World War II News

2012-02-21T20:09:00.000-05:00

Large WWII gun to travel to Lewes

by Molly Murray

LEWES -- A relic of World War II -- a gun that's 66 feet long, weighs a quarter-million pounds and was powerful enough to hurl a more than 1-ton shell 23 miles -- will soon make its way to Cape Henlopen State Park by train.

And because the gun is in Norfolk, Va., it will make a 26-mile crossing of the Chesapeake Bay on a train barge run by Bay Coast Railroad. In all, three rail companies will be involved in moving the gun: Bay Coast, Norfolk Southern and the Delaware Coast Line.

"It's going to take quite a ride," said Larry E. LeMond of the Bay Coast Railroad.

This isn't just any old 16-inch gun. It has a historic pedigree. It was part of the heavy weaponry on the battleship USS Missouri when Japanese representatives signed the surrender documents that ended World War II.

It was never at Fort Miles, the Army base at Cape Henlopen, but it's similar to the two 16-inch Army guns there that stood ready during the war to defend the coast and the entrance to Delaware Bay.

Fort Miles is now Cape Henlopen State Park, and park officials and a group of volunteers with the Fort Miles Historical Association have been developing a section of the former base into a World War II historical attraction, complete with examples of the weapons that would have been found at the base.

The association began raising money to bring the gun to Delaware -- it was declared surplus by the Navy and was being stored in a yard in Norfolk -- in June. By the end of December it met its $110,000 goal and then some, said association President Gary Wray.

In the meantime, the organization had to figure out the logistics of moving such a big and heavy chunk of metal. The gun was originally manufactured at the Washington Navy Yard, he said.

Wray said that weight limits on bridges made truck transportation a difficult and costly option. They also looked at moving it up the coast by barge, he said. In the end, they decided that the train would be the easiest and least expensive option.

The gun could begin its journey in late March or early April. The goal, Wray said, is to have it in Georgetown by April 16. It would then be moved another 15 miles by rail to Lewes and end up near the Cape Shores development. There it would be lifted onto a truck and moved the last mile or so to the park, he said.

"It's really exciting," he said.

Coincidentally, Wray said, the gun will be moved the same way the two original guns at the fort -- manufactured in New York -- were: by rail. Even then, they were off-loaded at the fort and then moved by tractor-trailer to Battery Smith.

This gun will end up on the ground near Fort Miles' orientation building for the next year or so while teams of volunteers work to restore it and determine how best to display the artifact.

"To pull all this off in seven months has been darn near miraculous," Wray said.

He estimates that it will take four years to complete restoration work and develop a final display, but "it's going to be absolutely magnificent."

The story goes that the fort's two 16-inch guns were fired just once during World War II -- with practice rounds. Legend has it that the concussion was so great that it broke windows in houses in Lewes.

After the war, the two big guns at Fort Miles probably were cut up and sold for scrap, Cape Henlopen State Park historian Michael Rogers said. The lore among the soldiers who had been assigned to Fort Miles is that the Gillette Co. bought the scrap and used it to make razor blades, he said.

As part of a plan for a $6 million World War II museum at the park, officials and volunteers would like the gun to help tell the story of Delaware's coastal defenses, the very real threat of German U-boat attacks and how the army planned and prepared for them.

"It will end up being a World War II tourism destination," Wray said.

2012-02-21T20:05:00.000-05:00

Polson residents proved heroes to World War II bomber crew in distress

by BRANDON HANSEN

World War II reached across nations and cost the lives of 70 million people, the deadliest conflict in human history. While the Mission Valley was a considerable distance from the theaters of war, it didn’t stop many of the region’s residents from going overseas to fight, and even die, for their country.

On Feb. 3, 1943, World War II came to the town of Polson quite literally, and the townspeople rose to the occasion.

Earlier that day, a B-17 Flying Fortress had taken off from Walla Walla, Wash., for a two-hour practice bombing run with pilot Lt. Jim Breeden at the controls. Things started to go south as the crew experienced bad weather and lost radio communications due to static. The plane flew all afternoon and into the evening before Breeden found favorable weather above the Mission and lower Flathead valleys and saw the lights of Polson and Ronan.

Polson’s telephone operator, Maude Brassfield, had been told there was a missing B-17 earlier in the day, and at around 10 p.m. she heard the bomber flying low and circling the town. Along with fellow operator Louise Malgren, Brassfield alerted Polson residents to the situation.

Montana Highway Patrolman Wallace Beaudry and Les Baldwin led residents in their vehicles to the Polson Airport, where they lit the runway with their headlights. Meanwhile, Breeden picked out what appeared to be a fairly flat field south of Polson for a belly-landing.

The crew observed cars lining up around the snow-covered runway, and their hopes immediately soared. The B-17 circled around, and Breeden had the crew defuse the practice bombs by dropping them into Flathead Lake.

Then he approached the airfield from the north and lowered the landing gears.

“I flashed the light to indicate the field,” Beaudry said in several newspaper articles covering the incident. “Then pointed it upward toward where we could hear the ship circling. With the flares lined up as a path and the spot pointing like a finger, the pilot brought in his ship. It was a beautiful landing.”

At approximately 11 p.m., the wheels made touchdown with a rooster tail spray of snow. The deep snow actually acted as a brake, and thanks to the efforts of Polson residents, the B-17 was safe and sound on the ground.

About five minutes of fuel remained in the plane after the 12-hour flight.

When the crew exited the plane, bombardier Lt. Herbert Egender kissed the snow-covered ground. Egender would come back 25 years later as a colonel to visit Polson.

“The landing in Polson that dark night in 1943 is deeply engraved in my memory, and the wonderful hospitality of the good people of Polson then and in 1968 will never be forgotten,” he later wrote in a letter to the Lake County Leader’s Paul Fugleberg. “Is it any wonder I have had a warm spot in my heart for Polson for more than 40 years?”

Right after the plane landed, Egender took the plane’s Norden bomb sight and stored it in the vault of Security State Bank. Lake County deputies guarded the plane, and the crew was taken into town for a T-bone steak dinner at the Hut Cafe. They then stayed the night at the Salish Hotel.

The crew of eight would stay for the next couple of days in Polson, where they were treated like heroes, dining and dancing the time away with Polson residents.

The hospitality was so good that the men decided to rename their plane “The Polson Express.”

Hundreds of Polson residents went to the airport to take a look at the B-17, which is still the largest plane to ever land or take off from there. School children even wrote their names on the fuselage.

Leo Maier, who grew up on Flathead Lake, wrote to Missoulian columnist Evelyn King in 1992 to tell his experience of the B-17 landing.

“I will never forget it,” Maier said. “I had ridden my horse into town to go to the movie. When I came out, I heard that big airplane circling overhead. So I rode over the bridge and over to the airport. Made it just after the plane landed.

“My horse walked right up to the airplane and I got to touch it. Still gives me chills just to think about it.”

The landing incident made the newspapers in Spokane, Missoula and Boise, Idaho. For the plane to leave, Lake County road equipment was used to lengthen the runway to 2,500 feet, but an experienced crew sent to take the plane back to Walla Walla got it in the air in less than 2,100 feet.

The crew that had landed in Polson eventually parted ways and met different fates during the war.

Sgt. Joseph Napalitaro didn’t make it to Europe; he was grounded because he suffered from terrible air sickness.

Breeden was shot down during his first mission in Europe and become a prisoner of war. Navigator Morris Floyd was also shot down on his first mission and was a POW.

Egender would “dodge bullets” until Aug. 17, 1943. While on the way to Schweinfurt, Germany, during his 15th mission, he was shot down and taken prisoner.

The rest of the crew were in a plane that was shot down over Europe, and only two gunners survived.

The Polson Express was shot down over France on its eighth mission of the war, but the crew inside survived.

Those who were prisoners of war were released April 29, 1945.

Egender made the trip back to Polson in 1968 as a colonel, and Breeden would end up ranching in Montana near Augusta before he died in 1975.

According to his brother, Vic, Breeden didn’t like to talk about his wartime experience, but he had a fond place in his heart for the Polson folks that came to the rescue in 1943.

