Right here, he told me…this chap born of Irish background, Catholic. They came from Ireland. He was born in Boston and raised in that very limited environment, where nothing was right but a good Irish Catholic. He said, “I hated two people in the world: I hated the Jew and I hated the Negro. Then came the 2nd World War and I was a sergeant in the Pacific. The Japanese had us pinned down. I couldn’t move, I just couldn’t move…my entire company pinned down. The slightest motion and the machine guns simply swept us. On my left was a Jew. Because he was a Jew, I gave him all the dirty work in the company. I was a Catholic and he a Jew, and I threw everything I should not have, because he was really not worthy of that treatment.” Then he said to me when we were pinned down, he said, ‘Sarge, do you have a grenade?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Let me have them.’ So, he said, I unpinned a couple and the very motion caused fire, and he took them. He stretched his hand out and took them. Then he jumped up like lightning and threw, pins pulled, threw them right into that nest and blew the entire nest apart. He was wounded, seriously wounded, but he saved the company. From that day on, no matter who he was, if he was a Jew, he was tops in my world. That delusion died when I saw the bravery of a man. I always thought that they were cowards, and I, the great Catholic, and I wouldn’t budge to get up to give my life, but he jumped up to save others, and he saved the entire company. “I came back to America. I hadn’t yet gotten over my prejudice of the Negro. Now, I’m a builder, bricks, all the things that go into building buildings. In San Francisco…I didn’t return to Boston, I went to see my family, then I came back to the West Coast. Having spent a little time here, I liked it.” So he came back, another job in San Francisco, producing materials for all construction. “One day, an explosion took place in a factory and I’m afire. My whole body is blazing. And all the Caucasians around just simply are afraid, not one came towards me. This Negro rushed towards me, picked me up bodily, and threw me down, and laid on me, smothered every little spark on my body with his body. He was burned, yes, really burned, but he saved my life and smothered it. And now, as the employer of all the work in building, if you are a Negro or a Jew, you get the first choice.”325 ¶5