Good Saturday Afternoon
I hope that your weekend is starting well
.Regards.
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Today in Naval History
August 8
1860 Screw frigate USS San Jacinto, commanded by Capt. William M. Armstrong, captures the American slaver Storm King with 619 slaves on board, off the Congo River. A prize crew from the steam frigate sailed the captured slaver to Monrovia and turned 616 freed Negroes over to the United States agent there before proceeding to Norfolk with the prize.
1861 During the Civil War, the frigate USS Santee commanded by Capt. Eagle captured the schooner C.P. Knapp in the Gulf of Mexico.
1863 During the Civil War, the screw steam gunboat, USS Sagamore, commanded by Lt. Cmdr. English, seizes British sloop, HMS Clara Louisa, off Indian River, Fla. Later the same day, Lt. Cmdr. English captures British schooners, HMS Southern Rights and HMS Shot, and Confederate schooner, CSS Ann, off Gilberts Bar.
1924 USS Shenandoah (ZR 1) secures herself to the mooring mast on USS Patoka (AO 9), making the first use of the mooring mast erected on shipboard to facilitate airship operations with the fleet.
1933 Commander, Aircraft Battle Force, requests the authority to use variable-pitch propellers during forthcoming exercises on six Boeing F4B-4s of VF 3 based on board USS Langley (CV 1) and on one (F4B 4) of (VF 1) on board USS Saratoga (CV 3).
1942 USS Narwhal (SS 167) sinks Japanese crab boat, Bifuku Maru, southeast of Sharia Saki while USS S-38 (SS 143) sinks Japanese transport, Meiyo Maru, at the southern entrance of St. George Channel, between New Britain and New Ireland. Also on this date, USS Silversides (SS 236) attacks a Japanese convoy emerging from Kobe Harbor and sinks freighter Nikkei Maru in Kii Strait.
1987 USS Fort McHenry (LSD 43) is commissioned at Lockheed Shipyard, Seattle, Wash. The Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship is named for Fort McHenry in Baltimore, Md., the fort for which its 1814 defense inspired Francis Scott Key to write the lyrics for the Star Spangled Banner.
Thanks to CHINFO
No CHINFO on the weekend
Today in History August 8
1306 | King Wenceslas of Poland is murdered. | |
1570 | Charles IX of France signs the Treaty of St. Germain, ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots. | |
1636 | The invading armies of Spain, Austria and Bavaria are stopped at the village of St.-Jean-de-Losne, only 50 miles from France. | |
1648 | Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, is thrown into prison, then assassinated. | |
1786 | Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard become the first men to climb Mont Blanc in France. | |
1844 | Brigham Young is chosen to head the Mormon Church, succeeding Joseph Smith. | |
1863 | Confederate President Jefferson Davis refuses General Robert E. Lee's resignation. | |
1876 | Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph. | |
1899 | The first household refrigerating machine is patented. | |
1925 | The first national congress of the Ku Klux Klan opens. | |
1937 | The Japanese Army occupies Beijing. | |
1940 | The German Luftwaffe attacks Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain. | |
1942 | U.S. Marines capture the Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal. | |
1944 | U.S. forces complete the capture of the Marianas Islands. | |
1945 | ||
1950 | U.S. troops repel the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the Battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days. | |
1963 | England's "Great Train Robbery;" 2.6 million pounds ($7.3 million) is stolen | |
1974 | President Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal. | |
1978 | Pioneer-Venus 2 is launched to probe the atmosphere of Venus. | |
1979 | Iraq's president Saddam Hussein executes 22 political opponents. | |
1983 | Brigadier General Efrain Rios Montt is deposed as president of Guatemala in the country's second military coup in 17 months. | |
1988 | Angola, Cuba and South Africa sign a cease-fire treaty in the border war that began in 1966. | |
1989 | NASA Space Shuttle Columbia begins its eighth flight, NASA's 30th shuttle mission. | |
1990 | Iraq annexes the state of Kuwait as its 19th province, six days after Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait. | |
2000 | The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to surface, 136 years after it sank following its successful attack on USS Housatonic in the outer harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. | |
2007 | An EF2 tornado hits Brooklyn, New York, the first in that borough since 1889. | |
2008 | Georgia invades South Ossetia, touching off a five-day war between Georgia and Russia. |
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From John Junek's son on his passing
Yes Sir, my Dad passed away yesterday evening at 75, after a brilliantly successful career in service to our Nation, followed by the kind of retirement most men only dream about.
