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Whoa. Dave. Of all the yarns that have been spun on this site, yours about your dad's brush with what will go down, unfortunately, as one of the most significant historic events of our lifetime is the topper. Fascinating, too, that your father had a follow-up experience with one of the crewmen.

I guess I should say of our parent's lifetime, since none of us were born when it happened.

Once I told my younger sister: "Just imagine. You and I might not be here had it not been for the atomic bomb." Our dad was on Okinawa when the war ended. He might have wound up being part of the invasion of Japan and lost his life in the effort had Hiroshima and Nagasaki not put an end to it.

08/08/18 12:08 PM

#3727

Mark Schweickart

Dave -- wow, another thoughtful post, and still another compelling story about your father. He seems to have led a truly unique life. What continually amazes me is not only the life he led, but the way you remember all of these details about his life. The memories I have of my own father, who also served in WWII, would barely provide enough raw material for a short stoy, whereas your memories seem to flow like a Tolstoyian fountain. It truly dumfounds me that you seem to know more about his story than, I would dare to argue, many of us know about our own pasts. A weird talent you have my friend, and a very impressive father you were lucky to have had.

I agree with your point about how Hiroshima and Nagasaki get all of the attention, when other horrific events are so generally overlooked. If I am not mistaken, the fire-bombing of Tokyo with conventional weaponary did even more damage and took more lives than the atomic bomb released from the Enola Gay, yet this fact little remains in our collective conciousness. But our collective conciousness is the key to this question, is it not? We all deplore war-making in its more conventional forms, but I think what truly haunts the human imagination is the possible world-ending spectre of nuclear annihilation of the planet. We all are currently reeling from the effects of climate change as it is, and fear what more it has in store, but the thought of what nuclear explosions could do to the atmosphere, and the nuclear winter that will follow is so powerful that the memory of Hiroshima will always resonate in our imagination far more than the crimes involving Japanese war-brides or the rape of Nanking. Granted, at the time, I am sure Truman was not thinking about nuclear winter, but that is what we think about today, is it not? Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not just about what happened to those two cities, but rather that event showed our willingness to use these new weapons. It is our collective fear that some head of state of a nuclear power will someday also give in to that willingness and plunge the world into irreparable darkness.

That is why this date in history stands out. Maybe this is just the scars of our own duck-and-cover childhood talking. But I don't think so.

08/08/18 12:59 PM

#3728

Yes. We are the first generation to grow up with the knowledge that as a species we now have the ability to destroy ourselves either actively,by blowing each other to smithereens, or passively, by failing to recognize and contend with self-inflicted and possibly fatal ecological castrophes.

We are the first who get to think about that, talk about that, send messages in a bottle about it to future generations - however many there may be.

I'm hoping they don't look back on us as dumb asses. But I have my doubts.

08/08/18 01:18 PM

#3729

Mark,

I was blessed with parents who were both great storytellers - and both had lives full of stories to tell. Mom moved 6 times before 8th grade and lived twice on the wild frontier of Minot, North Dakota in the teens and again in the 20's. They had Indians, Cowboys, Gypsies, and Rum-Runners. Dad grew up a little "street tough" on 10th or 11th Ave in those same years. They either read to me (Mom - nursurey rymes "Tall Book of Make Believe", etc., and later, Dad read Dickens, Twain, Lewis-Stevenson, etc.), or told me wonderful stories of a childhoods I could only dream of. But it may have been Dad's Air Force (excuse me, "Army Air Corps" in those days) reunions that left me with so much of my WW2 "imprint".

Dad came to a realization about 8 years after the War that many of his old buddies were in a pattern of some form of depression - heavy or light - but noticeable effects of frustration and suppression. He made a medical decision to form some casual get-togethers, to get the guys to share and hopefuly release, some of their anxiety. (We would call it sort of an unstrucuted "group therapy" now). This led to a full blown annual reunion. These were held in differet cities around the country for 4 day weekends every summer, starting in about 1956. He took me along in 1957 and almost every year after that. I grew up with my other little reunion buddies (especailly one Joey Pakracka from Indiana). Every second night, they would gather (men only) in a large room with a couple if "slide projectors" (remember those?) and fill the room with pictures, stories, memories, laughter, a few tears, some periods of pregnant silence,,,, and cigar smoke. Joey and I would sit in the back of the room and listen to their stories - many of the same ones year after year. We loved it and got a wonderful bit of history straight from the source.

