@toriaezu Thank you so much, but I just had a cursory look at the real life Bird. Oh yeah... she's definitely a product of her time... maybe I should consider the manga a reinterpretation.
@NegiLol yeah that's probably for the best, they're pretty night and day. I usually tend to think of manga Bird as an idealized version, one who isn't so crotchety and casually racist...