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WAR (WORLD WAR II) - Page 1 (A-M)

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see "WAR & PEACE" for related links


They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards.
--Creighton Abrams (1914-1974)
American army general.
Preparing for the counteroffensive at the Battle of Bastogne [1944].

Tho' there's one motor gone, we can still carry on,
Comin' in on a wing a pray'r.
--Harold Adamson (1906-1980)
American songwriter.
"Comin' In On a Wing and a Prayer" [1943 song]
(music by Jimmy McHugh)

-

Eddie learned many things during the war. He learned to ride
atop a tank. He learned to shave with cold water in his helmet.
He learned to be careful when shooting from a foxhole, lest he
hit a tree and wound himself with deflected shrapnel.

He learned to smoke. He learned to march. He learned to cross
a rope bridge while carrying, all at once, an overcoat, a radio,
a carbine, a gas mask, a tripod for a machine gun, a backpack,
and several bandoliers on his shoulder. He learned how to drink
the worst coffee he'd ever tasted. He learned a few words in a
few foreign languages.

He learned to spit a great distance. He learned the nervous
cheer of a soldier's first survived combat, when the men slap
each other and smile as if it's over--"We can go home now!"
And he learned the sinking depression of a soldier's second
combat, when he realizes the fighting does not stop at one
battle, there is more and more after that.

He learned to whistle through his teeth. He learned to sleep
on rocky earth. He learned that scabies are itchy little mites
that burrow into your skin, especially if you've worn the same
filthy clothes for a week. He learned a man's bones really do
look white when they burst through the skin.

He learned to pray quickly. He learned in which pocket to keep
the letters to his family and Marguerite, in case he should be
found dead by his fellow soldiers. He learned that sometimes
you are sitting next to a buddy in a dugout, whispering about
how hungry you are, and the next instant there is a small whoosh
and the buddy slumps over and his hunger is no longer an issue.

He learned, as one year turned to two and two years turned toward
three, that even strong, muscular men vomit on their shoes when
the transport plane is about to unload them, and even officers
talk in their sleep the night before combat. He learned how to
take a prisoner, although he never learned how to become one.

Then one night, on a Philippine island, his group came under
heavy fire and they scattered for shelter and the skies were
lit and Eddie heard one of his buddies, down in a ditch,
weeping like a child, and he yelled at him, "Shut up, will ya!"
and he realized the man was crying because there was an enemy
soldier standing over him with a rifle at his head, and Eddie
felt something cold at his neck and there was one behind him,
too.

--Mitch Albom (1958- )
American sportswriter, novelist and newspaper columnist.
_The Five People You Meet in Heaven_ [2003],
"The Second Person Eddie Meets in Heaven"

-

In December, 1991 Gordon saw a story in the Gulfport _Sun
Herald_. It related that Mayor Jan Ritsema of Eindhoven,
Holland, had refused to meet General H. Norman Schwarzkopf,
because the commander of the UN forces in the Gulf War had
"too much blood on his hands." Ritsema said of Schwarzkopf,
"He is the person who devised the most efficient way possible
to kill as many people as possible."

Gordon wrote to Mayor Ritsema: "On September 17, 1944 I
participated in the large airborne operation which was
conducted to liberate your country. As a member of company
E, 506th PIR, I landed near the small town of Son. The
following day we moved south and liberated Eindhoven.
While carrying out our assignment, we suffered casualties.
That is war talk for bleeding. We occupied various defense
positions for over two months. Like animals, we lived in
holes, barns, and as best we could. The weather was cold
and wet. In spite of the adverse conditions, we held the
ground we had fought so hard to capture.

"The citizens of Holland at that time did not share your
aversion to bloodshed when the blood being shed was that
of the German occupiers of your city. How soon we forget.
History has proven more than once that Holland could again
be conquered if your neighbor, the Germans, are having a
dull weekend and the golf links are crowded.

"Please don't allow your country to be swallowed up by
Liechtenstein or the Vatican as I don't plan to return.
As of now, you are on your own."

