"...we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain..."
[February 20, 2003 update]
[Some personal reflections regarding attitudes and actions of peoples around the world regarding the United States and our President>]
I am almost 79 years old, and was a combat marine with the Fourth Marine Division in World War ll. I was wounded twice, blown up by a Japanese hand grenade, shot by a machine gun and in a hand to hand combat situation involving four Japanese soldiers, was shot several more times. All of this resulted in numerous injuries over much of my body. I mention this only to qualify myself as knowing what I am talking about in terms of dedication to my country, my president, my family and friends. I was willing to put my life on the line then and would again if it were popssible.
There may be a few, a very few, of the demonstrators around the world who truly feel that war, any war, is evel but it is obvious that most are in the streets out of pure hate for America and our President. What most Americans don't know, because they were not even born then, is that just before Pearl Harbor
over 80 per cent of Americans were oposed to going to war. Not only were they opposed to war they were opposed to preparing for war and as a result we who fought in the Pacific were asked to fight an enemy who outnumbered us 10 to one.
There was about 50,000 allied combat troops in the pacific facing over 500,000
serasoned Japanese troops. We were told by our ppresident that we would have to do the best we could because all available supplies were going to England and his pal Joe in Russia. It was difficult for the men in the Pacific who felt that our country owed its fighting men proper arms to fight with. It was a long time before that happened. History has been written to reflect the defeat of the U. S. and our allies in the Philippines and other parts of the Pacific. This was NOT true. We were not defeated, we ran completely out of ammunition, food, first aid and all other items need to maintain an army. What history does not say is that in ever case our forces fired their last round, ate their last bit of food, and didn't even have a band aid for dressing a wound. At this point their only choice was to sit down and wait for the Japanese to come. Had the US been prepared for war the death March would never have happened, Pearl Harbor would never have happened and thousands and thousands of dead Americans and allies would be alive today.
In Europe as soon as Hitler and his staff realized that Chamberland of England
would not fight, and that France did not have the will to defend itself, he turned his armies loose on Europe. That failure to stop Hitler cost the world over 40,000,000 lives lost.
[Basil Duncan-Webmaster]
The attack on the U. S. Fleet stationed in Pearl Harbor, on
December 7, 1941, and master-minded by Admiral Isoroko Yamamoto,
worked perfectly. It was a complete surprise, at least to the
people of Hawaii. At exactly 7:55 a.m. on this Sunday morning,
planes from the Japanese Fleet came roaring down from above,
raining death and destruction on the Navy ships sitting at
anchor in the harbor at Pearl.
In the time it takes you to read this page, over a thousand men
were killed and hundreds more had become America's first true
heroes of World War II.
According to the book, "Days of '41, Pearl Harbor Remembered",
by Ed Sheehan, who was there that fateful day, very ordinary men
did very extraordinary things. They lifted objects it was
thought to be impossible to lift, moved with broken backs,
walked with feet shot off, and serviced guns with broken arms.
Some fought on at their battle stations knowing they would
drown. Others swam in burning oil to rescue comrades. Mess
cooks manned guns, musicians steered boats, machinists tied
tourniquets, and nurses hauled lines.
Likewise in the 1930's Stalin in the Soviet Union massacred over 20 million of its own people and the world stood by because they didn't want to get involved. Again in 1975, mostly because of street demonstrations of the ignorant and uninformed, the United States abandoned Vietnam, and in the years following more than 2 million people were massacred by the Communist all over Asia. This number exceeds the total number killed during the 10 year period of the Vietnam War. It is a well known fact that had the US gone into Vietnam with the will to win, the war would have been over in two to three years.
All of us who have experienced the terror of war know and understand only too well that war is hell, but we also realize there are times when fighting is better than surrender. Most important I hope and pray we never ever go to war without the will to win and never try to micro manage the war in Washington. Most of all I never want to see this country allow street mobs to dictate foreign policy with the goal of American surrender. If we do fight, I pray we fight to win, if not then don't fight at all.
This is the way she looked in 1941 prior to being sunk on December 7 by the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.
Eight U.S. battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers, and
eight other craft were sunk or badly damaged. Almost half of
America's combat aircraft on Oahu were destroyed. In just one
hour and fifty minutes, the naval fleet and air force of the
United States' military in the Pacific were badly crippled. In
this same one hour and fifty minutes, the United States lost
2,341 killed and 1,143 wounded.
No ladies and gentlemen, we should NEVER forget Pearl Harbor and
we should never allow any administration in Washington to reduce
our military and naval forces to the ridiculously low state that
existed on December 7, 1941. We must always be ready and able
to defend ourselves in the event of a surprise attack.
