First Hand History

"And all of a sudden, there was a brilliant flash of orange light, and everyone kind of went, what was that? And you got about that far with what you said, and the shockwave hit."

"This is not the religion I believe in, this is somebody’s twisted view of religion."

"I looked back, and there was a mushroom cloud going up in the air. Hundreds and hundreds of feet, maybe thousands of feet in the air, near where the hooch was where my friends and I lived"

"A lot of people are still living the way they were 3000 years ago."

"There was times when we didn't get the best of treatment but that is to be expected."

"You reach a point where you wonder, are you doing the right thing..."

"I got malaria. Nearly everybody over there got some malaria."

"In the air you see life from another perspective."

"I always felt that war was far away, but yes, I did have a fear that war would come to our country."

"You know they're just going off everywhere all around you. It wasn't a boom, it was a crack like somebody cracked a whip."

"Forests fires burn things down and the trees grow back and one day we aren't going to talk about this anymore."

"Everything was destroyed from the bombings."

"...hearing bombs everyday, or not going to school once or twice a week is something that became kind of normal for me."

"If the U.S. hadn’t bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan would have never loosened their grip on us."

"I could see the bombs getting dropped out of the airplanes."

"Our base was shelled nightly...you could always hear gunfire off base."

"It's better to run and live in a free country than live in a Communist country."

"No one anticipated planes with 100, 200 innocent people to be turned into weapons, killing everybody."

"Natives like us... Indians, didn't have much of a say during England's regime."

"Being in the military gives you a chance to serve something bigger than yourself."

"... only when you respect the knowledge and the teacher can the country and youth learn and advance..."

"Journalism is like writing the first draft of history. We get a good front seat to watch the world, and see what's happening."

"It was me and Tom, walking for six hours out in the dark."

"It’s kind of a, kind of a nightmare to tell you the truth."

"Many of my pupils died during the war, when they went on the protests against the government, they were shot point blank. It was very sad to see them dying."

"Those were some of the risks and I don't think it discouraged anyone, I think it just hardened us all to the fact that this might be what was happening and it was all the more to protest the war."

"[. . .] Because of communication and global communication, this is our opportunity to connect and realize that we are all in this together, and this is where we can empower ourselves to control these mighty governments who in the past told us what to do, now, we really recognize that there are real people all over the planet, and it is our duty to be kind to each other."

"The war was not a good war, if there is such a thing. It was a war where people were being exploited, both the Vietnamese that lived there and the young Americans that had gone over there to fight."

"...The civilian population back in the states did not feel that the war was justified and were keen on letting those of us who were returning know how they felt."

"When the revolution came, we all supported Fidel Castro."

"War does not solve anything, nothing. It just leaves a lot of sadness, and is not good."

"Everyone look at us with eyes that show that we were less than them."

"There's students running everywhere, and all I can remember is going to class, walking up the steps, and there were young, young members of the National Guard. They were probably just my age, but they were holding weapons."

"You can't just believe the liberal news or conservative news, but to make an opinion for yourself. Get the facts."

"Sarajevo had been a major war zone, there had been a lot of fighting for several years, and pretty much everything was blown up."

"This guy turns and he looks out the window, and on the back of his helmet he’s got this tape that says, 'If you ain’t got nothing, you ain’t got nothing to lose.' "

"It always seems impossible unless it is done."

""

"Don’t you think we have a right to speak Pakistani leadership when you are engaging with India on different issues? Where is Kashmir? We don’t want them to forget Pakistan."

"I had no grandparents; I had no uncles, no aunts -- they were all murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps. "

"This [9/11] happened to the country but it mainly happened to us [New Yorkers]."

"The police shot a dozen tear gas, so I could not see a foot away."

"Mainly we were fighting for freedom. "

"It's really difficult to think that that happened to us, that that was… part of our history of Japanese people, and that something that was so wrong could happen, and I guess that's how it affects us."

"I'll never get a chance to do something like this, if I don't take this job."

"Know what your mission is, and master all that you can about the elements of your mission and pursue it as hard as possible. "

"At that time Batumi did not have electricity, so the streets were pretty dark. We started running, we heard them running after us, and my mom took her shoes off because her shoes were making noise, and I took my shoes off."