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September 2003
Posts: 782
Location: Waurika OK | It just hit me that today is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
I have the priviledge of sitting here in front of my computer, to read and write as I please. Enjoying the benefits of a free society.
It is amazing that, for the most part, those who were our bitter and hated enemies during that war are now our allies.
I know some Pearl Harbor survivors, they will tell you they just did what they were called upon to do. Aren't we glad they and the millions more that were involved in the awful carnage did what they did?
noel |
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August 2003
Posts: 2246
Location: Yucaipa, California | well said... we owe our very lives to "those who went before"... too bad the Date gets lost in the Holiday shuffle...along with the One who gave His life that we might live! |
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March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | . . . and Happy Birthday, Harry Chapin . . |
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June 2002
Posts: 1614
Location: Converse, Texas | If you've ever studied Hitler's plan for world conquest ... had we not gotten involved in the war when we did... we might all be speaking a different language now. |
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Joined:
March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | If you ever want to read a very good book on that era:
"Tuxedo Park" by Jenet Conant
It's a biography of Alfred Lee Loomis who was an instrumental (and very much unrecognized) "hero" in the Allied campaign during WWII.
Loomis was a self-made multi-millionaire (at one time, he OWNED all of Hilton Head Island, NC - as a private hunting resort) who had an incredible mind for numbers (and money) and a pure "passion" for Science. The book's title comes from a private, exclusive, lake community called Tuxedo Park in Orange County, NY. There, Loomis owned two mansions, one of which he converted into a giant, live-in laboratory. He financed and participated (on occasion) in numerous private experiments with the likes of Wood, Lawrence, Einstein, Fermi, Tizard and various other scientific minds of his time. These experiments yielded such technological advances as ultrasound, sonar, and radar (in conjunction with a team of Brit scientists). Loomis was particularly involved in the R&D of "portable" radar units to be installed in Allied aircraft - very much instrumental in turning the tide of the war. Loomis also invented the LORAN navigational system.
Later, Loomis was very much a driving force in persuading the US government (his uncle was a former Secretary of War) to push forward into atomic research (at the time, the US administration felt that the idea on an atom bomb would be a weapon for the "next" war . . . chilling thought).
Yet, with all of this involvement, he was pretty much overlooked by history books (much of it by his own volition - he was a very private individual). I never would've heard of him if I hadn't stumbled upon the book in a bookstore one rainy weekend on Block Island.
Interesting read. |
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July 2004
Posts: 338
Location: Omaha | May God bless all who serve...
...and thanks for the heads up on an interesting book (I love finding out about "real" history; it is often elusive).
Hmmm...there's no Instant Graemlins saluting the flag... |
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January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | Hilton Head is South Carolina and is now golf courses. I've heard that book is very good, they were talking it up on NPR a while back. |
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February 2004
Posts: 2487
| Brings the importance of History to the surface don't it. I have always disliked the term "Forgive and Forget" I feel, with time, it is good to Forgive. But Never EVER Forget! If we don't learn from our Fathers mistakes through History we are Condemned to repeat them.
And that's a fact.
Strange world out there, Can't walk into anything without History as a reference!
Randy |
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March 2002
Posts: 15680
Location: SoCal | Randy, I agree with you. I never hold somebody responsibly for the sins of their fathers. But I never forget.
It's amazing to me the number of people who ignore history, thinking it's "just something that happened in the past".
I just got done seeing Saving Private Ryan for the first time. It's rare when I cry at the beginning of a movie and at the end.
All the good that our soldiers have done over the years should never be forgotten. |
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March 2002
Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | Y'know, I KNOW that it's SOUTH Carolina, and yet I typed "NC" . . . must be the "DamnYankee" in me . .
If you're interested Bill, I'll send it down t'ya when I get a chance. Jeanette & I've both read it, and it's just sitting on top of the bookcase . . . Books don't generally serve much of a purpose unless somebody's reading 'em.
". . If we don't learn from our Fathers mistakes through History we are Condemned to repeat them . . ."
Strangely enough, the book I'm currently reading is Irwin Black's "Banking on Baghdad". Basically, a very detailed chronicle of the region's SEVEN THOUSAND year history - from Mesopotamia, the "Cradle of Civilization" to today (and all of the regimes, governments, corporations, religions, and ideologies that have had (and still have) their hands on/in it). In the Foreward, the author demonstrates how that if you connected the dots in Iraq's "TimeLine" - the line'd actually be a series of "circles" - one after the next.
