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RE: Late night shop drawings
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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quote:
The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley
The "Imperial Cruise," by James Bradley has been panned by many professional historians as a hack work riddled with errors. William Tilchin, an Associate Professor of Sociology and History at Boston University, reviewed the book and sums up what many others have written. Portions of Professor Tilchin's review follow below.
While this review must and will focus primarily on Bradley's stupendously faulty analysis, The Imperial Cruise is a profoundly ignorant book even on the basic level of undisputed objective facts. Pity the student who carefully reads this book in preparation for an important multiple-choice exam. For here are some of the claims such a student would encounter in this process: (1) The United States' existence as an independent nation began in 1783 (you might remember the grand bicentennial celebration you participated in on July 4, 1983)—and this is not a typing error, for the assertion occurs at least twice. (2) Theodore Roosevelt deployed naval forces in 1903 "to wrest Panama away from Venezuela." (3) The United States fought in World War II for "a period of fifty-six months" (the actual number is forty-four, so maybe Bradley was counting backward from one hundred). (4) "Emperor Napoleon helped America in the war of separation from England" (a war that actually ended several years before the onset of the French Revolution, which preceded [and set the stage for] the rise of Napoleon). (5) The Philippines gained its independence from the United States in 1962 (actually 1946).
Tilchin then lays into Bradley's faulty analytical work.
The pomposity and the utter absurdity of The Imperial Cruise are starkly previewed in a single sentence in the book's sixth paragraph: "This book reveals that behind [Roosevelt's] Asian whispers that critical summer of 1905 was a very big stick—the bruises from which would catalyze World War II in the Pacific, the Chinese Communist Revolution, the Korean War, and an array of tensions that inform our lives today." This grandiose, ridiculous assertion is made without even the remotest understanding of Theodore Roosevelt's diplomacy or of either U.S. foreign policy or internal Japanese developments between 1905 and 1941. The central notion that TR "gave" Korea to Japan—when Japan actually had previously secured control of Korea—is preposterous and, moreover, completely fails to explore the president's main alternative to endorsing Japanese rule: TR could have gratuitously antagonized Japan over this matter, thereby endangering the U.S. position in the Philippines and, more generally, signaling the Japanese that they should view the United States as a hostile rival.
One last observation for good measure.
Bradley depicts Theodore Roosevelt as a thoroughgoing racist. This is another gross distortion. TR was a progressive racial thinker for his era. Yes, he believed that some peoples—particularly Americans and Britons—were ahead of others in what he called the "progress of civilization," and that the more advanced peoples should help the less advanced move forward. But he rejected skin color and ethnicity as determinants of a people's capacities. Bradley's repeated emphasis of the idea that TR believed in "Aryan" supremacy is especially insidious (as is his constant employment of the phrase "American Aryan," obviously intended to suggest that historical American racism was on a par with Nazism). Had TR lived into the 1930s, he almost certainly would have been the American counterpart of Winston Churchill in calling for active resistance to the Aryan-supremacist aggression of the Nazis—and he would have condemned unequivocally Japanese brutality in China and elsewhere.
This is not to say that Bradley's flawed book should not be read. But be aware that Bradley is no historian, and, to the contrary, much of his work is, to put it charitably, ahistorical.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 25 2015 23:09:40
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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I'm a voracious reader. I'm glad I read Bradley's book, because it set me to thinking..... I'm old enough to remember that it was not really all that long ago that the overwhelming mindset of the highest echelons of America, in business, politics, foreign relations, was of an all-permeating WASP superiority so ingrained as to defy any contradiction. It was modeled on the British example--I recall Churchill's dismissal of Gandhi as a half-naked fakir. I recall Woodrow Wilson's racism. TR's inviting Booker T.Washington to dine at the White House was, as we know, a one-off, brave as it was. As one reviewer on Amazon noted, Bradley quotes some pretty ugly stuff said at the time about the various non-white and certainly non-WASP populations that were the subjects of Roosevelt's attention. As a card-carrying WASP myself, I attest that as a teenager and young adult, I shared many of those views. I venture to think, with Bradley, that TR and his peers were convinced beyond all question that he and they knew exactly what was best for all concerned. For another parallel, just review the position of the aristocracy of the antebellum South in regard to black slavery-- it was just the natural order of things, and ordained by Almighty God Himself. I again recommend Bradley's book, and hope I've whetted appetites.
