More German Club Pics From Harlow's Bar in Downtown Springfield MO

The German Club at Harlow's in Springfield MO

The author Joel Z. Williams (with hat), Kelli, Diane (in black), and Professor Steven Trobisch at Harlow's in central Springfield MO.

Prof Trobisch is an expert in Modern and Classical Languages which he teaches at the nearby Missouri State University (My alma mater). On Thursday nights for the last ten years, Prof Trobisch has convined a ragtag assemblage of students, local barflys and other people to discuss politics, tell tasteless jokes and other fun stuff over pitchers of beer. (or Dr. Pepper for us non-drinkers)

The Flamingo

Here is a picture I took June 7, 2009 in Chicago's Federal Plaza of the artist Alexander Calder's 1973 piece (which weighs 50 tons). The color of this beautiful masterpiece is officially called vermillion, but orange-red is close enough.

This piece is absolutely stunning when standing underneath its expansive flukes!

Ripples of Battle Summary Crib Notes

Book Title: Ripples of Battle: How Wars of the Past Still Determine How we Fight, How we Live, and how we Think.

Author: Victor Davis Hanson

Publisher: Doubleday

Year: 2003

Date Reviewed: May 25, 2009

Overall Grade: A+ This is a great book, and Hanso is a gifted writer. If you can only read one book about warfare this year, make it this one.

1. April 1 through July 2, 1945 Approximately 4 months or 120 days.

2. Hanson is a Professor of Classics at UC Fresno. He is also a conservative hawk who fervently supported the invasion of Iraq.

3. P. 38. Hanson argues that the real lessons of the Japanese kamikaze attacks of WWII ( October 25, 1944-April 1945) as well as the terrorist hijackings of 9/11 is not that a military backward and technologically inferior foe could inflict damage to a vulnerable Western society. But that the introduction of suicidal warfare has the opposite effect on American society… instead of frightening the West into submission, the cadres of suicidal warriors “unshackled” the average American from their natural ethical and moral restraints and allowed them to consider using the most terrifying weaponry to defeat a foe that had crossed the line into barbarity.

4. P.45 although the Japanese kikusui (floating chrysanthemums) kamikaze wave attacks sunk scores of American warships, not a single capital ship (fleet carrier or battleship) was sunk. The kamikaze’s real effect (as well as the fanatic Japanese troops fighting on Okinawa) was to have consequences on the way the American military dealt with Asians in Korea, and Vietnam.

5. P.45. the sacrifice of the 3,913 American-documented kamikaze attacks was in vain. Much like the destruction left by the 9/11 hijackers the actual damage they caused was then visited on their host nations many times over. If anything, they just exacerbated the situation. “But again, what those who crash airplanes in the past and present alike failed to grasp was also the deadly repercussions that arose from their explosions. Suicide bombings strike at the very psyche of the Western mind that is repelled by religious fanaticism and the authoritarianism, or perhaps the despair, of such enemies—confirming that wars are not just misunderstandings over policy or the reckless actions of a deranged leader, but accurate reflections of fundamental differences in culture and society. In precisely the same way as kamikazes off Okinawa lead to A-bombs, so too jumbo jets exploding at the World Trade Center were the logical pre-cursors to daisy-cutters, bunker-busters, and thermobaric bombs in Afghanistan—as an unleashed America resounded with a terrible fury not seen or anticipated since 1945.”

6. P. 45-46. “The Western world publicly objected to the Israeli plunge into the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002 and its purported destruction of the civilian infrastructure—but much of it also privately sighed, ‘Such are the wages for suicide –murderers who blow up children in Tel Aviv.’ “If it is true that moral pretensions at restraint are the ultimate brakes on the murderous Western way of war, it is also accurate to suggest that such ethical restrictions erode considerably when the enemy employs suicide bombers.”

7. Only 7,000 Japanese surrendered out of an original 110,000 combatants on Okinawa. There is little doubt that such a low number (7 percent) was because many tens of thousands of Japanese chose to either commit suicide or held on tenaciously until killed by the Americans who often found them hiding in caves or strapped to trees. Both of the two commanding Japanese generals, Cho and Ushijima committed seppuku on June 18, 1945 rather than give up.

8. P. 51. Up until Okinawa, the invading Americans had fought in two general scenarios—either on islands like Iwo Jima, were there were essentially no civilians, or in places like the Philippines, where the local inhabitants were clearly friendly and welcomed liberation. After Okinawa , no one had any allusions about a third and more difficult situation to come on the mainland itself—where rumor had it that 30 million Japanese elderly, women, and children were arming themselves with guns, spears, and explosives to join in the resistance alongside both regular troops and militias.

