For those of you who struggle to make sense of political shenanigans here in the United States maybe I can offer you peace if not understanding of the subject.
First, “The Great Game” and what it means. As originally coined it referred to a so-called “Tournament of Shadows” featuring political and diplomatic struggles between western powers and the the countries of the middle east. Secrecy, spies, murder and open warfare were featured in the attempt to control the governments and destinies of entire countries. Kings, Prime Ministers, Presidents, Dictators, Tsars, Generals and religious leaders operated in a murky underworld of governments always seeking advantage. The whole thing driven by profit or money if you will, the only true “Universal Language.”
Dear Mister King of Whataboutistan. I see your father sent you to Oxford, Cambridge or Berkeley for a first class education. I understand that your goal is to raise your people out of poverty and build a modern capitalist county. Wink, wink. Great idea. Now, heres what we can do. For a nominal amount of interest we will loan you a Billion or so. You can then begin realizing your dream.
We will provide you with skilled advisors to help you in your endeavor. They can set up the agencies you will need to disburse the funds, plan improvements and expand your army because you will need security for yourself and all the special people who will gladly help you in accomplishing your goals. Actually the more you hire the more loyal people you have. It doesn’t cost much, buying loyalty is a snap.
We don’t ask for much in return, just the opportunity to buy minerals and other goods from you for a nominal fee. That Potash in the hills is just going to waste, we could use it for fertilizer at home and that Guano on your coastal islands makes great gunpowder and we need that also to make sure that the German tyrant or the French Emperor stay in their places. If you give us a monopoly on them we will pay you directly, put money in your treasury which you can share as you see fit but only if you want to of course. The peasants in the hills don’t really need the money do they? They’d just waste it and since you’re the King it’s really all yours anyway, right?
Those Russians up north can’t really be trusted can they? Perhaps you would consider letting us station just a few troops to help if they try anything funny. They have a history of that you know. If you could see your way clear to letting us to help you out, you know just a few thousand soldiers and some generals and such. By the way we have some great medals and silk sashess encrusted with diamonds and rubies, we’d oh so happy to give you a few, they will make your uniform look oh so fine, very Kingly if you know what I mean.
The former Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
If you need help with mineing we can do that too for just a nominal share. We’d be delighted to build you some railroads too, we will even pay for building them you will just have to sign over a little land along the right of way, not a gift mind you, after all were are doing you a favor. In any case you will need them to haul the Guano and Potash to the docks where our latest devices will load it onto our ships. The money will just roll in to to the bank we will charter in your name. Maybe take some of your bright boys and teach them the business, mentored by our skilled adviors mind you but they will learn the system.
And hey, what if we build you a couple of mansions in London or perhaps one in Monaco just so you have a nice place to live and not in that old Imperial Palace you live in now. It’s old and drafty isn’t it? No problem, New York living is great and your kids can go to the best schools, hang out with Manhattan posh crowd and not have to worry about business at home we will be glad to take care of that for you, just a small fee.
Life in London, New York or Paris is good for the kids, keeps them out of your hair so they’re not scheming to show you the door. Your girls can hang with Kim and Kylie and the boys can play polo. No sucession worries.
If the warlords get restless up in the mountains why we can provide our troops, we will call them advisors, to train and help you keep them at bay and don’t worry about weapons we will sell whatever you need, at least up to a point. Your army doesn’t need the sophisticated ones we use. The risk is they might turn against you so better be safe.
Oh, and those poppies in the south, you know, he ones that produce opium, you could make some serious money there if you need it. Drugs will keep your people happy and quiet. We will back you on that so go ahead.
Don’t like the sound of that, well do a Google search on the Opium Wars.* Ask the Chinese how that worked for them. Oh no, no, no thats not a threat. We don’t do that, we bring drugs into our country by the truckload and then throw billions of dollars at enforcement that doesn’t work. Just arrest the users and street dealers but stay away from the finance boys. Just make ’em think you’re doing something when you’re not. Tell them “Just say no.” Heck, just blame it on the young woman with a baby who walked across the border all the way from Guatemala. The drugs are in her backpack. Beside she’s probably a murderer or rapist. She is the wrong color too and doesn’t speak “Our” language. Both strategies will work for you.