He had cancer for the past four years but it only seemed to get bad this summer. It got worse rapidly over the past month or so. Towards the end it progressed really quickly. He was married to the love of his life and she took outstanding care of him for 48 years, all the way up to the end. Both of his children, and his grand children live within half mile of his home and we all visited him daily. He had built up an amazing estate for his family on the shores of the Potomac River, which he enjoyed mowing and patrolling regularly. The John Deere Corporation will surely miss him. On his last day he had a little ice cream, gave his dog a treat and took a nap. He died in his big beautiful home on his idyllic waterfront farm with his wife and kids and dog by his side. If you've got to go, that's the way to go!
So now the Ruskies can breathe a little sigh of relief as the world famous J Squared and his mighty AUG-9 no longer sweep the skies for communists. But his name still remains on the Tomcat at the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum in honor of the flight test work he did in the very early days of that program. The Thanh Hoa bridge still bears the scars of his passing. There are still USAF O'clubs that he and his squadron mates are not allowed to return to. There are hundreds sailors who had the honor of serving with him and under his command, as CO of the Black Lions (VF-213) and CO of the USS Roanoke (AOR-7), that will never forget his leadership. To some of them, he will be remembered as the Skipper who brought his own machineguns aboard the ship. The Pentagon will never be the same, in ways that only those who have had the 'pleasure' of working there might understand. I hear that there were two corvettes and a Pontiac GTO that will never be the same after he owned them, and neither will the streets of Miramar, California. I can confirm that all manner of fish and fowl in our area are still keenly aware of the first day of the season because of him. In fact, I think there's still a game warden or two out there trying to catch him for who knows what manner of perceived offense. He has been an outstanding father, husband, marksman, hunter, fisherman, sailor, Naval Officer, aviator, navigator and role model. If anyone has any sea stories about my Dad, please pass them my way, I'd love to hear them and add to the collection.
V/R,
LCDR John "Spoon" Junek, USN
You can send reply's to John above or me at sleonard001@san.rr.com and I will pass them on
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Thanks to Chuck
Truly an amazing piece of history!
Subject: From a FB post of a friend
Wow!.
· April 25 ·
In May of 1861, 9-year-old John Lincoln "Johnny" Clem ran away from his home in Newark, Ohio, to join the Union Army, but found the Army was not interested in signing on a 9-year-old boy when the commander of the 3rd Ohio Regiment told him he "wasn't enlisting infants," and turned him down. Clem tried the 22nd Michigan Regiment next, and its commander told him the same. Determined, Clem tagged after the regiment, acted out the role of a drummer boy, and was allowed to remain. Though still not regularly enrolled, he performed camp duties and received a soldier's pay of $13 a month, a sum collected and donated by the regiment's officers.
The next April, at Shiloh, Clem's drum was smashed by an artillery round and he became a minor news item as "Johnny Shiloh, The Smallest Drummer". A year later, at the Battle Of Chickamauga, he rode an artillery caisson to the front and wielded a musket trimmed to his size. In one of the Union retreats a Confederate officer ran after the cannon Clem rode with, and yelled, "Surrender you damned little Yankee!" Johnny shot him dead. This pluck won for Clem national attention and the name "Drummer Boy of Chickamauga."
