World War II

In my inaugural post on this blog I provided a link to an obituary for Rear Adm. Eugene B. Fluckey, 93, winner of the Medal of Honor for his wartime exploits as the commander of the submarine the USS Barb. Fluckey, who also held four Navy Crosses, commanded the Barb from April 1944 to August 1945 and sent 95,360 tons of Japanese shipping to the bottom. Adm. Fluckey died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease in June.

Tuesday, August 28, the Admiral’s services were held at the Naval Academy Chapel. Fluckey was in the Class of 1935. This story carries a moving photograph of his wife accepting the flag on behalf of a grateful nation and the memories of an 83-year-old man who came to bury his commander. Be warned, I cried.

WWII, USS Barb, Eugene Fluckey

Some of you may recall my earlier post about the Ghost Army documentary project. I received the following encouraging update from Rick Beyer this morning plus a link to the trailer on YouTube:

“I just wanted to let you know how it is going with the Ghost Army Charity badge campaign. As of this writing, 65 people have donated more than $3000 to the film through the badge.(Many are people who didn’t even know about the project until we started this charity badge campaign.)

“Two donor families have pledged to match whatever we raise through the badge, meaning that $3000 in donations will translate into $9000 for the film.

“And of course we’re not done. We’re making a big push to double our numbers in the last two weeks.

“FYI, we enjoyed the Disney propaganda film. I assume you have seen our trailer, also posted on youtube, but if you have missed it, check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQVsR_HO5aA.”

Totally my bad for not posting a link to the trailer sooner. Click over and check it out. Excellent stuff.

WWII, documentary, Ghost Army, Rick Beyer

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a YouTube video and this is a good one, a Disney propaganda cartoon called “Education for Death.” Running approximately 10 minutes, the story follows the birth of a German child, Hans, from his registration as an infant through his education and into military service. Like most propaganda, it speaks for itself in both imagery and words. Exceedingly interesting as an historical document.

WWII, Disney, propaganda, cartoon

There are three items for the round-up today that sat in my RSS reader all week. All involve specific individuals - a pilot believed lost, a man who went to war at 32, and the death of a war correspondent:

“Deep Regret for WWII Fighter Pilot Premature” from The Plain Dealer - The story of a son, James Frolking, lost and returned and the memories of the 83-year-old man he is today.

World War II Vet Marks 100th Birthday from the Dothan Eagle - Glenn Marble had a quiet time of the war and was known to his shipmates at 32 as “the old man.”

Correspondent Russell J. Hill; Covered WWII and Postwar Europe from the Washington Post - The obituary for Hill, 88, a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune and noted author.

WWII, Glenn Marble, Russell J. Hill, James Frolking

Sixty-three years ago today Free French Forces (led by Gen. Charles De Gaulle) and members of the French Resistance liberated Paris from the occupying German forces. France was under Nazi control (and that of the collaborationist Vichy government led by Marshal Henri Philippe Petain) from May 1940 to December 1944.

Today’s Friday Five links are:

- Extensive Wikipedia article on the Liberation of Paris.
- New York Times Art Review: Occupied Paris and the Politics of Picasso
- History of the French Resistance
- France and the Final Solution
- Official Website of the City of Paris

WWII, Paris, French Resistance, Free French, Vichy France, Charles de Gaulle, Philippe Petain

In 1942 the USS Grunion a World War II Gato-class submarine with a crew of 70 disappeared near the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.

She left Hawaii on June 30 touching base at Midway before heading to the Aleutians for patrol duty. A Japanese destroyer attacked the Grunion off Kiska Island and the Grunion returned fire. Throughout the month of July she sank two patrol boats. The night of July 30, after sending a report of heavy anti-submarine activity, the Grunion fell silent and was never heard from again.

Air searches found nothing. The Grunion’s name was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in November 1942 and she received a single battle star for her wartime service. That wasn’t good enough, however, for the three sons of the Lt. Cmdr. Mannert L. Abele, the skipper of the Grunion. After years of searching, Bruce, John, and Brad Abele found their Dad on August 22, 2007.

The Grunion lies in approximately 1,000 feet of water, imploded by the pressure at that depth. Photos were taken by a remote vehicle, but no signs of human remains were detected. Still, the Abeles now know where their father lies and what happened to his vessel. One more mystery of World War II laid to rest.

(Site Note: Since I was unable to post yesterday, today’s WWII Friday Five will appear later in the day.)

USS Grunion, Aleutians, submarine, Abele

A few years ago I read and greatly enjoyed a book by Conrad Anker entitled The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mt. Everest. Mallory went missing in 1924 and his body lay undiscovered until 1999. At the time I wondered why they took him down from the mountain after 75 years. In fact I still do. The man died doing what he loved and it would probably be hard to find a more peaceful, undisturbed place to spend eternity.

