at the Havana Hilton Hotel and a pro-Castro bomb went off on the ground floor of the Hilton knocking out all the shops and elevator system, so we had to leave the hotel. It was a minor inconvenience for us. We weren't hurt in any way, shape, or form. The third bomb was when I was a travel agent. I went to a convention in Manila, Philippines and a bomb went off at the convention about six rows ahead of me. Somebody had brought a bomb in, put it under the seat, and then had left, and the bomb exploded, and there again it was complete mayhem and I thought I would be permanently deaf from that one, too, but I wasn't touched. They were bringing out people on stretchers. It was cordite bomb, so there were little bits of cordite in the faces of people all around it, but it didn't touch me for some reason, and I was the closest one to it. There again, another bomb that didn't affect me at all except for the hearing. I was very lucky. INTERVIEWER: I can see why you consider yourself as being charmed. ALEX HITZ: That's right. INTERVIEWER: Do you have any reluctance now to travel to overseas areas? ALEX HITZ: No, no. I've traveled a great deal. I've traveled in some 75 countries and I was a travel agent for 40 years. INTERVIEWER: I see, okay. ALEX HITZ: I was also the Honorary Counselor of Switzerland for 12 years. INTERVIEWER: Oh. ALEX HITZ: So I'm a linguist. When I was in India I told you that I learned basic Hindi. I couldn't read it or write it but I could speak it to get my wants known. So I went to school in Paris, so French is the language of Paris, so I had to know French and German because I worked for the Consulate of Switzerland. And let's see, Spanish because I traveled so much in Spanish speaking countries. INTERVIEWER: So that's four languages that you have mentioned. You speak four languages. Do you speak them fluently? ALEX HITZ: Yes. In Paris I had to study Russian. I don't speak it fluently. I only know a few phrases, but I studied Russian for two years. And I work at the Atlanta Botanical Garden down there so I can greet the visitors that come into the Orchid Center in Hindi – INTERVIEWER: Whatever language – ALEX HITZ: -- French or German or Spanish, which I enjoy very much. It's fun. INTERVIEWER: What was life like for you when you first got back into Atlanta? ALEX HITZ: It was difficult. It's difficult for any returning serviceman I think. So many of my friends were gone at that time, killed in the war. We had heavy casualties in my class at Washington and Lee, and some of my best friends were killed. And it was difficult getting adjusted but I managed. Some people weren't quite as lucky as I was. INTERVIEWER: Earlier you made reference to the fact that you had been in Swan House here at the Atlanta History Center area. ALEX HITZ: Yes, sir. INTERVIEWER: Tell us about that, please. ALEX HITZ: Well, when my sister got married one of her bridesmaids lived here at Swan House, so I had to pick her up sometimes, so I knew Swan House as a private residence, and another bridesmaid lived Callanwolde, which is now a cultural arts center in Decatur, so that was a private home to me, too. And also Rhodes Hall, which is on Peachtree Street and Ansley Park, I knew that as a private residence too, because I went to Grandmother Rhodes' funeral when I was a little boy. That was my – I think I must have been six or seven years old. INTERVIEWER: So your family, evidently, was well connected. ALEX HITZ: It was not a wealthy family but it was well connected, yes. INTERVIEWER: I see. And your sister was friends with these other girls? ALEX HITZ: Yeah, my great Aunt married Mr. Rhodes, so that's how I was connected with the Rhodes family at Rhodes Hall. INTERVIEWER: So you saw this area developed; is that right? ALEX HITZ: I saw this area develop. This was a pleasant residential section. It wasn't the – it didn't have the importance that Buckhead seems to have now with people. Everybody wants a home – everybody that's wealthy wants a home in Buckhead. But in those days it was just where we lived. It was just a quiet residential area. Buckhead – it's actually two things. It's a very large residential area and it's also a little business area at Peachtree and Roswell Road. That's also called Buckhead. So you have to know which Buckhead you're talking about when you mention the term Buckhead. It could be two different things. INTERVIEWER: I see. I see. ALEX HITZ: But I grew up in Buckhead. I now live in Midtown but Buckhead I consider my home. INTERVIEWER: So, thinking back on your military service and if you had the opportunity to talk to younger people today about the possibility of going into military service, what would you advise them? ALEX HITZ: I would strongly recommend that they do so. I think it's a good training for everybody. I really do. Men and women. There were things that I really enjoyed about it, things that I thought taught me some valuable lessons. Self reliance, that's the most valuable lesson that any GI could get. You have to depend on yourself to survive. You can't depend on your buddies or the commanding officer. He's not going to save you, but you can save yourself. You have to be wary, you have to be alert, and you have to not take any unnecessary chances. That's some very important lessons I think. And I was amazed that some friends of mine died in Burma from being what I would consider foolish, doing things that they shouldn't have done. They should have known better. So I think the Army teaches us many valuable lessons like that. And to live by your own wits is very important. I did take some chances in Burma that I shouldn't have taken. I got lost one time, my own foolishness. I was lost in north Burma for a whole day, and I thought I was going to die there. I didn't think there would be any possible way for me to ever get out of there. It was in scrub vegetation country. It wasn't jungle country, but it was tiger country, but what I was really afraid of was leeches because there was a leech under every single leaf. And I was tired and hungry and I couldn't lie down because I knew that I'd be covered with leeches. This is amazing; I actually stumbled onto a small territory where a man came out every day to send up AK-AK guns to shoot at for target practice. That was his job, just to send up these targets. And I stumbled onto his tent. It was the only thing within miles of this vegetation, and I wandered into his little area and he thought I was an escaped Japanese soldier and he almost killed me. He points a rifle at my belly and I was incapable of speech before he could realize that I was a fellow American. And he gave me something to eat, and I took a nap on his couch and that afternoon a jeep came in with supplies for him and took me back with them to my base. But he kept telling me if I hadn't found him that I'd wander around for days in