Clem stayed with the Army through the war, served as a courier, and was wounded twice. Between Shiloh and Chickamauga he was regularly enrolled in the service, began receiving his own pay, and was soon-after promoted to the rank of Sergeant. He was only 12 years old. After the Civil War he tried to enter West Point but was turned down because of his slim education. A personal appeal to President Ulysses S. Grant, his commanding general at Shiloh, won him a 2nd Lieutenant's appointment in the Regular Army on 18 December 1871, and in 1903 he attained the rank of Colonel and served as Assistant Quartermaster General. He retired from the Army as a Major General in 1916, having served an astounding 55 years.
General Clem died in San Antonio, Texas on 13 May 1937, exactly 3 months shy of his 86th birthday, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
*Reposted from ACV.
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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for August 8, 2020 FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY
8 August
1903: The Langley gasoline engine model plane was successfully launched from a catapult on a houseboat; however, the flight did not last very long and the vehicle was uncontrollable. For this reason, the Wrights received credit for the first sustained, controllable flight. (24)
1908: At Camp d'Auvours, France, Orville Wright broke French records for duration, distance, and altitude. (8)
1910: A civilian mechanic, Oliver G. Simmons, and Cpl Glen Madole built and installed the first tricycle landing gear on the Army Wright plane. (4) (24)
1913: Lt Harold Geiger (US Army) flew a military airplane for the first time in Hawaii at the Fort Kamehameha Aviation School. He flew a Curtiss E two-seater, Signal Corps No. 8, over Pearl Harbor. (21)
1933: The Navy accepted the variable-pitch propeller. (24)
1945: At NACA's Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory, scientists published an article suggesting that it may possible to fly an aircraft with an atomic engine and brick-sized fuel source around the world nonstop several times. (8: Aug 90)
1946: The Convair XB-36 Peacemaker first flew at Fort Worth. (24)
1947: A. L. Berger of Wright Field received the Thurman H. Bane Award for 1947 for work in developing new types of high temperature ceramic coatings for use in aircraft engines. (24)
1950: KOREAN WAR. Advancing N. Korean forces caused the 18 FBG to evacuate Taegu to Ashiya. The 307 BG, newly based in Okinawa, flew its first mission. (28)
1952: KOREAN WAR. Fifth Air Force fighters flew 285 close air support sorties, the highest daily total for the month. At night B-26s flew three voice broadcast sorties totaling almost four hours over enemy-held positions near the east coast. (28)
1955: Over Edwards AFB, the X-1A rocket research plane exploded on its B-29 carrier and was jettisoned to destruction. NACA pilot Joe Walker escaped safely. (3) (8: Aug 90)
1961: The USAF launched the Atlas F from Cape Canaveral for the first time. It was designed to store liquid fuels for a long time and for a short countdown. It was the only Atlas model put in hardened underground silo lift-launchers. (6) (24) Operation SWIFT STRIKE. This joint USAF-Army exercise at Fort Bragg began when USAF airplanes dropped 7,500 paratroops of the 82d Airborne Division into the area. (16)
1962: In tests to reveal the relationship of speed, altitude, and angle of attack to aerodynamic heating of an aircraft's exterior surfaces, the X-15 No. 2 reached nearly 900° F while flying at about 90,000 feet and about 2,900 MPH. Major Robert A. Rushworth flew the aircraft. (24)
1967: McGuire AFB received the last C-141 Starlifter, the "Garden State Starlifter," to be delivered to a MAC base from Lockheed. (18)
1969: The C-131A Samaritan flew its last domestic aeromedical evacuation mission. Samaritans flew nearly 437,000 accident-free flying hours to airlift some 400,000 patients during their 14-year history in domestic service. (18)
1972: An over-the-horizon radar system radar system, capable of detecting missiles as they penetrate the ionosphere, came under the operational command of ADC. This system had sites in both the Pacific and European areas.