2012-02-21T20:04:00.000-05:00

Before U.S. Supreme Court: Is lying about a medal a crime?

By Mark Sherman

Associated Press

Posted: 02/19/2012 06:49:30 AM PST

Updated: 02/19/2012 07:03:11 AM PST

WASHINGTON -- Xavier Alvarez was in good company when he stood up at a public meeting and called himself a wounded war veteran who had received the top military award, the Medal of Honor.

Alvarez was lying about his medal, his wounds and his military service, but he wasn't the first man to invent war exploits.

He was, however, one of the first people prosecuted under a 2006 federal law aimed at curbing false claims of military valor.

Concerns that the law improperly limits speech and turns people into criminals for things they say, rather than do, are at the heart of the Supreme Court's review of his case and the Stolen Valor Act.

Veterans groups have come to the aid of the Obama administration, which calls the law a narrowly crafted effort to protect the system of military awards that was established during the Revolutionary war by Gen. George Washington. The high court will hear the case Wednesday, which is Washington's 280th birthday.

"They're committing fraud. They're impersonating somebody else. They take on attributes of somebody else, attributes of a hero who served honorably," said Pam Sterner, whose college term paper calling for the law wound up in the hands of members of Congress. "When you do that, impersonating someone else, that's fraud, not freedom of speech."

Civil liberties groups, writers, publishers and news media outlets, including The Associated Press, have told the justices they worry the law, and

especially the administration's defense of it, could lead to more attempts by government to regulate speech.

When he established military decorations in 1782, seven years before he was elected as the nation's first president, Washington himself also prescribed severe military punishment for soldiers who purported to be medal winners but weren't. Since then, many men have embellished their war records, and some have won special recognition.

It long has been a federal crime to wear unearned medals, but mere claims of being decorated were beyond the reach of law enforcement.

The House of Representatives has more than once voted to name a post office after men who claimed awards they never received. The Air Force named an award after a man who falsely claimed to have survived the Bataan Death March and been awarded the Silver Star in World War II. The Boxing Writers of America named its perseverance award after the late Pat Putnam of Sports Illustrated because of his made-up tale of surviving a Chinese prisoner of war camp in the Korean War and receiving a Navy Cross.

The Stolen Valor Act aimed to solve that problem, and garnered significant support in Congress during a time of war.

"The admiration and respect for the military increased dramatically after 9/11 and the false claims, as well," said Thomas A. Cottone Jr., a retired FBI agent who investigated phony award cases.

Alvarez made his claims by way of introducing himself as an elected member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in Pomona, Calif. There is nothing to suggest that he received anything in exchange or that listeners especially believed him.

Even Alvarez' lawyers acknowledged their client sometimes has trouble telling the truth. "Xavier Alvarez lied," they declare in the first sentence of their Supreme Court brief and go on to recount six separate lies in the next few lines.

He lied when he claimed he played hockey for the Detroit Red Wings, married a Mexican starlet who made paparazzi swoon, was an engineer, rescued the American ambassador during the Iranian hostage crisis and was shot when he went back for the U.S. flag. Alvarez also lied, they said, when he talked about his military service.

But the lies Alvarez told harmed no one, they said, so what he did couldn't be considered fraud.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down the law as an unconstitutional restraint on free speech and said the government might instead invest in an awards database that would make it harder for people to lay claim to medals they never won. Last month, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the law in a separate case, saying the First Amendment does not always protect false statements.

The issue might never have reached this stage if not for the efforts of Sterner, and her husband, Doug.

He is a decorated Vietnam veteran who has made it his work in recent years to ensure that service members get the recognition they deserve and expose those who falsely claim acts of heroism under fire. Rather than wait for the government to act, Doug Sterner has entered nearly 100,000 award citations since Civil War in his online database, including all 3,475 Medal of Honor winners in U.S. history. His archive is used by the Military Times newspapers, published by Gannett Co.

Pam Sterner went back to school in her early 40s at Colorado State University in Pueblo, Colo. In a political science course, she wrote a paper that grew out of her husband's frustrations over phony award claimants whose worst punishment was public embarrassment. That paper eventually led to the Stolen Valor Act.

Doug Sterner's database did not save Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, from some embarrassment when he invited cameras and reporters to watch him pin medals on an elderly Korean War veteran in June.

The veteran, Myron Brown of Utah, said his Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star were awarded belatedly, and he asked Chaffetz to present them to him publicly.

After the ceremony took place, Sterner and others raised questions about the medals and the Pentagon confirmed to Chaffetz in December that they were not authentic.

"Others have been burned by this. I have too, but I want to solve the problem," Chaffetz told the Salt Lake Tribune. He is planning a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee he leads to explore creating a government-run awards database.

------

Online:

Military Times Hall of Valor database: http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards

2012-02-21T20:03:00.000-05:00

Remembering Iwo Jima

February 18, 2012|By Lauren William

Although his memories of Iwo Jima are more than six decades old, Bruce Bender remembered the volcanic ash, the pungent smell of sulfur and oppressive heat with vivid clarity as he sat in his Costa Mesa home this week.

Bender was one of the first Marines to set foot on that desolate island in the Pacific in 1945. For those men, things started out calmly enough. But not for long.

The barrage began when the third wave of Marines arrived on shore. After that, it didn't end for two days.

"They were shooting at us — we were digging holes," Bender said with a faint accent reflective of his native Pittsburgh.

Of the 29 men who Bender came with, he was one of three to survive the battle's bloodshed and the only one to leave unscathed.

Sunday marks the 67th anniversary of the storming of Iwo Jima. Bender, now 88, is one of an exponentially shrinking number of World War II veterans still alive to share their memories.

Bender can remember with great clarity the tasks set before the Marines in the days before the attack. Three groups were to ascend Mt. Suribachi, eventually making the island safe for U.S. pilots to land and use as a stop before heading to the Japanese mainland.

As it were, the planned five-day mission turned into a bloody commitment lasting over one month, where more than 6,000 Americans lost their lives and about 18,000, or 90%, of the Japanese defenders were killed, according to the military's estimates.

Despite the tremendous loss of life, Bender said that without the capture of Iwo Jima, more aviators would have been killed.

"Iwo Jima was a necessary battle because it was needed as a safety valve for B-29 bombers," Bender said as he sat at the kitchen table.

As he spoke of his time in the Pacific Theater, Bender reflected that prior to the storming of Iwo Jima was a three-day bombardment by theU.S. Navy. It left the land bleak, with no vegetation and no reprieve from the intense sun.

Suribachi was pockmarked with caves and other well-concealed hiding places where the Japanese would shoot at the Marines, the origin of the shots nearly impossible to determine, Bender said.

With the constant sulfurous gas and heat, Bender said he was amazed that there were Japanese defenders capable of living on the island. He said the Japanese wore gas masks as protection from the fumes.

On the beach, amid the chaos, he was promoted to first lieutenant because of the high number of officers killed — it was a possible flub in bypassing the second lieutenant rank or a necessary measure in such extreme circumstances, Bender said.

Another vivid memory: the smell. Men on the island were barred from using water for anything other than drinking. They faced possible court-martialing if they used valuable freshwater to bathe, he said.

After a month without washing, the men reeked.

But the Battle of Iwo Jima took place just as the war was ending, and before long Bender was recuperating in Maui.

He eventually graduated from USC using the G.I. Bill. While there, he met his wife of 62 years, Jeanette, 83, in what she describes as a "whirlwind romance." The two eventually went on to have three children, four grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Over the years, like many veterans of his era, Bender has remained silent about his experiences.

"He said, 'Why should I be the one to be here to tell the story?'" Jeanette Bender said.

It wasn't until about five years ago that he saw the value in telling his children his experiences of war. He later opened up enough to write it, and more, all down in a book, typos and all.

Of his inclusion of typos and the book's conversational tone, Bender said: "Well, that's me. ... You know, I'm myself. I'm not perfect. … I just thought it was more homey, if you will. I'm more informal. I hate ties and business suits. I'm that kind of guy."

This past December, his children each found a hardcover copy of his book under the Christmas tree.

