“We had no reason to believe the Japanese would attack us,” Executive Officer Lieutenant Arthur Anders later explained. “The United States was a neutral nation.”
USS Panay was a flat bottomed river craft built in Shanghai, part of the Asiatic fleet and charged with protecting American lives and property on the Yangtze River near Nanking.
Japanese forces invaded China in the summer of 1937, advancing on Nanking as American citizens evacuated the city. The last of them boarded Panay on December 11: five officers, 54 enlisted men, four US embassy staff, and 10 civilians.
Japanese air forces received word the morning of December 12, 1937, that Chinese forces were about 12 miles north of the city, evacuating on several large steamers and a number of junks.
Anchored a short way upstream along with several Chinese oil tankers, Panay came under bombing and strafing attack that morning, sinking mid-river with three men killed. 43 sailors and five civilians were wounded. Two newsreel cameramen were on board at the time of the attack, and were able to film part of it.
“View of Panay with her main deck awash, as she sinks into the Yangtze River between Nanking and Wuhu, China, after being bombed by Japanese planes on 12 December 1937. Note tangled wreckage of foremast and seaman on deck, to left (NH 50807)”. – Hat Tip history.navy.mil
The American ambassador to Japan at the time was Joseph C. Grew, a man who was more than old enough to remember how the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor brought the US into war with Spain in 1898. While Japanese authorities were less than helpful, Ambassador Grew hoped to avoid a similar outcome following the Panay sinking.
The Japanese government continued to insist that the attack had been accidental, even as US cryptographers uncovered information indicating that aircraft were operating under orders.
Hat tip Historica.fandom.com
The matter was officially settled four months later, with an official apology and an indemnity of $2,214,007.36 paid to the US government. The “accidental attack” narrative seems to have been a safe story both sides pretended to believe, but the story strains credulity. HMS Ladybird was fired on that same morning by Japanese shore batteries, the attack followed a month later by the “Allison incident”, in which the American consul in Nanking, John M. Allison, was struck in the face by a Japanese soldier.
Adding in the fact that American property had been looted by Japanese forces, it seems clear that relations between the two governments had become toxic.
Interestingly, though the Japanese government held considerable animosity for that of the United States, the people of Japan seemed a different story. Ambassador Grew was flooded with expressions of sympathy from Japanese citizens, apologizing for their government and expressing affection for the United States.
Letters came from citizens of all ages and walks of life, from doctors and professors to school children. The wives of high ranking Japanese officials apologized to Ambassador Grew’s wife without their own husbands’ knowledge, while ten Japanese men describing themselves as retired US Navy sailors living in Yokohama, sent a check for $87.19.
One typical letter read: “Dear Friend! This is a short letter, but we want to tell you how sorry we are for the mistake our airplane made. We want you to forgive us I am little and do not understand very well, but I know they did not mean it. I feel so sorry for those who were hurt and killed. I am studying here at St. Margarets school which was built by many American friends. I am studying English. But I am only thirteen and cannot write very well. All my school-mates are sorry like myself and wish you to forgive our country. To-morrow is X-Mas, May it be merry, I hope the time will come when everybody can be friends. I wish you a Happy New Year. Good-bye.”
The two governments never did patch things up. The US placed an embargo in September 1940 prohibiting exports of steel, scrap iron, and aviation fuel to Japan, in retaliation for the Japanese occupation of northern French Indochina: modern day Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Japan occupied southern Indochina by the summer of 1941 as the US, Great Britain and the Netherlands retaliated by freezing Japanese assets.
Throughout that summer and fall, Japan tried to negotiate a settlement to lift the embargo on terms which would allow them to keep newly captured territory, while at the same time preparing for war. Future Prime Minister and General Hideki Tojo secretly set November 29 as the last day on which Japan would accept a peaceful settlement.
Air and naval forces of the Imperial Japanese government attacked the US naval anchorage at Pearl Harbor one week later.
code of Bushidō or “Way of the Warrior” prized fearlessness in battle. Athletic and martial skill was emphasized and personal honor, inviolate. Filial loyalty ranked high on this code of conduct, and yet not so high as the supreme obligation: that of the samurai to his lord. Even at the expense of his own parents. Or his own life.
As Japan emerged from the medieval period into the early modern age, the future Nippon Empire transformed from a period of warring states and social upheaval. This “Sengoku period” came to an end on October 21, 1600 at the Battle of Sekigahara, pitting a coalition of clans led by one Ishida Mitsunari against forces loyal to the first of “Three Great Unifiers” of Japan, called Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Defection of several of these clans led to victory for the Tokugawa faction, paving to the way to a feudal military government or Shōgunate. Ruled from the Edo castle in the Chiyoda district of modern-day Tokyo, Tokugawa ruled as Shōgun over some 250 provincial domains called han.
