THE ROUND-UP PLUS 80

  

Following August’s reprise of the August 1945 atomic bombings that ended World War II, I’m devoting this month’s retrospective to the sudden onset of peace.  With a very personal view.  It's excerpted from my 2023 history August 1945: When the Shooting Stopped.  Far as I know, it's the only one-volume account of global events in that world-shaping month.

 

==

 

Beverly Jean Barrett was a princess on the Pendleton, Oregon, Round-Up court in September 1945. A 25-year-old green-eyed brunette, she rode a large sorrel horse called Jimmy who enjoyed ice cream cones and the occasional hamburger. During the week-long rodeo, she and her friends became acquainted with some naval aviators who attended the event with all the innovative enthusiasm of Frederick Wakeman’s wartime novel, Shore Leave.

 

Beverly explained, “The ’45 event was the first full-scale rodeo since the war, and a lot of boys were home from the service. It was and is the major event in Umatilla County every year, and my family had been involved since it began in 1910.”

 

On the first day – Wednesday, September 12 – the queen and court rode into the arena, waving to the crowd in the grandstand, and went to the box seats. Beverly recalled, “We were just sitting down when I heard a sudden, loud noise. I turned around just in time to see a fighter plane swooping down into the arena and pulling up on the other side. There were American flags all around the top row, so I don’t know how the pilot missed any of the poles. He was very low.”

 

That was just the beginning. The miscreant aviator was about 50 air miles off track from NAS Pasco, Washington, across the Columbia River. Pasco was home to part of a light carrier air group and Composite Squadron 82, which had completed a combat tour aboard the escort carrier USS Anzio (CVE-57) in March. Lieutenant Commander F.A. Green’s unit, with FM-2 Wildcats and TBM-3 Avengers, was recycling for another deployment when the war ended. But flying continued with instrument practice and rocket firing.

 

Aside from their end-of-war exuberance, the Navy fliers probably relished the opportunity to upstage their khaki counterparts. Pendleton Army Airfield was home of the B-25 group that provided the Doolittle Raiders in 1942 and continued as an operational training and maintenance facility. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, then-Major Curtis LeMay briefly flew from Pendleton.

 

The blue intruders made themselves known to Umatilla County. Wildcats buzzed tractors in fields and cars on highways– allegedly running an Oregon State trooper off the road. Local legend related the tale of an Avenger that executed a mock torpedo attack against fishing boats on the reservoir south of town–with bomb bay doors open. Finally enough was enough. Some high-decibel phone calls were made, and Pasco grounded the errant tailhookers.

 

Nobody complained–the Navy men were stranded for the duration of Round-Up. Beverly Barrett explained, “They were definitely ready to party. They sort of attached themselves to us, though the court had escorts as well as a chaperone. I had already met Jack Tillman when he was a flight cadet. I had seen him in his dress uniform, leaning against a light pole, and I remember thinking, ‘Hmmm…how did I miss that?’”

 

Tillman had already encountered the Pasco fliers downtown, where they carried a 20mm ammunition case filled with ice and beer.

 

Beverly continued, “One evening the Round-Up court was at the country club for an event. The fliers from Pasco were there in dress blues,

because some of them had met other local girls. It got to be late and we decided to go to dinner, and I got up to leave. Then somebody asked, ‘Where’s Mac?’

 

“Mack was a short, stocky young man. I never did know the full names 

of any of the fliers because they came and went so much. But we all knew Mack. Finally somebody found him out behind the club house, asleep under a tree with the club’s big Saint Bernard. Mack had drunk about 12 Alexander cocktails and apparently crawled through the sprinklers on the green, because his blues were ruined from water and grass stains.

 

I’ve often wondered if Mack or any of those other fliers remember that night. But I certainly do!

THE NUKE SEASON REVISITED

 Because this month marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending the Second World War, I am reprinting the 2009 original with minor updates.

+++

What does baseball have to do with atom bombs?

A whimsical baseball movie was the 1949 Ray Milland offering, It Happens Every Spring. It’s an enjoyable tale about a college professor who invents a formula that repels wood, making it impossible for a batter to hit a ball coated with the stuff. The title refers to the annual onset of spring training.

That’s a lot like The Nuke Season. It happens every August with the anniversaries of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since we’re now into this year’s Nuke Season, I’ll address the matter.

(Caution: if facts do not matter to you, skip this Rant. Some people prefer emotion to facts.)

