Mark Scott Smith's Blog: Enemy in the Mirror, page 90

Ernie Pyle Killed – 1945

Before he became a WWII correspondent, Indianan Ernie Pyle wrote a popular syndicated column for the Scripps-Howard newspapers about the lives and hopes of typical American citizens in the 1930s. In 1942, Pyle went overseas as a war correspondent where he covered the North Africa campaign and the invasions of Sicily, Italy and Normandy.

Rather than focusing on the battles he saw, Pyle wrote about the experiences of ordinary enlisted men.  D-Day was described as  “… a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead.”

In 1945, after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished correspondence, Pyle traveled to the Pacific to cover the war against Japan. On April 18, 1945, Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese machine gun fire on Iejima island.

Ernie Pyle Quotations:

“They were young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion made them look middle-aged. In their eyes as they passed was no hatred, no excitement, no despair, no tonic of their victory—there was just the simple expression of being there as if they had been there doing that forever, and nothing else.”

“It would be wrong to say that war is all grim; if it were, the human spirit could not survive two and three and four years of it. … As some soldier once said, the army is good for one ridiculous laugh per minute. Our soldiers are still just as roughly good-humored as they always were, and they laugh easily, although there isn’t as much to laugh about as there used to be.”

“The most vivid change was the casual and workshop manner in which they talked about killing. They had made the psychological transition from their normal belief that taking human life was sinful, over to a new professional outlook where killing was a craft. No longer was there anything morally wrong about killing. In fact, it was an admirable thing.”

“A soldier who has been a long time in the line does have a ‘look’ in his eyes that anyone who knows about it can discern. It’s a look of dullness, eyes that look without seeing, eyes that see without conveying any image to the mind. It’s a look that is the display room for what lies behind it—exhaustion, lack of sleep, tension for too long, weariness that is too great, fear beyond fear, misery to the point of numbness, a look of surpassing indifference to anything anybody can do. It’s a look I dread to see on men.”

“They seemed terribly pathetic to me. They weren’t warriors. They were American boys who by mere chance of fate had wound up with guns in their hands, sneaking up a death-laden street in a strange and shattered city in a faraway country in a driving rain. They were afraid, but it was beyond their power to quit. … And even though they weren’t warriors born to the kill, they won their battles. That’s the point.”

 

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Dietrich Bonhöffer Executed 1945

Together with theologians Karl Barth and Martin Niemöller, the German pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer was a founding member of the German Bekennende Kirche ( Confessing Church), a Protestant movement that opposed Nazi attempts to unify all Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi Deutsche Evangelische Kirche (Protestant Reich Church)

Writing about Christianity’s role in the secular world, Bonhöffer was widely influential. His 1937 book Nachfolge (The Cost of Discipleship) is considered a modern religious classic.

Bonhöffer was also a staunch opponent of Nazi euthanasia  and genocidal persecution of the Jews. Arrested in April 1943 by the Gestapo, he was imprisoned for 1 1/2 years before transfer to a concentration camp. After being associated with the Operation Valkyrie plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was convicted and hung on April 9, 1945.

 

Dietrich Bonhöffer Quotations:

Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear … Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now.

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will.

Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God…..We must not…..assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

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B-29s Blast Japan

 

First deployed in 1944, the B-29 was a new generation bomber that carried more bombs, and flew higher, faster and farther than any other WWII bomber. It also introduced remote controlled turrets for defense and pressurized crew compartments that allowed them to forgo heavy cold weather clothing.

Wingspan: 141 ft 3 in
Length: 99 ft
Height: 29 ft 7 in
Weight: 141,100 lbs (loaded)
Max. Speed: 358 mph
Service Ceiling: 31,850 ft
Range: 4,100 miles
Engines: 4 Wright R-3350-23 radial, 2,200 horsepower each
Armament: 12 .50-caliber machine guns, 1 20 mm cannon, 20,000-pound bomb load
Crew:11

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Like the United States, Japan improved it’s fighters throughout the war. Japanese fighters became faster, were heavier armed, had self-sealing fuel tanks and some armor protection for the pilot. The Japanese Kawasaki Ki-61 had a number of B-29 kills.

 

 

Kawasaki Ki-61 Specifications

Length: 29 ft 4 in
Wingspan: 39 ft 4 in
Height: 12 ft 2 in
Gross weight: 7,650 lb
Powerplant: 1 × Kawasaki Ha40 inverted liquid-cooled V-12 piston engine, 864 kW (1,159 hp)
Maximum speed: 360 mph at 16,000 ft
Range: 360 mi
Service ceiling: 38,100 ft
Guns:  2× 20 mm Ho-5 cannon; 2× 12.7 mm Ho-103 machine guns
Bombs: 2× 550 lb
Crew: 1

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The Kawasaki Ki-100 only entered service in the last months of the war but was considered an excellent fighter by the U.S. The Mitsubishi J2M, the Nakajima Ki-44 and the Nakajima Ki-84  could out perform the American P-51D Mustang and P-47D Thunderbolt at certain altitudes.