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Date Feb. 25 2015 23:58:04
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estebanana
Posts: 9354
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to Miguel de Maria)
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quote:
ill, it is facile to so dismiss the US gunboat diplomacy that showed the Japanese they must modernize or be subjugated. They responded to external superior force, and a projected existential threat, by attempting to make themselves strong. It is a rare ability of their culture that I am not sure I have seen in any other. Most bow down and disappear with a whimper. Nor do I think they have exhausted their aggressive tendencies--in the 80's, they scared the hell out of everyone with their fiercely competitive manufacturing campaigns.
I'm not getting the connection between aggressive colonialism and manufacturing! Two completely different things. The Japanese embraced the West for many reasons not just because they were forced. One of the major reasons is that Japanese culture and society was cultivated over many centuries to assimilate other cultures and remake them into Japanese culture. They are differ then the Chinese in this respect. It an inherent part of Japanese nature to look out at the world, but stand apart from it. The same thing happened in China, but the Chinese rejected the British and closed the country to outside culture and interchange. They paid dearly for that later.
But if you know Japanese history you come to see how they took culture from China for several centuries and reinvented it to be Japanese. The over arching theme is that Japan is a great assimilator of culture and they had been practiced at it for a long time. When the West first came onto the scene they resisted allowing the culture to tale over pan, but that was during the time when Japan was more like Italy consisting of separate city states. They took lots of ideas a culture from the West when the Portugese arrived, but they were not ruled by A centralized government so they were less open.
When the industrial revolution came to Europe Japanese engineers traveled to Europe to learn about the new technologies, they were not forced at gunpoint to learn these things, that is ridiculous. They embraced the industrial revolution faster than any other country in Asia and because they had a culture in place of interpreting technologies they were naturals at at excelling in high technologies and science.
The problem is that Japanese history is extremely complex and I have found after living here most other Westerns don't see many things because of the density of history you have to parse through to get the Japanese side. Then and only then can you really put together a picture of how it happened. The same with China. The Chinese are fabulous warm people with a heavy handed government.
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I would also add, I'm not an apologist for any atrocities Japan committed Pre or during WWII, I'm just intoersted in giving a voice to anon individuals who died in war time. Making the voices indivuduals instead of lumped together as evil Kamikaze'. Once you read the letters of these men to their families you begin to see the cultural pressures and frankly brainwashing about nationalism they grew up with. The conditioning of children and peasants to servitude to the will of the militaristic elite pre WWII is amazing. The government was structured to instill a militarustic mind set to the those few generations. This stands out as radically differnt from how Japanese society sees aggrassion today. It's competely different.
One of the books in English I recommend for a picture of this is pre WWII mind set is:
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbet Bix
He leaves out speculation and racial theories and breaks down the lineage and structure of the power culture that arose after the Edo period industrial revolution.
I have my own way of explaining it, but I recommend his book highly.
What I say and put together about 20 years ago, is that about the time of the American Civil War the now unified central government of Japan was moved to Tokyo and declared the wearing of katana ( samurai swords) in public to be banned. The symbol of aristocratic hegemony and power. Now that class of elite rulers still had family members in high positions in government, but now instead of a many running battles all over the islands to unify Japan, the kinds of battles which raged during the feudal times, there was a battle between a facton of government that wanted to rule peacefully and a faction that wanted to to continue to rule as samurai. The unseated samurai class gained power over the democrats, remember the US was fighting its own civil war now, the first civil war, Japan had already had centuries of civil war.
There were several political unifiers in 19th century Japan, they came from all areas of the country and the goal was to connect the country together and salve the old rivalries of centuries of feudal lords ruling local areas. These men are celebrated today in Japan as very important, much more important than feudal families, samurai families are more a thing of the past and a historical curiosity, most Japanese people can't even name them unless they specialized in that kind of history. But the famous men of the 19th century that worked to change the culture from local war lord rule to democratic rule are recognized.
Prior to WWII and in the late 19th century the vestiges of the prideful and displaced samurai families gained a political foot hold. The last foot hold they would ever get. The father of the Showa Emperor Hirohito was very militaristic and he almost single handedly steered elementary school and high school curriculum into being as close to military schools as possible. From the 1880's until the 1940's the Japanese school system taught a kind of nationalism that has been totally dismantled by the educators and government that emerged after WWII. The Meiji Emperor was Hirohito's father, he was the architect of military power and the last push of aristocratic nationalist rule in Japan. After he died the structure he created was still in place and Hirohito enabled it, not that he could do anything about it, to continue.
