Today is Victory over Japan Day, the day on which Imperial Japan surrendered in WWII, bringing an end to the war. The formal signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender took place on board the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, and at that time President Truman declared September 2 to be the official V-J Day.
General Douglas MacArthur signing the Instrument of Surrender on behalf of th e Allied Powers. Generals Wainwright and Percival, both former prisoners of the Japanese, stand behind him.
Missouri was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named after the US state of Missouri. The ship was authorized by Congress in 1938. The ship was launched on 29 January 1944 before a crowd of 20,000 to 30,000 spectators. At the launching ceremony, the ship was christened by Margaret Truman, the ship sponsor and daughter of Harry S. Truman, then one of the senators from the ship’s namesake state.
USS Missouri underway in August 1944.
Missouri earned three battle stars for World War II service, five for Korean War service and a further three for Gulf War service.
As you know Veterans Day was yesterday and as usual I gave it some thought. I think a lot of Boomers like myself are fascinated with WWII because we grew up with so many WWII veterans–fathers and grandfathers–ordinary men who did extraordinary things.
So I was doing some research about a local man who became an “Ace in a day” on August 7, 1942 at Guadalcanal. Courtney Shands was awarded the Navy Cross for “extraordinary heroism in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Navy Fighter Plane in Fighting Squadron SEVENTY-ONE (VF-71), attached to the U.S.S. WASP (CV-7), in action against enemy Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 7 August 1942. Leading his fighter squadron in the initial air assault on Japanese positions on the Solomon Islands, Lieutenant Commander Shands’ flight destroyed seven enemy fighters and 15 patrol planes. This victory eliminated all local air opposition in the area, thus greatly contributing to the successful occupation of the islands by American ground forces. Lieutenant Commander Shands personally shot down four Japanese fighters and two patrol planes. His outstanding courage, daring airmanship and devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”
A month later in September 1942 Shands was commander of the USS Wasp’s air group when the aircraft carrier was torpedoed and sank in shark-infested waters. The descriptions of this disaster are blood-curdling. At one point Shands was “floating in the water in his “Mae West” life preserver and holding on to an injured man when he saw Lieutenant Ray Conklin helping a wounded sailor down one of the lines and into the ocean. While towing a wounded man toward one of the life crafts, Shands was amazed that Conklin towed his casualty past him “on the double.” The reason for Conklin’s Olympic speed? A shark was following him.”
Courtney Shands from Kirkwood, MO (KHS class of 1923) went on to become a Rear Admiral in the USN.
I may have mentioned that next week the OM, daughter #1 and I are heading out West to visit Monument Valley on the Arizona-Utah border. The valley is considered sacred by the Navaho Nation, within whose reservation it lies. It is rather sacred to me as well. We are pretty excited.
Recently daughter #2 and Katie were reading this book…
…which included this…
How cool is that? IYKYK. I do love Pete.
In preparation for this trip, I am re-watching some of John Ford’s iconic films. First up was Fort Apache (1948) starring John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, et al. It is the first of Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy.
Next on the docket will be Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946) and She Wore A YellowRibbon (1949)–three of my all-time favorites.
Unrelated to this, I also recently watched The Human Comedy (1943) on TCM. Directed by Clarence Brown from a story by William Saroyan, it stars Mickey Rooney as high school student Homer Macauley, who works part-time as a telegram delivery boy in the fictional town of Ithaca, California, during World War II. The movie depicts the effects of the war on the Home Front over a year in Homer’s life in a series of vignettes involving himself, his family, friends and neighbors in his hometown, and his brother Marcus, a Private in the U.S. Army. Homer is thrust into some difficult situations, some of which are heart-wrenching.
Rooney handles it all with skill and does not overdo it. (He was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.) He is really quite impressive and he carries the film like a pro.
This scene, which does not involve Rooney, but includes Van Johnson as his brother on a troop train, is a real emotional highpoint–the kind they were not embarrassed to attempt in 1943.