"Cause I'm cheap," Bender said joking. "I promised my children over the years that I would have it done and completed, and I finally did. It was just, well hey, instead of buying junky things for our kids, we tried to give something they could pass on to their own children when they have children. We wanted to put money into something that would last."

2012-02-20T14:22:00.000-05:00

Robin Gibb Pays First Visit To London WWII Memorial

Robin Gibb put his cancer battle aside on Thursday to visit the war memorial he spent years campaigning to have built.

The Bee Gees legend, who is suffering colon cancer, has been behind a long-running fight to have the Bomber Command Memorial erected in London in memory of the aircrews of World War II.

The monument is currently under construction in London's Green Park and Gibb visited the site for the first time on Thursday, wearing a hard hat and climbing up the scaffold to get a better look.

The star admits he's incredibly proud to have won his battle for the memorial, telling Britain's Sunday Express, "This is honestly the proudest thing I have ever done. It was so important to finally see that the brave airmen who risked their lives... were finally honored and now it is happening. This memorial is bigger than even the Wellington Memorial and will still be here long after we are gone. It will last forever."

2012-02-20T14:21:00.000-05:00

Horace Axtell – World War II Vet and Ceremonial Leader

LEWISTON, Idaho – Horace Axtell is known as “Uncle” to virtually everyone on the Nez Perce Reservation, a sign of both respect and affection. He conducts memorial services, blessings, funerals, and various other occasions where he is asked. But his story dates long before that, back to World War II where he served in the U.S. Army, and to even earlier as a child.

He had tried to volunteer for the Navy or Marines but was rejected due to an earlier eye injury. He tells the story of going huckleberry picking with his mother and grandmother, riding a horse as the women traveled by horse-drawn wagon. He was galloping when the cinch broke, landing him on his face in gravel and breaking the tear duct in his right eye. Fearful he would lose his eye, his grandmother dug a root, crushed it, and put it in a wet washrag over his eye. The eye healed but kept him from joining the Navy or Marines.

In 1943 he “raised his age,” got into the draft and joined the U.S. Army. He did basic training at Camp Swift in Texas. He was assigned to 529^th Engineers and was scheduled to sail to Germany but caught mumps while on furlough, missed the ship, and was later reassigned to a combat engineer unit and sent to Hawaii, “zigzagging to avoid torpedo boats.”

Part of the 1298^th Combat Engineer Battallion, they set off from Hawaii to Japan but arrived there just two days after the atomic bomb was dropped and the war ended. “I never served in combat,” he commented. He did remain in Japan eight months building such things as roads and warehouses and hospitals.

His mother had died while he was overseas. The family house had burned down and no one was waiting for him when he returned after three years and four months of military service. It was a difficult time and he started drinking pretty heavily, which led to him and couple of buddies being arrested for stealing. Although he doesn’t remember much of it, the result was a year in prison.

His life back in order, he got a job at the Potlatch Mill in Lewiston, married Andrea in 1963, and remains married. He worked for Potlatch for 36 years but during that time he became deeply involved in the ceremonial life and spirituality of the Nez Perce people.

Axtell explains how that started. His grandmother only spoke the Nez Perce language and Horace grew up fluent in that language and kept up with it while in Japan. “I’d be on guard duty and start talking Nez Perce. I was talking to my grandmother and then I’d answer her,” he laughed. “I did that quite a bit and never forgot my language.”

Back home, he was awakened one morning by a small group of elders who believed in the old Nez Perce spirituality. “They call it Seven Drums, or things like that,” he said. They had heard him speak the language and asked if he would go out and learn how to lead the old longhouse way, “the old spirituality of our tribe.”

After talking with his wife he decided to try it and spent time with other Plateau tribes learning from them how to conduct the various ceremonies, funerals, and blessings. He learned how to conduct pipe ceremonies. He already knew the old songs, learned from church and from his grandmother. “It wasn’t hard for me to take over this longhouse way. I still do that,” he said.

He also did some language teaching at Lewis and Clark State College and was later given an honorary doctorate by the school.

In 1977, 100 years after the Nez Perce War, he visited the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana, where Chief Joseph formally surrendered. He took his father with him, just two weeks before his death. This was also where his grandfather had died. He and three other warriors had escaped toward Canada but decided to return to help Chief Joseph and all four were shot and killed.

In 1978 he and Wilfred Scott began conducting memorials at various battle sites along the Nez Perce Trail as well as other locations throughout the ancestral homelands and sites in Kansas and Oklahoma where the Nez Perce were held prisoner following the war. The memorials they’ve conducted probably number between 200 and 300.

Axtell is now 87. His health isn’t the best but his present intention is to conduct memorials along the Nez Perce Trail again this summer and fall.

2012-02-20T14:20:00.000-05:00

WWII radar station RAF Dunkirk sold at auction

A former Kent radar station which was used to help defend Britain during World War II has been sold at auction.

RAF Dunkirk, near Faversham, was built after 1937 to provide long range early warning for the Thames Estuary and the south eastern approaches to London.

The station is spread over 26 acres and is a listed Scheduled Monument.

The site, which includes a transmitter block, pillboxes, a radar tower base and an underground transmitter room, sold for £158,000.

2012-02-20T14:18:00.000-05:00

Rescuers of World War II camp take on new mission ‘to bring a fellow member home’

by Jane Lerner

On the same day the U.S. flag was raised on Iwo Jima in one of the pivotal battles of World War II, a daring and dangerous rescue mission by U.S. forces in the Philippines was under way.

That raid, far behind enemy lines, freed thousands of civilian prisoners being held by the Japanese at Los Banos internment camp — including a group of Maryknoll nuns and priests — and served as a model for future rescues.

Every year a group of veterans of the Army’s 11th Airborne Division, many from the Lower Hudson Valley, meet to commemorate the Los Banos raid of Feb. 23, 1945.

When they meet Saturday in a New York City restaurant owned by a Yonkers veteran, they will have a new mission: to help find the remains of a Piermont man who fought in a nearby battle and is still missing in action.

“We don’t leave our dead or wounded on the battlefield,” said John Noonan of New Hempstead, who arrived in the Philippines with the division soon after the raid. “Even though it’s 67 years later, we will do everything in our power to bring a fellow member home.”

Pfc. Dennis Hogan Jr. of Piermont was wounded in the Philippines two weeks before the raid at Los Banos.

The 23-year-old Rockland County native recovered and returned to his unit. On the night of April 22, 1945, Hogan and other members of the 511th Parachute Infantry with the 11th Airborne Division jumped out of a plane onto a mountain on the Philippines island of Luzon.

What happened next has never been fully explained to his family.

MIA

Word reached Piermont several days later that Hogan had been killed near Sulac in the mountains of Malipunyo, an area south of Manila that saw intense combat between U.S. and Japanese forces.

Despite more than six decades of searching, the Hogans have never been able to find out the exact circumstances of his death, or, more importantly, locate his remains. His nephew, Nick Hogan, owner of Hogan’s Diner in Orangeburg, has revived his family’s long search for answers.

Veterans of the 11th Airborne, including those who freed the Los Banos camp, are helping him. When the group meets Saturday, they will present him with a plaque honoring his uncle.

But they are also using their contacts to find answers to the mystery surrounding the fate of Dennis Hogan Jr. so long along.

“These guys have been fantastic,” Nick Hogan said. “I think they’re going to come up with some answers.”

Nick Hogan recently submitted a DNA sample to military investigators, but knows that there is a long backlog of cases. The veterans group has discovered that Dennis Hogan Jr. was awarded the Silver Star for his actions in battle.

Another member, Larry Lenahan of Mahopac, who served in the 11th Airborne in the late 1950s, has uncovered more information, including the orders for Hogan’s division and possible clues about the locations of remains.

“I am getting a higher level of confidence that the Hogans will be able to achieve closure,” Lenahan said.

On Saturday, the veterans will plan other strategies for locating the soldier’s remains.

Grateful for rescue

The annual reunion also serves to keep alive the story of the daring raid that rescued more than 2,400 civilians.

“What those guys accomplished was nothing short of amazing,” Lenahan said. “But it got overshadowed by other events and is not as well-known as it should be.”

None of the civilian prisoners, some of whom had been captives for years, was harmed as the U.S. paratroopers liberated the camp, 30 miles behind enemy lines.