The story is super complex and the colonial powers and desires in Japan at the time were driven by the unseating of the samurai class, but in the end they were dismantled after centuries of rule. The elite samurai class no longer exist, except in the TV drama soap operas about Japanese feudal history.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Feb. 25 2015 23:58:42
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timoteo
Posts: 219
Joined: Jun. 22 2012
From: Seattle, USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
weak apologies and a tendency to make excuses for its actions
Another aside... Japan isn't alone in this department. The US sent American citizens to internment camps, depriving them of their liberty and their property, just because they happened to have Japanese ancestry. I find it appalling that this action was widely accepted and praised, even to this day, and our very belated and weak attempt to redress this more than 40 years later was too little too late. A real apology would be to admit wrongdoing and CHANGE our behavior, but I see strong echos of these actions even to this day.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
How can anyone believe this - really believe this - and at the same time endorse jailing entire families of American citizens solely because of their ancestry? Our own citizens, but only the Japanese Americans, not German Americans, nor Italian Americans. How much do we really believe in our own principles?
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Date Feb. 26 2015 4:22:25
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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...a slip of the keyboard. The Emperor Taisho was the son of the Emperor Meiji. He was the father of the WW II Emperor Showa (Hirohito).
In many accounts the Emperor Taisho has been portrayed as weak, and not especially astute. People like Yamagata Aritomo (family name first, Japanese style), the major founder of the Imperial Army, who was Field Marshall, Prime Minister, and eventually Prince, have been portrayed as playing upon Taisho's weakness to implement the militarist rule.
A major accomplishment of the militarists was in shaping the Meiji era constitution. The armed forces were made subject only to the Emperor, not to the civilian government. During Yamagata's time as Prime Minister a rule was made that the posts of War Minister and Navy Minister were available only to an actively serving officer of the Army or Navy. This gave the militarists power over the formation of the cabinet of the "civil" government.
By the time Hirohito ascended to the throne, the implements of militarist rule had been forged and tested during the reign of his father the Taisho Emperor.
Here are a couple of public references to Yamagata. The first one repeats something I had heard from his descendants.
http://www.jref.com/history/yamagata-aritomo/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamagata_Aritomo
It says he was at first a member of a group whose agenda included both the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogun (the restoration of the Emperor) and the elimination of foreign influences. But after his native Choshu province was shelled by western warships in 1864, he became convinced of the need for foreign technology.
Both references concur that it was during Yamagata's ministry that the samurai were deprived of wearing the katana, "Walking through the streets with the power of life and death," as his great-granddaughter put it. This despite Yamagata being born into the lower ranks of the samurai himself.
She admired him for his leading role in modernizing and unifying Japan, but deeply regretted his reliance on militarism and politicizing the military.
She hated the militarists of the 20th century for what they had done to her father, and despised them for what she saw as their stupidity and arrogance. "They brought defeat upon us for the first time since the beginning of the world." After the war she was ostracized by half of her family.
Yamagata was a member of a delegation sent to Europe to study military science. He was especially impressed by the Prussian military, and by that country's transformation of itself from an agrarian nation to a modern industrialized country, and the unifier of Germany. It was a model he bore in mind throughout the modernization of Japan.
Both references concur that Yamagata became the dominant member of the genro. They concur that the seven genro dominated Japanese politics from the overthrow of the Shogun in 1868 until 1940, by which time the seeds of WW II in the Pacific were irrevocably sown.
Yamagata retired from public office and military service after the Russo-Japanese war ended in 1905. But he remained one of the most powerful men in Japan until his death in 1922.
Do the modern Japanese know Yamagata's name, or has he been erased from the history books?
What do they say about the Showa Emperor's role in the war in Manchuria and China, and other events leading up to WW II in the Pacific?
We had a hand in Japanese myth-making when, during the Occupation, MacArthur suppressed all evidence of the Showa Emperor's complicity and leadership in Japan's 20th century adventures. This came to light in the late 1980s to early1990s, as former members of the Imperial Household died and their diaries were published.
As a good subject, Prime Minister Tojo took the rap and was hanged for war crimes. Of course, Tojo was in fact a significant war leader, but at his trial he followed MacArthur's script about the Emperor.