Added later: I think that may have been the seed that was planted in me to form that reunion I held four years ago. One of the most enjoyable (and cathartic) activities in my recent life. And we think it may have helped one of our guys avoid something regrettable. He is now in contact with most of us and living a happier life.

*I absolutely reccomend Veterans to re-connect with some - any - old buddies and let some form of shared memories take place. Keeping it all bottled up inside is NOT working!

Which brings me to another point. I can't help thinking there are so many more good stories from this class that would be fun to hear on this forum. Linda's story and photos about her Dad's Country Western Band is still one of the gems of this Forum. And Tim's "Big Sally" story. Aren't there more of those out there?

------------------

Mike,

Wow, I think you are "Dead On" to coin a phrase. Your Dad would likely have been one of at least a half million American soldiers sacrificed in that "final invasion" of the Home Islands.

On a lighter note: I for one am tickled that he didn't - otherwise I could never have had the priviledge of witnessing you attempting to demonstrate the thickness of our cafeteria milk shakes, by holding one upside down over your head.

08/08/18 01:42 PM

#3730

Your honor I have no specific memory of what Mr. Mitchell is talking about.

On the other hand, not to incriminate myself, but I have to admit it sure sounds like something I would have done.

08/08/18 02:50 PM

#3731

O.K., quiz time!

What is this?

Hint: See Dave's Post #3740 above.

Jim

08/08/18 04:11 PM

#3732

Ok this is too easy I won't even look at the clue: that's either a papoose or a pill that's way to big for that lady to take. Leaning toward guess number two because of the expression on her face.

08/08/18 05:02 PM

#3733

Ain't no Hopi Kachina doll.

---------

And Mike, somewhere in my memory there is a photo of you in the cafetera performing that "thickness test". Could it have been an old Eagle view? And was it Dan Cody holding it over your head?

08/08/18 06:24 PM

#3734

If you live in or have spent some time in the Southwest, you may have come across various forms (jewelry, paintings, sculptures, dolls, etc.) of Native American art. These are from several tribes that inhabit the area and the plazas of towns such as Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque have some excellent shops that deal in these crafts.

My sister, Sue (BWHS '64), has lived in this area since 1971, taught in a few elementary schools which included Native American students and her husband taught in some federal Indian schools. Over the years they have helped populate our home with many pieces of such art.

This particular basket depicts a common theme in Navajo culture.

No, Mike, although some pills may seem as large as a papoose board 💊, this basket scene has nothing to do with medicine, medicine women or shamen. 😷 It does, however, relate to Dave's Post #3740.

As the nuns used to say, "Put your thinking caps on."!

Jim

08/08/18 10:00 PM

#3735

Mark Schweickart

Jim -- my guess for your quiz challenge is that since you say this Native American folk art piece is Navajo, it brings to mind the Navajo Code Talkers, which would relate back to Dave's story about the ultra-secrecy his father experienced when bumping up against Colonel Tibbet's air squadron. But then again, this is probably not right because that part of Dave's story was in his post 3735 not his post 3740. Anyway, I will stick by this guess for now, because all of the little figures have their mouths pursed in such a way as to suggest they are making some sort of sound.

08/08/18 10:59 PM

#3736

"I was blessed with parents who were great storytellers..."

- Dave Mitchell Post #3740

That line triggered my snapping a cellphone camera shot of the Navajo artwork pictured a few posts ago.

This art from is simply called "Storytellers" and the Navajo brand is the most popular. It is common among several other tribes such as the Cochiti and Jemez people many of whom live in small pueblos around Albuquerque. A Cochiti woman was actually the first to create one back in 1964.

The Indian culture was to pass down stories by word of mouth, generation to generation. Men were most frequently the storytellers but, in most of the art, women are depicted as the main historians with multiple children, sometimes more than a dozen, clinging to and surrounding the tribal matriarch as she relates the tales of the past to them. Her mouth is always open, usually in an almost howling configuration, in these art pieces. To me it is like a wolf, a lobo, which is a revered animal to many tribes.

If you Bing or Google "Navajo Storytellers" and look for "images" you can see many examples of these.

When Dave used that phrase I quoted, I could just imagine a similar scene in the Mitchell household!

Jim

08/08/18 11:23 PM

#3737

Jim,

Your photo quiz strikes a nerve with me.