“We were very proud of what we did and how many people we rescued,” said Yonkers resident Frank Forlini, 89, who was in the unit but was wounded right before the raid. He hosts the yearly commemoration at his restaurant in lower Manhattan.

For many years, Maryknoll nuns who survived the internment camp would go to the yearly commemoration. Those nuns have since died, but the story of their imprisonment and rescue is still remembered and celebrated by their colleagues.

Sister Virgeen Healey entered the Ossining-based order while the nuns were imprisoned and recalled their stories of the ordeal and how much they appreciated their rescuers. The sisters had been saying a novena that day. They, like others in the camp, were convinced that their Japanese captors were about to kill them.

“They could not get enough of talking about how God took care of them all through their stay in Los Banos,” Healey said. “The paratroopers were a great gift from heaven to them.”

The Rev. John Ruane, a Catholic priest, was a young seminarian when he was taken prisoner in Los Banos. He recalled how the prisoners were lining up for their morning rations when they saw the U.S. planes.

“You can imagine how happy we were to see the Americans coming,” recalled Ruane, 91, a philosophy professor at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, N.J., who attends the yearly commemoration. “Anyone who lived through it will never forget it.”

WWII flight engineer recalls how he made it through flak, explosions and attacks | The Star Press | thestarpress.com

2012-02-20T14:16:00.000-05:00

WWII flight engineer recalls how he made it through flak, explosions and attacks

by John Carlson

MUNCIE -- It sounds like the stuff of nightmares.

Amid a blast of wind and noise, you're standing on a narrow metal catwalk six miles high in the sky, nothing but empty air between you and the ground far below, holding on with one hand while working with the other hand to release thousands of pounds of deadly explosives that are hanging just inches away from you.

Sixty-five years ago, that happened to Lee Shank.

Then a young flight-engineer on a B-17 bomber over Germany, this cool February day he sat in an easy chair in his room at Elmcroft of Muncie, a warming blanket thrown over his lap.

His memory of that event?

"Pretty scary," he said with a confident smile, though his words were faint.

Nearby, his devoted son, Mike, sat watching and listening to his father, who is 95, occasionally stepping over to adjust his blanket or reposition him in his chair.

"Do you remember that old television series 12 O'clock High?" Mike asked two visitors to the room, referring to the show that was about B-17 crews in combat. Then he nodded toward his father, who had experienced the real thing. "He'd sit stiff on the edge of his couch watching it."

With some prompting from his son, Shank told his story, how he grew up in Farmland, the son of a tailor and an English teacher, and worked as a mechanic before being drafted at age 26 in 1943. Trained as a flight engineer, he flew 34 missions over Germany with his crew as part of the 8th Air Force's 94th Bomb Group.

In the course of those missions, he saw many of his friends shot down, but his crew came through it unscathed.

"We were lucky," Shank said. "No one got shot or hurt."

They had their moments, though. Was he scared on missions?

"Scared on every one of them," he said, noting his scariest was that time he had to crawl into the bomb bay and release the bombs by hand.

The flak explosions from German anti-aircraft fire were another danger, he noted, as his son handed over a picture Shank had taken from his upper machine-gun turret that showed a flight of B-17s flying through so many explosions, they looked like a rash in the sky.

Even scarier for Shank than the flak were the German fighter planes, though as it turned out, their pilots had equal reason to be scared of him.

"I got credit for shooting a fighter down," the old man noted, smiling again, recalling how the Messerschmidt 109 was firing and coming straight for his plane when he nailed it. "It blew up."

Among the mementos in his room at Elmcroft are pictures of him in his flight suit, the "Lucky Bastards Club" certificate he earned for surviving 34 risky combat missions, and the Air Medal he was awarded for shooting down that German fighter plane. Another photograph, this one taken of the back of his leather flight jacket, also marks that aerial victory with a small painted black cross, plus includes the name that his crew christened their B-17, "Tuff Teddie."

On a chest of drawers, meanwhile, there was also a model of a B-17. What does that mean to Shank?

"Memories," he said.

Following the war, by the way, he pursued a successful career in commercial construction, even becoming the building superintendent for construction of the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

A couple of years ago, Shank was one of a number of old B-17 crewmen given a final flight in one that was flown into Mount Comfort Airport. Seated near the cockpit, he couldn't quite climb to his old perch in the top turret, but he loved the flight anyway.

"He came off that airplane smiling from ear to ear," Mike said of his father.

So what, we asked Mike, does he think when he ponders the wartime exploits of the bald, angular old man sitting across from him?

"I think how lucky I am that he's not dead," Mike answered, "or buried overseas, or in the ocean."

Then he asked his father if, after returning from the war, anyone had called him a hero.

"No," Shank said, smiling again, as if it were a ridiculous notion.

Then it was Mike's turn to smile. "Just my hero, right?"

2012-02-20T14:15:00.000-05:00

World War II: 'Hitler had planned to set up headquarters in UK'

London: Adolf Hitler had plans to set up his headquarters in the English Midlands if the Nazi invasion of Britain had been successful during World War II, say historians.

According to them, Hitler had, in fact, chalked out the "top secret" plan to use Apley Hall, near Norton, in the heart of Shropshire countryside in the Midlands as the headquarters of his operation during the Second World War.

The house was then owned by one Major AW Foster, a decorated hero of both the Boer War and First World War, who had lost a leg in battle.

The historians believe the Nazi tyrant was interested in the area, seven miles from the tourist town of Bridgnorth, as it was geographically in the middle of England and had a handy airbase nearby, the Daily Mail reported.

Their conclusion came from a bundle of 1940s papers, recovered from a bunker in Belgium at the end of World War II, containing maps highlighting strategic sites for attack by the Germans, including railway stations, power plants and bridges in Bridgnorth and other towns in the Midlands.

"As far-fetched as it may sound, the papers, which were marked 'top secret', earmarked a place in the middle of nowhere where Hitler hoped to set up camp during his planned invasion.

"It was widely believed that Hitler's invasion was timed for 1940 but that he scrapped the idea after the Royal Air Force fended off the Luftwaffe over Kent. The fact that some of these documents date from 1941, a year after the Battle of Britain, clearly shows that Hitler never abandoned the plan.

"To go to so much trouble in researching Bridgnorth and the surrounding area indicated that the Nazis saw the town as of key importance for something," Richard Westwood-Brookes, one of the historians, said.

[That's quite a leap to go from "the Nazis saw the town as of key importance for something," to claiming that was where Hitler would set up his headquarters. --Ray]

2012-02-20T14:12:00.000-05:00

WWII: Then and Now: Ralph Lewton served throughout Europe

Italy is most vivid in the mind of Ralph Lewton of Perry Township when he remembers serving throughout North Africa and Europe during World War II.

“Our airfield was across the river from the Tower of Pisa,” recalled Lewton, who was an aircraft mechanic in the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1945. “Our barracks was right across the street from the tower. I climbed that tower.”

One other memory from a pair of military stops Lewton made in Italy are days in March of 1944.

“We saw Mount Vesuvius erupt. It started spitting and two days later it blew up.”

LEAVING FOR WAR

Lewton enlisted in January of 1942 after graduating from Lisbon High School. His Army Air Corps unit, the 526th Fighter-Bomber Squadron of the 86th Fighter-Bomber Group, was attached to the 12th Air Force in Africa and Italy and the 9th Air Force in Germany.

“We got our planes in North Africa,” he remembered.

Lewton and his fellow mechanics would keep those planes — the A-36 and the P-47 — flying and fighting through eight campaigns.

“They called the 86th Fighter-Bomber Group ‘The Invaders,’ ” Lewton said. “We were tactical support for the front lines.”

Lewton’s tour of duty was through Africa, into Sicily, over to Italy, to Corsica, back to Italy, on to France and finishing in Germany.

Hanging on the walls of Lewton’s home are photos of the planes he worked on between missions. Sitting nearby are models of those planes that he once put together.

“Some of them got pretty shot up,” he said, his gaze far away, as if focused on those former warplanes and not the models.

BACK HOME

“After the war was over we couldn’t get transportation back right away,” said Lewton. “I was in southern Germany, then France.”