RNJ
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Date Feb. 26 2015 4:45:17
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Some further thoughts on Prof. Tilchin's disapproving review of the Bradley book: his ragbag assortment of various errors of date or country are the sort of errors that a good copy editor would have corrected or screened out, had the copyediting standards of yesteryear been with us today. Clearly, Bradley has inserted the date of the Treaty of Paris, 1783, ending the war with Britain, as his date for independence. He has mistaken Venezuela for Colombia. He has inadvertently added a year to our participation in WWII. He has chosen Philippine President Macapagal's declaration of July 12, 1962 as a Special Day in the changing of the date of Philippine Independence. He has dragged the War of 1812 and Napoleon into where it doesn't belong. All of this is there in the book, and shouldn't be, had everyone done his/her job. For a period in my past, I earned my daily crust as a proofreader and copy editor, and the habit has stuck with me. For a lark, I decided to proof the Bold Strummer's ghastly reprint of Donn Pohren's Art of Flamenco, and gave up after registering something like 494 typos and wrong fonts. So I don't put the same emphasis on Bradley's tiresome but relatively minor errors of fact that the good professor does.
When we get to the meat of Bradley's book, we encounter the differences between the sciences and history. In history, we need to somehow figure out what triggered what, what was important, what was not, who thought what-- it's a whole different ballgame. It's best to read widely (for the lay reader like most of us), if not deeply, in history, to get a feel for the range of possibilities, of opinions, out there. Rudy Giuliani claims to love America; Barack Obama claims to love America; Howard Zinn claims to love America. Each of them can craft a narrative that will tell us something, and maybe get us to think a bit more about what exactly went on..... Bradley's book offers us a somewhat different view of TR than many of us will be comfortable or familiar with. Maybe Bill can read the book and give us his opinion. Warning--there may be typos or errors of fact in this post, as I am relying on memory for some details.
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Date Feb. 26 2015 5:12:44
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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I read the "Imperial Cruise" when it was published in 2009, and my reaction was the same as Professor Tilchin's. I found Bradley's work to be tendentious, riddled with errors, and ridiculously absurd in his analysis of U.S. foreign policy, Japanese internal dynamics, and particularly in his vastly overblown conclusion that the cruise and TR's foreign policy led in a direct line to the Communist takeover of China, the Korean War and other maladies of our time. The reason I posted parts of Professor Tilchin's review of the book, rather than critique it myself, is that I thought the view point of a respected professional historian would be of particular interest.
I would add that Bradley's "ragbag assortment of various errors of date or country" (as you put it) reflect much more than poor copyediting. They reflect the kind of fundamental errors that good historians do not make because of their familiarity with the material with which they are working. And his analytical work is so flawed that one wonders if he had any in-depth knowledge at all of the subjects discussed in the book. One example is Bradley's assertion that TR "gave" Korea to Japan (supposedly leading to later problems), when Japan had previously secured control of Korea. Another is his assertion that Panama was taken from Venezuela, when anyone with the slightest knowledge of Latin American geography or the Panama Canal venture would know immediately it was taken from Colombia. (Does he not even look at a Map?)
This is the problem when non-historians, including Post-Modernists as well as others, attempt to write history without any knowledge of historiography or how to interpret the documentary record and the events they are purporting to describe. Moreover, it becomes especially egregious when, as appears to be the case with Bradley, they are out to create a tendentious screed, projecting their political agenda onto events, rather than allowing the documentary record to guide their research and conclusions.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 26 2015 12:18:20
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to estebanana)
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Stephen, I share your interest in and appreciation for weaponry--sleek WWII aircraft, tanks, whatnot. I especially enjoy reading accounts of the German commerce raiders of both world wars: Wolf, Kormoran, Atlantis, etc. I never served in the military, having been, as a member of a newly-deferred class, exempted twice during Vietnam. I think others have noted that, like myself, those interested in militaria and military history are generally those who have never served. I do not carry my interest anywhere near obsession, yet I wonder at the link between such interest and a lack of any close experience with military service. Any thoughts?
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Date Feb. 26 2015 15:11:19
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Ricardo
Posts: 14822
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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When I was a kid I watched saturday afternoon's "Kung fu action theater", religiously every week. The recurring message was clear...it is quite noble and necessary to "take revenge" on your enemy. The general theme was poor little chinese campesinos getting bullied by these immoral japanese guys take a good beating, then train for the ultimate battle and take revenge and live happily ever after. Now, the revenge thing was at odds with what I was being taught at home, but it seemed to be cultural difference I could understand even as a kid. So the non appologize thing seems normal to me. What we have, basically is this...bully picks on some guy until the bigger bully comes along and teaches him a lesson. That leaves the bully with two choices...1. can't beat em join attitude...or 2. hold a grudge until you have your revenge.