The role of the emperor, the supreme monarch dating back to the mythical Jimmu in the year 660BC, was largely ceremonial at this time.
The military and governing structure of the Tokugawa or Edo period rested on a rigid and inflexible class system placing feudal lords or daimyō at the top, followed by a warrior-caste of samurai and a lower caste of merchants and artisans. At the bottom of it all stood some 80% of the population, the peasant farmer forbidden to engage in non-agricultural work and expected to provide the income to make the whole system work.
The samurai caste adopted a Confucian ethic at this time, developing a code of honor and conduct known as Bushidō, loosely analogous to the chivalric practices of European knights of an earlier era.
This code of Bushidō or “Way of the Warrior” prized fearlessness in battle. Athletic and martial skill was emphasized and personal honor, inviolate. Filial loyalty ranked high on this code of conduct, and yet not so high as the supreme obligation: that of the samurai to his lord. Even at the expense of his own parents. Or his own life.
This system paved the way for an incident, destined to become one of the great legends in Japanese history. The small han of Akō at this time was the domain of a young daimyō called Asano Naganori. In 1701, Asano was called upon to assist in ceremonial duties surrounding a visit from emissaries of the 113th monarch according to traditional order of succession, Emperor Higashiyama.
The emperor’s representative in the matter was one Kira Yoshinaka. Accounts vary as to what happened next. Kira was officious, arrogant and insistent on a bribe. Asano was young and inexperienced with the “ways “gift giving” traditions of the royal court. Be that as it may the next part, is not in dispute. Asano took offence at the official’s actions and drew his sword.
Kira survived the attack but Asano’s actions were a grave breach of protocol. The Lord of Akō was ordered to perform seppuku, on the spot. It was December 14, 1701.
Seppuku, often called hara-kiri in the west, is a grisly form of suicide by self disembowelment originated by Japan’s ancient samurai warrior caste. The event is often accompanied by ceremony including the drinking of sake, and the condemned composing a death poem. The practitioner will then plunge a short bladed sword deep into his abdomen, cutting sideways and then upward, to be sure the process is fatal. Some will complete the nightmarishly painful process only to die, slowly. Others will employ a kaishakunin or “second, whose job it is to hack off the head of the sufferer, after his honor was restored through that first cut.
A staged version of the Japanese ritual suicide known as Seppuku or Hara-Kiri, circa 1885. The warrior in white plunges a knife into his belly, while his second stands behind him, ready to perform the decapitation. (Photo by Sean Sexton/Getty Images)
Asano’s 300 Samurai retainers were now Rōnin. Samurai without a master. 47 of their number vowed to avenge the death of the daimyō led by one Ōishi Kuranosuke, even though they knew it would cost them their lives.
The 47 Rōnin broke up and went their own way. Many became monks and tradesmen. Ōishi himself carried out the life of an inebriate and frequenter of geisha houses. He even went so far as to divorce a loyal wife of twenty years and send her away, so she would not be associated with the plot.
For nearly two years the 47, carried out the ruse. While drunk and insensate one Satsuma man went so far as to kick Ōishi in the face and spit on him, for the disgrace he had brought on the samurai caste. It was a grave breach of protocol which, under ordinary circumstances, would have cost the man his life. Little did anyone suspect, least of all Kira’s spies. It was all a massive head fake.
Scene from the eponymously named film
The chance for vengeance came in late January, 1703. Kira and the Shōgun’s officials had at last taken the bait and relaxed their defenses.
By this time there were 46 as the oldest, now in his eighties, dropped out of the plot. Forcing their way into Kira’s residence the official’s loyal samurai fought bravely, but were soon overwhelmed. Kira himself was found cowering in an outhouse and summarily decapitated.
The entire cohort now walked the ten or so miles past an astonished populace, to the Sengaku-ji Temple. The head was washed in a well and laid on Asano’s grave. And then they turned themselves in.
The authorities were in a quandary. These men had followed the warrior’s code and avenged the death of their master. They had also defied the will of the Shōgun. Letters of support began to arrive from an admiring public and so, it was decided. The 47 Rōnin would be spared the death by execution meted out to criminals. Shōgun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, a man so horrified by cruelty to animals he once proclaimed it a capital offence to kill a dog, ordered the Rōnin to commit seppuku.