Finally, Lewton flew from France to Boston, and was discharged in October of 1945.

Lewton got married in 1946 to Mary Karr. They have celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary. Together they raised two sons, Tim and Greg, and a daughter, Kim.

A carpenter after the war, Lewton worked for contractors for more than 40 years. He retired in 1986.

“I’ve got a bunch of shop tools and made some furniture,” he recalled of his early retirement years. “I’ve got stuff all over the house and the kids have got some stuff, and the grandkids have got some stuff,” he added with a smile. “I didn’t keep track of it.”

In the basement of his home, which he built himself, are framed displays of his military honors and papers that provide evidence of his service in the Air Corps during World War II.

“I remember it,” he said. “We traveled. I got to see a lot of things over there. And, I came back in one piece. That’s the main thing.”

2012-02-18T17:45:00.000-05:00

Going Deep: The Red Army in World War II

By Robert M. Citino

Published Online: February 16, 2012

Yesterday in my 20th Century Warfare course I was taking my students through the intricacies of "deep battle"—the Soviet warfighting doctrine that arose in the interwar period, came to fruition during wartime, and eventually helped inform U.S. doctrinal reform in the 1980s (the era that witnessed the rise of "AirLand Battle").

It's an important topic for students of the war. With all the attention we lavish on the Germans and the Americans in World War II classes, the Red Army rarely gets the credit it deserves. Oh sure, just about everyone now accepts the truth that the Soviets bore the brunt of defeating the Wehrmacht on land. The vast majority of the German army at any given time was deployed in the East, and that's where it suffered its most catastrophic defeats, just about one a year, in fact: at Moscow in 1941, Stalingrad (1942), Kursk (1943), and Byelorussia (Operation Bagration) in 1944. Still, there has been a tendency to belittle the fighting qualities of the Soviet army, to attribute its victories to size and mass and numbers alone, to portray it as a big beast with a single-digit IQ, or better yet, as a mindless steamroller that simply flattened everything in its path.

That is in incomplete portrait, however, and I'll go on record: these guys were good. Before 1939, the Soviet army had a reputation as one of the most forward-thinking and experimental military forces in the world. Guided by the fertile brain of Marshal M. N. Tukhachevsky, the Soviets devised a doctrine they called "deep battle": huge armored formations (styled "mechanized corps") crashing through very narrow portions of the enemy line, feeding in more men, tanks, and guns along the same axis in one irresistible wave after another (echelons, they were called), smashing hostile resistance and driving far into the depth of the enemy position. He also stressed the notion of "consecutive operations." Modern armies had grown so large and had such enduring recuperative powers that it had become impossible to destroy them in a single battle. You had to keep pounding them in repeated large-scale offensives, landing a series of non-stop blows on the enemy that would not let him reform his line or recover his equilibrium.

Like all good ideas, these two took a while to put into practice. Stalin's purges of the 1930s had a ruinous impact on many areas of Soviet society, but they hit the army especially hard. Tukhachevsky was arrested, accused of disloyalty, and shot. Most of the corps and divisional commanders were replaced, and this at a time when the Vozhd was ordering a vast military expansion as a reaction to the dark international situation. The army grew rapidly in this period, therefore, from 1.5 million men in 1937 to 5 million in 1941, but it didn't grow very good. New generals, a lot of poorly trained manpower, fear hanging over everyone like a shroud: it was a toxic combination for unit quality and cohesion.

And with the Tukh gone, so was deep battle. In its place was a cautious armored doctrine that parceled out small tank brigades as infantry support. It was the same sort of thing the French army was doing at the time—"shallow battle," we might call it, if we wanted to be sarcastic. Once deep battle got going, however, the Germans never really were able to develop an answer to it, and the Red Army's battle honors prove it.

If there is one caveat I would introduce at this point, it is to warn against turning deep battle into a fetish or a buzzword. Yes, it presented the Germans with a problem they could not solve. Something else it did, however, was to generate massive casualties, both enemy and friendly. Try running a second echelon against the same position you just assaulted with your first, and then your third echelon against a position you just assaulted with your second. If you didn't break through immediately, and you often didn't, you were essentially launching a series of frontal assaults against fully alerted defenders—rarely a good idea against anyone, and never a good idea against the Germans. When deep battle failed (Operation Mars, 1942), it could fail spectacularly. Even when it worked, however, it was expensive.

A last point: deep battle and consecutive operations made perfect sense for the biggest country in the world, one with a massive population, vast natural resources, and a strong stomach for casualties. In other words, Tukhachevsky had come up with a way of war that made perfect sense for the Soviet Union. Could other countries fight this way? Would they want to? The Germans lacked the materiel; the French lacked the space; the British couldn't afford the high casualties, and the United States saw no need to risk them. In that sense, deep battle is not some sort of recipe for victory. It is, instead, an example of a "military culture," one linked to a specific army's history, tradition, and geography.

More next time. But I'll say it again: these guys were good.

2012-02-18T17:42:00.000-05:00

Bloody liberation of Manila during WWII recalled

by Jeannette I. Andrade

Historian Ricardo Jose on Saturday called on his Filipinos to keep alive the lessons learned from the battle to liberate Manila 67 years ago, as he lamented that the generations that followed had taken for granted the 100,000 innocent lives lost as Allied forces mounted the offensive to free the country’s capital from Japanese occupation.

At Saturday’s commemoration of Manila’s liberation at the Plazuela de Sta. Isabel in Intramuros, Jose, director of the Memorare-Manila 1945 Foundation, said in closing remarks that generations who were born after World War II could never fully grasp the sense of loss, pain and suffering that those who lived during the war experienced.

“We never felt the fear during the Japanese occupation. We cannot conceive that our friends or relatives were so brutally and senselessly killed,” he said. “For this we can only be thankful that we were spared those moments of anguish.”

But, he noted, the survivors had not forgotten the grief caused by the carnage and devastation.

“There is too much we take for granted… As the years pass, so the survivors grow fewer… The lessons we learned from the battle of Manila must be kept alive, if only to remind us of the inhumanity that can beset man,” Jose said.

One such survivor is Justo Ortiz, 82, who said on Saturday that he believed that an important lesson from the war had not been absorbed because violence, injustice and poverty still prevailed worldwide.

He described the battle for Manila as “one of the devastating events of World War II” and “a horrendous human experience in our recorded history.”

Ortiz, who led the invocation in Saturday’s rites, said that when he was 15 years old, a garden fountain in Intramuros shielded and saved his family from the artillery bombardment of the walled city.

Seeking shelter

“In October 1944, Japanese soldiers took our house in Intramuros. We moved to Ermita. There is a street there called Gonzales, on which was the only house we could find. The next year in February, we moved to the Swiss house along General Luna Street in Ermita because bridges were being blown up (by the Japanese army) and our house was burned down,” he told the Inquirer.

His parents decided to again seek another shelter, to a garden fountain. The decision proved to be well-timed because none of the occupants of the Swiss house survived the battle.

“We had thought that the house would never be attacked because the Swiss were neutral in the war. But it was not spared. Had we stayed in that house, I would not be here. Not a single man was left alive.”

The Ortiz family, along with the Ruiz-Jimenez family, took refuge at the fountain from Feb. 4 to 13, 1945. He said that they piled up whatever mattresses, grills and other building materials they could scrounge from the ruins of Intramuros on top of the fountain to build a makeshift bomb shelter.

At the time, the walled city suffered a barrage of aerial bombardments and artillery fire as the liberation and Japanese forces clashed, reducing buildings to rubble.

He said that amid the bombs and gunfire, he and his family continuously prayed a novena to the Virgin of Peñafrancia. “I read up to ten novenas and the Americans came,” he said.

The five members of the Ortiz family were saved on Feb. 13 and escorted across Nagtahan Bridge to safety by American soldiers.

The battle for the liberation of Manila continued until March 3, 1945, killing 100,000 noncombatants, most of them victims of atrocities committed by angry and frustrated soldiers of the Japanese Imperial Army. The month-long struggle ended almost three years of Japanese military occupation in the country.

