Posted on 09/03/2015 4:59:55 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Quite a few went home to suffer a variety of vague maladies resembling auto-immune responses and ultimately succumb to the condition. What they actually had was probably a parasitic infection.
Good thought. My Dad spent 4 months in the hospital in India with some kind of infection and Malaria and Dysentary.
That sounds about right. Years ago I talked to a doctor who was familiar with the history and he told me that Pacific vets died by the thousands in late 50's & early 60's.
The malta cross medal is the marksmanship badge. Normally, one or more clasps bearing the name of a weapon he qualified with would hang from the cross.
“That sounds about right. Years ago I talked to a doctor who was familiar with the history and he told me that Pacific vets died by the thousands in late 50’s & early 60’s”.
I can see that.
The approximate 405,000 battle deaths was probably exceeded by service connected deaths over the years.
Thank you again, Homer, for your outstanding work.
Homer, did you serve in the military? Just curious if your research in this project was guided by that experience. Thanks.
I was a navy corpsman in the early 70s. Undistinguished career assigned to naval hospitals in CA. It doesn’t relate to this project.
I dont wish to sound repetitious, but thanks, thanks and again, thanks for all you did.
I will miss this thread/topic and all those who contributed to it.
I hope to revisit this topic from time to time.
God bless you.
I would be remiss if I didnt give you a special thanks for your contributions as well.
Thank you for the excellent work putting this together. I cannot imagine the hours it must have taken to do this. It was wonderful watching events unfold in “real time.” The past week has been rough because I would always look for your post first thing each morning and now there is nothing. It’s also rough because my Dad’s involvement was being part of the occupation force and that was just getting ramped up when the series ended.
Thanks again for the yeoman’s effort. Now what will you do with all of your spare time?
Way back in the 1970’s I first read Herman Wouk’s two volume novel of World War II, ‘The Winds of War’ and ‘War and Remembrance.’ I enjoyed them enough that I reread them several times over following decades. I wondered at the way Wouk managed to get his hand full characters directly involved in so many of the key events of the war so at one point I created a timeline to illustrate just how improbable it was. I decided it was not impossible however, even if the younger son of the hero got a lot of leave for a navy line officer in wartime. Anyway the key thing for our project is that I now had an interest in the war, which built on the experiences of my family members, a general idea of the course of the war, and the idea of a timeline.
When my mother passed away in 1990 I first learned of the letters my father wrote during the war and that I eventually posted. I decided to transcribe the letters and assemble them in a binder. To fill it out a little I decided to find some headlines from the newspapers of the time to mark some of the historic points during the series of letters. Like the fall of Corregidor, the battle of Midway, D-Day, and so on. As long as I was at the library looking at microfilm I checked out the New York Times front page for Dec. 1, 1939, to compare it with what Wouk had included in his novel for that day. It matched, of course, and for some reason that tickled me and the memory remained. On that day I discovered how entertaining it was to scroll through old newspapers reading stories of important events and trivial incidents, reading ads, visiting the sports section and getting first impressions of movies that are now old classics. I left the library hooked on microfilm.
I was slow to catch on to the internet and it wasn’t until 2000 that I began to surf on a regular basis. Somehow I found my way to freerepublic.com during the presidential campaign and the ongoing debate between libertarians (which I was then but am not now) and traditional conservatives. I liked it here and soon signed up as a freeper. I noted that in addition to links and discussion of current news there were threads devoted to honoring service personnel and marking important days in history.
Over the next several years the factors I have laid out here percolated in my subconscious and finally formed into the idea of doing a real-time series on the war. I read William Shirer’s ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ and Toland’s ‘The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire,’ and entered dates they contained on my timeline so I could post excerpts when the time came. I got a copy of Volume 1 of Churchill’s memoirs and did the same. Ditto for a few other books. I moved the start of my timeline back to 1935 as I read the history, but it seemed there were not enough events leading to war to populate a day-by-day account of the type I envisioned so I didn’t get around to actually posting stuff until 1938/2008.
I was at such a rudimentary level of posting skill at the time that I didn’t know how to create and save a jpeg image and then post it with the proper html coding. That left me having to transcribe articles manually and then copy/paste them to start new threads. That took an enormous amount of time and severely limited the amount of material I would be able to post. It also eliminated the valuable benefit of seeing how the articles appeared in the original version and made the inclusion of photographs and advertisements impossible. Luckily for all of us CougarGA7 came to the rescue and gave me a quick course on posting photos. That was mid-1938.