It's pretty simple. USA being the top bully for a long time finally got to do our thing. Thank you japan for giving us the excuse. Any school ground can show what is always been going on and will continue.
This is specific about first persian gulf war, but can apply to any and all conflict IMO.
http://youtu.be/CghWWWXSUUU
PS...when things in media get us going, such as isis etc, the kung fu kid blood in me starts bubbling, tempered by my better judgment as taught at home. It is amusing however to watch how, in this day and age, world leaders can't help but to re package the same old revenge story.
Ricardo
_____________________________
CD's and transcriptions available here:
www.ricardomarlow.com
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Date Feb. 26 2015 16:19:11
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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Runner, I know your post was directed at Stephen, but I would like to put in my two cents, for what it's worth. Before entering and making a career of the U.S. Foreign Service, I spent several years in the U.S. Air Force. I was in the intelligence branch that has gone through several iterations since my service, but which now is known as the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency (AFISRA).
If my situation is any indication, I don't think there is a specific link between an interest in military (and naval) history and whether or not one has served in the military. In my case, I have an avid interest in military history, and one section of my library is filled with works of military history by the imminent British military historians John Keegan, Max Hastings, and Basil H. Liddell Hart, as well as Thomas Ricks, Gary Gallagher, and other American authors. In addition, I have always had a keen interest in T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), and I have his seminal work "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," about his participation in the Hejaz campaign against the Turks in WWI, as well as several biographies of Lawrence.
On the other hand, I have several friends who never served in the military who are just as interested in military history. The Department of State has, as one of its functional bureaus, the Bureau for Politico-Military Affairs in which I served on one of my Washington assignments. There was a mix of us, both those who had previous military service and those who had none. In my experience at least, I perceive no correlation between whether or not one has served in the military and an interest in military history.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 26 2015 16:36:06
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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If anyone has a particular interest in WWII's Battle of the Bulge, there is an excellent book just published entitled, "Snow and Steel: The Battle of the Bulge, 1944-45," by Patrick Caddick-Adams. The German push was a bold move on Hitler's part, and it caught the Allies off-guard. Hitler's plan was to drive toward the port of Antwerp through the Ardennes. Total victory was no longer in the cards for Germany, but Hitler thought if he could split the U.S. and British forces, disrupting their logistics, he could press for a negotiated end to hostilities, rather than submit to unconditional surrender.
The Battle of the Bulge was, for American forces, the toughest and costliest battle of WWII, with 19,000 American soldiers killed. The Germans, however, lacked the capacity to sustain a long campaign, and the battle left their forces exhausted and depleted. There are interesting vignettes described in the book. The Americans had taken the town of Bastogne and the Germans laid siege to it. When the German command demanded that the Americans surrender, U.S. General Anthony McAuliffe responded with his famous one word answer--"Nuts!", a response that passed into U.S. Army legend. One of the more interesting facts that Caddick-Adams brings out is just how dependent the Germans were on horses. Their mobility at times was hardly better than it had been in World War I.
A very good book, highly recommended.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Feb. 26 2015 17:28:04
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runner
Posts: 357
Joined: Dec. 5 2008
From: New Jersey USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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In an effort to fine-tune the possible relationship, I modify my query to include only those who have served in combat, seen explosions, heard incoming and outgoing, put their hands on the gear, saw or were casualties perhaps. I mention this because the late Stephen Ambrose was remarked by those commenting on his works as being both highly involved with the tales of his protagonists, and never having served himself. Does closeness to real and life threatening combat foster a disinclination to have a continuing interest in weaponry?
Bill, I share your interest in Lawrence. His reconstruction of Seven Pillars after misplacing the entire manuscript is remarkable in itself; I'm reminded of Carlyle's losing his manuscript similarly when John Stuart Mill's maid threw it into the fire. Also a fan of Liddell Hart, though questions came up about his alleged influence on the thinking of Guderian re modern tank tactics. His short history of WWI is a model of its kind, especially in his scathing critique of virtually everyone's thinking on both strategy and tactics, with the strong exception of Col. Hoffman.
On the Bulge, I think costliest battle involving Americans should be noted. There were plenty of battles on the Eastern Front that are right out of Greek tragedy: "the remorseless working of things"-- of which Stalingrad is the exemplar. Alan Clark's Barbarossa remains a classic recounting of Hitler's Russian adventure.