--Stephen Ambrose (1936-2002)
American historian and author.
_Band of Brothers_ [1992]


Older British observers complained, "The trouble with you
Yanks is that you are overpaid, oversexed, and over here."
[To which the Yanks would reply, "The trouble with you
Limeys is that you are underpaid, undersexed, and under
Eisenhower."]
--Stephen Ambrose (1936-2002)
American historian and author.
_The Victors_


Overlord was staggering in its scope. In one day and night,
175,000 fighting men and their equipment, including 50,000
vehicles of all types, ranging from motorcycles to tanks
and armored bulldozers, were to be transported across sixty
to a hundred miles of open water and landed on a hostile
shore against intense opposition. They would either be
carried by or supported by 5,333 ships and craft of all
types and almost 11,000 airplanes. They came from southwestern
England, southern England, the east coast of England. It
was as if the cities of Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha,
Wisconsin, were picked up and moved -- every man, woman,
and child, every automobile and truck -- to the east side
of Lake Michigan in one night.
--Stephen Ambrose (1936-2002)
American historian and author.
_The Victors_

-

During World War II, a German officer visited Pablo
Picasso's studio and saw a sketch of "Guernica,"
Picasso's graphic painting of the Nazis' horrific
devastation of the Spanish town. "Did you do this?"
the officer asked, obviously disgusted. "No,"
Picasso replied. You did."
--Meredith Benke

There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, just you wait and see.
There'll be love and laughter
And peace ever after
Tomorrow, when the world is free.
--Nat Burton
American songwriter.
"The White Cliffs of Dover" [1941 song]
(music by Walter Kent)

^

Barbara Bush (1925- ) wife of
President George H. W. Bush [1989-1993]

On a foreign tour with her husband, then vice
president, Mrs. Bush sat next to Japan's
Emperor Hirohito at a luncheon in Tokyo.
Commenting on her surroundings, she praised
the architecture and decor of the Imperial
Palace but wondered at its seeming newness.
Was the former palace so old it crumbled?
'No,' replied the emperor stiffly, 'I'm afraid
that you bombed it.'

--_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_
edited by Clifton Fadiman and André Bernard [2000 ed.]

^

-

How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and
trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country [Czechoslovakia]
between people of whom we know nothing.
--Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940)
British Conservative politician, Prime Minister [1937-1940];
{son of Joseph Chamberlain}.
Shortly before signing the Munich Pact which in effect
ceded Czechoslovakia to Germany - in BBC radio broadcast,
London [27 September 1938]


My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back
from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our
time. I thank you from the bottom of our hearts. And now I recommend you
go home and sleep quietly in your beds.
--Neville Chamberlain (1869-1940)
British Conservative politician, Prime Minister [1937-1940];
{son of Joseph Chamberlain}.
Speech at 10 Downing Street before a jubilant London crowd
after returning from the Munich Conference [30 September 1938]

-

The crime of which he was guilty was buying food
through the fence. Some crime, I would say! Well,
they took that boy to the graveyard, made him dig
his own grave. During the time he was digging the
grave, he up and hit one of the guards. For that he
was stuck with bayonets many times. His body was
left on the ground for all to look upon for seven
days.
--Merle Chandler on the execution of Private
Donell K. Russell at Cabanatuan POW camp
in the Philippines;
in Robert W. Levering _Horror Trek_ [1948] pp. I92-193.

-

The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily
devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in
ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
Radio broadcast [14 July 1940].


Away across the Atlantic the prolonged bombardment of London,
and later of other cities and seaports, aroused a wave of
sympathy in the United States, stronger than any ever felt
before or since in the English-speaking world. Passion flamed
in American hearts, and in none more than in the heart of
President Roosevelt. The temperature rose steadily in the
United States. I could feel the glow of millions of men and
women eager to share the suffering, burning to strike a blow.
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].


What is our aim? . . . Victory, victory at all costs,
victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long
and hard the road may be; for without victory,
there is no survival.
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
Speech in House of Commons [13 May 1940].