9. P. 54. Okinawa is curiously underrepresented in history books, although it is the most powerful amphibious assault in history and, indeed the single most deadly campaign in the history of the United States’ Navy. Some attribute this to the April and May end of the third Reich—and no opportunities for swashbuckling Pattonesque Armor.

10. P. 57. The dropping of the A-bombs on Japan probably actually saved lives. “…the always deadly inventive General Curtis LeMay was ready on his own to use airpower in radically new ways to avoid American casualties. In response to the horrific losses on Okinawa, he was carefully assembling a monstrous fleet of B-29’s—perhaps eventually 5,000 in number—to be augmented by over 5,000 B-24’s and B-17’s transferred from the European theater, with the possibility that over a thousand British Lancaster bombers and their seasoned crews would join the armada as well! That rain of napalm to come from a nightmarish fleet of 10,000 or more bombers on short missions from Okinawa would have made both atomic bombs seem child’s play in comparison. The fire raids on March 11, 1945 alone killed more than died at Hiroshima, and were followed by far more destruction—perhaps 500,000 incinerated in all by the subsequent bombing—than occurred at Nagasaki.

11. P.64- VDH talks about the unique capacity for destruction in the Western war of warfare. “Romantics may have remembered the kamikazes; realist recalled how they were dealt with. Quite simply, there has never arisen a military culture quite like the West, in its terrifying ability to draw on innate values such as secular rationalism, free inquiry, and consensual government to create frightening weapons of destruction and the protocols and disciplined soldiers to use them to deadly effect—a firepower and materiel onslaught that can overwhelm the most fanatical and deadly of warriors, whether they be Apaches, kamikazes, or al-Qaeda terrorists.

Shiloh’s Ghosts April 6-7, 1862

12. P.111,VDH argues that the Confederate loss at Shiloh, after squandering a huge initial advantage lead to the persistent myth that many southerners still feel today known as “The Lost Opportunity”. The LO is based on the assumption that the much admired Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston may have been able to turn Grant’s left flank and push him backwards to the Tennessee River and destroyed Grant’s army had he not been killed in a heroic charge at the Hornet’s nest. VDH also says that the “The Lost Cause” or the way much of the South viewed their Confederate Army as noble warriors fighting a futile effort against better supplied yet less honorable men, was a direct result of battles like Shiloh where, in their eyes, it had always been some random, unfortunate catastrophe that caused their defeat. The South was more apt to attribute the defeats of their Confederate army more toward arbitrary circumstances rather than place the responsibility of those losses squarely on the incompetence or the inexperience of their courageous and heroic Southern soldiers.

13. P. 116 The tragedy of Albert Sydney Johnston dying “at the moment of victory” at Shiloh established a dangerous precedent, and was soon followed by the corollary of Stonewall Jackson being accidentally shot at the climax of Chancellorsville, thereby robbing Lee of his “right arm” in the weeks ahead at Gettysburg and allowing a dilatory Longstreet to “lose the war” on Gettysburg’s second day. VDH argues that it was the south’s obsession with these “what ifs” and “if only” scenarios that made it difficult for them to accept the verdict of the Civil War, and directly contributed to the rise of Nathan Bedford Forest’s KKK.

The Culture of Delium November 424 B.C.

14. P.193 “In theory the right wing of a Greek army was the place of honor. It was usually occupied by those troops with the greatest military prestige (or in case of armies on the defense) by local militias whose native ground was the scene of the engagement and warranted then preference.”

15. P. 237 “Yet the flamethrower at Delium predated Philip’s catapults by nearly a century and would much later be emulated by the infamous Greek fire that first emerged at Byzantium somewhere around A.D. 675. Although the exact ingredients and their ratios of mixtures remain unknown this day, the torrent of flame that was shot out of Byzantine galleys was apparently a potent fusion of naphtha, sulfur, petroleum, and quicklime that could not be extinguished with water—a nearly unquenchable toxic spume that could incinerate enemy shops in seconds.”

Joel Z. Williams' Interview with a World War II Veteran of Okinawa

Personal Interview Record

Interviewee: James (Jimmy) Kane-Age 85

Title/ Position: Coxswain-(Boatswain -3rd class) U.S. Navy Veteran of WWII Battle of Okinawa

Location: Strafford, Missouri

Phone Number: 417-736-2371

Interviewer: Joel Z. Williams

Time and Date of Interview: 3:10 pm May 29, 2009

Length of Interview: 1hour, 23 minutes

Date of Record: May 30, 2009

Additional Info: a 26 minute supplementary video and several still photographs of the subject (taken by the interviewer) also accompany this interview.