1975: Five AFRES and ANG C-130s flew 104 sorties through 15 August to drop 1,400 tons of fire retardant on fires in southern California. (21)
1984: The first USAFE C-23 Sherpas entered USAF service in the European Distribution System. (16)
1990: Operation DESERT SHIELD. The first USAF transport, a C-141, arrived in Dhahran. The aircraft had a reserve aircrew. (16) (26)
1998: Boeing-Rocketdyne and Air Force Research Laboratory personnel conducted the first successful test burn of the RS-68 rocket engine at Edwards AFB. It was the first new large liquid-fuel rocket motor developed in the US in 25 years. (3)
2007: Air Force officials in Washington DC signed a production contract with Lockheed Martin to add 60 F-22 Raptors to the Air Force inventory by December 2011. The multiyear contract for the fifth-generation fighters saved the Air Force $411 million as compared to a traditional annual procurement program of three separate, single-year contracts for 20 aircraft. (AFNEWS, "Air Force Signs Multiyear Contract for F-22," 8 Aug 2007.) Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne certified the synthetic Fischer-Tropsch fuel blend for the B-52H Stratofortress in a ceremony at Edwards AFB, Calif. (AFNEWS, "SECAF Certifies Synthetic Fuel Blends for B-52H," 8 Aug 2007.) Elmendorf AFB, Alaska, welcomed its first F-22 Raptor. Its arrival made Elmendorf the second operational base in the Air Force and the first base in Pacific Air Forces to receive the new air superiority fighter. At Elmendorf, the F-22s joined the 3rd Wing and the Air Force Reserve Command's 477th Fighter Group. The 477th Fighter Group became the first Air Force Reserve unit to operate and maintain the F-22. (AFNEWS, "Elmendorf Welcomes F-22 Raptor," 8 Aug 2007.) .
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Thanks to Carl…..WOW
A buddy in Louisville just called on his 76th birthday and this is his present to himself!! This red color too! Over $400K! He already has an Audi R8 and a Mercedes AMG GT, both under lease!! Now I have to go visit him!!
https://www.ferrari.com/en-US/auto/812-superfast
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This Day in U S Military History
1942 – The invasion of Guadalcanal continues as the remainder of the first wave of American troops come ashore. Advancing rapidly inland, they capture the Japanese airstrip intact, renaming it Henderson Field. The missions on Tulagi and Gavutu are completed and the islands captured. Due to Japanese air and submarine attacks, Admiral Fletcher decides to withdraw his carriers, leaving the cruisers and transports near the island. .
1942 – During World War II, six German saboteurs who secretly entered the United States on a mission to attack its civil infrastructure are executed by the United States for spying. Two other saboteurs who disclosed the plot to the FBI and aided U.S. authorities in their manhunt for their collaborators were imprisoned. In 1942, under Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's orders, the defense branch of the German Military Intelligence Corps initiated a program to infiltrate the United States and destroy industrial plants, bridges, railroads, waterworks, and Jewish-owned department stores. The Nazis hoped that sabotage teams would be able to slip into America at the rate of one or two every six weeks. The first two teams, made up of eight Germans who had all lived in the United States before the war, departed the German submarine base at Lorient, France, in late May. Just before midnight on June 12, in a heavy fog, a German submarine reached the American coast off Amagansett, Long Island, and deployed a team who rowed ashore in an inflatable boat. Just as the Germans finished burying their explosives in the sand, John C. Cullen, a young U.S. Coast Guardsman, came upon them during his regular patrol of the beach. The leader of the team, George Dasch, bribed the suspicious Cullen, and he accepted the money, promising to keep quiet. However, as soon as he passed safely back into the fog, he sprinted the two miles back to the Coast Guard station and informed his superiors of his discovery. After retrieving the German supplies from the beach, the Coast Guard called the FBI, which launched a massive manhunt for the saboteurs, who had fled to New York City. Although unaware that the FBI was looking for them, Dasch and another saboteur, Ernest Burger, decided to turn themselves in and betray their colleagues, perhaps because they feared capture was inevitable after the botched landing. On July 15, Dasch called the FBI in New York, but they failed to take his claims seriously, so he decided to travel to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. On July 18, the same day that a second four-man team successfully landed at Ponte Verdra Beach, Florida, Dasch turned himself in. He agreed to help the FBI capture the rest of the saboteurs. Burger and the rest of the Long Island team were picked up by June 22, and by June 27 the whole of the Florida team was arrested. To preserve wartime secrecy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a special military tribunal consisting of seven generals to try the saboteurs. At the end of July, Dasch was sentenced to 30 years in prison, Burger was sentenced to hard labor for life, and the other six Germans were sentenced to die. The six condemned saboteurs were executed by electric chair in Washington, D.C., on August 8. In 1944, two other German spies were caught after a landing in Maine. No other instances of German sabotage within wartime America has come to light. In 1948, Dasch and Burger were freed by order of President Harry Truman, and they both returned to Germany.