What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over.
I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon
this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.
Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity
of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might
of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows
that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If
we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life
of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. but
if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States,
including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into
the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps
more protracted, by the light of perverted science. Let us
therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves
that, if the British Empire and Commonwealth last for a thousand
years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
--Excerpt of Speech given by Winston Churchill to the House of
Commons as the The Battle of Britain Begins [18 June 1940].


I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck
and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... Silly
people--and there were many, not only in enemy countries--
might discount the force of the United States. Some said
they were soft, others that they would never be united.
They would fool around at a distance. They would never
come to grips. They would never stand blood-letting.
Their democracy and system of recurrent elections would
paralyze their war effort. They would be just a vague
blur on the horizon to friend or foe. Now we should see
the weakness of this numerous but remote, wealthy, and
talkative people. But I had studied the American Civil
War, fought out to the last desperate inch. American
blood flowed in my veins. I thought of a remark which
Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years
before-that the United States is like 'a gigantic boiler.
Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the
power it can generate.' Being saturated and satiated
with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept
the sleep of the saved and thankful.
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
On learning of the attack on Pearl Harbor.


In defeat unbeatable: in victory unbearable.
{of Lord Montgomery}
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
In Edward Marsh _Ambrosia and Small Beer_ [1964].


Thoughtless, dilettante or purblind wordlings sometimes
ask us "What is it that Britain and France are fighting
for?" To this I answer "If we left off fighting, you
would soon find out."
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].


When I warned [the French] that Britain would fight
on alone whatever they did, their generals told their
prime minister and his divided cabinet, 'In three
weeks England will have her neck wrung like a
chicken.' Some chicken, some neck.
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
Speech to the Canadian Senate and House of
Commons, Ottawa, [30 December 1941].


Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed by so many to
so few.
(on the skill and courage of British airmen]
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
[Speech, House of Commons, 20 August 1940].


The multitudes remained plunged in ignorance of the simplest economic facts,
and their leaders, seeking their votes, did not dare to undeceive them.
--Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940-1945, 1951-1955].
_The Gathering Storm: The Second World War_ [1948-1951].

-

Looking back, I think that if we had then realized
the confusion and chaos which existed we would
indeed have thought ours a hopeless task. Certainly
the authorities in Washington who had prepared
(the occupation policy) did not visualize these
conditions.
--Lucius Clay (1897-1978)
U.S. army officer who became the first director
of civilian affairs in defeated Germany after
World War II.

[W]hen Hitler overran the Netherlands and forced
the surrender of France, Congress passed a law
conscripting young men for a year's training. When,
in August 1941, this draft act was about to expire,
Roosevelt wanted it renewed. The isolationists
raised a storm against him, partly from disillusion
with the last American effort to "save the world
for democracy"; partly from the conviction that
to go into Europe again would, as one Senator
put it,"plow under every fourth American boy";
partly from a deep resentment at Roosevelt's
secret order to the Navy to convoy Allied
merchantmen. The United States was, in truth,
very nearly a secret belligerent. The Germans
knew it, and so did the Congress. In August 1941
the House Armed Services Committee met to
hold hearings on extending the draft and to bring
the question of the war-making power to a
showdown. Things were going very badly for the
Administration till at last it brought up its big
gun: the Army Chief of Staff, General George
Catlett Marshall, a flinty lifetime soldier as
impressive for his restraint under a bombardment
of rhetoric as he was for the disheartening
statistics he quoted. (It was Marshall who publicly
equated the American army with the standing army
of Sweden.) It is probable that, without him,
the United States would have found itself four
months later with nothing but its small volunteer
army. For, when the renewal act went to the
floor of the House, it was passed by 203 to 202.
--Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (1908-2004)
British-born American broadcater and journalist.
_America_ [1973]

If we collaborate with Germany ... that is to say, if
we work for her in our factories, if we give her certain
facilities, we can save the French nation; reduce
to a minimum our territorial losses in the colonies
and on the mainland; play an honorable - if not
important - role in the future of Europe.
--François Darlan (1881-1942)
French admiral and a leading figure in the WW II Vichy government.
[14 May 1941], in Julian Jackson
_France: The Dark Years 1940-1944_ [2001] p.179.