this wilderness. INTERVIEWER: Why were you there? ALEX HITZ: Well, I had gotten a ride -- oddly enough I had gotten a ride in a plane going down to Bhamo. Bhamo was the next town south of us. It had just been taken by the allies, and for some reason I wanted to see Bhamo. I wanted to get close to the war. Up in Myitkyina the war is over for them. But Bhamo has just been taken. Okay, we had an L5, which is a Piper Cub, it's a one man plane, a little tiny plane going down there to Bhamo. And I managed to get a ride with that pilot, which means I had to sit in the same seat as the pilot, right behind him holding on because there were no doors and no strap. So I had to hold on to this teenage pilot flying down there through this mountain pass and it was a very harrowing ride. It was one of the most awful rides in my life, but what was so bad about it, it was an air drop mission as well. I had to throw out a box of supplies to some British soldiers who were surrounded by Japanese. They had no other supplies. My job was to throw out the box to them on the ground, and I almost went with that box because there's nothing holding me onto that plane. So at a certain time when the plane banked, I had to throw the box out to these guys on the ground. And I said, I almost went with that box. The only way I could hold on is to have my legs around the pilot, almost choking him to death like that. Okay, we made it to Bhamo and I told him I wasn't going back with him I was going back on the Ledo Road. There was no Ledo Road going down there. It went in the other direction. So, he says “well, this is the only way you can get back.” I said “no, I'll take my chances.” So I got a ride in a truck going partly up the road and I didn't realize, I wasn't thinking. Soldiers do some things and I was on the wrong side of the river. I couldn't have crossed the river if I'd gotten there. INTERVIEWER: So you were quite fortunate to meet this fellow? ALEX HITZ: Yes. He was much more amazed and frightened than I was. He was astonished that I would burst in on his territory. But following up that story, years later I was on a safari in Kenya and the owner of the safari company gave a little cocktail party for the people on the safari the first night at his house in Koran, which is a section of Nyrobi, and at this lovely cocktail party I met an Englishman, resident of Nyrobi, and he asked me if I had been to Africa before, and I said yes, and he said where else have you been, and I said, well, I spent two yeas in India and Burma during World War II. And he says, “Oh really? I was stationed in Burma also.” And I said, “You were?” And he said, “Yes, I'm very grateful to you fellows,” he says “because you saved my life with an air drop mission one time when I was in north Burma.” INTERVIEWER: What a coincidence. ALEX HITZ: And I said “I might have been the one that threw that box down to you.” He was a great big guy and he came over and hugged me and his wife could not understand why we were both crying. She couldn't understand at all, but we had a feeling that, you know, that was it, that I had given him the box. And I had that strong feeling too, that I'm the one that saved that guy's life. And we met at a cocktail party in Nyrobi. It's an amazing incident. But sometimes these things do happen. And it could have been, and he realized it could have been, and I realized it could have been, too. But it's funny how things work out like that, isn't it? INTERVIEWER: It really is, yes. Well, this has been a real interesting interview with you. ALEX HITZ: Well, thank you so much for saying that. I just felt like I didn't have much to say. INTERVIEWER: Well, that's what you said, but as it turns out you've got an awful lot to say. ALEX HITZ: Well, thank you. INTERVIEWER: Which is usually the case when veterans start talking, and that really is why this project is so interesting and so necessary. ALEX HITZ: Good. INTERVIEWER: We have only about five minutes left, so is there anything else that you want to say? ALEX HITZ: There isn't anything to say since I was never in actual combat. Fortunately, I never had to shoot at anyone and nobody ever shot at me, so I consider myself very lucky. I survived. I survived very well. I have led a charmed life, I feel. I was destined to do something else than just die in Burma, and I really feel that. INTERVIEWER: And you took advantage of the programs that the military – ALEX HITZ: I took advantage of all the programs I could possibly take up. INTERVIEWER: Okay. And you would recommend that to other military personnel when they got out of the service? ALEX HITZ: Let me tell you one more little interesting story while we have a few minutes. As I mentioned, the train in the British days came all the way from Rangoon up to Mandalay to Myitkyina where I was stationed. It was a railroad ride. It had been bombed by the Japanese. There were only two freight cars left. They were terribly damaged and there was no engine because they had taken the engine away. So the Americans can do anything they really want to do, and you know, Americans have fun everywhere they go. Other people don't seem to have the fun that we have. But they put out a call for anybody in the Armed Services in Burma and India who had ever worked on an American railroad to report to their commanding officer, and they brought them to north Burma and we put that little train back together. Since we had no engine, couldn't get one, we made an engine out of a Jeep. We took the wheels off of a Jeep and put railroad wheels on that Jeep and it pulled these two little cars down the track to Bhamo taking supplies. We rebuilt the little railroad station, put signs on it just like it was before and any GI that had the day off could ride that train down to Bhamo and back. So I brought pictures today of that little train. INTERVIEWER: I have seen the pictures of that train. ALEX HITZ: Uh-huh. We had fun doing that. INTERVIEWER: Well, you know, this is testimony to American ingenuity. ALEX HITZ: We also had hot and cold showers in the jungle in north Burma, too, using drop tanks from a plane and wired up and in the proper pipe so we can tear down the hot water and the cold water and the British were amazed because they had no such thing at all. INTERVIEWER: Necessity is the mother of invention. ALEX HITZ: Uh-huh, we had fun with that. Well, thank you for listening to me. INTERVIEWER: Well, thank you again. This has really been very interesting. ALEX HITZ: I hope it's been as interesting for you as it was for me. INTERVIEWER: It certainly was. [END INTERVIEW]
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/212
Additional Rights Information:: This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
Extent:: 58:47
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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