Now, in an eerily reminiscent incident, a hiker in Kings Canyon National Park found the second set of World War II-era remains located in the park in two years. The remains were found within 100 yards of one another and both were airmen. The second man is probably a member of the crew of the same plane on which 22-year-old Leo Mustonen served. His body was found in October 2005.

The flight, a training run in an AT-7 out of Mather Field in Sacramento got off course and wandered into a blizzard, crashing in the Sierra Nevadas on Mount Mendel, November 18, 1942. The body found this week was still wearing its parachute, neatly folded, the pull cord in place on his chest.

I looked up Mount Mendel. It’s isolated, windswept, and beautiful. For 65 years the as-yet-unidentified man has lain there undisturbed, just like Mallory on Everest. In both cases surviving family wanted a different kind of burial, something more formal. My father always said funerals are for the living. But the souls of Mallory and these missing airmen? Somehow I like to think they’re mountain spirits now.

WWII, AT-7, Mount Mendel, missing airman, Leo Mustonen

The Hollywoodization of World War II has left many Americans with what I used to tell my students was the “John Wayne” version of the war. Handsome American G.I.s fight [insert German or Japanese racial epithet of your choice] and are welcomed ecstatically by liberated civilians. Alas, the story didn’t really play out that way as Giles MacDonogh apparently demonstrates in After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation. (Available on Amazon.)

Although I’ve not yet read the book, the review Bruce Ramsey wrote for The Seattle Times made me place the title on my “to read” list. As Ramsey writes, “. . . war is brutal, and brotherhood did not come overnight. Nor were all occupiers the same.”

The book covers the occupation of the Red Army in eastern Germany as well as the questionable behavior of the French in Stuttgart. Americans, restrained by Eisenhower’s strict policies, did a better job but were still conditioned by wartime propaganda to award collective guilt to all Germans regardless of their station in life. Ramsey’s conclusion reads, “This is a sometimes violent and often disturbing history that prods the reader to think about the choices of the conquerors.”

What about you? Any WWII books you’ve read lately we need to know about or old favorites you consider “standards” on the subject?

WWII, books, reviews, occupation, Germany, Giles MacDonogh

When I first told friends I’d be writing a blog about World War II the reaction was pretty much uniform, “How are you going to find anything to write about? That’s going to be really hard.” The truth of the matter is that there’s always more coming through my RSS reader than I can possibly cover. On Monday’s I’m going to try to provide links to and small descriptions of stories that caught my eye but didn’t make it into posts the week before.

USS. Houston Survivor Honored - This story from the Deland-Deltona Beacon recounts the story of 90-year-old Guy Rose who survived the sinking of the USS Houston and subsequent imprisonment by the Japanese. I had never heard the story of the Houston and found the tale compelling.

Paper Balloon Bombers of World War II - Any war has its fair share of bizarre experimental weapons, but this account, by Walt Sehnert, discusses an effort by the Japanese to use prevailing winds to deploy unmanned balloon bombs against the United States.

Remains of German Flying Ace Recovered - The Washington Post reports on a group of amateur researchers who located the wreckage of Flight Sgt. Maximilian Volke’s plane as well as the pilot’s remains. Volke was credited with 37 kills.

World War II Memorial Dedicated to Texans - A brief story from the Austin American Statesman covering the dedication of a WWII memorial on the grounds of the state capitol on August 16.

WWII, USS Houston, Japanese balloon bombs, Maximilian Volke, memorial, Texas

On August 17, 1943 the U.S. Seventh Army under the command of General George S. “Blood and Guts” Patton arrived in Messina, Italy several hours ahead of the British 8th under Field Marshal Bernard L. “Monty” Montgomery (whom Patton detested.) This marked the completion of the Allied conquest of Sicily, a campaign in which my father flew bombing missions.

Today’s five links include:

- The Wikipedia entries for the Seventh Army and Gen. Patton.

- The entry from the same source on Bernard Law Montgomery.

- The Flickr search results page for pictures taken in Messina.

- The Army’s history page on the Sicily campaign.

- And of course, the Internet Movie Database entry for the 1970 film “Patton” with George C. Scott. (Scroll down and have a look at the Fun Stuff section with trivia, goofs, and quotes.)

Regular readers may recall this post from August 1st about Ron Modro’s photographic project to commemorate the Hiroshima anniversary on August 6 at 8:15 a.m.

More than 40 photographers from 25 nations took a single photograph at that instant as both a memorial and a wake-up signal for the crises and challenges confronting our world today. The images are now beginning to appear in the gallery at Ron’s site, Once Upon A Time on Planet Earth.

Prepared to be moved, amused, and provoked to serious thought. One image in particular brought tears to my eyes, that of a little girl and her grandfather seated together in the early morning in France. His arm is around her tiny waist, he’s pointing at something across the water, and even in profile the child’s delight is obvious. (The image is by Sherry Jackson of the Netherlands.)