I have no doubt that many today would find this entire movie to be absolute hokum and too rah-rah America, but I did not. I pity them. We still sing this hymn at my church and I will always think of these soldiers from now on when I hear it.
I had not heard of the Battle of Iuka, nor of Iuka, Mississippi for that matter, until yesterday. Before the Civil War the town boasted an all-female college, a boys’ military academy and a fine hotel. The Civil War brought widespread devastation when a major engagement took place on September 19, 1862.
Major General Ulysses Grant brought two armies to confront Sterling Price in a double envelopment: Rosecrans’s Army of the Mississippi approaching Iuka from the southwest, and three divisions of his own Army of the Tennessee under Maj. General Edmund Ord, approaching from the northwest. Although Grant and Ord planned to attack in conjunction with Rosecrans when they heard the sound of battle, an acoustic shadow suppressed the sound and prevented them from realizing that the battle had begun.
Now hold the phone, what is an acoustic shadow?!
“An acoustic shadow is an area through which sound waves fail to propagate, due to topographical obstructions or disruption of the waves via phenomena such as wind currents, buildings, or sound barriers.”
I looked up in his Memoirs to see what Grant had to say about this:
“During the 19th the wind blew in the wrong direction to transmit sound either towards the point where Ord was, or to Burnsville where I had remained…A couple of hours before dark on the 19th…the wind was hard and in the wrong direction to transmit sound either to Ord or to me. Neither he nor I nor any one in either command heard a gun that was fired upon the battle-field. After the engagement Rosecrans sent me a dispatch announcing the result. This was brought by a courier. There is no road between Burnsville and the position then occupied by Rosecrans and the country was impassable for a man on horseback. The courier bearing the message was compelled to move west nearly to Jacinto before he found a road leading to Burnsville.”
Boy, the things we take for granted in our tech world today.
Anyway, I thought that was very interesting. And now we know what an acoustic shadow is.
Today is also the anniversary ( in 1863 ) of the first day of the Battle of Chickamauga, in northwestern Georgia, the bloodiest two-day battle of the conflict, and the only significant Confederate victory in the war’s Western Theater. You will recall the short story by Ambrose Bierce about the deaf-mute boy who wanders onto the battlefield.
One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved. It was happy in a new sense of freedom from control, happy in the opportunity of exploration and adventure; for this child’s spirit, in bodies of its ancestors, had for thousands of years been trained to memorable feats of discovery and conquest—victories in battles whose critical moments were centuries, whose victors’ camps were cities of hewn stone. From the cradle of its race it had conquered its way through two continents and passing a great sea had penetrated a third, there to be born to war and dominion as a heritage.
A very grim read, to be sure.
September 19 was also the first day of the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest in 1944, which was the longest battle on German ground during World War II. It is the second longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought after The Battle of Bataan. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest has been referred to as a stalemate that consumed large amounts of resources on both sides. Many men died in the freezing cold. The Americans suffered 33,000 casualties during the course of the battle which ranged up to 55,000 casualties, including 9,000 non-combat losses, and represented a 25 percent casualty rate.
J.D. Salinger was there. And I always think of a girl I knew in college whose father was there in the Hürtgen Forest and who returned home after the war and became a mailman in Worcester, MA.
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. 4 He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. 5 You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, 6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. 8 You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
9 Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place— the Most High, who is my refuge — 10 no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. 12 On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. 13 You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. 15 When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. 16 With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
Unlike the narrator of Moby-Dick, I have no great topic to write about today (see above quote), but only some odds and ends of my small life. But I do love that image of a condor’s quill.
Tomorrow the OM and daughter #1 and I are heading to Jefferson City (woohoo!) to see Marty Stuart and the Fabulous Superlatives in concert. While in town we will visit our favorite winery down there and other old haunts. I was pleased to see Marty visiting with Robert Duvall…
Speaking of Red River Valley, Saturday is the National Day of the Cowboy, so you will want to plan accordingly. We will toast my ancestor John Wesley Prowers and watch Red River (1948) which is our tradition.