1. The U.S. Navy drafted Mr. Kane and subsequently inducted him into service at 1:00pm on December 22, 1943 in St. Louis, Missouri. The Navy then discharged Mr. Kane from his duties as an enlisted sailor at the same location, at precisely 2:00 pm on December 22, 1945; making the overall length of Mr. Kane’s military service just short of two years, by exactly one hour.

2. Following his induction into the Navy at St. Louis, Missouri, Mr. Kane travelled to Farragut, Idaho where he participated in an eight-week Basic Military Training course. After completing Basic Training, the Navy sent Mr. Kane to Bremerton Naval Station located in Seattle, Washington, where he stayed for several weeks before shipping out to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

3. At the same time Mr Kane’s ship arrived in Hawaii (Pearl Harbor), the Navy was testing a battery of 16 inch shore guns, which had not fired in years. The concussive force created by the blast of those massive guns startled Mr. Kane, as well as other sailors aboard the incoming vessel. The shock waves from the shelling sent tables full of dishes, cups and bowls, stacked to the ceiling within the ship’s galley, hurtling to the deck where they shattered in a cacophonous rain of porcelain. “Welcome to the war, gentlemen.”

4. Mr. Kane stated that he and the other men attached to tank landing ship, number 353 (LST 353) trained at various jobs and practiced several surface exercises between the Hawaiian islands of Oahu and Maui for several weeks prior to departing for Taiwan. During his time in Hawaii, the Navy was experimenting with using radar to detect approaching enemy aircraft and vessels. They assigned Mr. Kane to operate the new radar system recently installed on LST 353 after giving him approximately one week of training on how to operate the apparatus. The ship’s captain, eager to see just what the radar could do, ordered Mr. Kane to demonstrate its effectiveness. Radar technology was still cutting edge at the time and the radar return signatures on the monitor were inconclusive, at best. The captain was extremely dismayed by the results of Mr Kane’s radar demonstration and so he ordered a ship’s electrician, a man who had been trained by the manufacturer to service the equipment, to take over the radar. Despite his best efforts, the electrician also met with equally disappointing results with the radar. Frustrated with the poor radar data, the officer-in-charge immediately ordered the equipment secured and the men went back to using binoculars and monitoring radio traffic for the detection and early warning of approaching enemy ships and aircraft. Mr. Kane recalled that the officer who made that decision was a “mustang” or a naval officer who had worked his way up through the ranks as an enlisted man. The “mustang” officers Mr. Kane encountered skeptical of newer technology and therefore more prone to eschew newer tactics and devices and instead they relied more on time proven methods.

5. Mr. Kane was aboard LST 353 on May 21, 1944, in West Loch; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when a terrible explosion occurred aboard the ship which ultimately resulted in the deaths of 163 sailors and 396 wounded. LST 353 was tethered, side by side, along with six other ships as the group of vessels processed the loading of supplies and equipment intended for the Pacific island-hopping campaign. Mr Kane recalled that he and another sailor were relaxing inside the loading dock area after they had just completed their work shift of M.A. duty (master at arms, general cleaning and work detail). The two men were hanging around and casually observing the unloading of 105 mm mortar shells from an Army truck, which had just backed into the loading ramp, when the explosion occurred. The concussive force of the blast instantly ruptured Mr. Kane’s ear drums (causing permanent hearing damage), and sent him sailing through the air before it left him dangling from a railing on the side of the ship. Disoriented from the blast, deaf, and very much afraid, Mr. Kane’s arms eventually grew tired and he lost his grip on the ship’s railing. He then dropped several stories into the cold water below, narrowly missing hitting a metal beam by less than three feet. Once in the water, Mr Kane regained his wits, and swam around to the other side of the ship where the loading ramp was situated. Near the ramp, Mr. Kane discovered an Ensign (the lowest rank of a Naval officer) foundering in the water, apparently unable to swim. Mr. Kane grabbed hold of the drowning man and dogpaddled with him until he found something floating nearby to hang onto. Mr. Kane remembered looking up into the gaping maw of the LST’s two massive open doors and saw the entire loading bay of the ship totally engulfed in flames. The flames and billowing smoke were so thick that Mr Kane recalled that he was even unable to see the truck that had just backed into the stall immediately prior to the blast. Mr. Kane recalled that the bodies of six men, nearest the epicenter of the detonation, were never found, their remains apparently completely vaporized by the force of the blast. Of the seven ships that had been tethered together, only one survived destruction by the fire which spread quickly from ship to ship. Mr Kane remembered hearing the story of one decisive ship’s captain, who after realizing the inferno would eventually engulf his vessel as well made a fateful decision which ultimately saved his crew and spared the contents of the ship from the fire. The captain of the lone surviving ship ordered his crew to cut the tether lines and give the helm flank power. The ship’s engines generated enough power to speed the vessel free of the docking area and amazingly forced the ship all the way up onto the beach, leaving just a bit of its keel still submerged in the water.