Inevitably The Nuke Season features the following:

The bombs were unnecessary since Japan was about to surrender.
Truman only wanted to impress the Soviets.
Racist America used nukes against Asians but not against Germans.
A demonstration should have been made before destroying a city.
Blockade was preferable to bombing.

None of the foregoing assertions bear examination, to wit:

As British historian Max Hastings noted in Retribution (2008), "The myth that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway has been so completely discredited by modern research that it is astonishing some writers continue to give it credence.” In researching Whirlwind, my volume on air operations over Japan, I found a wealth of Japanese testimony supporting Hastings’ conclusion. In 1943 Prime Minister Tojo admitted there was no viable plan to win the war, but hostilities continued. Admiral Onishi, the kamikaze master, asserted in March 1945 that the war had just begun. And a general staff officer told POWs that the war would last at least until 1948. 

Furthermore, the war cabinet’s actions give 0.00 credence to the notion that Japan was about to surrender. Tokyo rebuffed the allies’ Potsdam declaration calling for capitulation, and then sought intervention by the Soviets, who already planned to invade the Kurile Islands! There is no documentation that any of the eight men ruling Japan (including the emperor) stated before Hiroshima that they would have surrendered under any circumstances—not even when some were on trial for their lives. None stated that Soviet entry--plus some guarantee of the imperial system--would have moved them individually, much less triggered the necessary set of actions within the cabinet, that would have ended the war before the atoms were loosed. Two weeks before Hiroshima, Tokyo’s ambassador to Moscow said the best possible outcome was capitulation, perhaps with some guarantee of the emperor’s status—a situation rejected by the foreign minister and known by U.S. intelligence at the time.

So: if Tokyo was “about to surrender anyway” why did Hirohito have to over-ride his warlords? 

Harry Truman’s presumed intention to cow the Soviets with the nukes is another unsupportable contention. As commander in chief his first obligation was to the American forces facing a horrific invasion. Forcing Japan to surrender soonest was Job One, and any geopolitical fallout (!) was a tertiary concern if it was ever discussed at all. 

I encountered the “racism” mantra in college, and it still arises from the moldy PC pond. No less an authority than Malcolm X (!) stated that America would not use nukes against whites—a bald lie when the entire Manhattan Project was spurred by the German nuclear program. Colonel Paul Tibbets’ 509th Composite Group originally was instructed to conduct a dual strike: Germany and Japan. But “the weapon” was not available until July 1945, over two months after Germany surrendered. (When I noted that fact, the tweedy prof merely scrawled, “Are you sure?” and gave me a B+.)

Dropping a demonstration bomb was considered but rejected on at least two counts: it might be a dud, which would only reinforce Tokyo’s resolve; and there existed material for only two weapons at the time. Besides, there were in fact two demonstrations before Japan surrendered: at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

That leaves blockade which, short of invasion, was the only option other than declaring peace and going home. But as my colleague Rich Frank has observed in Downfall (1999), blockade would have killed far more people than the two A-bombs. Precious time would have passed, with at least hundreds of thousands of Japanese starving to death, plus millions more dead in Asia. As it was, perhaps 100,000 died there every month from famine, disease, and Japanese brutality. I have yet to see any critic even mention that fact. And it does not count the American KIAs sustaining a blockade—a cost that nuke critics seem willing to ignore.

So, here’s the deal:

You are Harry Truman in early August 1945. You have responsibility for ending a war that has killed nearly 400,000 Americans, with many thousands more to die in an invasion. Your military is divided on the subject: the Army under the megalomaniacal General Douglas MacArthur favors invasion while the Navy, which understands the human cost, opposes it. You know from intelligence sources that Tokyo is nowhere near capitulation. The daily cost of hostilities runs in the thousands 

You face an enemy unlike any in American history. You have seen the films of mothers throwing their infants off Saipan’s cliffs and jumping after them. You know that Tokyo is impervious to civilian suffering: after Curt LeMay’s B-29s burned down one-seventh of the city and killed at least 85,000 people one night in March, the war cabinet never flinched. You know that the government has closed schools and conscripted most of the civilian population into “volunteer” resistance units.

Now your scientists present you with the ultimate weapon bearing the potential for convincing the samurai zealots in Tokyo to “bear the unbearable.” If you decline that option and the invasion proceeds, eventually the parents of tens of thousands of GIs, Marines, and sailors will demand to know why you sent their sons to their deaths. You may or may not be lynched, but you definitely will be impeached.

What do you do?

It’s the lingering question whenever The Nuke Season rolls around.