If I was in Oklahoma City, I would, of course, go to the celebration the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum has planned, but we do what we can.
In other news, maybe you have noticed that there is nothing to watch on TV and, if you do watch–even streaming platforms–you are inundated with ads and more ads. And political ads. So the OM and I are watching (on DVD) the Hillsdale College series on WWII with Victor David Hanson. It is intellectually stimulating and the politics is 85 years old. After watching last night’s episode, we watched OperationPacific (1951) with John Wayne as a submarine commander in WWII. Not the greatest movie ever, but entertaining and diverting. If I was in a submarine in WWII, I would want the Duke as my commander! (The freckle-faced kid below is Martin Milner of Adam-12 fame.)
Meanwhile here is something good to read about Mothering in today’s world. “Mothering is a fraught profession in the modern world. The stakes are high to do it right. If you’re going to ‘waste your intellect’, as my own mother so kindly put it, you’d better have exceptional children to show for it. Or at least a podcast.”
So learn something new, call your mother (or mother substitute), watch a cowboy movie, and listen to some good music:
It grew harder and harder. Even within these four walls there was too much misery, too much seemingly pointless suffering. Every day something else failed to make sense, something else grew too heavy. Will You carry this too, Lord Jesus? But as the rest of the world grew stranger, one thing became increasingly clear. And that was the reason the two of us were here. Why others should suffer we were not shown. As for us, from morning until lights-out, whenever we were not in ranks for roll call, our Bible was the center of an ever-widening circle of help and hope. Like waifs clustered around a blazing fire, we gathered about it, holding out our hearts to its warmth and light. The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
I am reading several books, but at the moment I am concentrating on re-reading The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. I read it many years ago, but I kept running across references to it and thought it was time to read it again.
You will recall that Corrie Ten Boom was a watchmaker in Haarlem, the Netherlands, who lived with her family above their father’s shop. A devout Calvinist Christian, she, along her family, never thought twice about sheltering and aiding Jews in need after the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. Ten Boom’s involvement in the Dutch resistance grew beyond gathering stolen ration cards and harboring Jews in her home. She soon became part of the Dutch underground resistance network and oversaw a network of smuggling Jews to safe places. All in all, it is estimated that around 800 Jews were saved by Ten Boom’s efforts. As a result of her and her family’s efforts, they were arrested by the Nazis and sent to a series of concentration camps. Casper Ten Boom and Betsie Ten Boom never returned. The story is a harrowing one, but a truly inspiring one.
I must note that what the Ten Booms did, they did not do for any political reason. They acted by faith alone. As Christians they could not do otherwise.
I used to think that such a thing as the Holocaust could never happen in America, but I don’t think that anymore.
*Code for “all the people hiding in your secret room are safe.”
We did not do anything very exciting this weekend–at least not as exciting as going to a Zoom wedding like daughter #2 and Baby Katie, who attended her BFF Edwina’s nuptials on Saturday. They got dressed up and DN popped the Prosecco and it was a whole thing. I salute Edwina and Kevin for not putting it off because of the crazy time we live in. Because as Harry said to Sally, ““When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with a person, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
Speaking of movies, the other night we watched Action in the North Atlantic (1943) a typical Warner Brothers patriotic war film of that era starring Humphrey Bogart as the 1st Officer on a Liberty Ship in a convoy bound from Halifax to Murmansk. After German subs crush the convoy, his ship loses the convoy and heads alone to Murmansk.
In spite of attacks by German planes and a sneaky Nazi sub and the captain being wounded, the gallant crew manages to get the cargo through. I was quite impressed by the special effects wizardry–the whole thing was filmed in a tank on the back lot! Anyway, the movie works as an effective propaganda tool for recruiting for the wartime Merchant Marines. There is even a moving burial at sea scene where Bogart reads a good portion of the naval service for eight seamen who have died to which he adds:
Now, that’s the word of God. And it’s good. But I don’t think He’d mind if I put my oar in. These are eight men we knew and liked, guys like us. Guys we ate with and slept with and fought with. Well, we were just a little luckier than they were. We’ll miss them. All of them.
