American History – Page 21 – Historical Easter Eggs

March 28, 1892 Two-Gun Hart, Prohibition Cowboy

By 1930, Richard James Hart was so famous as to receive a letter addressed only to “Hart”, along with the sketch of a brace of pistols.

In 2002, the Martin Scorcese film Gangs of New York told the story of Civil War-era street gangs, the violent underworld of a city run by Tammany Hall “Machine” politician William “Boss” Tweed. The slum tenements of turn-of-the century New York were borne of this earlier period, a vicious, teeming underworld of petty criminals and street gangs including the Five Point, Whyos, Chichester and a score of others.

James Vincenzo was born into this world on this day in 1892, a world of gang violence where rivalries were brutal and fights armed and often, to the death. James ran to the defense of his younger brother Al after one gang-banger slashed the boy across the face, hurling his little brother’s attacker through a plate glass window.

While many of the boys of this day grew into the criminals of another era, James left New York City for the life of a circus roustabout.

This was the age of the silent film, William S. Hart one of the great “cowboy” stars of the era. Hart was larger than life, the six-gun toting cow-punching gunslinger from a bygone era.

The roustabout so idolized the silent film star he adopted the mannerisms, the low-slung six-shooters, red bandanna and the ten-gallon hat. Not content with merely aping all that cinematic charisma, James went so far as to adopt the man’s name.

Richard James Hart stepped off the freight train in 1919, a walking, talking anachronism. He was a 19th century Wild West gunfighter, from his cowboy boots to his embroidered vest to that broad-brimmed stetson hat. This was Homer Nebraska, a small town of about 500, some seventeen miles from Sioux City Iowa.

He claimed to be a hero of the Great War, personally decorated by General John J. Pershing. Intelligent, ambitious and not afraid of a little hard work, Hart took jobs as paper hanger, house painter, whatever it took.

He was short and powerfully built with the look of a man who carried mixed Indian or Mexican blood, regaling veterans at the local American Legion with tales of his exploits, against the Hun.

The man could fight and he knew how to use those guns, amazing onlookers with feats of marksmanship, behind the Legion post.

Any doubts about Hart’s physical courage were put to rest that May when a flash-flood nearly killed the Winch family of neighboring Emerson Nebraska. Hart dashed across the raging flood time after time to bring the family to safety. Nineteen-year-old Kathleen was so taken with her savior she married the man that Fall, a marriage which would produce four boys.

The small town was enthralled by this new arrival, the town council appointing Hart as Marshall. He was a big fish in a small pond, elected commander of the Legion post and district commissioner for the Boy Scouts of America.

The 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on January 16 of that year, the Volstead Act passed by the United States Congress over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson on October 29. “Prohibition” had descended across the land. It was now illegal to produce, import, transport or sell intoxicating liquor.

Richard Hart became Prohibition Agent in the Summer of 1920 and went immediately to work, destroying stills and arresting area bootleggers.

Hart was loved by Temperance types and hated by the “wets”, and famous across the state of Nebraska. The Homer Star reported their hometown hero was “becoming such a menace in the state that his name alone carries terror to the heart of every criminal.”

Officials at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs took note and before long, Hart was performing the more difficult (and dangerous) job of liquor suppression on the reservations.

Hart brought his chaps and his six-shooters to South Dakota, where the Yanktown reservation superintendent reported to his superiors in Washington “I wish to commend Mr. Hart in highest terms for his fearless and untiring efforts to bring these liquor peddlers and moonshiners to justice. …This man Hart is a go-getter.”

Hart became proficient in Lakota and Omaha dialects. Tribal leaders called him “Two Gun”, after the twin revolvers he wore. Some members of the Oglala tribe called him “Soiko”, the name roughly translating as “Big hairy boogey-man”.

By 1927, Two-Guns Hart had achieved such a reputation as to be appointed bodyguard to President Calvin Coolidge, on a trip through the Black Hills of South Dakota.

By 1930, Richard James Hart was so famous as to receive a letter addressed only to “Hart”, along with the sketch of a brace of pistols.

Hart became livestock inspector after repeal of prohibition, and special agent assigned to the Winnebago and Omaha reservations. He was re-appointed Marshall of his adopted home town but, depression-era Nebraska was tough. The money was minuscule and the Marshall was caught, stealing cans of food.

The relatives of one bootlegging victim of his earlier days tracked him down and beat him so severely with brass knuckles, the Prohibition Cowboy lost sight in one eye.

Fellow members of the American Legion had by this time contacted the Army to learn Hart’s WW1 tales, were all fake. Richard James Hart was never in the Army though his namesake Richard Jr. died fighting for the nation, in World War 2.

Turns out that other parts of the lawman’s story were fraudulent, too. Like the Italian American actor Espera Oscar de Corti better known as “Iron Eyes Cody”, the “crying Indian” of those commercials had no Native American blood. Nor did the Italian American Richard James Hart.

The Lawman had left the slums of Brooklyn to become a Prohibition Cowboy while that little brother slashed across the face, had pursued a life of crime. Richard James Hart was James Vincenzo Capone, long lost brother of Alphonse “Scarface” Capone.

A Trivial Matter

James Vincenzo Capone’s strange double-life came to the public eye for the first time in 1951, when defense attorneys subpoenaed Richard Hart to testify on behalf of his brother Ralph Capone. Hart faded into anonymity following a rash of newspaper stories, and died within a year at his adopted home town of Homer, the small Nebraska town where he stepped off that freight train, some 33 years earlier.

March 27, 1794 Quasi War

On this day in 1794, the United States Government established a permanent navy and authorized the building of six frigates.. One of them, USS Constitution, saw its first combat in the Quasi-War and remains in service to this day, the oldest commissioned warship in the United States Navy.

Imagine you consider yourself to be somewhere in the political center. Maybe a little to the left. Now imagine that, in the space of two years, national politics have shifted to the point you find yourself on the “reactionary right”, subject to execution as such by your government.

And your personal convictions have never so much as wavered.

America’s strongest Revolution-era ally lost its collective mind in 1792, when France descended into a revolution of its own. 17,000 Frenchmen were officially tried and executed during the 1793-’94 “Reign of Terror” alone, including King Louis XVI and Queen consort, Marie Antoinette. Untold thousands died in prison or without benefit of trial.

The monarchical powers of Europe were quick to intervene. For the 32^nd time since the Norman invasion of 1066, England and France once again found themselves in a state of war.

France was the American patriot’s strongest supporter during America’s revolution, yet the US remained neutral in the later conflict, straining relations between the former allies. Making matters worse, America repudiated its war debt in 1794, arguing that it owed money to “l’ancien régime”, not to the French First Republic which had overthrown it and executed its King.

