WWII Museum should be mandatory viewing
By Ken Tingley
Visiting the National World War II Museum in New Orleans should be a mandatory part of orientation for every new member of Congress; their staffs, too.
Maybe for every citizen, too.
Its contents are a reminder of how perilously close the world, and our country, came to losing the things we hold dearest. You know, those inalienable rights we take for granted in our pursuit of happiness.
It’s what Ukraine is fighting for.
It’s what Taiwan is concerned about losing.
It’s what the presidential election in Brazil was about.
And our midterms, too.
It’s why so many immigrants risk their lives crossing the border just have a chance at what we already have - an opportunity to live in peace and have a future.
How many of us were thankful for that yesterday?
It should have been at the top of the list.
This was my fifth time to the World War II Museum. I thought I knew the subject matter backwards and forwards, but I was still learning. More importantly, the stories of the men and women who lived the four most consequential years of the 20th Century still resonated, still moved me.
The National World War II Museum is not a “rah, rah” place about how we won the war and made the world safer place. Instead, it reminds us of how close we came to losing our way of life; where its cost in blood and tears is driven home through the individual stories of sacrifice. It is where we are reminded of the staggering toll of life and where entire continents were left in ruins.
The story is epic and should make our concerns today small in comparison.
Consider the story of John Fox, an artillery observer fighting with the 92nd Infantry Division in Italy in 1944. As enemy troops descended on his outnumbered unit the day after Christmas, Fox called for heavy artillery to fire on his position to stop the enemy advance in a final act of desperation.
Three days later, the allies recaptured the town and found Fox’s body among 100 dead enemy soldiers.
Remember the story of Alexander Bonnyman before you complain about gas prices again.
Bonnyman was a 32-year-old mining executive who was exempt from military service. He joined the Marines anyway as a lowly private. He earned a battlefield commission at Guadalcanal. Then, during the invasion of Tarawa in 1943, he led U.S. forces on a furious assault to capture a Japanese blockhouse that was holding up the U.S. advance. The Americans captured the blockhouse and killed 150 enemy defenders. Bonnyman was also killed in the fighting.
Consider Eugene Sledge as you complain about your latest grocery bill.
Sledge was a mortar crewman in the 5th Marines in the Pacific and saw the worst of combat in places like Peleliu and Okinawa. He chronicled the horrors he witnessed in his book “With the Old Breed.” He detailed the challenges of intense heat, swarming rats, the stench of rotting corpses and maggots and the inhumanity of man. He wrote of the experience: "The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu had eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all.”
That is the toll of war that can never be measured.
Consider the air crews who fire-bombed Tokyo and Dresden with a front-row seat to hell.
In 1945, Major General Curtis LeMay decided on a low level, nighttime bombing strike on Tokyo using incendiary, rather than conventional bombs. The March 9, 1945 attack resulted in a firestorm that consumed 16 square miles of the city and killed more than 100,000 Japanese civilians. More fire bombing raids followed leaving every targeted Japanese city in ruins and its economy near collapse.
And before you unleash your anger on social media about some political slight, consider Captain Robert A. Lewis’ eyewitness account from his mission on Aug. 6, 1945. He was co-pilot on the Enola Gay. He kept a minute-by-minute log of the mission that was not discovered until 1971. In the log, Lewis described the mushroom cloud rising to an altitude of 30,000 feet in less than three minutes and writing:
"My God what have we done."
But what stays with me after two intense days at the museum is that its ultimate message is a warning of what could be again.
It was a reminder of how perilously close we came to losing it all if not for a team of code-breakers led by Lieutenant Commander Joseph Rochefort in Hawaii.
With the Japanese expanding their empire all across the Pacific in the year after Pearl Harbor, the intelligence unit learned the Japanese were planning a new offensive in the northern Pacific, but they did not know where.
The Japanese repeatedly referred to the location of the attack in code as “af.”
The Americans believed “af” was Midway Island. An intelligence officer named Wilfred Holmes suggested they transmit a message about water shortages on Midway as a way of confirming the intent of the Japanese. It wasn’t long before the Japanese sent a message saying that “af” was reporting water shortages.
It was the confirmation Admiral Nimitz needed to position his carrier task force to ambush the Japanese fleet. It led to a decisive victory at the Battle of Midway with the Americans sinking four Japanese aircraft carriers and stopping their push toward Hawaii.
After the war, it was learned that Admiral Yamamoto wanted to deliver a knockout blow at Midway and then occupy Hawaii and use its population as a bargaining chip to negotiate a favorable peace for the Japanese.
The code-breakers changed the trajectory of the war and our world order was preserved.
It is humbling and frightening to think about now.
And a reminder we still need to be vigilant.
At the signing of Japan’s surrender aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, Gen. Douglas MacArthur said:
"'It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past - a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice."
Why do I think we’ve failed?
Queensbury event
Reminder that I will be speaking at the Queensbury Senior Center on Bay Road at 2 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 5 about newspapers, journalism and my new book “The Last American Newspaper.”
It is available locally and on Amazon.
Thank you for reminding us of the sacrifices the Greatest Generation made so that we may live in a free society and how perilously close we came to losing it. Will definitely look for the book by Eugene Sledge.
Thank you, Mr Tingley, for your continued efforts to educate. If only the right would read with comprehension.
I attended a veteran’s memorial service at the Gerald Solomon National Cemetery 3 years ago. As I drove from the entrance to the site, I was overwhelmed by the knowledge that we stood at the precipice of losing everything these generations of veterans had fought for, thus making their sacrifices for naught. Standing in the group of mourners, alone, as the weight of that knowledge bore down on me, I began to weep and was walking (limping) to my vehicle, head down, sobbing, when I felt someone come along side me. It was a young Army captain and she touched my arm to offer solace. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t the burial of a veteran that had me crying in public, something men of my generation don’t do, but the knowledge that greed, ignorance, and hate seem to be winning the battle for our country’s soul.
But I was unable to share the reasons for my sorrow, mumbled my appreciation for her kindness, got on my bike and left.
Three years later, we are still teetering on the precipice of losing our republic, my sorrow has turned to anger. I have no patience for illegitimate discourse, which puts me at odds with half of the people around me, at least the ones who vocalize their, fascism, hatred and ignorance as is their right.
President Biden said, when his speech was interrupted by a member of the audience, “Let him be, he has the right to act like an idiot.”. I am clinging to that thought every time I leave the house. It is keeping me out of prison.😉