A monument, the “Memorare-Manila 1945,” has stood since 1995 at the center of Intramuros at Plazuela de Sta. Isabel at the corner of General Luna and Anda Streets as a testament to the martyrdom of the residents of the country’s capital.

At the center of the monument, rendered by sculptor Peter Guzman, is a hooded woman crying for a dead child she cradles in her arms. Six other anguished and tormented figures, innocent casualties of war, are immortalized on the monument.

The inscription penned by National Artist Nick Joaquin goes: “This memorial is dedicated to all those innocent victims of war, many of whom went nameless and unknown to a common grave, or never even knew a grave at all, their bodies having been consumed by fire or crushed to dust beneath the rubble of ruins.

“Let this monument be a gravestone for each and every one of the over 100,000 men, women, children and infants killed in Manila during its battle of liberation, Feb. 3 to March 3, 1945. We have never forgotten them. Nor shall we ever forget. May they rest in peace as part now of the sacred ground of this city: The Manila of our affection. February 18, 1995.”

2012-02-18T17:40:00.000-05:00

Pain and redemption of WWII interned Japanese-Americans

By Cordelia Hebblethwaite

Seventy years ago, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attacks, the US West Coast was cleared of Japanese-Americans. More than 110,000 people were put into internment camps, in what was the largest official forced relocation in US history. For many who lived through it, the story remains a painful one.

Now aged 87, Mary Matsuda Gruenewald cuts an elegant and strong figure. She speaks vividly and with almost photographic detail as she recalls the time she and her family spent in internment camps during World War II.

But it wasn't always so - it was only many years after she left the camp that she felt able to tell the story, even to her own children.

"I was afraid that if I started talking about it, I would cry.

"And I didn't want to cry in front of my children, so I kept it all in."

Mary was 16 years old at the time of the Pearl Harbor attacks, and had been living an idyllic life on Vashon, a small rural island just off the coast of Seattle.

"It was a prison… One would be foolish to try to escape,” Mary Matsuda Gruenewald

Looking Like The Enemy

Her parents ran a strawberry farm, and were regarded as upstanding members of the community - good, hard-working and church-going.

Mary and her brother Yoneichi were born in the US, and considered themselves both American and Japanese. So they were just as shocked as the rest of the nation when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, killing more than 2,400 Americans.

The nation was now at war and, because of their Japanese connections, they overnight came to be seen as the enemy.

"We were not white and so we stood out - there was no way for us to hide."

"The propaganda in the newspapers, on the radio, in the magazines, the caricatures - all this was overwhelming, and it just kept coming and coming," she recalls.

"We knew that something really bad would happen to us - we just weren't sure what it would be."

Leaving home

On 19 February 1942 - just over two months after Pearl Harbor - President Franklin D Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It allowed the military to designate "exclusion zones" and cleared the way for the removal into internment camps of more than 110,000 Japanese-Americans.

The government feared Japan's next move might be an attack on the US West Coast, and that the large community of Japanese-Americans living there might act as spies or collaborators.

"Everybody lost something and many people lost everything,” Prof Greg Robinson Author, A Tragedy of Democracy

The public was right behind the measures.

"There was very little dissent at the time," says Prof Greg Robinson, a historian at the University of Quebec at Montreal, and author of A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America, and By Order of the President.

"On the West Coast the political class was for it. In the rest of the country, people really didn't know or care - they just thought if the government was moving people, they knew what they were doing."

In May 1942 that order became a reality for Mary. Her family were given eight days to leave their homes.

"We didn't know how long we would be going for, or where we would be going," remembers Mary.

She packed enough socks and underwear for one week, together with one coat and one pair of shoes.

Each family had a number assigned to them and were given tags to wear.

After arrival in Seattle, Mary and her family were walked past a large crowd of the city's residents.

"A few men swore at us, and shook their fists, and some spat on us.

The Minidoka Internment Camp in Idaho, one of the camps that housed Mary

"But the majority were silent as they watched us walk from the ferry dock to the waiting train."

The windows on the train were obscured and no-one knew where they were headed.

After three days, the train stopped at Pinedale, near Fresno in California, and an Assembly Centre where Mary and her family spent the first two months before being moved to the Lake Tule camp, and then a further two camps over the years.

Life inside

The accommodation in the internment camps was basic - army barracks divided into a number of compartments.

Mary's family stayed in a bare room approximately 20ft x 24ft (6m x 7m) with one small window and a bare light-bulb. They were each given a woollen blanket and an army cot for a bed.

Like many of those who were interned, her family referred to their accommodation as their "apartment". It was however, she says, a euphemism.

"It was a prison indeed… There was barbed wire along the top [of the fence] and because the solders in the guard towers had machine guns, one would be foolish to try to escape.

"There were these big searchlights that rotated all night long and they would flash through our window."

There were schools in the camps, but - as with the living quarters - the facilities were basic.

Mary recalls how - in the absence of typewriters - typing classes involved tapping their fingers on an imaginary keyboard.

Many of the teachers were from inside the camps, but some came from the outside.

There were schools in the camps, but the facilities were basic

To the young students - confined, rejected and cut off from the wider world - they were a source of both curiosity and of comfort.

"We saw these teachers and we thought, 'Oh my goodness, this is a white person, in here, to teach us, why are they here?

"They were trying to act as a counterbalance to what the rest of the nation was doing, and we truly appreciated it," says Mary.

Freedom

One day they were given a questionnaire to fill in, asking whether they would be willing to serve in the US Army, and if they would pledge allegiance to the US and renounce loyalty to the Emperor of Japan.

"This is a country that was big enough to say, 'We were wrong, we're sorry'”

Mary Matsuda Gruenewald

Though they did not know it at the time, those who answered yes to both questions - as Mary's family did - would be classified as "loyals" and would be allowed to leave.

The young men, such as Mary's brother, were drafted into the US Army.

"As my brother got on the bus, drove through the gate and left, my mother and I wept, and wondered when it would be our turn to leave."

Her turn came soon afterwards, in August 1944, when she was sent to Chicago as part of the US Cadet Nurse Corps. She relished her new-found freedom and embraced it wholeheartedly.

"It was incredible - the sense that I could walk anywhere I wanted to, and enjoy the flowers, the grass, the trees and hear the birds - it was like being in heaven."

Two older nurses took her under their wing, treated her as an equal.

"I learnt a lot about what it means to feel despised, to be hated, to feel ashamed of who I was [during the internment].

Mary and brother Yoneichi returned in army uniforms to visit their parents in their Idaho camp

"So to be treated as a responsible, respectful person, I can't tell you the relief and the awe that I felt."

Just over a year later, in September 1945, her parents left the internment camp too.

But, for many, the life they returned to was very different to the one they left behind.

"The best estimate that I have heard is that 75% of people [who] moved, ended up losing their land," says Prof Robinson.

"Everybody lost something and many people lost everything."

For years, many Japanese-Americans stayed silent about what had happened.

"The shame that came from this whole period permeated our people, and nobody talked about it," says Mary.

In the 1980s, the US government issued a report stating that the internment had been "unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity".

President Ronald Reagan took steps to try to redress what had happened, which culminated in 1992 with an apology from President George HW Bush and $20,000 (£12,600) paid out to each surviving member of the camps.

Mary treasures the letter of apology she received from President Bush and only regrets that her parents and her brother died before it came.

"I took that as evidence that - in spite of the things the government did - this is a country that was big enough to say, 'We were wrong, we're sorry.'"

2012-02-18T17:37:00.000-05:00

WWII vet recounts sinking of Indianapolis

by Tom Greenwood

Detroit — More than 65 years later, John Heller still remembers the tremendous explosion that shook him from a sound sleep.

He remembers the screams of his mates as their ship churned away in the dark — listing, lurching and covered with flames.

What he can't recall is how he survived five days drifting in the Pacific Ocean as sharks, thirst and delirium killed his shipmates from the USS Indianapolis in the waning days of World War II.

"I guess I was just lucky," Heller, 84, said Friday to about 40 people at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center in Detroit. His remarks were part of National Salute to Veterans Week.

Heller — who lives in Clawson — was 17 when he convinced his mother to let him join the Navy in January 1945. After abbreviated training, he was one of 1,197 sailors and Marines assigned to the Indianapolis in San Francisco.