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Date Feb. 26 2015 17:49:55
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Miguel de Maria
Posts: 3532
Joined: Oct. 20 2003
From: Phoenix, AZ
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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Never served in battle or the military. I was a military brat, though. Most of my family served, but all were REMs (with the exception of one tank commander in Iraq). Military history does not hold any special place or preeminence for me, except in the sense that it is materially so important. Looking at my bookshelves, I see no military history. The only documents of that sort I ever owned were those pertaining to Cortez's conquest in Mexico.
That being said, when I was a kid, I loved war toys and guns and books comparing US hardware to its Soviet counterparts (the Soviet stuff always seemed bigger and more menacing). I spent many hours drawing planes shooting things.
Incidentally, I found this book fascinating: http://www.amazon.com/What-It-Is-Like-War/dp/B0071UEX8W
I had never read a vet talking about the actual experience of combat.
***
By the way, I came across an interesting list of Japanese apologies (to other Asian countries) for WWII. It is not for me to judge their sincerity, but they are not worded evasively.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan
Here, the Diplomat.com discusses how those apologies have been undermined by contrary currents in Japan:
http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/why-are-japans-apologies-forgotten/
_____________________________
Connect with me on Facebook, all the cool kids are doing it.
https://www.facebook.com/migueldemariaZ
Arizona Wedding Music Guitar
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Date Feb. 26 2015 18:07:10
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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You are, of course, correct, Runner, that the Bulge was the costliest battle for American forces. The great battles on the Eastern Front were far costlier in terms of Russian and German casualties.
Stalingrad is the most well-known, and many historians consider it the turning point in the war, but there is a cadre of historians who consider the Battle of Kursk to have been the most significant in its long-term effects in turning the war around. The numbers alone are almost beyond comprehension. The battle involved 3 million men, a full eight thousand tanks, and nearly five thousand warplanes, and it broke all records for both the costliest single day of aerial warfare and the largest tank battle in history.
Regarding your refinement in establishing any relationship between those who served in the military and who experienced combat under fire and their interest, or lack thereof, in military history, I would offer the following, involving both my father and friends who served in Vietnam. First regarding friends who served in combat roles in Vietnam, some maintain an interest in things military and some do not. Those who are interested in military history, I think, are interested not so much as a function of their military service; rather, they just have a genuine interest that probably would be there whether or not they had served and experienced combat. Those who are not particularly interested in military history have just moved on. They became professionals in one field or another, and, like the general population, aren't particularly interested in military history.
My father was with MacArthur's Southwest Pacific campaign in World War II, moving up the line and taking part in the liberation of Manila. He was not one to bring up his experiences in the Pacific War unsolicited, but he was not shy about discussing campaigns with me when the subject of the war came up. I grew up in a household where we discussed history and current events at the dinner table. My father was an avid history buff, including military history. We would discuss everything from Eisenhower and Montgomery's campaigns to the horrible battles on the Eastern Front, where masses of men were just thrown into battle by both sides. I would describe my father as a quiet, learned man who had experienced combat in WWII, but when the subject came up did not avoid discussing it with serious interlocutors. And he maintained a vibrant interest in history, foreign affairs, the military, and national security issues until he passed away.
I would make one other observation about Vietnam veterans. I think too much is made of the so-called "walking wounded" and "burnt-out" cases among Vietnam veterans. There certainly were (and remain to this day) cases of Vietnam veterans who could not adjust to civilian life after their military service. The misfits, homeless, and those on drugs were, and are, a fact of life. But when you consider the number of those who served in Vietnam, the misfits, homeless, and drug addicts are a small minority. Most veterans came back, went to university or graduate school on the G.I. Bill, and entered normal civilian life. Everyone I knew who served in Vietnam became a member of one of the professions and led a normal life. The media and certain groups, for their own reasons, liked to focus on those who could not adjust, but in my opinion, they vastly overstated the problem.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 26 2015 19:53:04
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to runner)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: runner
In an effort to fine-tune the possible relationship, I modify my query to include only those who have served in combat, seen explosions, heard incoming and outgoing, put their hands on the gear, saw or were casualties perhaps.
When I started high school in the Washington, DC suburbs after living for two years in Alaska, we did the usual presentations about "what I did last summer."
I spoke enthusiastically about Alaskan scenery and wildlife. None of my new acquaintance seemed very interested. Still, I went on about it for a couple of weeks.