Both sides in the European conflict seized neutral ships in the act of trading with their adversary. The “Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation” with Great Britain, better known as the “Jay Treaty”, all but destroyed relations with the French 1st Republic. France retaliated by stepping up attacks on American merchant shipping, seizing 316 American civilian ships in one eleven-month period, alone.

In 1796, the French Republic formally broke diplomatic relations with the United States, rejecting the credentials of President Washington’s representative Ambassador Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

The following year, President John Adams dispatched a delegation of two. They were the future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Marshall, and future Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry, he who lends his name to the term “Gerrymander”. Their instructions were to join with Pinckney in negotiating a treaty with France, with terms similar to those of the Jay treaty with Great Britain.

The American commission arrived in Paris in October 1797, requesting a meeting with the French Foreign Minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. Talleyrand, unkindly disposed toward the Adams administration to begin with, demanded money before meeting with the American delegation. The practice was not uncommon in European diplomacy of the time, but the Americans blanched.

Documents later released by the Adams administration describe Nicholas Hubbard, an English banker identified only as “W”. W introduced “X” (Baron Jean-Conrad Hottinguer) as a “man of honor”, who wished an informal meeting with Pinckney. Pinckney agreed and Hottinguer reiterated Talleyrand’s demands, specifying the payment of a large “loan” to the French government, and a £50,000 bribe to Talleyrand himself. Met with flat refusal by the American commission, X then introduced Pierre Bellamy (“Y”) to the Americans, followed by Lucien Hauteval (“Z”), sent by Talleyrand to meet with Elbridge Gerry. X, Y and Z, each in their turn, reiterated the Foreign Minister’s demand for a loan, and a bribe.

Believing that Adams sought war by exaggerating the French position, Jeffersonian members of Congress joined with the more warlike Federalists in demanding the release of the commissioner’s communications. It was these dispatches, released in redacted form, which gave the name “X-Y-Z Affair” to the diplomatic and military crisis which followed.

American politics were sharply divided over the European war. President Adams and his Federalists, always the believers in strong, central government, took the side of the Monarchists. Thomas Jefferson and his “Democratic-Republicans” found more in common with the “liberté, égalité, fraternité” espoused by revolutionaries.

In the United Kingdom, the ruling class enjoyed the chaos. One British political cartoon of the time depicted the United States, represented by a woman being groped by five Frenchmen while John Bull, the fictional personification of all England, looks on laughing from a nearby hilltop.

Adams’ commission left without entering formal negotiations, the failure leading to a political firestorm in the United States. Congress rescinded all existing treaties with France on July 7, 1798, the date beginning the undeclared “Quasi-War” with France. Four days later, President John Adams signed “An Act for Establishing and Organizing a Marine Corps,” permanently establishing the United States Marine Corps as an independent service branch, in order to defend the American merchant fleet.

At this point, the United States had no other means of fighting back. The government had disbanded the Navy along with its Marine contingent at the end of the Revolution, selling the last warship in 1785 and retaining only a handful of “revenue cutters” for purposes of customs enforcement. On this day in 1794, the United States Government established a permanent navy and authorized the building of six frigates.. One of them, USS Constitution, saw its first combat in the Quasi-War and remains in service to this day, the oldest commissioned warship in the United States Navy.

American military involvement proved decisive. Before armed intervention, the conflict with France resulted in the loss of over 2,000 merchant ships captured, with 28 Americans killed and another 42 wounded. Military escalation with the French First Republic cost the Americans 54 killed and 43 wounded, with only a single ship lost. That one, was later recaptured.

By the turn of the century, the naval power of the English speaking nations brought about a more agreeable negotiating position with the government of First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte. The Convention of 1800 ended the Quasi-War, asserting American rights and ending the alliance with France.

The entangling French alliance of 1778, was dead. The Napoleonic Wars would be fought entirely on European soil.

A Trivial Matter

Between 1803 and 1812, the Royal Navy’s manpower needs greatly exceeded voluntary enlistment. 5,000 to 9,000 American sailors were forcibly “impressed” (kidnapped) into service, becoming a major casus belli for the war of 1812.

March 26, 1958 How can they Hate me, when they don’t even Know me

“In a real sense we must all live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools”. – Reverend martin Luther King, Jr.

Daryl Davis is an American R & B musician, a master of Delta & Chicago Blues and the boogie-woogie style, on piano. The man can sing too, well enough to perform with the likes of Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Jerry Lee Lewis and BB King.

“Both Pinetop Perkins and Johnnie Johnson, considered to be the greatest Blues & Boogie Woogie and Blues and Rock’n’Roll pianists respectively, both have claimed DARYL as their godson”. – daryldavis.com/musician-biography/

Davis has acted on stage, film and television. He’s a Christian, a writer, an activist and lecturer, who’s spent the last thirty years befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan and. Oh…Did I mention, he’s black?

Daryl Davis was born this day in 1958, the son of a State Department foreign service officer. His first ten years were spent in the world of foreign diplomats where children of every race and nationality were schooled together. This was a world of easy integration, not so the world he entered on returning to the United states, at age ten.

As a member of an all-white Cub Scout troop in the racially backward Boston suburb of Belmont Massachusetts (you thought I was going to say “Selma”), Davis speaks of being struck with rocks and bottles thrown by the crowd, until encircled by members of the troop.

Lest anyone object to my characterizing the “Liberal” bastion of Massachusetts as “racially backward”, the affront to common decency below was photographed in Boston in 1976, nineteen years after President Dwight Eisenhower sent Federal troops into Little Rock, Arkansas.

The_Soiling_of_Old Glory_1976 — “The Soiling of Old Glory is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken by Stanley Forman during the Boston busing crisis in 1976” – H/T Wikipedia

Any fool can mistrust and even dislike those unlike himself. Most fools do. At ten years old, Daryl Davis understood as much and asked his father about the cub scout incident. The conversation led to a lifelong impression in Davis’ mind, that it made no sense. How can they Hate me, when the don’t even Know me.

Davis’ career as an activist began in a “white” bar in Frederick, Maryland, in 1983. Davis was playing Country & Western music when a white man commented, he’d never “heard a black man play as well as Jerry Lee Lewis“. Davis explained “Jerry Lee learned to play from black blues and boogie woogie piano players and he’s a friend of mine.” The patron was skeptical and, over drinks, admitted to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Eventually, the pair became friends, a relationship which would guide Daryl to leaders of the KKK.

