My wife expressed an interest in reading this book by Martin Dugard to get a sample of his writing beyond the “Killing” books with Bill O’Reilly. She decided she would be good with me reading it and her reading a review. The subtitle of the book is, “Being the Epic Tale of the Great Captain’s Fourth Expedition, Including Accounts of Swordfight, Mutiny, Shipwreck, Gold, War, Hurricane, and Discovery.” I’m glad I read the book. It is filled with history and facts about Columbus, the New World, and the natives who should have chased Columbus off the instant he and his ships landed. Continue reading
Category Archives: History
Die With Your Boots On
An interesting expression from the turn-of-the-last-century Wild West appears in a book reviewed on this site. “To die with your boots on” refers to dieing a violent death, specifically to being murdered. Continue reading
Thunderstruck
This is the third book I’ve read by Erik Larson, and it is by far my least favorite. My wife, who is my primary literary advisor, bought the book and eventually announced she couldn’t finish it. She commented something to the effect that she “…would just have to wait for my review.” So, here it is.
The book attempts to weave the story of the efforts of Guglielmo Marconi to develop the wireless telegraph and the life story of Hawley Harvey Crippen, the man who was convicted of the North Cellar Murder, into a single novel. There is certainly an abundance of details about Marconi, wireless transmissions, and the people in his life. However, I came to dislike him the more I read about him. Crippen is portrayed as a meek and somewhat uninteresting man who is convicted of murdering and mutilating his wife. The wife was outgoing and interesting when with friends and was irritatingly and persistently obnoxious to Crippen when they were alone. Continue reading
PT 109
This famous book was written by Robert J. Donovan, and I happened upon the fortieth anniversary edition in the library. The first two sentences of the front cover convinced me I should read it. “In the early morning darkness of August 2, 1943, in the waters of Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri (Japanese for “Heavenly Mist) sliced an American PT boat in two, leaving its crew for dead in a flaming sea. The boat’s skipper was a gaunt, boyish lieutenant from Boson named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”
I found myself having difficulty remaining interested in the somewhat lengthy Foreword, Prefaces, and even the early chapters of the book. I’m certain they contributed to setting up for the easy to read and interesting parts of the book. The early chapters certainly made it clear that JFK’s experiences were similar to those of most sailors and soldiers who were in the South Pacific in World War II. There were the easygoing days, weeks, and months of training, watching, waiting, and being bored while trying to make an uncomfortable life more bearable. All of that certainly came to an end as JFK and his PT boat were assigned to a forward position. “For months war had seemed comfortably distant most of the time. Now the air was heavy with it. Uneasiness and fear lay just below the surface everywhere.”
Any doubt JFK had about why he and his comrades were in the South Pacific would have been eliminated when he say a large billboard on a hillside that had been ordered to be installed by Admiral William R. Halsey. It said:
Kill Japs. Kill Japs.
Kill More Japs.
You will help to kill the yellow
bastards if you do your job well.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
I have often considered the arguments for and against President Harry Truman’s decision to authorize the use of atomic bombs on the two Japanese cities. There is no doubt the decision resulted in a horrible outcome for countless innocent people (not an uncommon outcome in World War II). Tens of thousands of Japanese of all ages were killed in the two atomic-blasts. There are arguments that the Japanese were just about ready to surrender anyway, but there is no doubt they surrendered soon after the two bombs were detonated.
My opinions have been mostly shaped by considering the American and other Allied soldiers in troop ships staging for the invasion of Japan. Those soldiers did not focus on the horror of people being incinerated in Japanese cities or dying of radiation sickness. They instead celebrated that they would no longer have to participate in an invasion that would result in the death or dismemberment of invading soldiers, perhaps including them personally, and millions of Japanese.
My interest in the subject was rekindled by reading and reviewing the book “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption” by Laura Hillenbrand. The book was selected by the Northern Colorado Common Read (NCCR) for this year. The book is the story of Louis Zamperini. He finished seventh in the 5000 meters at the Berlin Olympics and soon was a bombardier in planes on raids over Japanese targets in the Pacific. He was one of three men who survived a plane crash into the ocean, and he and another man survived for 47 days on a rubber raft before being captured by the Japanese. He suffered brutal conditions and treatment for years.