1945 – The Soviet Union declares itself to be at war with Japan as of midnight (August 9th), citing the Japanese failure to respond to the Potsdam Declaration. Commissar Molotov says that the USSR has declared war because Japan is the only great power preventing peace. He indicates that it was in the interests of shortening the war and bring peace to the world that the Soviet Union has agreed to the Allied request made at Potsdam to join the war. Furthermore, Molotov states that the Soviets had been asked to mediate by Japan, but that proposal had lost all basis when Japan refused to surrender unconditionally.
1945 – The Japanese Supreme War Council agrees, late that night, that they should accept the Potsdam Declaration if the monarchy is preserved. Some of the objections from the military are overruled by the Emperor himself.
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
GROBERG, FLORENT A.
Rank and Organization: Captain, U.S. Army, Company: 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, Division: 4th Infantry Division, Born: 8 May 1983, Poissy, France, Departed: No, Entered Service At: Bethesda, Maryland July, 2008, G.O. Number: , Date of Issue: 11/12/2015, Accredited To: , Place and Date: Asadabad, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 8 August 2012. Citation: Captain Florent A. Groberg distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a Personal Security Detachment Commander for Task Force Mountain Warrior, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, during combat operations against an armed enemy in Asadbad, Kunar Province, Afghanistan on August 8, 2012. On that day, Captain Groberg was leading a dismounted movement consisting of several senior leaders to include two brigade commanders, two battalion commanders, two command sergeants major, and an Afghanistan National Army brigade commander. As they approached the Provincial Governor's compound, Captain Groberg observed an individual walking close to the formation. When the individual made an abrupt turn towards the formation, he noticed an abnormal bulge underneath the individual's clothing. Selflessly placing himself in front of one of the brigade commanders, Captain Groberg rushed forward, using his body to push the suspect away from the formation. Simultaneously, he ordered another member of the security detail to assist with removing the suspect. At this time, Captain Groberg confirmed the bulge was a suicide vest and with complete disregard for his life, Captain Groberg again with the assistance of the other member of the security detail, physically pushed the suicide bomber away from the formation. Upon falling, the suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest outside the perimeter of the formation, killing four members of the formation and wounding numerous others. The blast from the first suicide bomber caused the suicide vest of a previously unnoticed second suicide bomber to detonate prematurely with minimal impact on the formation. Captain Groberg's immediate actions to push the first suicide bomber away from the formation significantly minimized the impact of the coordinated suicide bombers' attack on the formation, saving the lives of his comrades and several senior leaders. Captain Groberg's extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty at the risk of life are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect credit upon himself, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division and the United States Army
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Thanks to Bill
America's first 'top secret' Medal of Honor went to a Japanese-American fighting in Korea
James Elphick, We Are The Mighty
Hiroshi Miyamura Wikimedia Commons
Hiroshi Miyamura was born to Japanese immigrants in Gallup, New Mexico, in 1925. This made him Nisei — Japanese for "second-generation."
At the outbreak of World War II, Miyamura witnessed many of his fellow Nisei being shipped off to internment camps. Gallup, however, was not located within the relocation zone, and even if it was, the townspeople were ready to stand up for their Japanese neighbors.