6. The Navy had originally planned to send Mr. Kane’s task force to invade Taiwan, but other developments in the Pacific such as the battles at Leyte Gulf and Iwo Jima forced the military leadership to divert the massive flotilla group to Okinawa. Mr Kane recalls that it took the fleet of vessels, men and equipment more than six weeks to arrive at Okinawa. The fleet of ships intentionally delayed steaming straight toward the island for several weeks, and instead the group cruised around Saipan and the Philippine Islands, as they awaited the assemblage of the entire 10th Army task force before embarking on the invasion.

7. Mr. Kane vividly recalled his first impression of the island of Okinawa, remarking that, “It’s shaped like a fiddle, big on both ends and narrow in the middle.”

8. Mr Kane said that the U.S. Army made their initial invasion on the northern end of the island while the Marine Corps invaded at the southern end. “The Japs took off from the north and then went immediately to the south, and the Army took off after them… they got right on their tail. The Japs had orders to sneak around to the south side of the island at night on little boats.” Once the Army and Marines had pushed the Japanese resistance to the southern end of the islands Mr Kane recalled, “That’s where the fighting really took off…the Americans just hit a brick wall at that point.”

9. Mr. Kane recalled that his worst day of the battle came after he had lost his ship, due to an explosion and fire, and the Navy re-assigned him to a beach-master unit which consisted of 4 officers, one chief petty officer, and fifteen enlisted sailors, (the group’s alpha- numeric designation was B4D4). As part of this group, Mr. Kane said the worst day of the war for him was when B4D4 made their initial beach landing. Although most of the fighting had already moved south, Mr Kane remembered that it drizzled rain all day long as the group labored from before sunrise until well into the evening, setting up their beach markers and tents. The efforts of the men on that day were so exhausting that they eventually gave up on setting up their sleeping cots and simply laid down a sheet of canvas and went to sleep on the ground.

10. B4D4 used rods and canvas signs to demarcate the offloading zones for incoming transport ships. The signs typically read: AMMO, MEDIC, WATER, GAS, RATIONS and etcetera. As the beach-master group, B4D4 also had a group of African-American soldiers attached to their unit as laborers. Just a low, chain-link fence was all that separated the black and white sailors from each other, and they often traded cigarettes with each other. Mr. Kane recalled an incident where a black sailor was wounded fairly significantly, receiving a deep gash on his leg. Instead of simply hoisting the wounded black sailor over the fence and carrying him to an aide station less than 100 yards away the Navy leadership decided to place the injured black sailor in an amphibious tracked vehicle (duck) and float him about a mile or more around the entire staging area to get him to medical treatment.

11. Mr. Kane recalled a Japanese pilot the small band of Americans nicknamed, “Washboard Charlie”, due to the sound of his aircraft, who would buzz their area each day right around dusk. The plane never shot at them, nor dropped any bombs, but provided a source of harassment for the men.

12. Upon being asked whether he agreed if the United States should have dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, Mr. Kane remarked, “We had to do something drastic…the Japanese people had been so indoctrinated with the idea of not giving up that we had to do something big to convince them.”

13. One day, during some down time, Mr. Kane and a smaller group of men made an impromptu scouting incursion into the Okinawa countryside where they encountered an elderly Okinawan civilian who was starving. One member of the group of Americans, a Navy Seabee construction worker, wanted to shoot and kill the unarmed man, but Mr. Kane and the others, “would hear none of that”. The small band of soldiers took the man along with them as they continued to forage for war souvenirs and scouted a location in which to shoot their brand new Thompson 45. Caliber sub-machine guns.

14. Mr Kane showed off several items he picked up from the battlefield of Okinawa including a hand crafted abacus (used for calculating numbers) a Japanese mortar (approximately 60mm) a Japanese heavy machine gun round (approximately 20mm) and a Japanese hand grenade. It remains unclear if these items are safe or inert.