The Japanese Mitsubishi A6M Zero and Nakajima KI-43 were still in service toward the end of the war, but were little improved over the 1942 versions. Although  to attack B29s, none of these fighters had the high altitude performance necessary to effectively battle the B-29.

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In March 1945, when the US began escorting B-29 flights over Japan with P-51 Mustang fighters from Iwo Jima, Japanese defenses against the B-29 became relatively ineffective.

 

 P-51 Mustang

P-51 Mustang Specifications

ENGINE: Rolls Royce Packard built V-1650-7 Merlin 12 cylinder liquid cooled power plant-1490 HP

MAX SPEED: 505 mph

WINGSPAN:37′ 0″

LENGTH:32′ 2″

HEIGHT:13′ 8″

MAX GROSS WEIGHT:12,300 lbs.

MAX CEILING:41,900

RANGE: 2,080 miles with two 110 gal. drop tanks

ARMAMENT: 6 X .50 caliber Browning machine guns

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In 1945, Imperial Japan had inadequate numbers of aircraft and anti-aircraft guns to adequately defend their home islands. Additionally, most Japanese aircraft and ground artillery had difficulty reaching the B29s high altitude. Fuel shortages, loss of experienced pilots and inadequate pilot training, and a lack of effective coordination between defense units compounded their problems. Japanese firefighters lacked training and equipment, and few air raid shelters were constructed for civilians. In 1945, B29s wreaked havoc on Japanese cities with the loss of comparatively few American aircraft. (Read interesting commentary on B-29 losses)

U.S. Casualties and losses

614 aircraft lost

2,691 killed

Japanese Casualties and losses

4,200 aircraft lost

~333,000 killed and 473,000 wounded.

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FDR Dies- April 1945

Health and Medical History of FDR

President Roosevelt’s medical records were closely guarded during his lifetime and surviving documentation is incomplete. But it’s clear he had persistently severe high blood pressure in the 1940s. In late 1943 he apparently had congestive heart failure (CHF) and his health declined significantly.

In April 1944 his blood pressure was recorded as extremely high (218/130). Unfortunately at that time (unlike today) no medications were available to effectively treat hypertension. The only recommendations were to avoid stress and vigorous activity, eat a sensible diet and avoid tobacco use.

In the summer of 1944, during the campaign for an unprecedented 4th term, several physicians collectively reported that FDR was in good health. One of them however, Frank Lahey of Boston, wrote a confidential memo that suggested the president might not survive another four years. The public never learned of his assessment, and in April 1945 Roosevelt succumbed to a stroke just three months into his fourth term.

 

 

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Firebombing Tokyo-1945

On March 9, 1945, with the code name “Operation Meetinghouse,” 334 B-29 bombers under the command of Colonel Curtis LeMay, took off from USAAF bases in the Mariana Islands. Shortly after midnight on March 10, the B-29s flew over densely-populated areas of Tokyo at the relatively low altitude of 7,000 feet.

Prior to the raid, U.S. Army engineers at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah had tested the firebombing technique on a mock-Japanese village constructed of wooden houses. As predicted, ~1600 tons of napalm-filled incendiary bombs released over Tokyo in the next 48 hours initiated enormous firestorms that engulfed 15 square miles of the city.

Although estimates vary, between 80,000-130,000 Japanese civilians were killed in the worst single firestorm in recorded history. Several times that number of civilians were injured and more than a million people were left homeless.

The death toll of the Tokyo raid was the highest of any air raid during the entire war, including Hiroshima (estimated 70-80,000 deaths) and Nagasaki (estimated 60,000 deaths). Although many people today are more aware of the bombing of Dresden than Tokyo, the bombing of Dresden a month earlier resulted in an estimated 18- 25,000 deaths.

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Anne Frank Dies – March 1945

Anne Frank was a teenage writer who hid in Amsterdam with her family for two years during the Nazi occupation of Holland. She chronicled her feelings and experiences in a diary that became renowned after the war. She was 15 years old when the location of the family was betrayed and they were sent to the camps, where she died. Her work, The Diary of Anne Frank, has since been read by millions worldwide.

 

Last  diary entry August 1, 1944:

“… Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be ill, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up any more, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.”