Safe from the internment camps, Miyamura enlisted in the US Army volunteering to serve with the famed Nisei 100th Battalion, 442ndRegimental Combat Team. Unfortunately for Miyamura, by the time he reached Europe to join the unit, Germany had surrendered.
He returned home, stayed in the Army Reserve, and married a fellow Nisei woman who had been interned in Arizona.
Miyamura looked like he might pass his time in obscurity until North Korea charged across the 38th Parallel on June 25, 1950.
Recalled to active service, Miyamura joined the 3rd Infantry Division's 7th Infantry Regiment in Japan as it prepared to join the combat on the Korean peninsula.
Landing on Korea's east coast, Miyamura and the rest of the 3rd Infantry Division stormed into North Korea before being driven back by the Chinese intervention.
The 7th Infantry Regiment helped cover the retreat from the Chosin Reservoir and was the last unit to leave Hungnam on December 24, 1950.
Miyamura and his comrades were then placed on the defensive line around the 38th Parallel where they actively repelled numerous Chinese Offensives.
The war then became a bloody stalemate with each side battling across hilltops trying to gain an advantage.
One such hilltop, located at Taejon-ni along a defensive position known as the Kansas Line, was occupied by Miyamura and the rest of Company H, 2nd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment. 2
A map of China's offensives in the Korean Peninsula. Wikimedia Commons
After dark on April 24, 951, Miyamura quietly awakened his men – a trip flare had gone off in the valley below their position. In the faint light of the flare, the Americans could make out large masses of Communist troops advancing on their position.
The Chinese 29th Division smashed into the entire 7th Infantry Regiment. The hardest hit was the 2nd Battalion holding the right flank. By 2:30 the next morning, they were surrounded by the Chinese.
Miyamura, leading a machine-gun squad, ordered his men to open fire. As the American guns roared to life, the Chinese fell in droves. But still they kept coming.
After two hours of relentless fighting, Miyamura's machine-guns were down to less than 200 rounds of ammunition. He gave the order to fix bayonets and prepared to repulse the next wave of Chinese attackers.
When that attack came, Miyamura jumped from his position and savagely attacked the enemy. He blasted off eight rounds from his M-1 Garand before dispatching more Chinese with his bayonet.
He then returned to his position to give first aid to the wounded. When he realized they could no longer hold, he ordered his squad to retreat while he gave covering fire.
He shot off the last of the machine-gun ammunition and rendered the gun inoperable before pouring another eight rounds into the advancing Communist.
Machine-gunners. Wikimedia Commons
According to Miyamura's Medal of Honor citation, he then "bayoneted his way through infiltrated enemy soldiers" until he reached a second position and once again took up the defense. During his withdrawal, Miyamura was wounded by a grenade thrown by a dying Chinese soldier.
The attacks grew fiercer against the second position. Elsewhere along the line, the rest of the battalion had been ordered to begin a withdrawal south to a more tenable position. Miyamura, realizing their position was in danger of being overrun, ordered the remaining men to fall back as well while he covered their retreat. 3
Miyamura was last seen by friendly forces fighting ferociously against overwhelming odds. It is estimated he killed a further 50 Chinese before he ran out of ammunition and his position was overrun.
Exhausted and depleted from blood loss, Miyamura and numerous other men from the 7th Infantry Regiment were captured by the Communists.
Despite his heroic efforts, Miyamura's ordeal was far from over.
After being captured, the men were marched North for internment camps. Miyamura set out carrying his friend and fellow squad leader, Joe Annello, who had been more severely wounded.
Others who fell out of the march were shot or bayoneted. At gun point, the Chinese forced Miyamura to drop his friend. Miyamura initially refused but Annello convinced him. They said goodbye and Miyamura marched on.
He would spend over two years as a prisoner of war at Camp 1 in Changson.