Years later, Davis decided to write a book, answering the question that had dogged him, all those years: ‘Why do you hate me when you know nothing about me?’ That question had never been answered from my youth.” To satisfy his own curiosity, Davis reached out to Roger Kelly, Imperial Wizard of the KKK in Maryland. Let him tell the story:

“My secretary called him, and I told her, ‘do not tell Roger Kelly I’m black. Just tell him I am writing a book on the Klan.’ I wanted her to call because she’s white. I knew enough about the mentality of the Klan that they would never think a white woman would work for a black man. She called him and he didn’t ask what color I was, so we arranged to meet at a motel”.

The human brain is an awesome thing, the mind a strange and impenetrable place. Weighing in at about 3-pounds, the organ is comprised of some 86 billion neurons, each made of a stoma or cell body, an axon to take information away from the cell, and anywhere between a handful and a hundred thousand dendrites bringing information in. Chemical signals transmit data over minute gaps between neurons called synapses, about 1/25,000th to 1/50,000th the thickness of a sheet of paper.

There are roughly a quadrillion such synapses in any given brain, meaning any given thought could wend its way through more pathways than there are molecules in the known universe.

The possessors of such organs are themselves, strange and impenetrable beings. Some among us are impervious to new information. We all know the kind. Others are capable of the most gut-wrenching honesty, of challenging even the most deeply held beliefs in the face of new information.

When Confederate Major General Patrick Cleburne, the “Stonewall of the West” made the “Monstrous proposal” of arming slaves in the waning days of the Civil War, General and former Georgia Governor Howell Cobb gave us the faintest glimpse through that keyhole: “You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”

“And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”

Roger Kelly himself was a man, capable of looking through that keyhole. What he saw didn’t make sense to him either. Kelly arrived with an armed bodyguard, himself armed and wearing military-style fatigues. That first meeting must have been as tense as two cats in a wet sack. In time, the man’s views began to soften. Later on, Davis invited Kelly to be godfather, to his daughter. Kelly left the Klan and gave his outfit to Davis, who kept the robes in hopes of one day showing them in a “Museum of the Klan”.

Davis claims to have befriended over 20 members of the Ku Klux Klan. He claims direct responsibility for 40 to 60 of them leaving and indirectly, another 200. Davis believes Klansmen hold misconceptions about blacks based on brainwashing and unfamiliarity. He wrote of one such conversation in his 1998 book, Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan:

One Klansman informed Davis, “All black people have a gene in them that makes them violent “. Davis responded, ‘You know, it’s a fact that all white people have within them a gene that makes them serial killers. Name me three black serial killers.’ He could not do it. I said ‘you have the gene. It’s just latent.’ He said, ‘Well that’s stupid.’ I said, ‘It’s just as stupid as what you said to me.’ He was very quiet after that and I know it was sinking in.”

The man left the Klan several months later, giving Davis his robes. They were the first he ever received.

In an age of political race baiters and racial arsonists, (they’re a dime-a-dozen on TV), Daryl Davis is a man with the strength of character, the intellectual curiosity and the physical courage to challenge long-held stereotypes that many among us, hold about one another.

The man is a living tribute to the idea that if we just ignore the crazies, the rest of us can figure out how to get along.

Afterward

The documentary film Accidental Courtesy: Daryl Davis, Race & America debuted on the PBS TV series Independent Lens, in 2016. Frank Ancona, Imperial Wizard of the Missouri-based Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan was depicted at the opening and close of the documentary. Ancona was shot and killed in his bed on February 11, 2017, two days before the airing of the film. Ancona’s wife and step-son have been charged in the murder.

frank-ancona-3 — Imperial Wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Frank Ancona

“In a real sense we must all live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools”. – Reverend martin Luther King, Jr.

March 23, 1994 The Heroes of Green Ramp

“Ammunition was going off. I couldn’t tell where it was. I looked to my left and there was a man on fire. I looked to my right and there was a man on fire.” – Sgt. Gregory Cowper of the 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry

It was a good day for a jump. March 23, 1994. The skies were clear with moderate winds of five to seven MPH, temperatures a comfortable mid-sixties.

Some 500 paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division were assembled around the parking area known as “Green Ramp”, part of a joint exercise between Fort Bragg North Carolina, and nearby Pope Air Force base.

There were two parachute drops scheduled that day. The sky above was filled with aircraft, General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcons, Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolts and C-130 aircraft, conducting training.

On the ground, paratroops of the First Brigade, 504th Infantry Regiment, and 505th Infantry Regiment prepared to board Lockheed C-130 Hercules and Lockheed C-141 Starlifter aircraft parked on Green Ramp, or practiced jumps from one of several concrete tail mock-ups or just waited, resting in a large personnel shed called the “PAX”, or surrounding lawns.

An F-16D Fighting Falcon was conducting a simulated flame-out on final approach to the runway, with two pilots at the stick. 300-feet above tree level, the giant four-engine turboprop military transport known as the C-130E Hercules, was making the same approach.

The Fighter’s nose struck the tail of the transport, severing the C-130E’s right elevator. F-16 pilots applied full after burner trying to recover the aircraft, as its frame began to disintegrate. The transport was able to recover, veering off to circle the air field and assess the damage. Meanwhile both F-16 pilots ejected with the fighter still on afterburner, hurtling toward Green Ramp.

The shattered wreckage of the F-16 hit the ground between two parked C-130s before striking the right wing of the C-141B Starlifter, puncturing 55,000 gallon fuel tanks. A great fireball of flaming wreckage some 75-feet in diameter ricocheted across the tarmac, hurtling toward 82nd Airborne personnel staging for that second jump.

“S. Sgt. Daniel E. Price of the 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, sacrificed his life to save a female soldier he had never met before. Spc. Estella Wingfield, an information systems operator with Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 525th Military Intelligence Brigade, remembered:

He looked me in the eye, grabbed me by the shirt, threw me several feet in the air and jumped on top of me…. An instant later, I heard the blast, felt the extreme heat from the explosion and the debris falling on us…. After the explosion and the rounds stopped going off, he whispered in my ear, “Crawl out from underneath me.”” I did and took off running. History.army.mil

Captain Gerald K. Bebber, Chaplain to the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade chaplain, remembers he:

“heard the high pitched screech of a jet fighter airplane at open throttle from beyond the pack shed [sic] suddenly give way to a deep reverberating thud and massive explosion. I recognized the sound from my experience in battle in Desert Storm. As soon as I could think this, a great roaring rush of fire entered my sight above and to the left of the pack shed. It was at tree-top level, slanting down as it gushed into the mockup area at terrific speed…. The flame came though the tops of the trees that stood in a small open area beside the pack shed. In the torrent of flame I saw pieces of wreckage and machinery hurling along. As the torrent rushed in I could hear cries of alarm, curses, and someone yelling “run” from the mock-ups. The fire blast crackled as it blasted in, and at its sides it curled outward as it went forward. I was standing perhaps thirty feet beside the edge of the blast, and could see eddies of the flame curling out toward me. I turned and ran from the flame, to just beyond the right end of the pack shed, where . . . I no longer felt the intense heat, so I stopped. To my left, out on the aircraft ramp, now in my line of sight I could see a parked C-141 engulfed in flames. It was the left one of a pair of C-141s parked there”.