The book documents numerous instances where the Japanese applied a “kill-all” policy that “…held that camp commanders could not, under any circumstances, allow Allied forces to recapture POWs. If Allied advances made this a possibility, POWs were to be executed.” “An order was issued to all POW camp commanders that “…decisive measures must be taken without returning a single POW.” A clarification said that all POWs at risk of being taken by Allied forces should be “…destroyed individually or in groups…with mass bombings, poisonous smoke, drowning, decapitation (or by whatever method needed to) not to allow the escape of a single one, to annihilate them all, and not leave any traces.” The book gives several examples of how the “kill-all” policy was used by the Japanese when Allied forces threatened an area where there were Allied prisoners. (See the “kill-all” order listing of instances where the policy was used by the Japanese on page 464 in the Index of the book.)
Much has been written that the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved many thousands of Allied soldiers and countless millions of Japanese civilians. An article titled “How the Atomic Bomb Saved 4,000,000 Lives describes declassified documents that were plans for the invasion code named “Operation Downfall.” The invasion was to be in two parts. Operation Olympic would send fourteen divisions to invade Kyushu and Operation Coronet would send twenty-two divisions would invade the main island after massive bombardment. It is interesting that some of the comments about the article (some of course dispute the need to drop the bombs) say that it grossly underestimates the number of casualties.
The book “Unbroken” focuses on the many thousands of Allied prisoners who were to be murdered a few days after the bombs were dropped. The bombs (and the devastation preceding them from fire bombings with conventional weapons) assured the Japanese surrender and forestalled the mass murders of prisoners.
Prisoners freed from the POW camps on trains that passed what had been the city of Hiroshima were astonished at the level of destruction. “Virtually every POW believed the destruction of this city had saved them from execution.” One prisoner who had been on the Bataan Death March observed, in part, “…there was nothing. Nothing! It was beautiful. I realized this was what had ended the war. It meant we didn’t have to go hungry any longer, or go without medical treatment. I was so insensitive anyone else’s human needs and suffering. I know it’s not right to say it was beautiful, because it really wasn’t. But I believed the end probably justified the means.”
I ask all who vilify President Truman’s decision what they would have wanted him to do if they had been a prisoner of the Japanese and facing the “kill-all” policy when the bombs were dropped. Is that an unfair question? I don’t think so.
As always, I’m willing to listen to voices of reason to tell me what I’ve missed. However, you will have much to overcome if you disagree with me. The horror created by the atomic bombs detonating over Hiroshima and Nagasaki meant that many thousands of soldiers did not have to die or suffer terrible wounds in the invasion of Japan. Allied soldiers also did not have to kill Japanese civilians, including women and children, who were being prepared for the invasion armed with sharpened sticks. Tough choice, but I go with what Truman decided.
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
The copy of the book by Laura Hillenbrand I read was purchased by the Friends of the Westminster Colorado Public library. The book was selected by the Northern Colorado Common Read (NCCR) for this year and there were several discussion sessions that included meetings with veterans. The book is the story of Louis Zamperini. He was saved from a delinquent childhood by a bother who convinced him to try out long distance running. He broke the high school record for the mile. He was a star on the University of California track team where he met a mysterious Japanese man named Jimmie Sasaki who later turned up as a Japanese military official. Louis finished seventh in the 5000 meters at the Berlin Olympics. He soon was a bombardier on raids over Japanese targets in the Pacific, and perhaps the brutal training and running of the 5000 meter “torture chamber” prepared him for what was in store.
Louis participated in several bombing runs against Japanese targets, and was one of three who survived a plane crash in the Pacific. They had two small rafts and meager supplies; the survival kit did not make it to their rafts. One of the other men ate the entire supply of chocolate the first night, which left them with no food. Louis caught an albatross that landed on his head, the meat was so putrid they couldn’t eat it, but they did catch a small fish with a hook baited with the meat. Sharks circled the rafts for almost the entire 47 days of drifting. The sharks occasionally resorted to trying to jump into the rafts and had to be fended off with the oars.
The men teetered on starvation with only an occasional fish, bird, or the livers from a couple of small sharks to keep them barely alive. They roasted under the sun, and rains came just often enough to keep them from dying of thirst.
The men fired a flare to attract a plane, which turned out to be Japanese. The plane made several strafing runs, shot up the rafts, but miraculously missed the men. One raft couldn’t be saved and became a sun shade. They patched the other raft despite the fact the sandpaper in the patching kit was not waterproof and the sand had fallen off. One of the men died shortly before the raft drifted up to an island where a Japanese boat took the two survivors captive. Continue reading