If you still don’t have enough money and power as if such a thing is possible we will lend you more and perhaps you would be willing to let our businesses buy some concessions to operate in your country. I mean, you have all this unskilled labor that has nothing important to do and we could take care of that for you for a nice “Little” finders fee. Just a few chemical plants or some mineral extraction pits and mines, your people will be happy to have meaningful work and we don’t really need to spend money on safety or health care and pensions. Ignorant workers are happy workers.
IMF, International Monetary Fund.
Careful with education too. Educated workers are guaranteed trouble. They might start asking for a piece of the pie. So be careful what you teach them. Of course, when they gather in groups, you can just call them a “dangerous mob” and shoot a few. Thats worked well for us. Increases profits too.
If you come up a little short we would be happy to lend you more money. Interest has gone up a little but I’m sure thats not a problem for you and you can squirrel away a few billion Shekels, Rubles or Dollars in Switzerland for a rainy day, after all thats the only reason the country exists. A gentlemen’s agreement to let it hide away important monies for the powerful just like like you.
So lets shake on it and good luck. We’ll be your friends until we are not.
Notes:
PS: We will send you the phone numbers of some of our friends and they would be happy, I’m sure to give you any tips about exile when you need it.
Mrs Marcos, Mrs Arafat, Mrs Shah Reza Pahlavi, Idi Amin or Pol Pot, give ’em a ring. Don’t wait too long though like Muammar Gaddafi did. His Giant Revolutionary Nuns Amazon bodyguards couldn’t save him.
The Revolutionary Nuns.
*The Opium Wars were two mid-19th century conflicts between the British Empire (and later France) and China’s Qing dynasty. Fought over illicit British opium smuggling, trade imbalances, and diplomatic sovereignty, China’s defeat initiated a century of foreign exploitation and territorial concessions such as Nanking, Macao, Singapore and Hong Kong..
Cover: A 19th century political cartoon lampooning Russia, The Bear and Englands, the Lion’s adventures in Afghanistan. Names have changed but the games the same.
Michael Shannon will on occasion resort to Snark or as his friend Will says,”Why don’t you say what you really mean,” usually punctuated with laughter. Both are from California and proud of it.
I SEEMED TO HAVE LOVED YOU IN NUMBERLESS FORMS, NUMBERLESS TIMES… LIFE AFTER LIFE, IN AGE AFTER AGE…FOREVER. Rabindranath Tagore*
The tombstone speaks. It might be surprising to you that they do indeed speak to historians. Mankind’s desire to be remembered after death is an element of our collective history. Remembered by many when fresh, time slowly erodes those who knew the people lying under them until only the curious, someone who never knew the living person seeks out those that tell a story.
Cemetery’s are everywhere. During Vietnam I was stationed at Naval Hospital annex Pearl Harbor. Another sailor and I toured around the islands and visited whatever site we might find interesting. There are great things to see no matter where you live. Hawaii has its share. Long the home of the US military’s mid- Pacific’s home, there are more bases than you can shake a stick at.
I’ve seen the huge veterans cemetery nestled in the crater of the “Punchbowl” in Honolulu. The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, located in Honolulu’s Punchbowl Crater, is the final resting place for over 53,000 veterans of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. The “Punchbowl’s,” 116-acre site serves as a major Honolulu landmark.
The cemetery holds nearly 13,000 World War II dead from the Pacific theater. It is the resting place of numerous Medal of Honor recipients, including Pvt. Mikio Hasemoto of the all-nisei Japanese American 100th all Nisei infantry regiment.
It holds the remains of Medal of Honor recipient Senator Daniel Inouye, “Spark” Matsunaga also rests there. Both men veterans of the brutal Italian campaign up the boot of Italy. Both of them were later elected to the United States Senate from Hawaii.
The first time I went there it went to see the grave of Ernie Pyle who I knew from reading some of my mothers books which he wrote when he was a war correspondent in the Big One WWII. He is buried between two unknown soldiers, reflecting his desire to be with the ordinary soldiers he covered and who loved him.