Jump master Captain James B. Rich was conducting a pre-jump briefing by one of those concrete mock-ups, and remembers the “overwhelming understanding that there was no way in hell I could outrun the oncoming debris…” Captain Rich “felt fully exposed” as flaming chunks of white hot metal, rained down. It was like “heavy pipes clanging against each other, mixed with a handful of steel marbles thrown against a road sign“.

2d Battalion S. Sgt. Michael T. Kelley remembered nuclear event training and hit the ground as the fireball rolled over him. When he got up he was on fire. Sergeant Kelley dropped and rolled as a would-be rescuer jumped on his body, to put out the flames. A second beat back the fire with “a wrap of some kind” while a third came up with water. When the flames went out, Sgt. Kelly had severe burns over 70 per cent of his body, including the lower one-third of his face.

Sgt. Gregory Cowper of the 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, began to roll when the fire caught up with him. “Ammunition was going off”, he said, “I couldn’t tell where it was. I looked to my left and there was a man on fire. I looked to my right and there was a man on fire.”

Rank held no distinction that day, Privates to Captains age eighteen to forty, pulling one another from the flames and shielding the wounded, with their bodies. Twenty three were killed outright, another eighty severely injured. One badly burned soldier survived nine agonizing months before succumbing, to his wounds.

82d Airborne commander Major General William M. Steele, remembered:

“It was soldiers saving soldiers. Soldiers putting out fires on other soldiers; soldiers dragging soldiers out of fires; resuscitating; giving soldiers CPR; putting tourniquets on limbs that had been severed; putting out fires on their bodies, sometimes with their own hands. Anything they could do to care for their buddies that were more seriously injured they were doing. They can’t do that without knowing how. They responded the way they would in combat”.

The Green Ramp disaster of March 23, 1994 was the greatest single-day loss of life suffered by the 82nd Airborne division, since the Battle of the Bulge.

A Trivial Matter

Originally constituted as the 82nd Division following the American entry into World War 1, The 82nd Airborne Division was organized on August 25, 1917, at Camp Gordon, Georgia. The “AA” on the arm patch stands for “All American”. Now based out of Fort Bragg North Carolina, the All Americans have participated in virtually every American conflict, of the last 100 years.

March 18, 1837 Big Steve

The Presidential election of 1884 was as close as any in history and Republicans made hay with the Halpin scandal. “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa”?

Born this day in 1837, Stephen G. “Big Steve” Cleveland was 33 the day he left his practice of law to become Sheriff of Erie County, in western New York.

As Sheriff, Cleveland was responsible for carrying out the sentence of death, either with his own hands, or by that of a deputy. For this, the hangman was paid a fee of ten dollars.

PCLEV001-009 — Stephen G. Cleveland in an undated photograph

Sheriff Cleveland took care of this job himself, personally releasing the trap door on September 6, 1872 and hanging one Patrick Morrissey, who’d been convicted of stabbing his mother to death in a drunken rage. He executed another convicted murderer six months later, hanging John Gaffeny on February 14, 1873.

The fees for these and other services were surprisingly lucrative, amounting to $40,000 over a two year term, equivalent to $836,556, today.

A lifelong Democrat, Cleveland had a reputation for ‘shooting straight” at a time of rampant political corruption, by both parties.

Elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1871, Cleveland was called upon to approve a street cleaning contract awarded to the highest bidder. The difference between high and low bids came to the considerable sum of $100,000, a pot of money which could be expected to find its way back to the politicians who’d approved it.

This sort of graft had long been a feature of political life in New York, but not now. Mayor Cleveland vetoed the measure, describing the scheme “as the culmination of a most bare-faced, impudent, and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people, and to worse than squander the public money“.

This reputation for honesty propelled Big Steve’s political career from the Mayoralty of Buffalo to the Governor’s mansion, in New York.

Talk about corruption. Five years earlier, one New York city alderman’s committee estimated that Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall machine fleeced New York taxpayers to the tune of $25 to $45 million. Later estimates ranged as high as an astonishing $200 million, equivalent to a jaw-dropping $2.8 Billion, today. As Governor, Cleveland earned the ire of the city’s Tammany Hall machine, with eight vetoes in his first two months in office.

In 1884, the “Buffalo Hangman” found himself Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Boston Globe columnist and political commentator Jeff Jacoby notes that “Not since George Washington had a candidate for President been so renowned for his rectitude.”

Despite all that rectitude, the candidate was not without skeletons in his closet. One was a relationship with one Maria Crofts Halpin which produced a son, named Oscar Folsom Cleveland.

Halpin insisted to the end of her days, that she’d been raped. Big Steve claimed she was crazy and overly generous with her affections, accepting paternity only as a way of doing right by an old girlfriend. Cleveland did manage to get the woman involuntarily committed, for a time, and the boy taken away to be raised in anonymity, by his adoptive family.

The Presidential election of 1884 was as close as any in history and Republicans made hay with the Halpin scandal. “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa“?

Despite all of it, Stephen Grover Cleveland won the popular vote by one quarter of one per cent, and an electoral college victory of 219-192, leading to the rejoinder “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha ha ha“.

Fun fact: The only former executioner ever elected President of the United States, Grover Cleveland is best remembered for being the only President to ever serve two non-consecutive terms. The 22nd and 24th President of the United States was also, something of a medical miracle.

President Grover Cleveland was inaugurated for the second time in the midst of a disastrous recession known as the Panic of 1893. The nation suffered vast unemployment, with hundreds of businesses closing down. The railroad industry was devastated. With Americans struggling everywhere, many looked to the new President to provide hope and a new direction.

Early in his second term, the President noticed a bumpy and rapidly growing patch, on the roof of his mouth. White House physician Dr. Robert Maitland O’Reilly took one look and pronounced: “It’s a bad looking tenant, and I would have it evicted immediately”.

The health of the famously rotund, cigar chomping President was already a matter of public concern. Cleveland feared a cancer diagnosis would set off a panic. The tumor would have to be removed and the whole procedure, kept secret.

