World War II

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 Their organization, the Navajo Code Talkers Association, maintains a website here, although it seems pretty badly out of date.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

On the night of May 31, six Japanese submariners staged a bold raid on Sydney Harbour in Australia. Two of the midget submarines that slipped into the harbor that night to attack allied warships were destroyed before they saw action. The third sub intended to go after the USS Chicago but wound up putting a torpedo into the HMAS Kuttabul, a converted ferry, which sank. Twenty-one of the sailors sleeping onboard were killed.

That third sub disappeared only to be rediscovered by amateur divers in 2006. On August 6, relatives of Sub-Lieutenant Katsuhisa Ban and Petty Officer Memoru Ashibe cast flowers from the deck of an Australian warship and poured sake into the water in tribute to the men and the wreckage below.

The submarine is largely intact although filled with sand. It is believed that the remains of the crew lie inside the vessel, which will be left undisturbed as a protected monument. The younger brother of Lieutenant Ban, speaking through an interpreter, said, “We were all feeling uneasy about where it was so we are very happy the Australian divers found it.”

That “little” brother is now 74-years-old. Their story, like many in recent years, is being concluded after long years of wondering. During my childhood the news would occasionally report on an isolated Japanese soldier pulled off some nameless island after years of solitary waiting for the war to be over. I was fascinated by these men who remained at their post years beyond the official end of the conflict.

I won’t lie. In our household the Germans and the Japanese were referred to in derogatory terms replete with racial slurs. I don’t blame my father. These were the people who were trying to kill him when he was just 21-years-old. I’m not sure he lived long enough to see them as anything but the enemy. But part of the act of reconciliation is to remember that 21-year-old boys were dying on both sides, some, like these two men, entombed at the bottom of the ocean. Now their relatives know where they lie, in a sense, still at their post beneath the waters in the vessel they so daringly piloted. Two more boys who have finally come home.

(Click here for the International Herald Tribune story.)

WWII, Sydney, Australia, Japanese midget submarine

Writing for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune on July 19, Jeannine Aquino recounts a recent expedition to the jungles of Papua, New Guinea by a team of dedicated MIA hunters.

Three separate teams on three two-week trips searched for missing World War II crash sites in an effort to recover the remains of 60 American airmen missing 62 years.

A non-profit organization based in Minnesota and known simply as “MIA Hunters” makes it their mission to locate, recover, and bring home for burial these long-lost servicemen.

On this series of expeditions, eleven crash sites were located and potentially 38 American and 22 Japanese servicemen will finally be returned to their families.

There are still 78,000 servicemen listed as missing in action from World War II with about 70 percent of those in the Pacific Theatre of operations.

When the MIA Hunters find a site, they document its location, photograph the area, and leave identification markers. They then plan an American flag and offer a prayer for those who died there.

For more on the MIA Hunters, click here for their homepage.

MIA, Papua, New Guinea, MIA Hunters, Pacific Theater

CNN has posted an interesting feature story entitled, “Japanese Look for New Meaning from Kamikaze Sacrifice.” Back in the day when I was teaching freshman history in college I tried to emphasize to my students that the identity of the “good guys” and the “bad guys” in any conflict is purely a point of perspective.

I knew a man whose ship survived a kamikaze attack. He described watching the plane plummeting toward the deck. The pilot had the canopy thrown back and his excited screams carried clearly across the sounds of the battle. I’ll confess my friend ended the story with the words “crazy S.O.B.”

In today’s world we still grapple with the concept of the suicide mission, now carried out almost daily on another field of battle for very different reasons. The act is inconceivable to most of us, yet in Japan the memory of the approximately 4,000 kamikaze pilots is increasingly honored and cited as an example of the kind of focus and dedication the nation requires. The story makes for a fascinating read and I highly recommend it, but I want to leave you with a slightly different tale.

Sitting in the company of a World War II vet one afternoon I asked if he’d ever seen any of his buddies crack up. He’d fought in several island battles in the South Pacific, brutal campaigns that resulted in carnage on both sides. “Yeah,” he said, smoking the cigarette I’d just watched him roll. “We had a guy got shipped home. They caught him with a Jap major’s head in a sack.”

Swallowing down the sickening bile that rose in my throat I asked, “What was he planning to do with it?”

“Said he was going to boil it down and make a lamp when he got home. Had a bunch of ears in a sack too.”

War brutalizes both sides, a fact we as historians and enthusiasts must embrace these many years afterwards in our attempts to keep alive the legacy of the conflict.

Kamikaze, Japan, South Pacific