There is also a memorial in Okinawa on the site where he was killed by a sniper that states, “At this spot the 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945”. He is a person well worth reading if you want to know about your great uncles and fathers who called themselves “Dogfaces” and who, for five years ground down and finally defeated the worlds three great fascist powers. He literally carried his little typewriter into the lines and wrote about the sons of American families. He shared foxholes, slept in the mud and rain. He was bombed, strafed and lived as the riflemen did. He was revered by soldiers because he both spoke and wrote about their lives which were rarely featured in the big press of the time. He saw the tragedy of war right up front with the troops who lived and waged it. He knew the “Doggie’ who wore a stained and dirty khaki shirt, broken down boots and carried an M-1 rifle. They saved our country for $1.67 a day.
So thats how I became a “Haunt.” Someone who haunts graveyards. You can walk through one and try and imagine what the lives of the people who lie there were like. Those who came before you all have a story to tell. Some important, some not so much but a story nevertheless. It’s all those stories connected that comprise history.
Perhaps it’s in the genes. My father and uncle jack literally grew up on an old cemetery on our ranch. The dairy my grandparents owned had its milking barn and silos built right over the site of some of the earliest burials in our little community of Arroyo Grande, California. Before the dedication of the Odd Fellows cemetery which lay just west of the townsite itself many rural ranch folks were buried on their own property and this county has dozens of very old burial grounds dating to the earliest inhabitants including the original native population.
When I was in grammar school we could slip through the three wire Bob wire fence hustle up the hill and on the other side, visit the small burial site of our early pioneer Francis Ziba Branch, his wife Manuela and his three young daughters, Maria Josefa, 15 Manuela, 13 and Ysabel, 5. They all died within days of each other in 1862. The Smallpox that killed them brought by a visitor availing himself of the legendary hospitality of the Californio Rancheros.
That old story is marked by tombstones inside a dilapidated wire fence under an ancient and gnarled Oak that was there before any Branch and guards their memory today..
Just outside the fence, the Hemmi’s, father Peter and son, 15 year old PJ, who shot a neighbor to death in a land dispute. They were hanged from the Pacific Coast RR bridge in town for the suspected murder. It was a scene right out of an old western movie, the rope with its 13 loops slipped over the heads of the accused before they were and pushed off the edge. After the pair, man and boy were sufficiently strangled the upright local leaders went home and slept the sleep of the righteous. The next morning children coming down Crown Hill headed for school found the still, limp bodies swaying gently in the morning breeze. Coming together like a flock of birds, chirping and chattering at a sight the knew they might never see again.
The tombstone speaks. It might be surprising to you that they do indeed speak to historians. Mankind’s desire to be remembered after death is an element of our collective history. Remembered by many when fresh, time slowly erodes those who knew the people lying under them until only the curious, someone who never knew the living person seeks out those that tell a story.
Cemetery’s are everywhere. During Vietnam I was stationed at Naval Hospital annex Pearl Harbor. Another sailor and I toured around the islands and visited whatever site we might find interesting. There are great things to see no matter where you live. Hawaii has its share. Long the home of the US military’s mid- Pacific’s home, there are more bases than you can shake a stick at.
I’ve seen the huge veterans cemetery nestled in the crater of the “Punchbowl” in Honolulu. The National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, located in Honolulu’s Punchbowl Crater, is the final resting place for over 53,000 veterans of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. The “Punchbowl’s,” 116-acre site serves as a major Honolulu landmark.
The cemetery holds nearly 13,000 World War II dead from the Pacific theater. It is the resting place of numerous Medal of Honor recipients, including Pvt. Mikio Hasemoto of the all-nisei Japanese American 100th all Nisei infantry regiment. It holds the remains of Medal of Honor recipient Senator Daniel Inouye, “Spark” Matsunaga also rests there. Both men veterans of the brutal Italian campaign up the boot of Italy. Both of them were later elected to the United States Senate from Hawaii.
The first time I went there it went to see the grave of Ernie Pyle who I knew from reading some of my mothers books which he wrote when he was a war correspondent in the Big One, WWII. He is buried between two unknown soldiers, reflecting his desire to be with the ordinary soldiers he covered and who loved him.
So thats how I became a “Haunt.” Someone who haunts graveyards. You can walk through one and try and imagine what the lives of the people who lie there were like. Those who came before you all have a story to tell. Some important, some not so much but a story nevertheless. It’s all those stories connected that comprise history.