The only answer to the prying eyes of the press was to do it on the move, and there could be no scar. President Cleveland announced a four-day vacation aboard a friend’s yacht, a cruise through Long Island Sound to Buzzard’s Bay and on to the President’s summer home, on Cape Cod.

A surgical team of six boarded the yacht in disguise. On July 1, 1893, the President was strapped into a chair and anesthetized, with ether. The tumor was removed in a ninety minute procedure, along with the entire left side of the upper jaw, and five teeth. For all that, there was no external incision. The President’s life was saved, the trademark mustache undisturbed.

The operation remained secret until 1917, nine years after the death of the former President. A medical miracle for the time, the President’s surgery is studied, to this day.

A Trivial Matter

Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to call the official residence, the “White House.” Prior to that, the building was called the Executive Mansion or the President’s House.

March 15, 1783 A Pair of Spectacles

The politician who alienates a battle hardened army in the field walks on dangerous ground. Don’t pay for their services, that’s a good way to do it.

The great rebellion effectively came to an end in October 1781 with Lord Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, though no one knew it at that time. Eight years after the “shot heard round the world“, the American Revolution had slowed to a standoff.

King George III remained personally in favor of prosecuting the war even after the Patriot victory at Yorktown, while opinion in Parliament, was split. Across the water, some 26,000 British troops remained in occupation in Charleston, Savannah and New York, backed up be a mighty fleet.

The Americans’ greatest ally departed in 1782, never to return. With state finances already prostrate with debt, l’Ancien régime (French: “the old order”) would be overthrown by its own revolution inside the next ten years, the French King Louis XVI and Queen Consort Marie Antoinette executed, by guillotine.

Negotiations carried on for nearly three years in Paris while, an hour’s drive north by modern highway from the British occupation of New York, the Continental Army waited at Newburgh.

France wasn’t the only one, ruined by this war. The American Revolution debilitated the finances of all three principle belligerents, none more so than the new-born American Republic, itself. In fact, the fledgling United States nearly died on this day in 1783, by the very hands which had given them birth.

The Articles of Confederation, ratified by the states in March 1781, provided for a loose alliance of sovereign states. In theory, Congress possessed the authority to govern foreign affairs, conduct war and regulate currency. In practice, these powers were limited to a national body with no authority to enforce its will on the states.

In 1780, Congress promised Continental officers a lifetime pension, equal to half-pay upon discharge. The government in Philadelphia attempted to amend the Articles, to allow a new import duty or “impost”. States were divided against the measure. Two years later, the cupboard was bare. Continental soldiers weren’t being paid at all.

It wasn’t even possible to borrow. That required evidence, of an income stream.

The politician who alienates a battle hardened army in the field walks on dangerous ground. Don’t pay for their services, that’s a good way to do it. At the outset of war, these guys left homes and fields and families, to risk their lives on behalf of the dream of Liberty. Many among their number, had given all in service to that dream.

There was little to do during those long winter months of 1782-’83, but wait. Each with his own financial hardship waiting at home, every man worried that his promised compensation, would not come. The rumor mill worked overtime: The Army would be disbanded. The promised pensions would remain, unfunded.

The vague unease of rumor turned to a fury of near certainty through the late winter months, as one overture after another met with defeat, in Congress. On March 10, an unsigned letter believed to have been written by Major John Armstrong, aide to General Horatio Gates, urged unspecified action against the Continental Congress. Another called for a meeting on the morning of March 11. Events were building toward armed insurrection. A coup d’état.

General George Washington reacted quickly, objecting in his General Orders of March 11 to the “disorderly” and “irregular” nature of such a meeting. Washington specified the morning of March 15 for an officer’s meeting and requested a report, implying that he himself, would not be present.

The mood was one of surprise and anger when the Commander-in-Chief himself walked into the room, hard men pushed past the point of patience, and now determined to take action. The General urged patience in a brief and impassioned speech remembered as the Newburgh address.

Washington’s words may as well have fallen on deaf ears. There was little of the usual deference, in this room.

New_Windsor_Cantonment — Reconstructed Temple at the New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site, where the critical meeting took place on March 15, 1783

The future President of the United States then produced a letter from a member of Congress, to read to his officers. The content is unimportant. George Washington gazed on the letter in his hands without speaking and, fumbling in his pocket, came up with a pair of reading glasses. These were new. Few men in the room even knew the man required glasses.

Washington spoke:

Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.

The words were as a physical blow, on the men assembled in that room. Obstinate and unheeding mere moments before, the realization dawned on all at once. This man had been at their head and by their sides. Washington had personally endured every bit of the hardship, as these men bent on mutiny.

There was hardly a dry eye in the place. The moment was broken for all time. Bent on mutiny a mere moment before, the cream of the continental army now determined, to wait. This Republic to which we owe so much may have died before it was born, two hundred thirty-six years ago on this day. All but for one magnificent man with an actor’s sense of timing. And a new pair of spectacles.

A Trivial Matter

At age twenty-six, George Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, a widow with two children: Jacky and Patsy. The Father of the Nation never had any children of his own. At 6 feet, 3½ inches and 200-pounds, George Washington towered above his fellow Continental soldier, with an average height of 5-feet, 8-inches in height.

March 13, 1865 Train Wreck

Pinned against the split boiler plate and slowly scalded to death, engineer William Ingram lived long enough to speak with would-be rescuers. “With his last breath he warned away all who went near to try and aid him, declaring that there was danger of the boiler exploding and killing them.”

The wood burning steam locomotive #171 left Jersey City, New Jersey on July 15, 1864, pulling 17 passenger and freight cars. On board were 833 Confederate Prisoners of War captured at Cold Harbor and 128 Union guards, heading from Point Lookout, Maryland to the Union prison camp in Elmira, New York.

Engine #171 was an “extra” that day, running behind a scheduled train numbered West #23. West #23 displayed warning flags giving the second train right of way, but #171 was delayed while guards located missing prisoners. Then there was the wait for the drawbridge. By the time #171 reached Port Jervis, Pennsylvania, the train was four hours behind schedule.

Telegraph operator Douglas “Duff” Kent was on duty at the Lackawaxen Junction station, near Shohola Pennsylvania. Kent had seen West #23 pass through that morning with the “extra” flags. His job was to hold eastbound traffic at Lackawaxen until the second train passed. Kent might have been drunk that day, but nobody’s sure of it. He disappeared the following day, never to be seen again.

Erie Engine #237 arrived at Lackawaxen at 2:30 pm pulling 50 coal cars, loaded for Jersey City. Kent gave the All Clear at 2:45, the main switch was opened, and Erie #237 joined the single track heading east out of Shohola.

Only four miles of track stood between the two speeding locomotives.