This all reminded me of one pf those “luckier guys” I was reading about in the Jewish Light obits recently, who died in his nineties. He had joined the Army Air Corps during WWII at 19. As a ball turret gunner in B17 bombers, he flew 33 missions over Germany. Back in St. Louis after the war, Lou worked in advertising for over 44 years. He had big accounts–“Everything from Scoop to Nuts”–and a good long life. But he was a ball turret gunner at 19! That’s the guy who hangs from the belly of the plane armed with two machine guns. Let’s just take a moment.
Lest we forget. Regular guys do amazing things and they do it 33 times.
Forgive me if I got a little off track there, but that’s how my mind works. The wee babes came over Sunday with their parents for taco night. We caught up on the weeks activities and gazed at the fire.
I just love the fire.
I hope you enjoy your day off (if you have one).
Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:27–36 (The lesson appointed for use on the feast of Martin Luther King, Jr.)
*Robert Robinson, 1758, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. I am glad to know that this old English hymn is still sung, including many times by the David Crowder Band. Who doesn’t love Crowder?
Today is the 74th anniversary of Operation Chastise, an attack on German dams during WWII, carried out by Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron using a specially developed “bouncing bomb” invented by Barnes Wallis. The raid was subsequently publicized as the “Dam Busters” and was made into a movie called The Dam Busters (1955).
It was quite an undertaking. In total, 53 of the 133 aircrew who participated in the attack were killed, a casualty rate of almost 40 percent. In addition, later estimates put the death toll in the Möhne Valley at about 1,600, including people who drowned in the flood wave downstream from the dam.
The Mohne Dam breached
There are, of course, questions now about whether it in fact changed the course of the war by slowing down industrial production in the Rohr Valley. (Two hydroelectric power stations were destroyed and several more were damaged. Factories and mines were also either damaged or destroyed.)
Today is the birthday of Ronald William Fordham Searle, CBE, RDI (March 3, 1920 – December 30, 2011) who was a British artist and illustrator, best remembered as the creator of St. Trinian’s School
and for his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth series.
We were very fond of Ronald Searle growing up and my family always read aloud the Christmas chapter from How to Be Topp on Christmas Eve.
Searle grew up in Cambridge. At the age of 19 he gave up his art studies and joined the Royal Engineers at the start of WWII. Searle was stationed in Singapore. After a month of fighting in Malaya, Singapore fell to the Japanese, and he was taken prisoner. He spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, first in Changi Prison and then in the Kwai jungle, working on the Siam-Burma Death Railway. He contracted both beri-beri and malaria. He was liberated in late 1945 with the final defeat of the Japanese.
I have a copy of his book Ronald Searle To the Kwai and Back, War Drawings 1939–1945, an amazing pictorial record of his war years, three of them in Japanese prisoner of war camps.
In it he recorded the “grafitti of a condemned man, intending to leave a rough witness of his passing through, but who found himself–to the surprise and delight–among the reprieved.”
Immediately after the war, he served as a courtroom artist at the Nuremberg trials.
Eichmann in court
Like many funny men, he had a very serious past.
So a birthday toast to Ronald Searle!
And another toast to George Kennedy who died last Sunday. Like Searle, he was 91 when he died and had a long, interesting life. A prolific actor of film and television, he won a best supporting Oscar for Cool Hand Luke (1967) and made several movies with John Wayne, including Cahill U.S. Marshall (1973), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) and In Harm’s Way (1965). He also had memorable parts in Charade (1963), Bandolero! (1968) and TheDirty Dozen (1967).
Quite a career. Any of these movies are worth watching. As for me, it might be time to watch The Sons of Katie Elder again.
dual personalities 