As I expected, the first time I posted an article with the source identified as New York Times I set off bells and sirens and the article was promptly pulled. After a discussion with admin moderator our wise and benevolent leader Jim Robinson was called in and pronounced that, since the articles were 70 years old they were public domain and therefore acceptable for posting. For a long time after that I waited apprehensively for a notice from a lawyer for the Times ordering me to cease and desist, but it never came. I will always be grateful to Mr. Robinson for allowing me to begin this project on his site, when it , and for continuing to allowing me to fill up his servers with World War II news. I have been unemployed for most of the time and have lacked the fund to both donate during freepathons and pay for the copies ($0.25 ea.) that come from the microfilm. I hope a few satisfied readers have been inspired to donate because of my project.
Another early controversy concerned the titles of the articles. I wanted something distinctive that would make clear that the articles were connected and part of a series. I settled on “Real Time + 70 Years” as an appendage to whatever the title of the article was. I soon discovered that nothing is so insignificant that it won’t generate outrage from some quarter, and my use of “Real Time” actually became a distraction when a few freepers saw it as a misuse of the term and wouldn’t rest until I recognized my error. They actually did me a favor since I just gave up and put the date of the newspaper in parentheses after using the main headline as the thread title. That makes the articles easier to find and uses fewer of the 100 characters available for thread titles.
And so I began posting articles on January 27, 2008 with this modest and unwarlike story:
1,500 STORM THEATRE TO RECEIVE GOODMAN
I intended this to be an educational project as well as entertaining. Otherwise, why spend all the time and bandwidth on it? My thinking then was that the first and most important lesson we could learn from the war was how it could have been prevented, that we might know how to prevent future wars. There was plenty of discussion of the prewar period, as we watched the Munich Agreement, Kristalnacht, the absorption of Czechoslovakia into the Reich, up to the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement on the eve of war. In all that time I never felt like we had put our collective finger on the one thing, or set of things, that could have been done to stave of the catastrophe. So the war began and our moment to find the key to peace passed, as it did in the original. I let it go and settled down to observing the war. I often felt a twinge of guilt over my fascination since I was definitely having fun and the source of the fun was so horrible and involved such suffering.
Another observation from viewing the war in real time (if that usage bothers you, tough) is how long the intervals between major events seem. My view of the war after Pearl Harbor was that, first the surprise attack came and then it was just one damn thing after another until Coral Sea and then after a brief pause, Midway. But in 2011 and 2012 it seemed like a long haul between the losses of December and the fall of Corregidor. It must have been an agonizing time for those involved. I got the same impression for other phases of the war. Even when the Allies were winning.
As American industrial capacity began to gain traction and slowly began to turn the tide in the Pacific and Europe, I began to realize that my assumption about the opportunity to learn the lesson of how to prevent future wars might have not been in the prewar period at all but from the exercise of American power during the war. henkster frequently hinted at what was coming and then we could observe for ourselves as the materiel rolled off the assembly lines and out of the shipyards in quantities that made a mockery of the pitiful Axis dreams of eventual conquest. Most of the human suffering – for Americans, at least – took place after this inevitable turn of the tide. Perhaps if, the American industrial and military potential had been made clear to Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, and American leadership had convinced the Axis partners in no uncertain terms that we would destroy them utterly if they dared attack us, then maybe history would have taken a different turn.
But then anyone who took received at least a C- in this class knows that henkster’s law makes that scenario impossible. America was an isolationist nation in 1939 and Roosevelt had to use his prodigious wiles to pull off even token and symbolic warlike acts prior to Pearl Harbor. Still, the lesson of American power and the will to use it remains on the historical record. Maybe if our government, instead of reaching out, seeking mutual aims, striving to understand other cultural points of view, etc., simply told hostile powers that, if they attack us (and we reserve the right to define “attack”) we will use all our might to destroy them utterly, we might have a more peaceful world. That would require different government leaders and a political will among the people that doesn’t exist yet but as I understand it henkster’s law deals with alternative history of the past and not the future. That is why I believe powerful communication skill tops the list of qualities I believe we need in a future president and other political leaders. Because we can elect the right leaders with a narrow voting majority, but the concept of peace through strength needs to be sold to a large majority to be most effective.
So nothing new and profound from your humble facilitator, but that is my main serious takeaway from the project.
I had some personal lessons to learn from the war, too. I mentioned in reply #95 that I didn’t know my father well since he died when I was so young. Through the posting of his letters and following his career as a soldier I believe I have come to know him a little better. I feel I have paid a debt to both him and myself in that regard. I also know a little better what it was like for my other relatives who were alive during the war and understand more clearly how they saw the world.
I want to acknowledge the people who have done so much to make this project more than just a bunch of old newspaper articles. My problem is, where would I stop? Different freepers have stepped up at different periods of the war to contribute according to their own expert or first-hand knowledge. In some cases this period lasted from 1939 to 1945. In other cases light was shed on a single campaign or front. It all enhanced the experience, so thank you, professor level participants.