The trains met head-on at “King and Fuller’s Cut”, a section of track following a blind curve with only 50’ of visibility. Historian Joseph C. Boyd described what followed on the 100th anniversary of the wreck:

“[T]he wooden coaches telescoped into one another, some splitting open and strewing their human contents onto the berm, where flying glass, splintered wood, and jagged metal killed or injured them as they rolled. Other occupants were hurled through windows or pitched to the track as the car floors buckled and opened. The two ruptured engine tenders towered over the wreckage, their massive floor timbers snapped like matchsticks. Driving rods were bent like wire. Wheels and axles lay broken.” The troop train’s forward boxcar had been compacted and within the remaining mass were the remains of 37 men”. [Witnesses] saw “headless trunks, mangled between the telescoped cars” and “bodies impaled on iron rods and splintered beams.”

Pinned against the split boiler plate and slowly scalded to death, engineer William Ingram lived long enough to speak with would-be rescuers. “With his last breath he warned away all who went near to try and aid him, declaring that there was danger of the boiler exploding and killing them.”

51 Confederate prisoners and 17 Union guards were killed on the spot, or died within a day of the wreck. 5 prisoners escaped in the confusion.

Captured at Spotsylvania in early 1864, 52^nd North Carolina Infantry private James Tyner was incarcerated at the Elmira camp at this time. Tyner’s brother William was one of the prisoners on board #171.

William was badly injured in the wreck, and survived only long enough to avoid being buried in a mass grave, in Shohola. He died in Elmira three days later, never regaining consciousness.

I’ve always wondered if the brothers saw each other that one last time. James Tyner was my twice-great Grandfather, one of four brothers, farmers who laid down their tools and went to war for their home state of North Carolina, in 1861.

We’ll never know. James Tyner died in captivity on March 13, 1865, 27 days before General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Of the four brothers, Nicholas alone survived the war, laying down his arms when the man they called “Marse Robert” surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, to walk home to the Sand Hills of North Carolina.

A Trivial Matter

There were more Northern-born Confederate generals in the Civil War, than Southern-born Union generals. The last government to formally repeal ordinances of secession and rejoin the Union was the Village of Town Line, New York. In 1945.

March 11, 1918 Plague

“Antigenic Shift” occurs when two or more DNA strands combine, instantaneously forming a new virus sub-type. Like the dealer at some giant, cosmic poker table, this process may deal us a pair of twos. Occasionally, fate deals us aces & eights. The death hand.

In the world of virology, “Antigenic Drift” describes changes which happen slowly, the random mutation of virus DNA which takes place over months, or years. It’s why we get a new flu vaccine every year, even though there’s already some level of “herd immunity”.

When the “Great War” broke out in 1914, US Armed Forces were small compared with the mobilized forces of the European powers. The Selective Service Act, enacted May 18, 1917, authorized the federal government to raise an army for the United States’ entry into WWI. Two months after the American declaration of war against Imperial Germany, a mere 14,000 American soldiers had arrived “over there”. Eleven months later, that number stood at well over a million.

General “Black Jack” Pershing insisted that his forces be well trained before deployment. New recruits poured into training camps by the tens of thousands, while somewhere, some microscopic, chance recombination of surface proteins created a new virus, novel to nearly every immune system, in the world.

On the morning of March 11, 1918, most of the recruits at Fort Riley, Kansas, were turning out for breakfast. Private Albert Gitchell reported to the hospital, complaining of cold-like symptoms of sore throat, fever and headache. By noon, more than 100 more had reported sick with similar symptoms.

funston — Camp Funston, Fort Riley, Kansas – 1918

Ordinary flu strains prey heavily on children, elderly, and those with compromised immune systems. Not this one. This flu would kick off a positive feedback loop between small proteins called cytokines, and white blood cells. This “cytokine storm” resulted in a death rate for 15-34 year olds 20 times higher in 1918, than in previous years. Perversely, it was their young and healthy immune systems that were most likely to kill them.

Physicians described the most viscous pneumonia they had ever seen, death often coming within hours of the first symptoms. There’s a story about four young, healthy women playing bridge well into the night. By morning, three were dead of influenza.

Over the next two years, this strain of flu infected one in every four people in the United States, killing an estimated 675,000 Americans. Eight million died in Spain alone, following an initial outbreak in May. Forever after, the pandemic would be known as the Spanish Flu.

In 1918, children skipped rope to a rhyme:

“I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
and in-flu-enza”.

In the trenches, the flu cut down combatants on every side. “Operation Michael”, the final, no holds barred German offensive which would determine the outcome of the war, launched from the Hindenburg line in March. Crown Prince Rupprecht wrote in August, “poor provisions, heavy losses, and the deepening influenza have deeply depressed the spirits of men in the 3rd Infantry Division”.

Some sources report as many as half the Americans killed in WWI, died of the flu.

The parades and parties following the cease fire of November 11 threw gas on the flames. Millions more contracted the flu and thousands more died. President Wilson himself fell ill, while participating in 1919 treaty negotiations in Versailles. From a public health point of view, the end of war was a disaster.

Around the planet, the Spanish flu infected half a Billion people. A third of the population of the entire world, at that time. Estimates run as high 50 to 100 million killed. For purposes of comparison, the “Black Death” of 1347-51 killed 20 million Europeans.

History has a way of swallowing some events whole, like they never happened. Today, the Spanish flu is all but overshadowed by the War to end all wars. Even though in the end, the flu pandemic of 1918-19 proved a far deadlier adversary, than the war itself.

A Trivial Matter

In the 17th century, it was cheaper to import some things from England, than to produce them here. The first bible printed in the future United States came off the press in 1661 in the Algonquin language, a tongue all but extinct in this country, today.

March 10, 1864 General Grant’s Tomb

Though his life is remembered for other things, the final chapter of Ulysses S Grant’s story is one of the finest tributes to the common Family Man, in American history.

Hiram Grant was born in Point Pleasant, Ohio on April 27, 1822. His family called him by his middle name Ulysses, or sometimes just “Lyss”, for short.

A clerical error changed the name of the future Commander-in-Chief during his first days at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He didn’t seem to mind though, probably thinking that “US Grant” was preferable to “H.U.G.”, embroidered on his clothes. Predictably, Grant became known as “Uncle Sam” or simply “Sam.” It was as good a name as any though, as with future President Harry S. Truman, the “S” doesn’t actually stand for anything.

The 1862 Civil War Battle of Fort Donelson secured the name, when then-Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant received a request for terms from the fort’s commanding officer, Confederate Brigadier General Simon Bolivar Buckner. Grant’s reply was that “no terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately, upon your works.” The legend of “Unconditional Surrender” Grant, was born.