Our problem was not so much one of reduction as it was of ignorance and apathy on the part of our leadership in Washington. Our intelligence was almost nonexistent and it seemed that the ones responsible for interpretating the intelligence reports they received were either incompetent or ignorant of the process. There were numerous warning signs available that would have served as a warning to most Nations of the world except the U.S.
It took a massive loss of human life and the destruction of a major part of our pacific fleet to wake up the leadership in Washington D.C. and even then they tended to ignore the needs of the men in the pacific. We understood that since the Nation had been allowed to wallow in apathy and ignorance resulting in no real attemp to strenghen us militarily, that the main emphasis would neccessarily go to Europe. However I think some materials such as medical supplies and ammunition for the Soldiers and Marines could have been spared sooner than they were. Also it was not necessary to promise these things knowing all the while they would not be sent.
In the 1930's I heard the same rhetoric coming out of Washington
that I hear today, and they succeeded in reducing our armed
forces and their equipment to such a low level that we were
unable to defend ourselves on our outposts in the Pacific.
Those thousands of men who were captured in the early months of
the war after Pearl Harbor were not defeated; they had no
ammunition, no medical supplies, and no food. This was the
sorry state of our military in the Pacific when the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor.
Those thousands of men who were forced to surrender because they
had nothing to fight with, no food, and no medical supplies to
treat the wounded should never have been forced to endure the shame of surrender. This Nation let them down; they certainly did not let their Nation down.
In 1941, America had about 50,000 men in the Pacific who were
poorly armed; the Japanese had about 500,000 who were well
armed. Juist a little over a year before the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor the Military strength of the United States was 10th in the world, just behind that of Belgium.
When MacArthur and his army was fighting to hold the Philippines
they had every reason to believe that America would send help. They knew they could defend the islands because MacArthur's army of 65,000 Filipinos and 15,000 Americans had repulsed the Japanese time and time again, even though the army was ridden by malaria, beriberi, smallpox, dysentery, hookworm, dengue fever, and pellagra. With all this against these brave men, they held and held, because they believed supplies of medicine and war materials was on its way.
MacArthur who believed deeply in his country, had been lied to. Roosevelt cabled Manuel Quezon, president of the Philippine Commonwealth, then on Corregidor with the following message: "I can assure you that every vessel available is bearing....the strength that will eventually crush the enemy....I give to the people of the Philippines my solemn pledge that their freedom will be retained.....The entire resources in men and materials of the United States stand behind that pledge."
General George C. Marshall, FDR's army chief of staff, radioed MacArthur: "A stream of four-engine bombers, previously delayed by foul weather, is enroute.....Another stream of similar bombers started today from Hawaii, staging at new island fields. Two groups of powerful medium bombers of long range and heavy bomb-load capaciity leave this week. Pursuit plains are coming on every ship we can use....Our strength is to be concentrated and it shoiuld exert a decisive effect of Japanese shipping and force a withdrawal northward."
This was all a lie. Not one plane, not a single warship, not a single U.S. reinforcement reached Bataan or Corregidor. The only excuse for these kind of lies was to con the men into holding on to buy time for other, more defensible outposts. Washington knew they had lost the Philipines but felt they had to lie to MacArthur and his men so they would fight longer.
The only thing it accomplished was to embitter the men, who lost all faith in their country ever helping them. They knew after the truth finally sank in, they had been abandoned and sacrificed for other wars in other places.
The following article was written by Mona Charen, a syndicated Washington Columnist, On December 7, 1997.
Pearl Harbor Day, which once sent a shiver down the spine of every American, now passes almost unnoticed as America slides into historical ignorance.
For those alive on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian Islands (even as peace talks were under way in Washington) knocked the collective wind out of this country.
Prosperity and peace are the greatest gifts to which a nation can aspire--but we have found it easier to secure these blessings than to be grateful for them. Veterans Day and Pearl Harbor Day are not quaint remembrances for those who had a personal role. They are intended for those who did not serve, but who enjoy the fruit of others' service. It is for us, the beneficiaries, to honor those who fought and those who died.
The contrast between 1941 and 1997 is stark. This past week, at a "national town meeting" on race and presided over by the president, Americans expressed their "pain" at being the "victims" of stereotyping. A girl of Puerto Rican extraction described the torment of being asked why she doesn't have an accent.
Peace and prosperity have dulled us to the true meaning of pain and have devalued the language of suffering.
When America was attacked and plunged into World War 11, we were militarily and economically weak, and we faced two enemies of such surpassing evil it beggars the imagination. Whole libraries have been written to try to grasp the enormity of the Nazi Holocaust. Less attention has been paid to Japanese arocities.
The enemy America faced in the Pacific was not easily differentiated from the Nazi enemy in Europe. Time has distorted that reality. Much ink has been spilled wondering whether America was morally justified in dropping the atom bomb on the Japanese cities. But the rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March have dropped down the memory hole.