I picked my way over corpse after corpse in the
gloom until I heard one voice that rose above the
gentle, undulating moaning. I found a girl, she
was a living skeleton, impossible to gauge her age
for she had practically no hair left on her head and
her face was a yellow parchment sheet with two
holes in it for eyes. She was stretching out her
stick of an arm and gasping something. It was
'English, English, medicine, medicine', and she
was trying to cry but had not enough strength.
And beyond her down the passage, there were
convulsive movements of dying people too weak
to raise themselves from the floor.
--Richard Dimbleby(1913-1965)
English war correspondent, journalist, and broadcaster,
at Belsen concentration camp [19 April 1945];
in Tom Hickman
_What did you do in the War, Auntie? The BBC at War 1939-45 [1995] p.190.

I never can forget their groans and strangled
breathing as they tried to get up. Some succeeded.
Others lay lifelessly where they had fallen. I observed
that the Jap guards paid no attention to these. I
wondered why. The explanation wasn't long in
coming. There was a sharp crackle of pistol and
rifle fire behind us. Skulking along, a hundred yards
behind our contingent, came a 'clean-up squad' of
murdering Jap buzzards. Their helpless victims,
sprawled darkly against the white of the road, were
easy targets.
--American pilot William E. Dyess, on the 'Death March' of the survivors
of the surrendered Philippine fortress of Bataan [11 April 1942].

-

More than any other war in history, this war
has been an array of the forces of evil against
those of righteousness. It had to have its
leaders and it had to be won--but no matter
what the sacrifice, no matter what the suffering
of populations, no matter what the cost, the
war had to be won.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969),
American Army General, supreme Allied commander WWII,
NATO commander, US President [1953-1961].
In a speech at Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany [10 June 1945].


The battlefield at Falaise [France] was unquestionably one of the greatest
'killing grounds' of any of the war areas. Roads, highways, and fields were
so choked with . . . dead men that passage through the area was extremely
difficult. Forty-eight hours after the closing of the gap I was conducted through
on foot, to encounter scenes that could be described only by Dante. It was
literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards, stepping on nothing but dead
and decaying flesh.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969),
American Army General, supreme Allied commander WWII,
NATO commander, US President [1953-1961].
_Crusade in Europe_ [1949], ch. 15 {August 1944}.

-

A Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is a strategic impossibility.
--George Fielding Eliot (1894-1971).
"The Impossible War with Japan"
_American Mercury_ [September 1938]

-

Dear Mum, Of all people I know you are the one that will feel it most, so my
very last thoughts go to you. Don't blame anyone else for my death, because
I myself chose my fate.

I don't know what to write to you, because, even though I have a clear head,
I can't find the right words. I took my place in the Army of Liberation, and I
die as the light of victory is already beginning to shine ... I shall be shot very
shortly with twenty-three other comrades.

After the war you must claim your rights to a pension. They will let you have
my things at the jail, only I am keeping Dad's undervest, because I don't
want the cold to make me shiver ...

Once again I say goodbye. Courage!

Your son,
Spartaco

--Spartaco Fontanot, metal-worker, twenty-two years old, member
of the French resistance group of Misak Manouchian, 1944.
In E.J. Hobsbawm _The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991_ [2005 edn.]

-

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
--attributed to Howell M. Forgy
Navy chaplain at Pearl Harbor [7 December 1941]

The Jews are to blame for this war. The treatment
we give them does them no wrong. They have more
than deserved it.
--Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945)
German Nazi leader & minister of propaganda.
"The Jews are Guilty" in _Das Reich_ [16 November 1941]

-

The father held the ten-year-old boy by the hand,
speaking softly to him. The boy was struggling to
hold back his tears. The father pointed a finger to
the sky and stroked his head and seemed to be
explaining something.
--Hermann Graebe,
(on a massacre in Russia, [5 October 1942])

& see:

Typhoid fever - Russian camp (20,000) doomed
to die. Several German doctors fatally ill. In other
camps in the area no typhoid but large numbers
of prisoners dying daily through hunger. Makes a
terrible impression but for the moment apparently
nothing can be done.
--General Franz Halder, diary entry, 14 Nov. 1941;
in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.}
_History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 835
Cohan & Major add:
Nearly 50% of Red Army prisoners-of-war died in
German captivity, compared with less than 10% of
British, French and American prisoners. At least
3.3 million Russian POWs perished, 500,000 of
them between Nov. 1941 and Jan. 1942.