Grant was a light smoker before Donelson, generally preferring a pipe, if anything. A reporter spotted him holding an unlit cigar during the battle, a gift from Admiral Foote. Soon, ten thousand cigars were sent to him in camp. The general gave away as many as he could, but the episode started a cigar habit which became one of his trademarks, and probably led to his death of throat cancer, in 1885.

On this day in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a document promoting Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of Lieutenant General of the United States Army, officially putting then-Major General Grant in charge of all Union armies. Lincoln preferred Henry Wagner Halleck for the promotion, at the time fearing Grant would challenge him for the 1864 Republican Presidential nomination. Lincoln submitted to the will of Congress only after Grant publicly dismissed the idea of running for office.

46-year-old U.S. Grant was elected the 18th President of the United States four years later, going on to serve two terms after becoming, at that time, the youngest man ever so elected.

Grant bought a house in New York City in 1881 and invested his considerable fortune with the investment firm of Grant and Ward in which his son Ulysses, Jr., was a partner. The firm collapsed in 1884, investors fleeced and left penniless, by Ferdinand Ward.

Broke, humiliated and already suffering the pain destined to be diagnosed as throat cancer, Grant took pen to paper, and began his memoir.

The penning of that autobiography is a story in itself. Gravely ill and financially destitute, Grant soon understood with certainty, he was dying of throat cancer. The proceeds from his unwritten memoirs were his only means of supporting his family after his death.

The former President suffered constant and unbearable pain during his last year, as the cancer literally throttled the life from his body. Grant wrote at a furious pace despite his suffering, often finishing 25 to 50 pages in a day. No re-writes, no edits. There was no time for that. Grant wrote every word with his own hand, every word of the two-volume memoir a literal race with death.

Many of his wartime contemporaries felt they received too little credit in Grant’s retelling of events. That may be understood under the circumstances.

In June 1885, the cancer spread throughout his body, the Grant family moved to Mount MacGregor, New York to make him more comfortable. Propped up on chairs and too weak to walk, Grant worked to finish the book as friends, admirers and even former Confederate adversaries, made their way to Mount MacGregor to pay their respects.

Ulysses S Grant Grant was a gifted writer. He finished the manuscript on July 18, 1885. Five days later, he was gone. On release, the book received universal critical praise. Mark Twain, who published the memoir, compared the work to the Commentaries of Julius Caesar. Gertrude Stein admired the book, saying she could not think of Grant, without weeping. Ulysses Grant’s memoirs quickly became a best seller, his family receiving 75% of the net royalties after expenses. The book earned $450,000, over $10 million in today’s dollars, comfortably re-establishing the Grant family fortune.

Grant’s wife Julia died on December 14, 1902, and was buried with her husband in Grant’s monumental tomb overlooking the Hudson River, in New York City.

So, next time someone asks you who’s buried in Grant’s tomb, you can tell them. It’s Hiram Ulysses Grant. If you really want to show off, don’t forget to include his wife, Julia.

A Trivial Matter

In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding. In a horse-drawn carriage.

March 9, 1974 The Last Holdout

Japanese explorer and adventurer Norio Suzuki set out, looking for “Lieutenant Onoda, a wild panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order”.

Ford_Island_burning — Ford Island Burning

On December 7, 1941, Imperial Japanese air forces attacked the US Pacific Naval anchorage at Pearl Harbor.

The attack killed 2,335 and wounded another 1,178. Four battleships and two other vessels were sunk to the bottom. Thirteen other ships were damaged or destroyed.

188 aircraft were destroyed and another 159 damaged, most while still on the ground. All eight battleships then in harbor, were damaged.

The following day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress, asking for a declaration of war. Little did anyone know. The war with Imperial Japan would rage for 33 years.

Wait. What!?

Alright, not really. Representatives of the Empire of Japan signed the instruments of surrender aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, formally ending the war in the Pacific.

Except, some were so isolated from the chain of command, they never got the message. Others believed it to be a ruse. So steeped were these guys in the warrior code of bushido, it was impossible to believe their leaders had accepted dishonorable surrender. Still others were true believers, fanatically dedicated to the mythical “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. Never mind those mass graves, over there.

Whatever it was, WW2 came and then left without them. For thousands, the war went on.

On June 7, 1944, the largest gyokusai (honorable suicide) of World War 2 exploded from three sides against United States Army and Marine Corps troops, on Saipan. Some five thousand Japanese emerged shrieking from caves and hiding places, in the largest Banzai Charge of WW2. Savage fighting was hand to hand, the tide of humanity overrunning American forward positions and penetrating miles, into the rear. One rear-echelon regimental headquarters was overwhelmed.

The struggle raged for fifteen hours. In terms of American casualties, the Battle for Saipan was the third costliest battle of the Pacific war, after Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Some 4,300 Japanese troops were killed in the Bonsai charge of June 7. William O’Brien of Troy, New York, Benjamin Lewis Salomon of Milwaukee Wisconsin and Thomas Alexander Baker of Troy New York all earned the Medal of Honor. Posthumously.

Following the Battle of Saipan, Captain Sakae Ōba led a small band of survivors in guerrilla actions against American troops. The small group couldn’t know, the fleet of Japanese ships expected to bring relief from the Philippines was destroyed in the largest naval action of the war, in Leyte Gulf. And so they fought on, 47 men raiding by night, and taking pot shots, from a distance. When medical supplies ran out, Ōba cannily inserted the weak and infirm into American POW stockades, taking with him a like number among the strongest. He was “the fox”: so clever was this guy at evading capture.

Photographs were dropped after the war, depicting the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pictures Ōba deemed to be fakes. When Americans set up outdoor movie theaters in the fields of Saipan, none could know. Captain Sakae Ōba sat in the (way) back seat.

Captain Ōba’s band held out, for 512 days.

Oba Surrender — Captain Sakae Ōba surrenders his sword to Lieutenant Colonel Howard G. Kirgi

20 Imperial Japanese Army personnel emerged from a tunnel on Corregidor, surrendering to an American serviceman. Navy Lieutenant Hideo Horiuchi was arrested by on August 13, 1946, while recovering from wounds received in a battle with Dutch troops.

Lieutenant Ei Yamaguchi led 33 soldiers in an attack on an American Marine Corps detachment on Peleliu in March, 1947. Reinforcements were sent in, including a Japanese admiral who finally convinced these guys the war was over. The group surrendered in April, 1947.