At last I realized their lack of interest was because they had no real idea what I was talking about. They had no experience to base it upon. They had never seen Mount Susitna dominating the sunset from 60 miles away. Most of them had never even seen what I would have called a real mountain. They had never heard the ice floes on Cook Inlet grinding and roaring in the currents produced by the 40-foot tides. They had never noticed, on a clear subzero midwinter day the outline low on the horizon of Denali, 250 miles away to the north. They had never talked to the 12-year old grandson of an Inuit elder at Barrow, about his aging grandfather being taken by Nanuk the ice bear while on a seal hunting trip on the sea ice. They had never puzzled over his calm acceptance, even gratitude to the bear. They had never walked up on a brown bear in a clearing in the forest, to freeze in terror when he stood up ten feet tall and snuffled loudly to assess the situation.
So I stopped talking about it.
When they came back from WW II, I was disappointed and puzzled that the men refused to talk about it. After serving as a "military advisor" in a Central American guerilla war, with episodes of combat, I put two and two together. I figured out one reason why they wouldn't talk: the same reason I stopped talking about Alaska. There was no way to communicate the experience to civilians.
I had an additional reason. Once I began to form an idea of what was going on in Central America, an idea quite different from my indoctrination and the story apparently believed in Washington and told to the public, I was ashamed to have done it.
In 1991 I started diving almost every weekend while I lived at Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. I was at the older end of the age spectrum. Most of the guys were in their thirties, I was in my early fifties. Many of my fellow divers were service veterans, but only a couple of them--by then in their forties--had served in Vietnam. Many of the younger men were very interested in the numerous shipwrecks, discarded combat aircraft and various WW II detritus that littered the lagoon bottom in many places. They searched avidly, and spoke often of their new discoveries. Many collected souvenirs.
I had no particular interest in, perhaps a slight aversion to all the war stuff. If the group wanted to dive the wrecks, I went along and took pictures. But I preferred the beauty of the coral reefs and the teeming wildlife. So did the Vietnam vets.
My regular dive buddy and close friend, a few years older than I, had a tough time convincing me to travel to dive at Chuuk (Truk) where the lagoon bottom is thick with the wrecks of the forty-odd Japanese ships sunk by the U.S. Navy in Operation Hailstone. But he was right. The soft corals and shellfish that almost completely covered the wrecks and the abundant fish made a beautiful scene. The human remains had long been removed.
On our last day at Chuuk we went to the Blue Lagoon Dive Shop to buy T-shirts and postcards. My buddy was friends with the owner, Gradvin Aisek, whose father had been the first entrepreneur of tourist diving in Chuuk. Gradvin's father was a teenager during Operation Hailstone, and had noted the location relative to the mountainous islands of ships as they sank. He had suffered forced labor and abuse at the hands of the Japanese military, and the general starvation of the the Chuukese by their colonial overlords after the U.S. Navy cut the Imperial Combined Fleet Base's supply lines, while the Japanese monopolized the remaining food supply.
After our shopping was done, Gradvin brought out a color 8" by 10" print of a photo. In it Gradvin was on the deck of a sunken ship, holding a human skull. My buddy tried to buy the photo, but Gradvin refused.
"What are you going to do with it?" my buddy asked.
"Maybe show it to a Japanese tourist," Gradvin replied.
RNJ
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Feb. 26 2015 20:25:15
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3431
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to SephardRick)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SephardRick
RJ
Interesting about your experiences in the Marshall Islands. After reading about Project 4.1 some years ago, I consider you a very brave man diving in those waters.
There was at that time--the mid-1990s--a lot of unexploded ordnance remaining aboard the sunken wrecks at Chuuk. Local fishermen exploited this resource to make bombs that were set off to stun the fish. The results of accidents were fairly visible in missing arms, eyes, legs, etc. But it was easy to avoid the danger. Just don't go into the wrecks.
One danger that some tourists exposed themselves to is the depth of many of the wrecks. This was easy to avoid as well.
The Fujikawa Maru sits at a depth of more than 150 feet, beyond the limits of safe recreational diving set by the training/certifying agencies like PADI and NAUI. One day we shared a boat with a group of Americans from from the Naval Base in Guam. Their leader was a professional dive instructor. Some of them were experienced, some were novices.
