Dave Does History

In the early days of the Pacific War, the Japanese empire seized Wake Island from the United States. It was an epic battle, despite the inevitable outcome. An outnumbered and unsupported Marine garrison held out far longer than anyone imagined that they would. Upon seizing the island, the Japanese removed the Marines, but kept ninety-eight civilian workers, who were forced into slave labor to build defensive infrastructure on the island.

In October of 1943, a air attack from the USS Lexington, in which future US President George HW Bush got his first combat experience, convinced the local Japanese commander than an invasion was immanent.

It wasn’t. But he still made a decision that reverberates today…

This week in 1789, the 1st US Congress approved the first twelve amendments to the Constitution. These twelve amendments were the response to Anti-Federalist position that the Constitution MUST have a Bill of rights. To that end, these twelve amendments listed the specific rights which were to be placed outside of government interference.

Further, they would serve to limit the ability of the Government to reduce the representation of the people in their house, and insure that none of the people elected to congress would be able to manipulate the compensation to benefit themselves unduly.

Well… that was what was supposed to happen… 

In the debates over the ratification of the US Constitution, the Anti-Federalists often resorted to predictions of the worst case of the future. The understood human nature better than the Federalists did, but they lacked the ability to hope that the American people would rise above that nature.

George Washington had strongly supported ratification, but by this day in 1796, he was exhausted. Not just by war, but by the Presidency not being quite what he had hoped or expected it to be. As he said farewell to the nation, he was seeing the Anti-Federalist warnings beginning to come to fruition. He himself would not become one of them, but his warning to the nation would be along so many of the same lines of thinking.

As we take a few moments today to consider the Farewell Address of Washington, we must ask those same questions of ourselves.

It’s one of those “myths” of history, that on September 12, 1962, then President John F. Kennedy stood in Rice Stadium in Houston and announced to a stunned and surprised nation and world that the United States was committing itself to putting a man on the moon – and returning him safely – before the end of the decade. The speech is stirring and it was certainly one of Kennedy’s most noted.

What it was not, was any kind of surprise at all.

More than a year before, Kennedy had told a wildly cheering Congress that the moon was the goal, and they in turn were more than happy to fund it. What hadn’t happened after that announcement was the wild across the board support for the goal for which he had hoped. In fact, many newspapers ran articles explaining why the moon simply wasn’t a realistic goal, some going so far as to “prove” that it was, in fact, impossible.

The genius of Kennedy’s 1962 speech was that he knew all the naysayers would be listening, along with the folks who simply wanted to hear something inspirational of uplifting, given the troubling times in which they lived.

In one of the greatest moment of oratory, JFK delivered on the challenge to challenge America. And this time, the naysayers would have to come up with a different response…

Note: The entire speech by John F Kennedy is added to the end of the podcast…

I am a Cold Warrior. I grew up in the heat of it, and for the final decade of it, I was directly involved. It was intense. It was personal, and it left me with a profound sense of accomplishment. But unlike the shelling of Ft. Sumter (1861), or the invasion of Serbia (1914) or the Poland (1939), the actual beginning of the Cold War is a bit more… nebulous.

One could argue that the roots of the Cold War was in the politics and stresses of the pre-war years and the inevitable ideological struggle between communism and the liberal western democracies. But when did it actual… you know… start?

Igor Gouzenko in 1946
Public Domain

What if the whole thing started with a crying baby?

In September of 1945, a young Soviet embassy staffer walked in to the office of the Ottawa Journal, carrying a briefcase. He asked to see the editor of the paper, he hesitated and chose not to reveal his reason for the visit. Later that day, his resolved steeled, he returned, but was told that Editor was not in the office.

The disappointed and nervous young man left and went home. But the next day, his request for Canadian Citizenship would be the catalyst for the next forty-six years of the Cold War…

The 14th amendments Section 3 prohibition against permanently holding office has NEVER been invoked successfully. Even when it was tried the first time, it ended when Congress took action to change it.