THAT BUMP IN THE NIGHT

 

A few years ago around bedtime our security alarm went BEEEP.

 

I got the AR-15 with attached light just in case the electricity failed, but I left the interior lights on.  I briefly considered venturing outside but then thought....

 

Whatever-whomever's out there will see me back lighted and they'll be in darkness, Maglight or not.

 

So we called 911.  

 

I swear, in two minutes the PD had a helicopter overhead, scanning with its searchlight.  The gal at Dispatch was marvelous—calm, focused, even a bit funny.

 

Air One reported nothing visible.

 

Dispatch said two officers would arrive shortly.  I asked for a name.  She provided one.  (Separate story, see below.)

Doorbell rang and I played Whodat thru the door.

 

"Officer Stimpson."

 

Correctomundo.

 

We checked the perimeter (I being unarmed then) and found nothing.  Opened the electrical panel and...

 

A magnet had failed, allowing the alarm circuit to close.  Hence the BEEEP.

 

All was cool. 

 

Separate Story:

 

I asked where Officer Stimpson was from, and he said Utah.  I said dog-gone one of my best Navy ace friends was a Stimpson from Utah.  No relation that we could discern.  

 

Semi-semi related: Charlie Stimpson (16 kills) sported a Victory Model .38 with imitation bone grips.  Somewhere I may have a color pic.  One of his squadron mates (semi-POW of the Vichy French in Saigon) said he preferred the .38 and I asked why.  He said, "Have you ever carried a .45 all day?"  I confessed that yes, I have, but didn't go into details.

 

Anyway…

 

I take the threat of home invasion seriously.  One of my cherished friends—a two-war Marine Corps veteran--was murdered by a teenage POS who broke in late one night, demanding car keys.  The deputy who called to inform me said that the “suspect” was from a logging family with criminal backgrounds.  That came as no surprise—I’ve dealt with the type.

 

The murderer was tried and sentenced to death but then Oregon’s POS leftist governor suspended all death sentences for the remainder of his term.  (That governor later resigned in what passes for “disgrace” among Democrats.  The next Demogovernor commuted all death sentences to life.)

 

The trend continues.  Just this week during a crowded public safety meeting in Encino, California, police responded to two nearby residential break-ins.  The meeting was spurred by increased home invasions, notably the double murder of TV personalities this month.

 

A philosophical aside:

 

There are two kinds of people: grass eaters and meat eaters.

Or…there are copers and non-copers.

 

Both varieties are easily found on internet forums, usually preceded by libs who whine (and I’m quoting here) “Why don’t gun owners leave the house during a burglary?  Are their possessions more important than a life?”

 

Well, snowflake, consider this:

 

How much value does a criminal who invades your home place on his life?

 

Never thought of that did you?

 

No, of course not.

 

Yet  frequently the bleat arises again: “Why doesn’t somebody do something?”

 

Well, why don’t you do something like getting a gun and learning how to use it?

 

During the LA riots in 1992, some well-known entertainers sidled up to film writer-director and NRA board member John Milius (Dirty Harry, Conan, Apocalypse Now, Wind and the Lion, etc.) asking to borrow one of his firearms.  Reputedly he replied, “They’re all being used.

 

Moral: get your own.  And learn how to use them.

 

So…back to the bump in the night.

 

I’m excerpting a couple of passages from a former California police professional, previously one of my editors:

 

“For my pistols, if I need a light, I just turn it on and leave it on. I also turn on all the lights in the house, outside lights, everything. No need to be sneaky because I'll be yelling to get out of my house or my dogs and I are going to kill you!

 

“Dry firing? Turn the light on and aim things at the target and dry fire. At the range? Do the same thing. If you haven't done it much, with some loads, the smoke really shows up in the light and messes things up. Best to see that in person before you do it for real!

 

“My fighting guns are all iron sights. But two lights on the rifle, a light on each pistol.  The AR is a flat top, pencil barrel, old school fixed GI buttstock (I've had the collapsible ones collapse). 

 

I always also have two lights in my pockets. I've been in the dark before! I once started a felony hot stop with my early Streamlight. It died. Then I went to my backup light I had on my gunbelt. It died. Then I finally ended it using a small pocket light I had. 

 

“And I can speak from personal experience, when I pulled my gun on bad guys, my eyes were on the bad guy, not on the sights. Yes, I was indexing the gun, looking over the sights, but there would have been zero time to "transition to irons" if needed. It's silly stuff touted by people who don't know the real world. I agree, they're dandy for competition.

 

“But just that.”