I'm only up to the 3rd Ottoman Empire - 1600's - I've lost track LONG ago as to who's "come and gone" . . . .
Pretty "eye opening" reading. |
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January 2002
Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | Sure, I'll give it a read over the holiday. Send it to the mountain house. Might as well read if I can't golf. |
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May 2003
Posts: 4389
Location: Capital District, NY, USA Minor Outlying Islands | Cliff,
you might like germs, guns and steel by J. diamond. It's main theme is that geography is destiny. And mess o' potamia is in the perfect spot to be the birthplace of civilization. |
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May 2002
Posts: 3005
Location: Las Cruces, NM | We can't forget our WWII heroes, every day I read an obituary of one as they pass of into the perpetual lands of history.
I was 6 years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed and I can vaguely recall the atmosphere of great world change that my parents generated. They and their friends and neighbors, spent the next few weeks discussing this atrocity and what it meant to them, I can recall it also because my mother had already taught me to read and I could read the headlines but their meaning didn't mean much to me.
It was a great change to our lifestyle as rationing began and we moved to Cleveland for the duration where my dad worked seven days a week in a defense factory but couldn't buy much with the money. We had a cow even then as we lived on 5 acres in a suburb, my mother made soap and canned and we donated whatever we could to the war effort. Many of our friends and relatives of military age came and went to various war "theaters" as they called them then. I don't recall any deaths in our family or friends, but many houses around us had a gold star in the window signifying a loss of a son in the effort. Accross the street from us lived a German immigrant who I can recall visiting with my parents and actually crying because he had been insulted by other neighbors and called a spy and traitor, even though he was a full citizen and as patriotic as any. Our name was Stump and his was Stumpf, so there was a connnection, our Stumps had been here since the Revolution but it was very possible they at one time had been German, nobody called us spies.
It was a time when all of us were part of the war effort and it was a great relief when it was over. The heroes were happy to be home and have a chance to resume their lives, American soldiers were not the dedicated lifetime samurai and wermacht of our enemies, but they won. Thank God or any deity that you like. The enemy was an inhumane bunch of thugs and would not have and did not tolerate our ideas of freedom. No college professor or abstract theorist or carping newsman won that war. The rows of CROSSES and STARS OF DAVID (reviled religious symbols by some today) marked the graves of soldiers and patriots.
Bailey |
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Joined:
December 2001
Posts: 10583
Location: NJ | WWII
I was talking to my mom about how my pop and all his buddies are now gone and I no longer hear their old stories. When my nephew needed to write something about a person in WWII my sister came to me because I was the one that remembered most of his old stories and the ones of his buddies.
I will restrict my comments to the past and not go into the present. |
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Joined:
November 2004
Posts: 4413
| It's very true that we should never forget and most important that we remember to be grateful.
I grew up listening to the stories my family told and now they are almost all gone I tell the stories to my kids whether they want to listen or not.
There have been a couple of excellent books over here in the last few years which are just the unedited letters home of ordinary soldiers. They break your heart and make you weep laughing. It's always the average guys who pay the highest price, and it is their stories which are usually never told.
When I started work in '67 there was an old boy, long since retired, who came in for a couple of hours every day to do the filing. He had fought in the WW1 and told the story of how in 1918 they wre advancing to a new position and were crossing the now empty German trenches. He found himself walking into an overflowing latrine trench. Unfortunately he was carrying a Lewis machine gun (about the same weight as a Sherman tank) and began to sink. He called for help and the sergeant sent someone to find a rope and then stood there screaming at my friend "DON'T DROP THE GUN, DON'T DROP THE GUN...."
He was chest deep when the rope finally arrived.
And he didn't drop the gun. |
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Joined:
May 2002
Posts: 3005
Location: Las Cruces, NM | Schroeder
That is a great story and it reminded me of a great book, the title of which the author of which I have totally forgotten. It had great stories of a german who had learned to ride a motorcycle like a motorcross expert and as WWII was winding down witnessed the disposal of some dunderheads by their being grasped by the ankles and inserted head first in a deep latrine and held until their struggling ceased. If anybody can remember that book, I'd like to read it again.
Bailey |
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December 7, 1941