Then, in 1918, with World War I raging, a man from Wisconsin found himself charged under the 1917 Espionage Act of saying things that the government said were sedition. He was arrested, tried and convicted.

And then he won a seat in Congress. Twice.

Congress, invoking the 14th Section 3, told him that he couldn’t be seated. Two year later, he won again. And served another three terms in Congress.

Now, in 2023, a Florida barrister has filed a Federal complaint against Donald Trump claiming that under the 14th Amendment he (Trump) is “not eligible to run” for President. Hold on there, hombre… that is NOT what the Amendment says…

Who’s ready for the Presidential Campaign Debate Season? Whoo-hoo!!!!

Seriously, I long ago quit watching them because – and I say this with love – they are pointless. Nothing of any substance has been discussed at a debate since 1960, and it gets worse every cycle. Today we are literally watching them not to learn anything of value, but in the hope that – like NASCAR – there will be a giant implosion on the stage that ends with a Jerry Springer-esque fight. Including the chairs being thrown and noses being broken.

Now that I would most certainly watch.

That said, and putting my own ideas for how to improve the debates aside for the moment, there once was a time when debates in this country meant something. When opponents actually had positions on the issues that completely differed from one another. A time when politicians were actually addressing the issues, not trying get rich at the expense of the nation.

And the greatest of all these debates began on August 21, 1958 in Ottawa, IL…

In the days following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was confusion and uncertainty in the upper echelons of the Imperial Japanese government. Most of the leadership had deferred the final decision to the Emperor, who told them to “Bear the unbearable.”

During the few days of waiting for the Japanese decision, the United States had paused its B-29 led bombing campaign. There rumors were rampant. Time after time the surrender was said to be imminent, but then faded away to be followed by yet another rumor.

As it became clear that Japan had not been – as yet – convinced to lay down her arms, General Spaatz decided that what was needed was a 1000 Bomber raid. This had been the norm in the later stages of the war against Germany, but it had not – as yet – happened in the Pacific Theater. The sheer size of the Pacific Theater and the distances involved had made it impractical. A lack of B-29s had made unachievable.

Until today, August 14, 1945.

As the B-29s began to roll off of the Island of Tinian on the morning and throughout the entire day of August 14, 1945 (never totaling 1000) the aim was simply to bomb whatever targets might be left. At the Palace in Tokyo, the Emperor began to record a special message, announcing to his people the surrender. As the Bombers arrived overhead, the taping was topped and the record was hidden in a closet.

Safely stowed there it would not be found when a last violent attempt was made to stop the surrender. The B-29s dropped their lethal loads, killing ever more Japanese civilians. In anger over the impeding surrender and the B-29 raids, Japanese militants seized American POWs and began to behead them.

The last few moments of the war would be every bit as bloody and violent as the first.

By now you know that either Barbie or Oppenheimer, or possibly both, are the greatest movies ever created in the history film. Already people are talking about follow up films to tell what are known as “origin stories,” but frankly I couldn’t care less about the back-story of Barbie or Ken, or even for that matter Robert Oppenheimer.

That said, there would never have been a film on Oppenheimer if two men, joined by other scientists, hadn’t written letters to President Franklin Roosevelt. One of those letters was delivered to him this week (August 2) in 1939. It was that letter that alarmed Roosevelt and the US Government so much, that a crash program, which would be led by Oppenheimer, began to go critical…

I am often bemused by so many wannabe tough people proclaiming on social media that they are here to “punch Nazi’s in the face!”

More than once I have wondered if they would even recognize a actual Nazi if they were to see one in person? My own experience tells me that they would not, because in today’s world, the attitude is that “Everyone I don’t like is literally Hitler!“

That said, there was a day in 1935 (July 25th) when a group of men decided to… well.. punch Nazi’s in the face. Their actions on this day in New York City, and the outcome of the subsequent trial, were so offensive to Adolf Hitler and his merry men, that it forced the German regime to change it’s own laws.

And for the first time in history, but certainly not the last, actual Nazi’s were punched in their actual faces…