Heller recalls two garage-size boxes being loaded onto the ship, where they were guarded by heavily armed Marines.

"There was another container, about four times the size of a cigar box, which was welded to the floor of the captain's cabin," Heller said. "We had no idea what they were but realized it was some sort of a big deal."

It turned out to be a very big deal: The Indianapolis was carrying the components for the atomic bombs that would later be dropped on Japan.

After delivering the cargo to the island of Tinian, the Indianapolis sailed for the Philippines. But shortly after midnight on July 30, a Japanese submarine fired two torpedoes into the ship; it sank in less than 15 minutes.

At least 300 men went down with her, and the remaining 880 went into the water. When they were rescued five days later, their numbers were down to 317.

When the torpedoes hit, Heller recalled, "I was sleeping on deck near the guns and the deck got so hot that I burned my feet.

"I grabbed a life vest and ended up in the water as the ship began to list. We watched as she drifted away, listing heavily to one side. Then she went straight up and then straight down."

No one noticed the Indianapolis failed to arrive on station at Leyte Gulf.

Days later, a Navy plane hunting for submarines followed the ship's oil slick and found men scattered over 200 square miles of ocean.

Heller was with about 60 survivors when they went into the water. Only 18 were alive when they were rescued five days later.

Heller spent three months recovering on Okinawa.

Today, just 41 survivors of the Indianapolis are still alive, Heller said. They meet in Indianapolis every two years for a reunion.

His story, along with those of other survivors, is featured in the book "U.S.S. Indianapolis (CA-35): Only 317 Survived."

Among those in the audience was Army veteran Martin Levine, chairman of the membership committee of the Jewish War Veterans, Department of Michigan.

"I'm here to pay my respects," Levine said. "Tom Brokaw was right: These guys are 'The Greatest Generation,'" Levine said. "They really did save the world."

2012-02-17T15:23:00.000-05:00

World War II: February 17, 1942

Robert Stephens in the New York Post:

'PEACE' CHOIR CHANGES TUNE: Before the Nazis invaded Russia, a small mixed chorus called the Almanac Singers was using its talents to criticize conscription — already enacted by Congress. One of its songs had as its theme the vicious isolationist catchphrase, "Plow under every fourth American boy." Another referred to the Selective Service Act as "that goddamned bill." Last Saturday at the premiere of the government's morale broadcast, "This Is War", the Almanac Singers, now all-out for democracy and conscription, sang a number called "Round and Round Hitler's Grave."

Norman Corwin, director of "This Is War", chose them for his show after hearing them sing some innocuous songs six weeks ago on "We The People", A representative of Corwin said today that Corwin was entirely unaware of the singers' background….

Remember when the AAA
Killed a million hogs a day?
Instead of hogs, it's men today -
Plow the fourth one under!
Plow under, plow under,
Plow under every fourth American boy!…

A boy's no better than a cotton plant;
But we are here to say you can't
Plow the fourth one under!

These recordings were made by the Almanac Singers, who have now radically changed their tune.

The record album entitled "Songs for John Doe" was withdrawn and is no longer purchasable.

: http://www.peteseeger.net/nypost02171942.htm

2012-02-17T15:22:00.000-05:00

Connect Asia:Story:Darwin commemorates anniversary of WWII bombing

Updated February 17, 2012 15:29:30

There are still two days before the 70-year anniversary of the bombing of Darwin but a series of commemorative events has already begun.

This year the anniversary is being commemorated for the first time as a national day of observance.

The attack on Darwin was the start of a bombing campaign by the Japanese across Australia's north which lasted almost two years and killed hundreds of Australians and allies.

The Northern Territory Government is hoping that Darwin's war history will be better understood by more Australians and it expects more tourists will visit the city to learn about it.

Presenter: Sara Everingham
Speakers: Darryl Mullan, historical guide; Eric Thompson, navy veteran; Paul Henderson, Northern Territory Chief Minister;

Listen:
Windows Media

DARRYL MULLAN: G'day folks.

SARA EVERINGHAM: At Darwin's waterfront there's a steady flow of tourists visiting one of the many World War II sites around the city.

DARRYL MULLAN: Good afternoon folks. My name is Darryl. Welcome to the World War II underground oil storage tunnels.

SARA EVERINGHAM: Guide Darryl Mullan says there's been a growing interest in his tours in the lead-up to the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin.

DARRYL MULLAN: We've had a lot of interstate visitors and quite a few of them are up here for the 70th anniversary.

SARA EVERINGHAM: Veterans have also begun returning to Darwin to remember the battle to save the town.

About 100 people turned out last night to hear the story firsthand from navy veteran 98 year old Lieutenant Commander Eric Thompson.

ERIC THOMPSON: The sky was just full of screaming aircraft. Ships were blowing up. Bombs were coming down. It was noise, the main thing that struck me was noise.

I didn't feel any strangeness about it because I had been at war for two and a half years before that. I had so much to do, I had so much to think about that really it was just part of my job.

SARA EVERINGHAM: On the 19th of February 1942 Australia's mainland came under attack for the first time when Japanese forces mounted two air raids on the city.

About 250 people were killed. Hundreds more were injured. Around half the population of Darwin evacuated to the south.

It was the start of a bombing campaign in Northern Australia that lasted almost two years.

ERIC THOMPSON: We've got to let the rest of the people of Australia know what a devastating raid it was on Darwin because there are so few people down south who knew anything about it because it wasn't publicised of course.

But the lack of knowledge of the raid is quite extraordinary and my grandchildren, the children here, the grandchildren are quite grown up and they didn't know anything about it.

SARA EVERINGHAM: But after years of lobbying from the Northern Territory the bombing of Darwin is now being given more recognition and will this year be commemorated as a national day of observance.

The Northern Territory Chief Minister Paul Henderson says a new $10 million museum will also help tell the story of when World War II came to Australia's shores.

PAUL HENDERSON: As the chief minister I was very keen to see that we had a world class exhibit here, something that is going to tell the story to Territorians, to Australians, to people from around the world.

SARA EVERINGHAM: Do you hope to see more tourists coming to Darwin to learn about this history?

PAUL HENDERSON: I believe that there will be many thousands of Australian kids in years to come as well as all tourists. This will be a must-see destination on anybody's trip to Darwin.

SARA EVERINGHAM: A thousand people will gather in Darwin today for a tribute to the survivors of the bombing and their families.

2012-02-17T15:21:00.000-05:00

Nazis 'planted spy in MI5 during World War II'

London: German dictator Adolf Hitler managed to plant a Nazi agent in British spy agency MI5 during the initial years of the Second World War, but failed to utilise him, de-classified documents have revealed.

According to the documents, Dutchman Folkert Arie van Koutrik was the first German agent ever to infiltrate MI5 when he was employed by them in 1940.

Koutrik had already worked for Abwehr, the German secret service, before the war, as a double agent with MI6 in Europe and exposed some of the UK's top agents. But, incredibly after he moved to the UK and joined MI5, all contact appears to have broken off, 'The Daily Telegraph' reported.

He was sacked by the British spy agency in 1941 for having an "abrasive personality" but continued working for MI6 for another year and later for the Dutch intelligence based in London, according to the MI5 files released by The National Archives.

However, his pre-war treachery was only revealed after the conflict and during interrogation of German spies.

Under the code name Walbach, Koutrik worked in Holland in the 1930s and gave up two of MI5 and MI6's top German agents in the late 1930s and arranged for the kidnapping of two MI6 officers by the Gestapo in 1939, according to the documents.

After he "fled" the German advance and moved to the UK in 1940 he told MI6 that "I am proud to say that for my part not a piece of paper which could lead to the arrest by Germans of our agents was left in my house", according to the documents.

MI5 took him on but his "antagonistic" attitude to other officials led to his dismissal a year later, although his true identity still did not come to light. It is unclear what happened to Koutrik, but by 1948, it appears he had not been charged with anything due to lack of evidence.

2012-02-17T15:20:00.001-05:00

Australia's first WWII guerillas honoured

FOR almost three months, Australia's first guerilla force against the Japanese was believed to have been captured or killed in East Timor during World War II.