-

The war's over. One or two of those things,
and Japan will be finished.
--Leslie R. Groves (1896-1970)
General in charge of the Manhattan Project.
{Said to his deputy after the first test of
the atomic bomb [16 July 1945]}.

-

Letter to the Editor
The Wall Street Journal
June 17, 2004

[. . . ]

I've just returned from France, where I traveled with the Boston-
based Grand Circle Tours group. After a grand four days in Paris,
the group boarded le bateau "Bizet" for an eight-day cruise down
the winding Seine to the coastal city of Honfleur. En route we
passed dazzling display of lush green Normandy country-side, small
medieval towns, and chateaus straight from fairy stories, all part
of the region that produces some of the best cheeses in the world.

But the most memorable moment of the trip was at the American
Cemetery near Colleville Sur Mer -- high on the windy cliffs
overlooking Omaha Beach, where the bloodiest fighting of D-Day
occurred on June 6, 1944. Just before my group left the boat, each
passenger was handed a small piece of white paper on which was
written the name of an American soldier. When we arrived at the
cemetery we were given small sheaths of flowers and sent to
find "our soldiers."

I soon found my man, Willie Berg of Minnesota, residing in Plot B,
Row 22 and Grave 29. His date of death was just one month and
one day after D-Day, July 7, 1944.

Willie Berg was a private in the 33rd Field Artillery Battalion,
First Division, U.S. Army. He was one of the many soldiers who
were not claimed by family after the war ended. So Willie, along
with hundreds of others, lies in a field in France, possibly forgotten.
But not by me. The Willie Bergs of this wonderful nation should
never be forgotten. They gave their lives to bring about a better
world. I feel privileged to have caught up with Willie and to have
shared a few minutes with him on that windy cliffside. From now on,
when I feel a little less than happy with the present, maddeningly
fast world whirling by, I'll think of Willie and be grateful for the
sacrifice he made for us all.

Non, je n'oublierai jamais mon nouveau ami, Willie Berg. Rest in
peace my friend.

--Ray Hartley
New York

-

"Iwo Jima"

Arthur Herman
_Wall Street Journal_
[18 February 2005]

On Feb. 19, 1945, more than 110,000 Americans and 880 ships
began their assault on a small volcanic island in the Pacific, in the
climactic battle of the last year of World War II. For the next 36
days Iwo Jima would become the most populous seven-and-a-half
square miles on the planet, as United States Marines and Japanese
soldiers fought a battle that would test American resolve even more
than D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge had, and that still symbolizes
a free society's willingness to make the sacrifice necessary to prevail
over evil -- a sacrifice as relevant today as it was 60 years ago.

The attack on Iwo Jima capped a two year island-hopping campaign
which was as controversial with politicians and the press as any
Rumsfeld strategy. Each amphibious assault had been bloodier than
the last: at Tarawa, where 3,000 ill-prepared Marines fell taking an
island of just three square miles; at Saipan, where Army troops
performed so poorly two of their generals had to be fired; and
Peleliu, where it took 10 weeks of fighting in 115 degree heat to
root out the last Japanese defenders, at the cost of 6,000 soldiers
and Marines.

Iwo Jima would be the first island of the Japanese homeland to be
attacked. The Japanese had put in miles of tunnels and bunkers,
with 361 artillery pieces, 65 heavy mortars, 33 large naval guns,
and 21,000 defenders determined to fight to the death. Their motto
was, "kill 10 of the enemy before dying." American commanders
expected 40% casualties on the first assault. "We have taken such
losses before," remarked the Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Holland M.
Smith, "and if we have to, we can do it again."