Perhaps it’s in the genes. My father and uncle jack literally grew up on an old cemetery on our ranch. The dairy my grandparents owned had its milking barn and silos built right over the site of some of the earliest burials in our little community of Arroyo Grande, California. Before the dedication of the Odd Fellows cemetery which lay just west of the townsite itself many rural ranch folks were buried on their own property and this county has dozens of very old burial grounds dating to the earliest inhabitants including the original native population.
When I was in grammar school we could slip through the three wire Bob wire fence hustle up the hill and on the other side, visit the small burial site of our early pioneer Francis Ziba Branch, his wife Manuela and his three young daughters, Maria Josefa, 15 Manuela, 13 and Ysabel, 5. They all died within days of each other in 1862. The Smallpox that killed them brought by a visitor availing himself of the legendary hospitality of the Californio Rancheros.
That old story is marked by tombstones inside a dilapidated wire fence under an ancient and gnarled Oak that was there before any Branch and guards their memory today..
Just outside the fence, the Hemmi’s, father Peter and son,15 year old PJ, who shot a neighbor to death in a land dispute. They were hanged from the Pacific Coast Railway bridge in town for the suspected murder. It was a scene right out of an old western movie, the rope with its 13 loops slipped over the heads of the accused before they were and pushed off the edge. After the pair, man and boy were sufficiently strangled the upright local leaders went home and slept the sleep of the righteous.
The next morning children coming down Crown Hill headed for school found the still, limp bodies swaying gently in the morning breeze. The little group of kids stood chirping and chattering like a flock of little birds as they took in a scene never to be forgotten.
The Hemmi’s were refused burial in the cemetery on our property by our most upright of citizens, for Arroyo Grande had at the time almost as many churches as saloons. By the good graces of Mrs. Manuela Branch they were buried next to her family. A series of tragedies told in old stone and wooden markers.
In later days, a grandson of Manuela Josefa Branch talked of the lynching, he being a witness, saying that the two went quietly, no blindfolds, no Priest with a last prayer, simply shoved over the edge of the Railway bridge. Fred Jones was just fifteen himself and accompanied his father and the other men. Years later he said he had always wished he had stayed home. Mrs. Hemmi was sitting in the shed that passed for the make shift jail house. The look on her face revealed that she knew exactly what was about to happen. The old man had never forgotten the look of horror on her face at that moment
Fred Jones 1871-1967. Grandson to Manuela Josefa Branch. Witness to a hanging.
So, it has always been a human practice to celebrate or memorialize lives, to leave a mark that one has existed literally from mankind’s beginnings. Roughly 110 billion people have lived on earth. Most of their stories are unknown to us. The idea that an individual would have a personal marker is only a couple of centuries old. Gravestones, or headstones, evolved from ancient megalithic markers used around 3,000 B.C. to identify communal burial chambers, with individualized markers becoming widespread in the 17th century. While early markers focused on marking family sites, modern inscribed headstones grew popular with churchyard burials and, eventually, in cemeteries for the general population by the 19th century.
In my travels, what had started as just a curiosity has become more than that. A visit to graves has become a prominent feature of anywhere we go. Just the simple inscriptions can trigger a desire to find who and what that person was or did.
Somewhere behind the inscription is a life and a history, a story to be told. A man who immigrates from Ireland to the Hughes ranch on the wild Sixes river, never married and lived out his life and was buried in the family graveyard up on the ridge overlooking the wild Pacific Ocean.
If you ever travel to western Europe walk the old residential streets of Amsterdam or Vienna’s streets where the houses, chock-a-block as they are will have small brass markers set into the cobbled sidewalks, “She stumbling Stones,” or Stolpersteine, the brainchild of German artist Gunter Demnig. For years he’s been traveling across Europe placing plaques in front of houses where Jews lived before they were deported by the Nazis. The small memorial consists of a 4 x 4 inch stone with a brass plaque stating the Jewish victim’s name, date of birth and death and the name of the camp in which he or she was murdered. The aim is to make the magnitude and triviality of the Holocaust tangible and to commemorate the victims at the place they were taken from their lives. Demnig also likes the idea of bringing relatives ‘back together’ by placing their stones together after they were transported and murdered in the different camps.
Stolperstein, Wien, Austria.
In case you are wondering, there is a stone in front of Anne Frank’s home at Westermarkt 20, 1016 GV Amsterdam, Netherlands.