But for more than year, members of the 2/2nd Independent Company and their Timorese allies harassed and diverted more than 10,000 Japanese troops.

The 270-strong commando company - mostly West Australians - was honoured during the opening of an exhibition in Perth.

The WA Museum exhibit "Debt of Honour: Australia's First Commandos and East Timor" coincides with the 70th anniversary of the jungle campaign that resulted in an estimated 1000 Japanese casualties for the loss of just eight Australians.

The 2/2nd was originally sent to East Timor on December 17, 1941, as part of Sparrow Force, along with the 2/40th Battalion and a small artillery force.

The main battle group was quickly overrun by the advancing Japanese in February 1942 and the the remaining members of the 2/2nd retreated into the mountains to wage guerilla war.

For almost three months the 2/2nd was listed as missing in action, as it was thought they had been captured or killed along with the 2/40th.

But on April 19, 1942, members of the unit were able to make contact with Darwin using a wireless transmitter cobbled together from spare parts.

For the next eight months, the commandos waged a hit-and-run campaign against the Japanese with the help of young Timorese known as "criados", some of whom joined the fighting.

The 2/2nd was later withdrawn from Timor, but went on to serve in New Guinea and New Britain.

The unit was distinguished by having more enemy contact against the Japanese than any other Allied unit during the war.

WA Arts and Culture Minister John Day said the exhibition of military artifacts, rare photos and video footage showed the extraordinary efforts of the 2/2nd and the enduring friendship between the Australian soldiers, their families and the people of East Timor.

"Lacking supplies, the soldiers relied on support from the people of East Timor who risked their lives to help the Australians, providing food, shelter and information," Mr Day said.

"One soldier said if it wasn't for this assistance, the 2/2nd would not have lasted a week against the more numerous Japanese forces.

"The relationship between the soldiers and the local youths was one of enduring mateship and respect, and the soldiers of the 2/2nd felt they owed their lives to the people of East Timor and many dedicated their postwar years to repaying this 'debt of honour'."

The exhibition will run until May 20.

2012-02-17T15:20:00.000-05:00

Portugal plays each side against the other in World War II

By Randy Dotinga / February 17, 2012

'For small countries involved in global conflicts, it appears that there are possibilities to play both sides off against each other in order to maximum both political gains and money,' writer Neill Lochery says of Portugal's role in World War II.

If you wanted out of Europe during World War II, all signs pointed to Portugal. The same was true if you were a spy and wanted in.

Neutral and seemingly weak, the little country on the Iberian Peninsula managed to play the world powers off each other and avoid invasion. Meanwhile, desperate refugees crowded the streets of Lisbon while a dictator fought to survive and boost his country's wealth.

Neill Lochery, a historian best known for work analyzing the Middle East, chronicles the struggles and success of Portugal in his new book Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945.

In an interview this week, Lochery explored a dictator's dilemmas, a diplomat's bravery, and a legacy that could include tons of Nazi gold.

Q: Lisbon sounds like a combination of both Casablanca (the movie version, at least) and Switzerland. Is that a valid comparison?

A: To me, Lisbon was the real Casablanca, the only city where the allies and axis powers openly operated in Europe. It had all the diamond traders, the refugees, people with letters of transit, people trying to get letters of transit to get to America.

The British operations manager said it really resembled Casablanca twenty-fold. That was the atmosphere of Lisbon. But your point about Switzerland is well taken. One of the key questions was neutrality, and the success of maintaining neutrality was a great challenge for the Portuguese.

Q: What made Lisbon useful to people trying to get out of Europe?

A: Once France fell in summer of 1940, and specifically Paris fell, refugees started streaming to the south of France. As Germany consolidated its control, they moved into Spain and Portugal to try to get out of Europe to get to America or somewhere else in the free world.

Many of these refugees were Jewish, and they were desperate to escape the horrors of the Nazis. As Arthur Koestler said [in a 1941 book], "Lisbon was the bottleneck of Europe." It was the last chance to get out.

[Koestler, a journalist, added that Lisbon was "the last open gate of a concentration camp extending over the greater part of the Continent's surface."]

Q: How easy was it to get out of Lisbon to a place like America?

A: It was very difficult. The leader of Portugal, António de Oliveira Salazar, saw the refugees as a hugely complicating factor. He's trying to maintain Portugal’s neutrality, and feared a German invasion of Portugal. The Portuguese also feared a proxy invasion by Spain, particularly during 1940 and 1941.

He had to juggle a lot of balls in the air. There was a hugely important complicating factor in the question of tungsten, a rare ore that’s mined in the northeast of Portugal and is absolutely vital to arms industries. Without tungsten, it's impossible to produce weapons. So you can see where this is going.

This was the key issue between the allies, the Germans and the Portuguese in the war: Would Portugal supply the Germans with tungsten? Salazar refused to stop selling to Germany.

Q: You write about Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France, who turned out to be a Schindler-like character who saved lives at risk to himself. What's his story?

A: Against the wishes of Salazar, he granted visas in May and June 1940 to a number of people specifically of Jewish origin to travel though Portugal. This in effect helped create the refugee crisis in Portugal, but also got a lot of Jews out of France.

We hear numbers talking about 30,000 people, but I think we're talking about a couple thousand.

Salazar was furious at him for doing this, and it caused an enormous amount of trouble for Portugal. He was recalled back to Lisbon, he was essentially put on trial and disciplined. Salazar basically killed his career.

Now, he's regarded as a hero.

Q: Do you think he's a hero?

A: I don’t think any major single character in the book is completely a hero or completely a villain. Just when you’re about to paint someone as an evil character, you see something that intrigues you and you think, well…

Q: Salazar, the Portuguese leader, comes across as an unusual sort of character -- a savvy dictator. What do you make of him?

A: He had a good war. He made an enormous amount of money for Portugal through the selling of tungsten.

He demanded the Germans pay in gold. It became very clear very quickly that the Germans were not using their own gold, that it had been stolen from central banks of Holland, Belgium and France and, from 1943, that Germans were using gold stolen from victims of the Holocaust.

There were 400 tons of gold, worth around $20 billion-plus in today's dollars.

But just when you're about to paint him as an evil dictator, the fact is that he never spent the gold, and he was in power until 1968.

Q: Why do you think Salazar didn't spend the money on his people?

A: My guess is that part of his philosophy is that you don’t spend more than you earn. It's better to be poor but not in debt, which is kind of ironic considering what’s going on today.

Q: Portugal is hardly a wealthy country, then or now. Where did the gold go?

A: Efforts to trace the gold have been met with silence. Most of it, I think, was laundered out.

But… the Catholic church here in Portugal has a big shrine in Fatima. Every year pilgrims come there. The Catholics wanted to upgrade the shrine, and they sent all these trinkets and gold bits to the Bank of Portugal to have them melted down. What came back were gold bars that still had swastikas on them.

Q: You're talking about Portugal's debt crisis. If the money is still around, could it play a role in that mess?

A: If Lisbon has $20 billion worth of gold, then it puts a different spin on when you look at events that are currently going on.

Portugal received a bailout last year, and just before it received it, a senior member of a coalition in Germany made a suggestion that maybe Portugal should sell the family silverware before it asks for money. As far as I know, that was met by stony silence, a quite eerie stony silence.

Clearly, the Germans believe that Portugal should spend some of this gold. That has interesting dynamics -- a German asking the Portuguese to sell their gold.

Q: What was the legacy of Portugal's role in the war?

A: I'm sitting you here talking to you in Lisbon, the center of Portugal, which wasn't bombed, even though the Luftwaffe was a couple hundred miles away in Bordeaux. It's quite unusual to have a major European capital that wasn't bombed in the war.

Salazar managed to avoid a Spanish invasion and made money out of the war for Portugal. He also granted both the British and Americans access to the Azores, islands that were vitally important to both the British and Americans in terms of U-boat warfare.

Salazar and Portugal basically played a very complicated game, and played it very well. Whether it's morally right or wrong, this was an opportunity for the Portuguese.

For small countries involved in global conflicts, it appears that there are possibilities to play both sides off against each other in order to maximum both political gains and money.