Even before the attack, the Navy's bombardment of Iwo Jima cost
more ships and men than it lost on D-Day, without making a significant
dent in the Japanese defenses. Then, beginning at 9 a.m. on the
19th, Marines loaded down with 70 to 100 pounds of equipment each
hit the beach, and immediately sank into the thick volcanic ash.
They found themselves on a barren moonscape stripped of any
cover or vegetation, where Japanese artillery could pound them
with unrelenting fury. Scores of wounded Marines helplessly waiting
to be evacuated off the beach were killed "with the greatest possible
violence," as veteran war reporter Robert Sherrod put it. Shells
tore bodies in half and scattered arms and legs in all directions,
while so much underground steam rose from the churned up soil
the survivors broke up C-ration crates to sit on in order to keep
from being scalded. Some 2,300 Marines were killed or wounded
in the first 18 hours. It was, Sherrod said, "a nightmare in hell."

And overlooking it all, rising 556 feet above the carnage, stood
Mount Suribachi, where the Japanese could direct their fire along
the entire beach. Taking Suribachi became the key to victory. It
took four days of bloody fighting to reach the summit, and when
Marines did, they planted an American flag. When it was replaced
with a larger one, photographer Joe Rosenthal recorded the scene --
the most famous photograph of World War II and the most enduring
symbol of a modern democracy at war.

Yet, in the end, a symbol of what? Certainly not victory. The
capture of Suribachi only marked the beginning of the battle for Iwo
Jima, which dragged on for another month and cost nearly 26,000
men - all for an island whose future as a major air base never
materialized. Forty men were in the platoon which raised the flag on
Suribachi. Only four would survive the battle unhurt. Their company,
E Company, Second Battalion, 28th Regiment, Fifth Marine Division,
would suffer 75% casualties. Of the seven officers who led it into
battle, only one was left when it was over.

But the Marines pushed on. Over the next agonizing weeks, they took
the rest of the island yard by yard, bunker by bunker, cave by cave.
They fought through places with names like "Bloody Gorge" and "The
Meat Grinder." They learned to take no prisoners in fighting a
skilled and fanatical enemy who gave no quarter and expected none.
Twenty out of every 21 Japanese defenders would die where they
stood. One in three Marines on Iwo Jima would either be killed or
wounded, including 19 of 24 battalion commanders. Twenty-seven
Marines and naval medical corpsmen would win Medals of Honor --
more than in any other battle in history -- and 13 of them posthumously.
As Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific
Command, said, "Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island,
uncommon valor was a common virtue." [. . . ]

Mr. Herman, a historian, is the author, most recently, of "To Rule
the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World"
(HarperCollins, 2004).

-

The war situation has developed not necessarily to
Japan's advantage.
--Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989)
Emperor of Japan from 1926.
(Announcing Japan's surrender, in a broadcast to
his people after atomic bombs had destroyed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

The mortuary itself is full. Not only are there too
few trucks to go to the cemetery, but, more important,
not enough gasoline to put in the trucks, and the
main thing is - there is not enough strength left in
the living to bury the dead.
--Vera Inber (1890-1972)
Russian author.
Diary entry, 26 December 1941;
in _Leningrad Diary_ [1971].
(Leningrad was under siege from September 1941 to January 1943,
and almost a million people died of starvation or enemy action during
the winter of 1941-1942.)

^

Average American Family Income:

-------------------- 1938 1942

Washington, D.C. $2,227 $5,316

Hartford, CT $2,207 $5,208

New York City $2,760 $4,044

--in Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster _The Century_ [1998] p. 247

^

When you go home
Tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow
We gave our today.
--in M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.}
_History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 856
Cohan & Major explain:
Inscription on the British war memorial at Kohima on the
Burma-India border, where a Japanese onslaught was
halted in 1944. Reminiscent of the verse commemorating
the Spartans of Thermopylae.

That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury,
stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive
enemies to the judgment of the law, is one of the most significant
tributes that power has ever paid to reason.
--Robert H. Jackson (1892-1954)
U.S. Supreme Court Justice [1941-1954]
Chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.
Opening statement for the prosecution,
International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg
[21 November 1945].