Others helped me personally without adding any historical context by checking in once or twice to say, “I know I don’t post much here, but I read the posts every day, so thanks for doing the work.” I always got a lift from such a post, even if I didn’t acknowledge it at the time. So thank you for the encouragement.
When I first started the class roster I would sometimes check the posting history when someone new asked to be added. I was surprised at how often it turned out that the request to be added was the only post from that freeper for years. During the war they never posted, and as far as I know they still don’t post. But I respect and appreciate their taking the step of emerging from anonymity for a moment to join the class. I hope it measured up to your hopes and expectations.
Many of you have asked what is next for Homer J now that the war is over. Some have suggested covering the Korean War, or World War I, or even the Civil War in the same manner as this one. The last one would be really interesting to try, but even if I had access to a complete collection of NYT microfilm going that far back I would demur. I am done with this type of project. I sincerely wish that some young freeper with an interest in history and suffering from the same mental disorder as me would give it a go. I will be the first to enroll in the class. I feel the stirring of something different beginning in the back of my mind and maybe it will emerge for FR and all the world to see at some point. Something I don’t think I ever mentioned as part of this course (since it isn’t directly relevant) is that in 2002 I “swam the Tiber,” as the saying goes, and switched from being a confirmed-then-lapsed Episcopalian to a member of the Roman Catholic Church. From then until I got so deeply immersed in this project that it took most of my free time I explored different areas of the Magisterium – the Catechism, Holy Scripture, church histories, biographies, and so on. I realized a person could spend a lifetime, heck, several lifetimes, in such a pursuit and never see it all. It is likely that any new publicly displayed efforts like the WWII project will involve that route to the Kingdom of God.
In the meantime, I’m not going anywhere, so I look forward to encountering many of you on various Free Republic threads in the future. And I wait with eager anticipation to learn who will be posting the Civil War threads. Say, aren’t the Lincoln-Douglas debates going on about now?
Thanks again for the series.
Perhaps whenever a new book comes out, or some heretofore unknown research on WWII is revealed, that might be a good occasion for all of us to get back together. We should all be on the lookout for that.
Good idea. The ping list is still on my profile.
I have posted it before but will do so again. We had another FReeper Alamo Girl that did us a great service by developing a tremendous work The Down Side Legacy that is in fact the definitive history of the Clinton administration
You have accomplished what historians have attempted but were unable to accomplish. Rather than gather references and write, you have assembled the great body of references that are available but tucked away in the bowels of a library.
For a kid interested or perhaps assigned to report on say Midway, your work is the absolute best reference. I would encourage you to find a place beyond the FRee Republic servers as a depository accessible by the internet and the Google and Bing netbots.
While we have read your posts and find them very worthwhile, in my mind, my grandson can benefit by finding them readily available on the internet. that is where he and all of his generation will look.
I don’t know how it can be done but the present stage of your effort is but the prelude to forever
thanks eversomuch for you fantastic dedication and effort
Unfortunately today using the NYT 70 years from now to track, say the War on Terror, there could not be a worse source.
Whoever decides do do it should spent some time covering events leading to the Civil War such as the Tariffs of 1828, 1832 and the Nullification Crisis of 1832.
Obtaining newspaper coverage from so far back may be challenging but Homer's former students have high expectations of their professors.
Historians, almost all of whom are Leftists will never be critical of their demigod FDR by pointing out that he could have starved Japan in 1937 after the rape of Nanking by cutting off the supply of raw materials.
Instead, FDR waited another 4.5 years to do something until mid-summer 1941 when his ideological brother Joe Stalin was in deep trouble and desperately in need of not having to worry about Japan.
Oh and by the way, I missed your post about the final surrender of German forces last week on Bear Island.
Homer, I too am grateful that Jim Robinson and Free Republic gave you the bandwidth and forum for your project. Henkster’s law is not entirely my creation, but this exercise made me realize just how powerful and determinative it is. We looked back at the war as it unfolded day by day in the NYT, and read your posts of the other background materials, I came to same same conclusion that you and colorado tanker did. I just don’t see how World War II realistically could have played out any differently than it did.
As for the retrospective and not prospective application of henkster’s law, I sincerely pray that you are right and that the course of events from here out can be corrected and are not inevitable. Given the way things are playing out, I am not at all optimistic about the future. The last thing I want 70 years from now are a bunch of Chinese blogging about Lo Mein’s law or or moslems writing in the sand about Asshur du Smelbad’s law when discussing the end of western Judeo-Christian civilization.
So have looked a the NYT data available from the Civil War? How spotty is it? A Civil War day by day would be super.
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