In her new book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War 11," Iris Chang recounts the week-long orgy of murder, torture and rape that Japanese troops indulged in when they captured the Chinese capital in 1937. As Chang recounted on National Public Radio, the Japanese army, during a period of six to eight weeks,murdered 300,000 civilians and raped between 20,000 and 80,000 women.
Some of the murders were straightforward, death by machine gun. But the Japanese also engaged in beheading contests, skinning people alive and live burials. People were hanged from their tongues, and others , including small children, were tortured to death with needles. As for the rapes, they were creative. "They forced sons to rape mothers and fathers their daughters. And they mutilated the bodies afterwards."
Defeat at the hands of such an enemy was horrifying but not inconceivable. We know about the courage of the World War 11 generation. But imagine their fear.
Sixteen million Americans served in uniform during World War 11--400,000 were killed, 670,000 wounded, some grievously. (The world total of soldiers killed was 28,504,000. Civilian deaths numberd 46,403,000.) The necessities of war transformed a depression-plagued, sluggish economy into a colossus. In 1939, the United States produced 5,865 aircraft. In 1944, it produced 96,318. The mining, manufacturing and construction industries doubled their production between 1939 and 1944.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor truly woke a sleeping giant. Not only did the United States repair and put to sea many of the ships bombed and torpedoed that day, but in the four years that followed, the United States built 124,000 more ships of every variety: 303,713 aircraft: 2.4 million vehicles: 12.5 million rifles and carbines: and 100,000 tanks.
The war spun people around the globe like tumbleweed, and newsreels brought the world war to the home front.Americans found themselves in Burma and Bombay, the Solomon Islands, and Salzburg. We would never be provincial again.
About a thousand veterans of World War 11 die each and every day. A memorial has been planned for the Mall in Washington. We need it, for the sake of historical memory, and to reconfirm our gratitude that those who faced the dangers of that time performed so magnificently.
The following article was taken from the San Diego Union-Tribune paper, Saturday, May 16, 1998.
TOKYO--Fifty years after Japan's World War II prime minister, Hideki Tojo, was hanged as a war criminal, a controversial film is to be released in Tokyo that honors him as an Asian hero unjustly treated by the victorious Allies.
The movie, "Pride: The Fateful Moment," has prompted fierce criticism from Japan's neighbors and added fuel to the domestic debate on the question of the country's responsibility for the war.
Tojo, who was found guilty of "negligence in preventing crimes against humanity" by the Allied war crimes tribunal, is portrayed in the film as a man more sinned against than sinning. Skimming over his role in expanding the war against China, promoting the tripartite pact with Germany and Italy and ordering the attack on Pearl Harbor, the film focuses on the post-war trial, in which manipulative Western prosecutors are shown as twisting the truth to trap a man of samurai integrity.
"The truth was erased during the Allied occupation of Japan after its surrender in 1945." Yuko Iwanami, Tojo's granddaughter and the author of papers on which much of the film is based, told reporters. "My grandfather was not as bad as people say." Her views reflect those of many Japanese who see their country's actions up until 1945 as an effort to rid Asia of Western imperialists, and who resent the fact that their wartime leader is demonized as much as Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini.
"If this movie, which shows a unique Japanese spirit that disappeared at the end of the war, manages to restore the sense of pride in Japanese families and young people, then we shall have achieved something." the film's star, Masahiko Tsugawa, told a press conference.
China and North Korea have condemned Tokyo for allowing the film to be shown. Xinhua, China's official news agency, quoted a government source as saying: "We felt shocked and indignant over the fact that some people in Japan produced such a movie to whitewash aggression and sing the praises of Hideki Tojo."
The North Korean Communist Party newspaper Rodong Sinmin, called the movie "shameless" for seeking "to eradicate the guilty conscience of the past and implant pride of the past in the minds of the Japanese."
In Japan, trade unionists at the film's studio have registered their unhappiness with its content. However, members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party approve of the movie. It's also certain to be endorsed by historian Nobukatsu Fujioka, whose claims that Japan was forced by the Allies to adopt a "masochistic" view of history, have wide support.
The film goes on general release May 23, 1998.
My personal question as a former Marine in the pacific during World War II is this. "Where is the protest of the United States?" Ins't it strange that after what we and the world endured at the hands of Japanese like Tojo, the United States has neither the will nor the inclination to do or say anything.
Millions of people in Asia and thousands of American, Australian, New Zealanders, British and thousands from other countries, were slain at the hands of people like Toko and his criminal band, and we as a Nation just sit by and say nothing.
Why have we refused to learn from events of the past?
America, PLEASE don't let this happen again!