On March 20, 1703, 46 carried out the sentence and bared their bellies, to the blade. All were buried in death with their master in life, at the Sengaku-ji Temple. Terasaka Kichiemon alone was pardoned by the Shōgun, on account of his age. He was 15.
Sometime later the Satsuma man who had mocked and spat on a drunk visited Ōishi Kuranosuke’s grave and apologized, that he had ever doubted the heart of a samurai. And then he bared his belly to the blade and committed seppuku, right then and there. He too went to his rest Sengaku-ji shrine, along with the the 47 Rōnin.
Terasaka lived to the ripe old of 87 and then he too went his final rest, alongside his comrades.
Imagine feeling so desperate, so fearful of this alien ideology invading your country, that you convert all your worldly possessions and those of your family to a single diamond, bite down on it so hard it embeds in your shattered teeth and fled with your family to open ocean in a small boat. All in the faint and desperate hope, of getting out of that place. That’s but one story, among millions. And those were the lucky ones.
For 700 years the Khmer Empire occupied much of modern-day Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and southern Vietnam. Now extinct, this powerful civilization was once home to the largest city in the world. Until recently overrun by Jungle, the capital city of Angkor, whose original name was Yashodharapura (“Glory-bearing city”), was nearly the size of modern day Los Angeles, and home to roughly a million people.
Even today, the Hindu temple complex of Angkor Wat, built circa 1122, remains one of the largest religious monuments in the world.
Temple Complex at Angkor Wat
During the 1950s, a group of some 200 middle-class Cambodian kids were educated at French Universities. The greater part of that group formed a student organization of Marxist-Leninist intellectuals, dreaming of an agrarian utopia on the Indo-Chinese peninsula.
What began as a small leftist insurgency grew in power, thanks to support from Communist China and North Vietnam. From only a few hundred individuals in 1960, these “Red Khmers” (Khmer Rouge) grew into an effective insurgency against the Khmer Republic’s government of King Norodom Sihanouk and Prime Minister Lon Nol. By early 1975, the Khmer Rouge had overwhelmed Khmer National Armed Forces.
Even as the last, humiliating scenes of America’s war in neighboring Vietnam played themselves out in the capital of Saigon, Khmer Rouge forces captured the Cambodian capital at Phnom Penh, overthrowing the Khmer Republic and executing its officers.
This was to be “Democratic Kampuchea”, the name representing a local pronunciation of the word as it comes into English, as Cambodia.
The Kampuchean constitution, formally approved on January 5, 1976, theoretically vested power in a 250-member, directly elected “Kampuchean People’s Representative Assembly”. In reality, the body met once in April, and never again. Unlike the cult of personality grown up around the Kim family of North Korea or that of the Stalinist USSR or Maoist China, all power in the CPK (Communist Party of Kampuchea) belonged to “The Center”, a shadowy, nine-member standing committee of those same leftist intellectuals from the Paris student days, led by Prime Minister and Communist General Secretary Saloth Sar, better known as ‘Pol Pot’.
This nine-member “Angkar”, (pronounced ahng-kah), meaning ‘The Organization’, ushered in one of the great horrors of the twentieth century, a four-year genocide remembered as the “Killing Fields”, of Cambodia.
Khmer Rouge Uniforms
The “Khmer Rouge”, self-described as “The one authentic people capable of building true communism”, murdered or caused the deaths of an estimated 1.4 to 2.2 million of their own people out of a population, of some 7 million. All to build the perfect, agrarian “Worker’s Paradise”.
Imagine feeling so desperate, so fearful of this alien ideology invading your country, that you convert all your worldly possessions and those of your family to a single diamond, bite down on it so hard it embeds in your shattered teeth and fled with your family to open ocean in a small boat. All in the faint and desperate hope, of getting out of that place. That’s but one story, among millions. And those were the lucky ones.
The very embodiment of the ivory tower leftist intellectual, the Angkar was detached and incapable of connection with the masses. Theirs was a radicalized ideology, heavily influenced by French communists and the writings of Lenin and Mao and heavily tinged with ideas of racial superiority. Paradoxically, this was a creed altogether averse to an educated or merchant class and determined to use violence in pursuit of “class struggle”.
The Khmer rouge set out to create a peasant’s utopia. An agrarian, atheist state. Among the first to go were the Buddhist monks, nearly 25,000 murdered most often with a rock, or club. All religion was banned, repression of Christians and Muslims, extensive.
For generations, European colonists had exploited the mineral resources of “French Indochina”. Now, abandoned mine shafts filled with the bones of the slain.