• On May 12, 1948, two Japanese soldiers surrendered to civilian policemen in Guam.
• Two machine gunners from the Imperial Japanese Navy surrendered on Iwo Jima on January 6, 1949.
• Several went on to fight for the Viet Minh against French Imperial troops, in Indochina.
• Seaman Noburo Kinoshita hanged himself in the Luzon jungle in 1955, rather than “return to Japan in defeat.”

Private Bunzō Minagawa and Sergeant Masashi Itō held out for sixteen years on the American territory of Guam. Minagawa described the experience:

“We ate roots, worms, grass, and grasshoppers. It’s no use telling you because you wouldn’t believe it. You can’t imagine such a life. We were sleeping every night in the rain on the ground“.

The pair surrendered in May 1960, rotted uniforms hanging in tatters from from their bodies. Shoichi Yokoi also served under Itō. Corporal Yokoi evaded capture, for another twelve years.

masashi-ito-and-bunzo-minagawa.-vw-1-alumni-association — A cleaned-up and no doubt sweeter smelling Masashi Ito and Bunzo Minagawa in hospital, following capture

In June 1941, 36 soldiers and sailors survived the sinking of 3 Japanese supply ships off Anatahan, swimming ashore on the tiny speck of an island in the Marianas chain.

Anatahan island had two occupants at the time, the Japanese head of a coconut plantation, and his wife. Kikuichiro Higa “disappeared” under mysterious circumstances while his wife Kazuko, became the object of affection for thirty-six starving castaways.

noboru-kinoshita.-japanese-ship-sinking-under-air-attack.-pintrest — Japanese ship sinking under allied attack

Kazuko, a “lantern jawed” woman the Japan Times “charitably described” as “handsome’, “married” Kikuichiro Higa as protection, from the rest. Higa was soon shot and Kazuko’s third “husband”, had his throat slit. For six years, a dwindling number of starving waifs vied for the affections of the island’s only female.

Over the years, one erstwhile beau was stabbed, thirteen times.

After twelve murders and countless assaults and fist fights, “The Queen Bee of Anahatan Island” returned to Japan in 1951. Press adulation was short lived. Kazuku Higa fell into a life of prostitution and died in abject poverty at age 51, while working as garbage collector.

revenge-of-the-pearl-queen — The media highly glamorized (and highly sexualized) the dismal story of 36 soldiers and sailors and one civilian woman stranded on Anahatan Island

After the war, 2nd Lieutenant Hirō Onoda took to the mountains of Lubang Island along with Private Yūichi Akatsu, Corporal Shōichi Shimada and Private First Class Kinshichi Kozuka, carrying out guerrilla raids and engaging in shootouts with local police. Akatsu left the other three in 1949, and surrendered six months later. Shimada was killed by a search party in 1954. Kozuka was shot and killed by local police in 1972, while burning rice collected by farmers.

Two years later, Japanese explorer and adventurer Norio Suzuki set out, looking for “Lieutenant Onoda, a wild panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order“. On February 20, 1974, the pair met. Suzuki nearly got himself shot for his troubles, but he was quick. “Onoda-san”, he said, “the emperor and the people of Japan are worried about you.” Years later, Onada himself described the encounter: “This hippie boy Suzuki came to the island to listen to the feelings of a Japanese soldier. Suzuki asked me why I would not come out…”

“I am a soldier and remain true to my duties.” Onada would surrender when ordered to do so by a superior officer. Not before. Suzuki returned to Japan and located Onoda’s commanding officer, Major Yoshimi Taniguchi, who was now working in a book store. The pair flew to Lubang, where Taniguchi issued the following orders:

“In accordance with the Imperial command, the Fourteenth Area Army has ceased all combat activity.
In accordance with military Headquarters Command No. A-2003, the Special Squadron of Staff’s Headquarters is relieved of all military duties.
Units and individuals under the command of Special Squadron are to cease military activities and operations immediately and place themselves under the command of the nearest superior officer. When no officer can be found, they are to communicate with the American or Philippine forces and follow their directives”.

Thus properly relieved of duty, Onada surrendered, turning over his sword, his rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition and a number of hand grenades along with the dagger his mother had given him. To kill himself, should he ever be captured. It was March 9, 1974.

Private Teruo Nakamura, born Attun Palalin to the aboriginal Amis people native to the island nation of Taiwan, was the last confirmed holdout of WW2. Nakamura, who spoke neither Japanese nor Mandarin, was discovered by the Indonesian Air Force on Morotai. He surrendered to a search patrol on December 18, 1974.

japanese-holdouts-teruo-nakamura — Teruo Nakamura

Twenty-nine years, three months, and sixteen days after the Japanese instrument of surrender, World War Two was finally over.

Afterward

As a member of the Japanese Army, Hirō Onada received back pay and a pension equal to $160,000(US), equivalent to $850,000, today. Not so, Teuro Nakamura. As a member of a colonial army, Nakamura’s thirty-years service to the former Japanese Empire got him $1,186(US) and a trip back to Taiwan where he died of lung cancer, in 1979.

Private 1st Class James Donald “Don” Jones of Eastland County, Texas was a veteran of Tulagi, Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Tinian and helped defeat the great bonsai charge of Saipan, in 1944. Curious about his own history, Don Jones met with Captain Ōba in 1980, and returned the former geography teacher, his sword. You can read Private Jones’ story in his own words, if you like. It’s available from $16.93, in hard cover.

A Trivial Matter

On March 16, 1631, the first recorded fire in the city of Boston burned the home of Thomas Sharp to the ground. Thatch roofs and wooden chimneys were outlawed, not long after.

A Trivial Matter

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A Trivial Matter

Between 1803 and 1812, the Royal Navy’s manpower needs greatly exceeded voluntary enlistment. 5,000 to 9,000 American sailors were forcibly “impressed” (kidnapped) into service, becoming a major casus belli for the war of 1812.

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Afterward

“In a real sense we must all live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools”. – Reverend martin Luther King, Jr.

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A Trivial Matter

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A Trivial Matter

Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to call the official residence, the “White House.” Prior to that, the building was called the Executive Mansion or the President’s House.

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A Trivial Matter

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There were more Northern-born Confederate generals in the Civil War, than Southern-born Union generals. The last government to formally repeal ordinances of secession and rejoin the Union was the Village of Town Line, New York. In 1945.

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In the 17th century, it was cheaper to import some things from England, than to produce them here. The first bible printed in the future United States came off the press in 1661 in the Algonquin language, a tongue all but extinct in this country, today.

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In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding. In a horse-drawn carriage.

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On March 16, 1631, the first recorded fire in the city of Boston burned the home of Thomas Sharp to the ground. Thatch roofs and wooden chimneys were outlawed, not long after.

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