The following article appeared in the Hartford Courant, Tuesday, April 7, 1998
Japanese Conduct In China Featured
Associated Press
TOKYO - In statements for war crimes trials in China 42 years ago, semor Japanese military officials provided detailed admissions of biological warfare, poison gas attacks and sexual slavery.
Those depositions, to be published Thursday in the May edition of the Japanese magazine Sekkai, fill in some chapters of a history that Japan has been reluctant to acknowledge.
In one account, Masam Uesaka, a major general, tells of a May 1942 poison gas operation that killed more than 1,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians 'in China's northern Hebei province.
In another excerpt, Hiraku Suzuki, a lieutenant general, recalls ordering the abduction of Chinese and Korean women to serve in front-line military brothels and the use of cholera as a biological war fare agent
In the magazine, a freelance Japa nese photo journalist says he obtained the material from a war criminal detention center in north east China's Liaoning province.
The depositions of 45 ranking Japanese military officials and bureaucrats were released. Most of the Japanese involved in the 1956 trials were released before the end of their sentences or died in prison.
"What is most striking is the detailed descriptions of the complicity in these acts by high-ranking officials," said Yoshiaki Yoshimi, a history professor at Tokyo's Chuo University.
In recent years, the Japanese government has confirmed the existence of once-secret military operations such as brothels and Unit 731, a detachment that conducted biological weapons experiments on prisoners of war and civilians. But Japan has declined to detail the extent of these activities, in many cases saying records no longer exist
The April edition of another monthly magazine, Shokun, featured an article titled "Why is the Foreign Ministry silent about deceitful, anti-Japanese books?" The story criticized the depiction of Ja pan's military in books such as the recently published "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang.
A number of Chinese who say they were mistreated by the Imperial Japanese Army have filed lawsuits against Japan. The government has contended, however, that all wartime claims were settled in its postwar peace treaties.
Japan has offered privately donated money to all surviving sex slaves, but many victims have turned it down, demanding that compensation and an apology come directly from the Japanese government.
And the beat goes on!!!!!!
ITS ABOUT TIME!
PEROT GOT VETS OFF TO FLYING START
CORONADO--John McVean and the boys from Texas were in a pickle. McVean and about 50 0ther Pearl Harbor survivors from Texas were all set to fly to San Diego for the commissioning of the dock landing ship Pearl Harbor yesterday.
Then about a week before the trip, the military plane they were going to hitch a ride on to San Diego was diverted to fight fires in Mexico.
That left about 50 survivors, and their spouses, trying to book a last-minute flight during the Memorial Day holiday period, one of the busiest flying weeks of the year.
“I thought we wouldn’t make it,” said McVean, 79, of Dallas. All it took was a fellow Texan to take care of the problem. But this was no ordinary Texan. This was Ross Perot, the billionaire businessman and former presidential candidate. That Ross Perot.
McVean’s daughter, Karen McVean, knowing that Perot is very supportive of veterans’ groups, figured she would call him to see if he could do anything to help.
“I thought if I shot enough arrows in the air, maybe one of them would stick,” she said.
“The next morning, Ross called and simply said, ‘This is Ross Perot. How many people are you trying to get to California?’” Over the next two days, Perot made several phone calls and got American Airlines to offer cheap fares for the survivors.
Perot offered to pick up the tab for anyone who couldn’t afford the fares. And he even arranged transportation to get the survivors from various hotels to the North Island Naval Air Station for the commissioning.
Yesterday 31 of the survivors and spouses from Texas had made it to the commissioning, thanks to Perot’s help. “we just changed our chapter motto to ‘It helps to know Ross Perot,’” joked Roy Holland, a member of the North Central Texas Chapter of Pearl Harbor Survivors.
Perot couldn’t be reached for comment. Neither could officials at American Airlines. It was unclear yesterday how many survivors’ air fares Perot will actually pick up. American Airlines agreed to charge $290 for the round-trip flight. It would have cost $1,600 for a last-minute flight during the holiday, said Karen McVean.
“It’s several thousand dollars that he basically paid out of his pocket,” she said. “He’s just that kind of person.”
Some Texas survivors drove to San Diego or made other travel arrangements. Those who made it were overjoyed to be there. Many had been working on getting a ship named after pearl Harbor for years.
DOCK LANDING SHIP
(THE USS PEARL HARBOR)
Length: 609.7 feet
Beam: 84 feet
Depth: 44 feet
Displacement: 16,708 tons
Propulsion: 4 diesels; 2 shafts, 41,600 bhp; 22 knots
Crew: 419
Troops: 500
Cargo: 13,000 square feet for vehicles; 40,000 cubic feet for bulk cargo
Armament: Two 20-mm Phalanx CIWS; two 25-mm MK 38 machine guns; eight
50-caliber machine guns; two 21-cell RAM missile launchers
(delivered on Pearl Harbor
only, to be retrofitted on other ships.)
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