Men of the 1st Marine Division capture Chinese Communists during fighting on the central Korean front, Hoengsong. Wikimedia Commons
While he was there, the decision was made to award him the Medal of Honor for his actions on the night of April 24 and 25.
However, due to his staunch defense and the large numbers of enemy he killed, it was decided to keep his award classified until he could be repatriated for fear of retaliation by his captors.
Finally, on August 20, 1953 Miyamura was released from captivity as part of Operation Big Switch. When he arrived at Allied lines, he was taken aside and informed that he had been promoted to Sergeant and also that he had received the Medal of Honor.
Miyamura returned to Gallup after the war and settled down.
Then, in 1954, over a year after the war ended, a man walked into Miyamura's work – it was his
old friend Joe Annello. Both had been sure that the other had died in captivity until Annello read Miyamura's story and traveled all the way to New Mexico to see if it was true.
Miyamura is still in Gallup, in the same house he bought all the way back in 1954.
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Thanks to Carl
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/james-howard-kunstler/things-going-by/
August 8, 2020
If this (first?) summer of Covid-19 has revealed anything about the current version of civilization, it's the profound exhaustion of a culture reduced to going through the motions of its once-vital activities. A lot of things that we hope will come back are probably gone forever in the form we knew them, though they will eventually return in another configuration, reduced in scale, but perhaps finer in quality.
I miss baseball horribly, and its sad, half-assed attempt to present a rump season with no live bodies in the seats only amplifies the loss. But then, I haven't gone to a stadium in twenty years, and I certainly won't pay a hundred bucks or more sit in Fenway Park. I used to go to night games there all the time when I was a starving bohemian writing for the Boston hippie newspapers back in 1972. You could get a decent field-level seat behind first base for five bucks. When I was a kid in Manhattan in 1960, a bleacher seat in the old Yankee Stadium was a quarter (plus 30 cents round-trip on the IRT subway).
They weren't writing $100-million-plus player contracts until fairly recently, either, and of course that's been symptom of pro sports' slide into fatal decadence. If baseball does try to stage a full season in 2021 or 2022, they will not be selling many hundred-dollar seats to an economically demolished middle-class. The teams will be functionally bankrupt by then and if they survive restructuring, there won't be many million-dollar players. Maybe none. Carl Furillo, the veteran right-fielder for the 1955 World Series champion Brooklyn Dodgers, used to work construction in the off-season. He was on the crew that built New York's Verrazano Bridge. Imagine Mike Trout hanging sheet-rock (if sheet-rock even exists as a product a few years from now).
I can imagine baseball reorganizing into two separate East and West leagues for a while, to reduce costly airplane travel, but even that might not last very long. If pro sports survives the political turmoil ahead, it will come out the other side as a strictly local and regional thing — and that will be the theme for all the things we like to do and must do. The idiocy of pro football will not survive at all. Its farm system (college sports) will be long gone.
Higher education committed suicide with its dual racketeering model. First was the college loan racket, in which schools colluded with the federal government to jam too many "customers" through the pipeline who didn't belong there, and who buried themselves under a lifetime debt obligation they could never escape. The second was the intellectual racket of creating sham fields of study that contaminated all the other "humanities" with poisonous bullshit theory, and eventually even invaded the STEM disciplines. Covid-19 screwed the pooch on all that, scotching the four-year party-hearty in-residence part of the deal. For now, who needs an online class in Contemporary Sexual Transgression ($2000-a-credit) when you can just click on Porn-hub for free? Hundreds of colleges and universities will be going out of business in the years ahead.
The outlook for the big centralized high schools is also pretty dark. The teachers' unions insatiable needs are only part of the picture. Consolidating many smaller schools to save on administrative costs seemed like a good idea at the time. But we ended up with thousands of gigantic schools that looked like insecticide factories and felt like minimum security prisons. They all depend on the costly yellow bus fleets to collect the kids from far and wide. The whole scheme ended up as an elaborate day-care operation that actually retarded the development of young people into functional, autonomous adults.