In the summer of 1961, I was priviledged to go to a unique camp based in a canyon just outside the tiny truck stop of Thoreau, (pronounced, " thur-row" not like the author) New Mexico. (Google the "Cottonwood Gulch Foundation" - stiil exists today). We spent 8 weeks traveling by trucks and tenting around the "Four Corners" country. That is when I discoverd Monument Valley and Canyon DeChelly ("dee-shay") - two of God's greatest masterpieces. It was the summer of a lifetime. I was 12 and my tent mate was a 13 year old Jewish kid from Boston. Both of our dads were doctors. We had a blast and became best buddies. Among other things, we hiked through the Grand Canyon (down the "Bright Angle" from the South rim and out the North rim in about 30 hours, including sleeping at the bottom fort the night in sleeping bags on the ground (where I saw the biggest damn rattle snake ever!). It was also the summer of Mantle vs. Maris, and Johny and I were both baseball fanatics! Sooo much fun! A friendhsip I would never forget.

But to my question about your photo - The camp maintained a regular relationship with several local Navajo families, one of whom worked at the base camp. So our exposure to their culture was extensive. We aslo traveled to the Zuni reservation, and visited one ot the three Hopi Mesas ("Hotevila" if I recall correctly) - where Jonny and I sat in a home and bargained for a Kachina doll from the maker, the mother of the household. We were even among the last white people to be permitted up on the "Acoma" mesa, a single high mesa with about 400 remaining tiny little Acoma people left. I got pretty familiar with many of their crafts. I can still tell the difference between Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni jewelry - Navajo and Hopi weaving, and Kachina dolls. And later in life, I learned to pick out an Earl Biss painting from a mile away.

But I have never seen the likes of the figure in your photo. Please tell us what it is.

Answered - thanks Jim

---------------------

later- - Many years later, after my nephew had been on that same "Trek" and met my old tent mate at an "alumni" rendevous, and two of my own kids had gone, I saw my old friend as Dr. Johnathan Mann, head of some department in the World Health Organization in GenevaI - being interviewed on the Ted Koppel show. It took me a minute to realize what was so familiar about the face of this grey haired balding little man with a mustache and glasses. When it hit me I was dumbfounded! About a year later I was just thinking about contacting him. I had decided it would be that week - I would write him a letter. Then one afternoon that same week, sitting in front of the news with my son, they announced the crash of SWISSAIR flight 111. (sorry, I forgot the flight and looked it up). They gave one name from those 200+ who perished, becaue he was so famous. It was Dr. Jonathan Mann of Boston!

Moral of the story; if there is someone from your past you have wanted to get back in touch with -

DON"T WAIT!

Jonathan Mann, physician and advocate, pragmatist and visionary, transformed the way the world looked at AIDS. As the first head of the World Health Organization’s Global Programme on AIDS, he illuminated the intersection of health and human rights. Mann joined the faculty of HSPH in 1990, as a professor of epidemiology and international health. In 1993 he became the first director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, founded by the Countess Albina du Boisrouvray. He died at the age of 52 in 1998, in the crash of Swissair Flight 111.

08/09/18 12:10 AM

#3738

Ahem!

In just these last few days, I am having more fun with a conversation OFF of the Forum with someone I never expected. I only knew him slightly back in school. I have now had about 4 or 5 of these side conversations over the last year - all terriffic - with people who are reading the Forum, but started our own chat directly. What fun!

In each case, it's a bit of "how did I not know they were that intersting back then" ?

Again Janie - you're a hero!

08/09/18 12:31 AM

#3739

Dave,

A couple of things you mentioned:

Canyon DeChelly - we have a large, framed print of R.C. Gorman's "Canyon DeChelly (Night)" in our home.

Camping in the floor of the Grand Canyon and rattlesnakes - one of the military surgeons with whom I worked at Ft. Carson back in the '80's, was camped there during a rafting trip and had an intimate clash with a rattler which resulted in an air evacuation. He survived.

Jim

08/09/18 10:23 AM

#3740

Monument Valley rocks. I was there with a group of film students, writing a story about their exploration of the place where the great director of the 40s and 50s, John Ford, made westerns -- in particular, his masterpiece. The Searchers. I remember being at a home that had been built into the side of a cliff; its owner took us on a tour of the surroundings and showed us places where you could still find the cartridges of blanks that had been fired as the actors played out various ambushes and gun fights.