Whole cities were liquidated as “parasitic” and “corrupt”. Shop owners, business people and educators. Police officers, government employees and ethnic minorities such as Chinese, Vietnamese and Cham. All were driven from their homes and murdered as “class enemies”. Anyone who so much as wore eyeglasses or owned a wristwatch, was as good as dead.
Today, the Tuol Sleng (“Hill of Poisonous Trees”) Genocide Museum occupies the former Chao Ponhea Yat High School, operated during the Cambodian Genocide as Security Prison 21. In its day, “S-21” held an estimated 20,000 people at one time or another – no one knows for sure. Between 1976 and ’79, only seven adults survived this place.
The Khmer Rouge operated at least 150 such torture and execution facilities.
There, Khmer interrogators extracted “confessions” by torture. After two to three months, victims would eagerly agree to anything, thousand-word “confessions” weaving true stories into outlandish tales of conspiracy with Vietnamese, KGB and CIA operatives. Friends, families and acquaintances would be identified in such narratives as they in turn, were brought in for interrogation.
All were turned over to extermination centers, where squads of blank-eyed teenagers awaited with machetes, pick axes and iron bars. Ammunition was too expensive.
The vast majority of victims were Cambodian, but not all. 488 Vietnamese passed through S-21, as did 31 Thai, one Laotian, an Arab, one Brit, four French, two Americans, a Canadian, a New Zealander, two Australians and an Indonesian. An unknown number of Indians and Pakistanis also passed through the facility. Not a single foreigner lived, to tell the tale.
One among some 20,000 mass grave sites, in Cambodia
The Khmer Rouge is estimated to have executed over 1.38 million people in this way, with death by starvation, torture, overwork and disease accounting for some 2½ million more. Twenty-five per cent, of the entire nation.
The last straw came on April 18, 1978, four miles over the border into Vietnamese territory. Khmer Rouge troops took a page out of their own playbook, murdering 3,000 Vietnamese civilians in what came to be known as the Ba Chuc Massacre.
The New York Times reported:
“The Khmer Rouge then used the same formula for execution as in Cambodia. ‘They pointed their weapons and ordered us to come to a meeting with their superiors,’ said Nga, a dignified, soft-spoken woman.
She was forced toward the border with parents, siblings, husband and six children. Suddenly, their escorts began clubbing the children. Her youngest daughter was struck violently on the head three times and cried ‘Mother, Mother.’”
Four years earlier, North Vietnam had helped the Khmer Rouge take power. Now the Vietnamese government staged a massive invasion of its erstwhile ally. By January 7, 1979 it was over, the Khmer regime toppled and a new government installed in Phnom Penh.
Cambodian journalist Dith Pran managed to escape the regime, one among millions swept up in the humanitarian disaster following the war in Vietnam and the genocide, in Cambodia. It was he who coined the term, Killing Fields.
Justice was slow in coming. Most senior Khmer officials would not be tried, until well into the twenty-first century. Pol Pot died quietly in his bed, in 1998.
The Celtic warrior Calgacus once said of the Roman conquests, “They make a desert, and they call it peace”. Likewise could be said of the Mongol Empire. A time when “A maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely throughout the realm.” A time of peace for those who would submit, and pay tribute.
The Eurasian Steppe is a vast region of grasslands and savannas, extending thousands of miles east from the mouth of the Danube, nearly to the Pacific Ocean. There is no clearly defined southern boundary, as the land becomes increasingly dry as you move south. To the north are the impenetrable forests of Russia and Siberia.
The 12th century steppe was a land of inter-tribal rivalry, immersed in a poverty so profound that many inhabitants went about clad in the skins of field mice. Ongoing acts of warfare and revenge were carried out between a kaleidoscope of ever-changing tribal confederations, compounded and egged on by the interference of foreign powers such as the Chinese dynasties of the Song and the Jurchen, to the south.
Into this land was born the son of the Mongol chieftain Yesügei, born with a blood clot grasped in his fist. It was a sign, they said, that this child was destined to become a great leader. By 1197, the boy would unite the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia into the largest contiguous empire in history, extending from Korea in the east, through Baghdad and Syria all the way into eastern Europe. One-fifth of the inhabited land area, of the entire planet.
His name was Temujin. He is known to history as the Great Leader of the Mongol Empire, Genghis Khan.