There are parts of Vienna where literally every house has a plaque by the door with the names of the boys who went to war, were killed in WWI and WWII. They bring home the monumental sacrifice made by those boys to the megalomanic, suicidal vanities of old men. No history book can do this. It is simply stunning.
Cpl Edgar Green 2nd Australian Infantry, Gallipoli, WW1 North Gate cemetery, Baghdad, Iraq.
My wife’s great uncle Edgar Green’s body lies in the North Gate Cemetery in Baghdad, Iraq. “A little piece of England” as the British were wont to say when they were a worldwide empire. No one in our family has ever stood before it and prayed for his 24 year old soul. He was just 20 when he left Australia and traveled half way around the world to defend his country against the Turks and Germans. A stomach wound at the battle of Lone Pine on the Gallipoli peninsula and the 1918 Influenza epidemic ended him. Just an individual tragedy whose by product was the war to end all wars.”
As we grow closer to home, in Bridgeport, California there is a tiny grave that has the inscription,”The first white baby born in Bridgeport.” There is a subtle message there. I’ve seen the same inscription in the old Yosemite cemetery and another one up in Bodie. It’s a not so subtle statement that more than hints at America’s built in racism.
A couple years ago we traveled in Nevada and drove up to Virginia City. My family had stayed overnight there in 1955 when it was just a few inches from being a ghost town. We stayed in a room at the old Silver Queen hotel. I still remember the plaques on the doors that listed the Silver Kings, John William Mackay, James Graham Fair, James Clair Flood, and William S. O’Brien. The hotel was also the home of Samuel Clemons.
It is not the same today. It’s packed with tourists and its main type of business seems to be modeled on the cheap traveling carnival. For myself. a trip to the graveyard was the pièce de résistance. There are ten, thats right, ten cemeteries in the thirty acre plot. It’s built on a series of small hills and the paths that wander around, up and down between the different graves. There are Irish grave sites, two of them. One likely for the poor mine workers, the Hoi-Pallois, the other for the Hoity-Toity They’re all still Irish except for the cost of the stones. There is a section for Mormons another for Cornishmen and still another for Jews and Catholics. They do not abut.
Juliette “Julia” Bulette. 1832-1867. Note the Captain’s fire helmet.
There is a part near the top and outside the fence for the sad Soiled Doves. The exception is Julia Bulette, a madam who famously nursed dying miners during Virginia cities many epidemics. She was also made an honorary fireman by the city’s fire companies. She had many friends, some in high places, some in low. Bulette had entire fire companies as friends, and interestingly, some of Virginia City’s upper crust women. Bulette was an accomplished seamstress, and many of her frocks found their way to places like Piper’s Opera House and the International Hotel. You can still see a few in the city’s museum.
Stories today insist that Bulette was murdered for her jewels and money, the problem being, she had little of each. A Frenchman with little command of the English language, John Millian, 38 years old, was arrested when it was discovered he had some of Bulette’s possessions, including a dress pattern she had ordered. Millian was judged to be guilty by an impromptu court and quickly hanged for her murder. Bulette’s remains were buried in a silk lined mahogany casket, at the cost of $149. Every penny was raised by the people who cared for her. Her funeral procession was said to be the largest funeral in the city’s history. The Virginia and Truckee Railroad named a passenger car after her which still exists at the Nevada state RR museum in Carson city.
There is a headstone and a inside a small fenced area but her actual grave has been lost. You see, the Ladies of the city refused to let her rest with the people who loved her.
People who know the story still make sure there are flowers on the grave 159 years after her death.**
So, it has always been a human practice to celebrate or memorialize lives, to leave a mark that one has existed literally from mankind’s beginnings. Roughly 110 billion people have lived on earth. Most of their stories are unknown to us. The idea that an individual would have a personal marker is only a couple of centuries old. Gravestones, or headstones, evolved from ancient megalithic markers used around 3,000 B.C. to identify communal burial chambers, with individualized markers becoming widespread in the 17th century. While early markers focused on marking family sites, modern inscribed headstones grew popular with churchyard burials and, eventually, in cemeteries for the general population by the 19th century.
In my travels, what had started as just a curiosity has become more than that. A visit to graves has become a prominent feature of anywhere we go. Just the simple inscriptions can trigger a desire to find who and what that person was or what they did.