The dive instructor said she wanted to dive the Fujikawa Maru. My buddy and I demurred, saying we were photographers. We would have only about four minutes at that depth, not enough time to do any deliberate photography. The dive instructor insisted. The boat was captained by the owner of the dive operation, Gradvin Aisek himself. He stayed out of the discussion. Finally I said, "Let me put it this way: We're old fogies and we ain't gonna go."
Gradvin announced another destination. Later, back at the dock he thanked my buddy and me for refusing to go, saying that if we had not, he would have had to refuse to take the novices.
By the 1990s the U.S. Department of Energy had a small contingent living at Bikini and Robert Reimers had a dive operation there. The Brazilian divemaster Fabio Amaral was the manager of it. Fabio was well educated. I spoke to him at length before deciding to go to Bikini. His assessment, and the published assessment of scientists from France was that the only remaining danger at Bikini would be to eat locally grown plants. They would concentrate the residual levels of radioactive cesium in the soil. The sunken ships, and even the fish were assessed as safe, though Fabio didn't eat the local fish.
Kwajalein, hundreds of mile south of the bomb tests received very little if any radioactive fallout. By the 1990s it was undetectable.
Jack London might envy me for living nearly twice as long as he did. My assumption is that this is largely due to my being far more cautious.
Being brave is very dangerous when you're diving. I took pains to avoid it.
RNJ
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Date Feb. 26 2015 21:37:22
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estebanana
Posts: 9354
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Late night shop drawings (in reply to BarkellWH)
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I've know many, many vets from the wars WWII on that were talkative about combat. For some reason they engage me to talk, I listen carefully and never judge any legitimate veteran of any side. Of course none had ever told me they participated in any kind of war crimes, that I will not see the same way.
My grandfather was in in the Battle of the Bulge, he died in 1998. Previous to that up until three years before he died he would drive from Southern California to visit his sister in the Bay Area. He would trailer this 16' aluminum outboard and call me when he arrived. We had these things called 'land lines' then. He would set the hour at 5:30 am and the rendezvous point would be a doughnut shop coordinates Lafayette CA on the main street. I don't know the GPS setting or address because I had the route memorized.
I would arrive and he would be on the first doughnut and second coffee. We would eat few doughnuts until the reservoir gate opened up at 7am, or we would leave in time to get to the gate and sit in the truck until the ranger opened the gate. Then we put the boat in the water, he would go chat up the people who ran the bait shop to pump them to for information on where to fish.
We would usually go to a cove across the lake and mist would be rising as the sun would begin to show over the mountain on the far side. We would discuss the merits of still fishing or trolling, but usually sit still first. Then I would be in the bow, line in the water clutching my coffee and he would be in the motor end...is that called the stern? Yes maybe. lt was like a stage, then the actor would begin, although he was no actor. " You know it was pretty rough 'over there'". He still called Europe 'over there' as they did right after WWII. One of the things he would ask me about in the doughnut shop was about my trips 'over there'. It was hard for him to conceal his incredulity that anyone would want to volunteer to go to Europe.
He listened to my brief stories about Spain and Portugal and museums and thought it was harmless enough and seemed fun. Then he would make a quip like "Well at least you avoided France, that place is a mess." He was still thinking 1946 mess. Which when I read the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook I had to agree with him.
In the stern of the boat just as sun turned the water gold he continued, "You know I saw lots of things over there." I am pretty sure now knowing what I know about trauma that he suffered from PTSD. I think many guys from that era had PTSD, but that it went undiagnosed. In the 1940s it was called battle fatigue, and was thought to last a short time if you were repatriated or given a break from the front lines. But the guys who went over there and the guys who already lived over there were pretty torn up after the war. Which is why I always listened to them. After the ritual doughnut warm up, boat ramping, run across the lake, well I suppose he had found a safe spot. So he told me his whole four years in Europe over the course of six or seven trips to Northern California.
He was in the Battle of the Bulge and he was at a concentration camp when it was opened. His was in the Signal Corps and his job was to walk into towns at night with a map and confirm that the map was accurate and to scout the actual conditions of roads and placement of schools and churches. To establish road signs and monuments for reference when the other troops would move forward. Many of his stories were about walking into German towns.
He would once in a while break out of an almost trance like state and say something wry about the loose women of certain countries, but mostly he would talk for 45 minutes and then declare it was time to go trolling. Unless we were catching them in that spot, which we usually were not. Although we did get a few, but never trolling. Trolling only works in deeper older lakes for lake trout, in my opinion.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Feb. 27 2015 1:01:47
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