Covid-19 and the economic collapse it triggered will put an end to all that. How will the school districts cope with an epic loss of tax revenue from all the homeowners defaulting on their mortgages? They won't. Schooling will have to reorganize, and probably at a very grassroots level, with home-schools evolving into neighbor-pods of tiny schools, and only among parents who have the literacy and numeracy to pull it off. We'll be lucky if, years from now, we'll see something like local academies spring up that can handle a few hundred students. I'd also warn you about assuming that the Internet is a permanent installation of the human condition. It depends utterly on a pretty fragile electric grid. We do, after all, have libraries, and maybe they can be persuaded to stop trying to get rid of all their books.
These Covid months have prompted Americans to pass the idle hours of joblessness and anomie with Hollywood's canned entertainments. Could that all be over, too? The theaters were already sucking wind before the virus landed — relying on an ever more brain-dead repetition of comic book movies — while the quality product moved to Cable TV. Now that's saturated, with the newer product fermenting into garbage. But who is going to keep paying for all that with unemployment at 30 percent, and moving higher?
Are you already bored out of your skull with reruns of the old classics? People truly need narrative art forms to make sense of reality, but they have to be tuned to the times we live in. My bet would be on the eventual return of live theater on local stages for original stories keyed to the new post-collapse reality — which will not be understood via Star Wars or Breakfast at Tiffany's. Broadway is finished, with its endless reiterations of old hits, and also, of course, because New York City itself is only beginning a long journey down the drain before it can be reorganize into a functioning entrepôt. I've got half a mind to invest in an outfit that can put on puppet shows in my little flyover town.
As you can surely tell by now, the trend is local and smaller for all of these things. That may even be true for national elections and the venerable thing called the United States of America. The Democratic Party was initially only striving for mere suicide, but lately it looks like they want to destroy the country altogether — and they may succeed beyond their wildest dreams. Fifty years from now, several separate American nations may be sending their own regional baseball league champions to some kind of World Series, if we're not still at war with each other.
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(Another "behind the scenes" hero! A great story and many neat old photos on link!)
Meet the 99-year-old Pennsylvania woman who deciphered German Enigma code for the Navy during WWII - and kept her clandestine career secret from her family for 50 years
99-year-old Judy Parsons was recruited by Naval intelligence during WWII to work as a codebreaker; she was part of a top secret operation that intercepted and deciphered German Enigma messages
11,000 women were recruited from elite colleges and universities around the country to work as codebreakers in the communications division of the Navy known as 'Op-20-G'
A former seminary campus in Washington DC was converted during the war to serve as the Naval intelligence headquarters and became the Unites States' version of 'Bletchley Park'
The Navy women were called 'WAVES' or, Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service and they wore dashingly fitted uniforms designed by the French-American couturier Mainbocher
Parsons never told anyone (including her own husband) about the work she did in the war until she discovered that her program had been declassified in the 1990s - many people just assumed she worked as a secretary
She told CNN: 'The top bananas said that women couldn't keep a secret, and we showed them that we could'
In 1944, the codebreakers intercepted 30,000 messages per month, enabling the Navy to intercept and destroy practically every supply ship and convoy that tried to reach the South Pacific
After the war, the Army and Navy code-breaking operations merged to become what is now the National Security Agency
The WAVES, like so many other women who partook in the home front effort were expected to give up their jobs, go home and start having families. 'The Navy thanked us profusely, sent us home and it was back to the kitchen,' said Parsons.
New York Representative Clarence Hancock heralded the codebreaking forces as a great success in a rousing speech to the House on October 25, 1945. 'They are entitled to glory and national gratitude which they will never receive,' he said. 'I believe that our cryptographers ... in the war with Japan did as much to bring that war to a successful and early conclusion as any other group of men.'
'That more than half of those 'cryptographers' were women was nowhere mentioned,' said Liz Mundy.
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