Somewhere behind the inscription is a life and a history, a story to be told.
In my travels, what had started as just a curiosity has become more than that. A visit to graves has become a prominent feature of anywhere we go. Just the simple inscriptions can trigger a desire to find who and what that person was or what they did.
You don’t have to travel far either. The Odd Fellows cemetery here at home tells a story with every stone and in some cases graves that have no stone.
There are sixteen markers for my family alone. We also have graves in San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria and both cemeteries in Guadalupe.
EPSON MFP imageEPSON MFP image
Mehitabel and John Corbit
One of my favorites are a pair of graves just 50 feet from my parents. John Corbit or Corbett, different spellings from a time when things like spelling and pronunciation were a little more flexible. Next to him is his wife Mehitabel. Now this isn’t some grand story of war or politics though he was a successful businessman, ran for county sheriff and was a mainstay of the horse racing community, which in those days was a major enterprise in the Cow Counties, livestock being the chief economic driver. He owned extensive lands in what is now called Corbett Canyon and was considered not only a very early pioneer, they came here about 1860 when most of the land was still owned by the original Rancheros, but also a fine upstanding citizen. He was a friend of Francis Ziba Branch, Michael Price, David Mallagh and Captain William Dana. They propered in an area of California that was still in a semi-wild state. John Corbit who was from Cavan Ireland by way of upstate New York farmed and ranched in the eponymous canyon populated by many, many Irish families as you can see on a tour of the old graveyard.
The whipped cream on the top of the Corbits story is the inscription at the base of her tombstone. In small script written at the bottom, it says “A charitable and faithful woman” How about that.
It tells you in no uncertain terms who she was and what she meant to her husband. They are both buried in section A just feet from my family in section B along the old Halcyon road.
Drop by sometime and see them. I’m sure they would enjoy the company.
NOTES:
*Rabindranath Thakur FRAS, also known by his pseudonym Bhanusimha was a Bengali polymath of the Bengal Renaissance period. In 1913, Tagore became the first Asian to win a Nobel Prize in any category, and also the first lyricist and non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. B 1861-D 1941
**Julia’s grave has been lost in history. Those who actually knew where it was are long dead. There was a false grave put up years later which is not her real burial spot. It is thought that the original location is based on a mention of the pioneer cemetery known then as Flowery Hill from an old book printed the 1860s just a few years after her death.
The Corbit Photos are from a cherished family album. Bound in faded red velvet, it contains their photos and the printed announcement of her death. The album belonged to Patrick and Sarah Moore who were their contemporaries and were my grandmothers aunt and uncle.
Michael Shannon lives and writes in Arroyo Grande, California.
Dedicated to all the swabs whove served particularly Richard Waller, Rod Gibson and Donald Polhemus.
I was a Swab. A Medical Corpsman and it was my good fortune to be stationed at the medical clinic at Pearl in 1969. I was finishing out my five year tour and I guess the Bureau had decided that I deserved some minor reward for some rough times.
No one quite knew what to do with me because all the available billets were filled so I spent the last six months of my enlistment doing whatever the Captain wanted done. I didn’t mind and in fact I got to do some interesting things that weren’t on the normal duty roster for a Corpsman who was a trained scrub nurse and had spent most of his enlistment standing on a little stainless steel stool passing instruments and counting sponges. At one duty station it wasn’t even a stool butt a plastic milk box. But that’s another story for another time.
Lots of freedom which is hardly a concept acknowledged by any service. For a time I was on loan to an Admiral as his driver. The job was to wash, wax and polish the Navy Blue automobile and drive his majesty wherever and whenever he needed to go. I wore white gloves and kept my uniform spiffy.
Now you might think Admirals being right up there with the Pope would be unapproachable, and believe me many of the Academy Boys were all that but not this one. This Admiral was relaxed and chatty and, all in all it was a good gig for someone who had seen too much seeing nasty business. He was part of the command structure so I spent a lot of time going places I wouldn’t have gone otherwise. Meetings at Tripler hospital, or up at Schofield Barracks in Wahiawa, sometimes for a command lunch at Hickam Field as it was still known. Park the car, open the door, salute his highness and then carry the Admirals briefcase and do the most military duty of all, wait.