We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals,
strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy
civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed
the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific
boiled the flesh off enemy skulls to make table
ornaments for sweethearts, or carved their bones
into letter openers.
--Edgar J. Jones,
American war correspondent,
in _Atlantic Monthly_ [February 1945] p.49.

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from
D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the
other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of
graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly
straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves.
Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.
--Barbara Kingsolver (1955- )
American author.

-

The atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki on the morning of Aug. 9, 1945. On Sept. 6, George Weller of the Chicago Daily News, fresh from covering the formal surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri, arrived in the city. He got there by impersonating an American colonel and forcing his way onto Japanese trains. He was the first Westerner to enter Nagasaki after the bomb.

By heading for Nagasaki, Weller was following his nose for news but also defying a ban imposed by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had declared Japan's southernmost island of Kyushu, where Nagasaki is located, off-limits to journalists. Weller reasoned that the war was over, the U.S. military's authority over journalists was now moot, and he ought to be free to travel wherever his story took him.

But MacArthur had the last word. Weller's dispatches, filed through U.S. censors in Tokyo, never reached Chicago. Weller always assumed that they landed in the general's circular file. It wasn't until after the reporter's death, in 2002, that his son, Anthony, discovered the carbon copies of his father's never-published stories, buried in a box of files that had followed the peripatetic correspondent around the globe. The result is "First Into Nagasaki," compiled by the younger Mr. Weller and edited by him into a powerful set of historical documents. His intelligent concluding essay provides the framework for his father's raw copy.

The most striking aspect of the Weller dispatches is their immediacy. "Walk in Nagasaki's streets and you walk in ruins" is how his first report begins, as he describes the sights and smells of the devastated city, where pyres are still burning with the remains of humans killed in the attack. Yet "Nagasaki cannot be described as a city of the dead. . . . Though the smashed streets are as barren of production or commerce as Pompeii's, yet a living stream of humanity pours along them, looking with alert, shoe-button eyes for today's main chance."

It is a month after the bomb, and Weller, hearing rumors about what we now know to be radiation sickness, heads to two local hospitals to see what he can find out. He interviews doctors perplexed by how to treat "Disease X," which is killing people who appeared to have survived the blast unhurt. He reports the conditions of the patients he sees there in a spare, descriptive style. "Men, women and children with no outward marks of injury are dying daily in hospitals," he writes on Sept. 8, "some after having walked around for three or four weeks thinking they have escaped. . . . The doctors [say] . . . the answer to the malady is beyond them. Their patients, though their skins are whole, are simply passing away under their eyes."

The after-effects of the atomic bomb aren't the only story that Weller finds in Nagasaki. After a few days in the city, he heads to the nearby prisoner-of-war camps, where he has what can only be called the incredible experience of informing his fellow Americans, who did not know the war had ended, of the two atomic bombs, the Japanese surrender and the impending arrival of American occupation troops.

He writes a series of harrowing reports based on interviews with hundreds of American, British, Dutch and Australian soldiers interned there under appalling conditions. The younger Mr. Weller calls historians' lack of attention to the Japanese POW camps "one of the great omissions in World War II memory." After reading his father's shocking dispatches, one finds it hard not to agree. A third of Allied prisoners died in Japan's POW camps, the younger Mr. Weller says, compared with 4% in Germany's.

George Weller also writes about the "Death Cruise," one of the 200 or so "hellship voyages" that transported POWs from Southeast Asia to Japan between 1942 and 1945. Weller pieced together the lengthy account included here from stories told to him by the POWs he interviewed in Kyushu. A sanitized version was published in the Chicago Daily News, minus horrific details regarding Japanese brutalities and the cannibalism and vampirism that some prisoners resorted to in order to survive. Anthony Weller reports that of the roughly 50,000 prisoners who traveled by hellship during the war, some 21,000 died.

"First Into Nagasaki" is no "Hiroshima," John Hersey's famous 1946 account of atomic-bomb survivors that has been taken up by antinuclear activists. Weller doesn't flinch from describing the suffering of the Japanese victims of the bomb, but it is clear where his sympathies lie. In a 1967 essay for an anthology of reporters' memoirs, he relates his experiences in Nagasaki. "I felt pity," he writes, "but no remorse. The Japanese military had cured me of that."