When you see a moment in time 63 years after the ushering in of terrible technology capable of threatening our planet you get both a sense of the resiliency and the fragility of our world . . . and perhaps even, a glimpse into the things for which men at war fight because they are dear in their hearts. Beautiful work. I’m looking forward to the remainder of the images as they are posted.

Hiroshima, Ron Modro, photography

As always these stories about repatriated remains catch my eye. This time the crash site was near Nemesvita, a village in Hungary approximately 110 miles south and west of Budapest.

Staff Sgt. Martin F. Troy of Norwalk, Conn. was the tail gunner on a B-24H Liberator known as “Miss Fortune.” The plane flew a mission into Germany and headed back to base in Italy when a combination of bad weather and an encounter with Messerschmitt 110s sent it down on June 30, 1944.

A seven-man JPAC team (Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command) carried out the recovery. There wasn’t much left of the plane, just an engine and three prop blades.

JPAC is now attempting to locate Troy’s family. If no one is found, he could be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

(Click here for the article from Newsday.com.)

WWII, JPAC, Hungary, B-24, repatriated remains

A thoughtful piece by David Smollar appeared in The Salt Lake Tribune on August 7. In it the author described reading the 300-plus letters his father wrote home while stationed in the Philippines, especially those penned after the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb on Aug. 6, 1945.

Through his Dad’s letters Smollar was given an opportunity to see war as a weary soldier saw it. His father was an Army field hospital doctor who described distinguishing the dead men from those who were wounded by the undisturbed flies on yellow skin and mangled extremities.

Of the bomb itself, Smollar’s father wrote, “There is still something frightening about the new bomb, a weapon that truthfully is not pleasant to contemplate and that bodes danger for our future if human beings don’t quit acting like apes. The world had better come to its senses after this one.”

The doctor describes being ordered to establish a whore house for the men, censoring the letter of other soldiers, and of receiving a dozen fresh eggs from a grateful Filipino woman — and he writes of his heart’s desire. “I am emotionally limp, so long have I hoped for the end to this wasteful existence called war. I will think of nothing but our soon-to-be reunion.”

This one is a must read to catch a glimpse of World War II from a soldier’s eyes. Would that we all had such a treasure trove of insight into your parents’ youth.

WWII, David Smollar, Philippines, letters

Five surviving Navajo code talkers met with Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon yesterday.

Pace told the men, “You all are legends of our corps and Marines who demonstrated the resilience and capacity that made an enormous difference during the course of the war.”

Altogether there were more than 400 Navajos trained between 1942 and 1945 to take part in operations in the Pacific Theatre.

In 1995 a permanent code talkers’ exhibit was dedicated at the Pentagon and in July 2001 the 29 original code talkers were presented with Congressional Gold Medals by President George W. Bush.

The men who visited with Pace are recipients of the Silver Congressional Medal and included:

Cpl. Alfred Peaches (82)
Cpl. Joe Morris, Sr. (82)
Pvt. Arthur J. Hubbard, Sr. (95)
Pvt. George Willie (81)
Pfc. Samue Smith (82)

Fewer than 70 of these Navajo veterans survive today. Their organization, the Navajo Code Talkers Association, maintains a website here, although it seems pretty badly out of date. (Wikipedia offers a reasonably decent article and a nice list of links to external sources.)

Certainly the work of these men was among the most unique in the overall panorma of the war effort and it’s good to see they’ve lived long and honored lives.

I especially liked this quotation from Samuel Smith’s son, Michael. “If you’d ask my Dad about the code and how it was for him in battle, he will tell you that he was a Marine first. That was his job: to be a Marine.”

(For the source article from the Student Operated Press, click here.)

WWII, Navajo, code talkers, General Peter Pace, Pentagon

In a variation on the popular Friday Five in which many bloggers participate, in the future I’ll feature a WWII event on Fridays and provide five related links for your browsing pleasure. Today we begin with the 63rd anniversary of the defeat of the Japanese forces on the island of Guam on August 10, 1944.

The island, the largest of the Marianas, was captured on December 11, 1941 in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. It was used as a staging base for the next wave of Japanese operations against the Philippines, the Ryukyu Islands, and Taiwan. In addition to boasting a harbor deep enough to accommodate large ships, Guam had two airfields.

Casualty figures for the 1944 battle show 3,000 Americans killed and 7,122 wounded. More than 18,000 Japanese soldiers died with 485 becoming prisoners of war.

In honor of the anniversary, five Guam-related links for our first “Friday Five” entry.

- Sioux Canteen Found on Guam
- A Marine Describes the Battle of Guam
- Marine Dogs of World War II
- 76th SEABEES of World War II - An Untold Story
- The Official Island of Guam Website

WWII, Guam, 1944