I explored many of the nooks and crannies most sailors never see. Still today you can see the bullet pocked stucco walls of the old barracks at Schofield stitched by the 303 caliber machine guns mounted on the Zero fighters as they dove in from Kole Kole pass on their swing down towards Pearl and battleship row. There is even a small memorial to James Joyce an Army private who was there and wrote “From Here to Eternity.” The best first person account of that terrible morning.
The slugs from the 20mm’s shattered concrete revetments a the Kaneohe Marine base where the Catalina flying boats were parked are visible reminders of the absolute devastation. Near the Arizona is the rusted out hull of the Utah BB-31 unsalvageable and designated a war grave with its one hundred plus US sailors and Marines still trapped inside. An Arroyo Grande boy was trapped inside the capsized ship for days until the cutting torches finally freed him. I went to school with his son.
There are reminders everywhere of that “Day of Infamy.” When I was at Pearl Harbor there were many WWII veterans in the services. The civilian cooks truck drivers and other contractors employed people who were there on that day. Not words in a book, but someone who had seen, heard and still had vivid memories of it. It was still just 28 years after the bombs ended it all.
Our warehouse had a janitor who was a veteran of nearly every part of the War. He had worked at the naval base and was on duty the morning of the attack. He served in the US Army with the famous 100th Infantry battalion which fought in the incredibly vicious battles up the spine of Italy and in southern France.**
After his return from Europe in 1946 he went back to his old job. He was still doing it in 1969.
People might be surprised today to know that he was only 22 years older than I was. An easy man to like and chat with.
But there was a day when that changed. Mid-morning on a Monday we were at the coffee pot together, ready to start the day, him swabbing decks and emptying cans and me waiting for the Admirals aide to call to get the car ready when in the distance we heard a faint throbbing growl of radial engines coming down from the north. A very unusual occurrence in the jet age. We walked outside and turning toward the saddle which connects Oahu’s two mountain ranges. We saw a gaggle of aircraft headed for us. Nearly indistinguishable at first they gradual grew in size as they came nearer. As the planes came in over the East Loch of Pearl, the old destroyer anchorage they peeled off to our right and for the first time we could see the red meatballs of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s attack aircraft.
Frank froze in place, you could hear his breath as he began to softly gasp. He dropped his coffee, the cup broke as it hit the deck. He did not just look stunned, he was. Time stood still, just for a moment.
After a moment of watching we could see that the planes were not really Japanese but American trainers painted to look like them.
The pretty Wave from West Virginia came out and down the steps and said, “I heard they are making a Movie.”
I didn’t know exactly why they were there but for young man who read I knew what they were supposed to be and was thrilled because I had never seen one in actual flight. There was one on the roof of a service station in Easton, near Fresno on the way to my aunt Mickeys house but I’d never seen the real thing.
Frank came back from wherever he was, looked down at the mess on the deck, looked over at me and whispered,
“Jesus, oh Jesus, I thought it was real.” So silly, so silly of me.”
I understood in that moment that there is something real behind the history books. Frank showed me that.
Across the glistening surface of the Pearl Harbor, over there by Ford Island are the Tears. The Black Tears rimmed with the rainbow crown that shines in the tropical sun. Every day the Arizona weeps for her children entombed in the blackened steel coffin that knows no time which was once the glory of the fleet.
Those boys are gone. their mothers are gone too. Only our collective memory keeps them alive. Arizona is the most sacred monument we have. To go there, as the locals say, “Geeve you chicken skin.”
My generation gave it’s fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts and cousins to this country. The Arizona belongs to them, not to you Mister FBI.
So, Ka$h Patel, Fuck You. Just Fuck You to the ends of the earth.
Seaman 1st, US Navy, 1966.
*Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) is widely regarded as one of the most historically accurate war films ever made, particularly for its balanced, dual-perspective approach to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. While dramatized, it heavily researched events, using both American and Japanese technical advisors, and is known for meticulous attention to operational detail and communication failures
**The 100th Infantry Battalion is a historic U.S. Army unit comprised mostly of Japanese Americans (Nisei) from Hawaii. Formed during World War II, it earned the moniker “Purple Heart Battalion” for its valor and heavy casualties. Today, it operates as the Army Reserve’s only infantry unit.
Michael Shannon lives and writes in California. Navy Veteran and proud of it.