Yours, Anne M. Frank

 

 

 

 

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Memorial Day 1945

In May 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had recently died and the war in Europe was winding down.

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The origin of Memorial Day is attributed by most scholars to the ladies of Columbus, Mississippi  who decided to decorate both Union and Confederate graves with flowers on April 25, 1866. Francis Miles Finch commemorated the occasion with the poem “The Blue and the Grey; the last stanza read:

…No more shall the war cry sever,

Or the winding rivers be red;

They banish our anger forever

When they laurel the graves of our dead!

Under the sod and the dew,

Waiting the judgment-day,

Love and tears for the Blue,

Tears and love for the Gray.

“DECORATION DAY” was officially proclaimed after the Civil War in 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of a Union Civil War Veterans group known as the Grand Army of the Republic: “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

By the 20th century, competing Union and Confederate holiday traditions (which occurred on different days) had merged, and Memorial Day was celebrated on the last day of May to honor all Americans who died while in the military service.

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Inspired by the poem In Flanders Fields, written by John McCrae in 1915 during what was known then as the “Great War,” poppies have traditionally been worn in honor of America’s war dead on Memorial Day.

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Iwo Jima – Feb 1945

 

Iwo Jima is a rocky island in the volcano islands archipelago of Japan,~760 miles south of Tokyo. It is only 5 miles long and from 800 yards to 2.5 miles wide.

Located mid-way between the Marianas and the Japanese mainland, Iwo Jima provided a base for Japanese fighters to intercept  U.S. bombers attacking the home island.  Japanese airfields on the island were also used to launch attacks against American bases newly established in the Marianas.

After months of naval and air bombardment, ~70,000 U.S. Marines invaded Iwo Jima where ~18,000 Japanese defenders were dug into bunkers deep within the volcanic rocks. In a little over a month, ~7,000 U.S. Marines were killed and another 20,000 were wounded. Only 216 Japanese soldiers were captured; the rest were killed in action.

Iwo Jima was the only battle in the Pacific War where U.S. Marine casualties exceeded those of Japanese forces.

 

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Japanese forces on Iwo Jima were commanded by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. Refusing to order costly Banzai attacks, Kuribayashi developed an insurgent style of defense that eventually became the Japanese standard:

“We are here to defend this island to the limit of our strength. We must devote ourselves to that task entirely. Each of your shots must kill many Americans. We cannot allow ourselves to be captured by the enemy. If our positions are overrun, we will take bombs and grenades and throw ourselves under the tanks to destroy them. We will infiltrate enemy’s lines to exterminate him. No man must die until he has killed at least ten Americans. We will harass the enemy with guerilla actions until the last of us has perished. Long live the Emperor!”

Based on his letters home, the book So Sad to Fall in Battle by Kumiko Kakehashi is a fascinating account of this unique warrior – part-time writer, haiku poet, diplomat and General of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff.

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Clint Eastwood, deciding to narrate the Battle of Iwo Jima from both the American and the Japanese point of view, directed the two excellent films Flags of Our Fathers  and Letters from Iwo Jima.

 

 

 

 

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Manila Recaptured – Feb 1945

The month-long  Battle of Manila (February-March 1945), pitted American and Philippine forces against Imperial   Japanese occupiers in the most brutal urban fighting of the Pacific War. In addition to massive loss of civilian and military lives, much of the city’s architectural and cultural heritage was destroyed.

Casualties from the Battle of Manila

Allies:1,010 killed. 5,565 wounded

Japanese: 16,000+ killed

100,000 Filipino civilians killed

The most shocking events during the battle of Manila were the unfathomable atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers as it became clear they were losing Manila.

After the war, Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita (the “tiger of Malaya” and commander during the Palawan massacre) was convicted and executed for the Manila massacre and other atrocities committed by soldiers under his command.

 

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They Were Expendable – 1945

Starring: , ,

While the 1945 cinema in Nazi Germany re-lived historical victories and the Imperial Japanese turned toward animation to inspire their citizens, American films touted valor and victory. Nominated for two Oscars, They Were Expendable was named one of the top films of 1945 by the New York Times.

A dramatized account of the role of the American PT Boats in the defense of the Philippines, the film is based on a book by W.L. White about Motor Torpedo Squadron Three during the Battle of the Philippines (1941–42).

With enthusiastic support from the Navy Department, the film was shot in Key Biscayne and the Florida Keys, a region chosen to simulate the Pacific War zone. Actual U.S. Navy 80-foot Elco PT boats were used throughout the filming.Based on actual characters and events, the film has lauded for its verisimilitude.

Stars:

, ,

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