--"Present at the Devastation: A New Eyewitness to History"
Melanie Kirkpatrick, reviewing George Weller _First Into Nagasaki_ [2007]
in "Wall Street Journal" [1 March 2007]

-

-

The three most important groups who have
been pressing this country toward war are
the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt
Administration.
--Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974)
American aviator.
[1941], in Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster _The Century_ [1998] p. 227.

As long as Europe prepares for war, America
must prepare for neutrality.
--Walter Lippmann (1889-1974)
American journalist.
In his column in the "New York Herald Tribune" [17 May 1934].

-

Our troops were now approaching exhaustion. The
guerrilla movement was going well, but on Bataan and
Corregidor the clouds were growing darker. My heart
ached as I saw my men slowly wasting away. . . .

They would gather round and pat me on the back and
"Mabuhay Macarsar" me. They would grin--that
ghastly skeleton-like grin of the dying--as they
would roar in unison, "We are the battling bastards
of Bataan--no papa, no mama, no Uncle Sam."

They asked no quarter and they gave none. They died
hard--those savage men--not gently like a stricken
dove folding its wings in peaceful passing, but like
a wounded wolf at bay, with lips curled back in
sneering menace, and always a nerveless hand
reaching for that long sharp machete knife which
long ago they had substituted for the bayonet.

And around their necks, as we buried them, would be
a thread of dirty string with its dangling crucifix.
They were filthy; and they were lousy, and they
stank. And I loved them.

--Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
American general.
_Reminiscences_ [1964],
"World War II: Retreat from the Philippines, 1941-1943"


I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God,
our forces stand again on Philippine soil.
--Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
American general.
Following the U.S. landing on Leyte [20 October 1944]

-

The refusal of the British and Russian people to accept
what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great
factor in the salvage of our civilization.
--George C. (Catlett) Marshall (1880-1959)
American general and statesman.
In the Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff,
United States Army [1 September 1945].

I boast of being the only man in London who has
been bombed off a lavatory seat while reading Jane
Austen. She went into the bath; I went through the
door.
--Kingsley Martin (1897-1969)
British journalist.
[26 October 1940]

If you have sacrificed my nation to save the peace
of the world, I will be the first to applaud you. But
if not, gentlemen, God help your souls.
--Jan Masaryk (1886-1948)
Czech statesman and diplomat.
In Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster _The Century_ [1998] p. 206

Nuts!
--Anthony McAuliffe (1898-1975)
American general.
Published reply to the German demand for the surrender
of U.S. forces at Bastogne [22 December 1944] (The original
form of the message was somewhat different) -GBAQ.

The first thing which the rescue squads and the
firemen saw, as their torches poked through the
gloom and the smoke and the bloody pit which had
lately been the most chic cellar in London, was a
frieze of other shadowy men, night-creatures who
had scuttled within as soon as the echoes ceased,
crouching over any dead or wounded woman, any
soignee corpse they could find, and ripping off its
necklaces, or earrings, or brooch: rifling its handbag,
scooping up its loose change.
--Nicholas Monsarrat (1910-1979)
English novelist.
_Breaking In, Breaking Out_ [1971] p.288.
In M.J. Cohan and John Major {eds.}
_History in Quotations_ [2004] p. 847
Cohan & Major add:
The scene is the Cafe de Paris in London, which took a
direct hit on 8 March 1941. A darker sidelight on the Blitz.

-

This -- is London.
--Edward R. Murrow [Egbert Roscoe Murrow]
(1908-1965)
American broadcaster and journalist.
Opening phrase for broadcasts from London
during World War II [1939-1945].


These people are exceedingly brave, tough and
prudent. The East End, where disaster is always just
around the corner, seems to take it better than the
more fashionable districts in the West End.
--Edward R. Murrow [Egbert Roscoe Murrow]
(1908-1965)
American broadcaster and journalist.
[9 September 1940]
(The first sustained bombing attack on London came 2 days earlier.)


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