We met navajo elders who told us stories about being extras in the movies and how, when they were told to speak to each other in their own language during a scene, just to add a touch of realism to the film, they would say things about how stupid white people were, since they knew no one understood a word they were saying.

Somewhere along the line somebody told us of a famous John Wayne quote when he was asked why they always filmed westerns in Monument Valley.

His reply: "Because this is where God put the west."

08/09/18 11:14 AM

#3741

Jim,

I forgot to add Gorman to my list of "name drops". His work is more widely known (commercially) but I am not as attracted to it.

Mike,

You should see Monument Valley at sunset while a storm approaches. It happend to us and is still one of the most awesome sites of wonderful colors imaginable. We aslo did Bryce and Zion Canyons - both gorgeous, and many unknown sites.

If one goes to Monument Valley now, and you get off the highway to enter teh Valley at the Navajo town of Kayenta, there is a Burger King owned by the Navajo tribe (they are quite successful at many businesses on the reservation - mining - forestry, and a sawmill - a cattle herd - etc.). In that Burger King the "decor" is a room full of historical photos and explanation plaques about the history of the Navajo "code talkers" of WW2. The subject of a (really poor) Nicholas Cage film depicting the Navajos unique roll in baffling the Japanese with an undiscernable language for sending secret miitary mesages. They were finally recognized and decorated by president Reagan*

* (who had previously cut Native American tribal subsidies to the bone)

I believe there have been over 100 Westerns shot in Monument Valley.

08/09/18 11:47 AM

#3742

Hmmm yep wish I'd seen a storm like that but not sure I'd want to see it from my tent. Did see the coolest shooting star of my life while camped out across from that famous formation they call "the mittens" because the two buttes that are across from each other looks like two giant hands rising up out of the earth.

A navajo burger king. Is this a great country or what.

08/09/18 12:20 PM

#3743

Native American businesses? How about those casinos? I haven't been to one in many years now, but I recall in their early days they were not allowed to serve "firewater". They are now very glitzy and I assume that has changed.

Jim

08/09/18 01:02 PM

#3744

Yes, the "Mittens" - spectacular!

08/09/18 02:39 PM

#3745

Okay Mark,

I said earlier that if i could "SPELL" I'd be dangerous.

But it's worse than that. If I could "READ" I would be a menace to society.

I just called out two Irish lasses for a birthday the other day that hasn't happened yet. (with the dates right there in front of me on the Home Page) -

Yikes!

help, I'm "failing" and I can't get up!

08/09/18 03:54 PM

#3746

Twin Fawns

This set of twin fawns are a week or two younger than our old friend, Dap. These two still nest during mom's foraging time and today nested just outside one of our downstairs bedroom windows in the diminishing shade of a neighbor's fence to our east. One got up and was searching for a more hidden and shady refuge while the other continued to lounge for another few minutes until the sun moved more to the west.

Their fur is getting thicker as it gets closer to autumn and their spots are beginning to fade. I saw Dap earlier in the day with his mom and he is now about 2/3'rds her size. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me as I was sweeping up some Mugu Pine needles on the driveway, which begin to turn brown and drop in August well before the other pines do the same. Maybe someone should invent a broom with a built in camera - like a cell phone - since these critters often pass by when I'm working in the yard!

Jim

08/09/18 11:04 PM

#3747

Just had an afterthought about something related to my post #3747. I mentioned my late tent mate Johnny Mann from Boston - and what great baseball fans we both were. I just remebered that he lived on the same street as Ted Williams (yes, that Ted Williams!). And that Ted used to occasionally take Johnny and a couple other kids on the block to the games at Fenway, drop them off in front of the ticket gate, and proceed into the players sparking lot - and then take them home again after the game!

Different times huh?

p.s. I also seem to recall how impresed Johnny was with Jerry Lucas and John Havllicek. We would sit in our tent at night (flaps open to look at the stars) and talk about sports - and girls. And every time we stopped in a town or any place a newspaper could be bought, we literally ran to buy a copy to see who was ahead between Mantle and Maris.

Can you remember what you were doing in the summer of '61? One of those two hit 61 Home Runs that summer. Remember which one?

08/10/18 10:32 AM

#3748

Frank Ganley

Maris 61 in 61

08/10/18 02:58 PM

#3749

Interesting that the ears get so big so fast on those fawns. You can see why. Count on nature to always be pragmatic.

08/10/18 04:53 PM

#3750