The Steppes have long been a genetic crossroad, the physical features of its inhabitants as diverse as any in the world. The word “Rus”, from which we get Russia, was the name given to Viking invaders from earlier centuries. History fails to record what Genghis himself looked like, though he’s often depicted with Asian features. There is evidence suggesting he had red hair and green eyes. Think of that beautiful young Afghan girl, the one with those killer eyes on that National Geographic cover, a few years back.
The Mongols called themselves “Tata”, while others called them after the people of Tartarus, the Hell of Roman mythology. They were “Tatars” to the people they terrorized: “Demons from Hell”.
The two most prominent weapons in the Mongol arsenal can be found in the words, “Horse Archer”. Imagine an army of circus riders, equipped with composite bows and a minimum of 60 arrows apiece, every man capable of hitting a bird in flight. Stirrups allowed the rider to fire in any direction, including to the rear. Each rider has have no fewer than 3-4 small, fast horses, and is able to transfer mounts in mid-gallop in order to keep his mounts, fresh.
While medieval armies encumbered with long baggage trains sometimes averaged only single digits and rarely exceeded twelve miles at a time, Mongol riders could cover 100 miles and more, in a day. Vast hordes of these people could appear outside of city gates often, even before news of their presence.
The bow, a laminated composite of wood, horn and sinew, combined the compression of the interior horn lamina with the stretching of animal sinews, glued to the exterior. The weapon was capable of aimed shots at five times the length of an American football field. High, arching ballistic shots into large groups were common as far as 2½ times that distance. The average draw weight of a first-class English longbow is 70-80 pounds. The Mongol composite bow ranged from 100 to 160 lbs, depending upon the physical strength of its user.
Following the death of Genghis’ eldest son Jochi, who pre-deceased his father, the Great Khan installed his grandson Batu as Khan (Chief of State) of the Kipchak Khanate to the north. In 1235, the Great Khan Ögedei, who had succeeded his father on Genghis’ death in 1229, ordered his nephew Batu and an army of 130,000 of these circus riders to conquer Europe, beginning with the Rus.
13th century Russia was more a collection of principalities than a single nation. One by one these city-states fell to the army of Batu, known as the “Golden Horde”. Ryazan, Kolomna and Moscow. Vladimir, Rostov, Uglich, Yaroslavl, and a dozen others. Some of the names are familiar today, others were extinguished for all time. All fell to the Golden Horde. Smolensk alone escaped, having agreed to submit and pay tribute. The city of Kitezh, as the story goes, submerged itself into a lake with all its inhabitants, at the approach of the Horde. On this day, December 6, 1240, Mongols under Batu Khan occupied & destroyed Kiev in modern Ukraine, following several days’ struggle.
By the end of 1241, Mongol armies crushed opposing forces from the Plains of Hungary, to Eastern Persia, to the outskirts of Austria. That December, plans were being laid for the invasion of Germany, Austria and Italy, when news arrived informing the Mongol host of the death of the Great Khan, Ögödei. Batu wanted to continue, but the Law of Yassa required all Princes of the Blood to return to Karakorum and the Kurultai, the meeting of Mongol Chieftains.
The Abbasid Caliphate of Islam, descended from the uncle of Muhammad Al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib and established in 750, was the third Islamic Caliphate since the time of Muhammad. Centered in Baghdad, the Abbasid Caliphate became a center of science, culture, philosophy and invention, in what has come to be known as the Golden Age of Islam.
Since 1241, the Abbassids paid tribute to the Khanate in the form of gold, military support, and, according to rumors, Christian captives of the Crusades. That all came to a halt in 1258, when Caliph Al-Musta’sim refused to continue the practice. The Abbassid Caliphate ceased to exist on February 10, following a twelve-day siege by the Mongol army of Hulagu Khan, brother of the Khagan (great kahn) Möngke.
The Mongols first looted and then destroyed mosques, palaces and hospitals. The “House of Wisdom”, the grand library of Baghdad, compiled over generations and comparable in size and scope to the modern-day Library of Congress, the British Library in London or the Nationale Bibliotheque in Paris, was utterly destroyed. Survivors said the muddy waters of the Tigris ran black with the ink of all those books, and red from the blood of the slain.
Estimates of the number killed in the fall of Baghdad range from 90,000 to an eye-popping one million. Hulagu needed to move his camp to get upwind, so overwhelming was the stench of the dead.
Believing the earth to be offended by the spilling of royal blood, Mongols rolled Caliph Al-Musta’sim himself up in a carpet and trampled him to death, with their horses.
In 1281, a massive Mongol fleet of some 4,000 ships and 140,000 men set out under Kublai Khan, to invade Japan. This was the second such attempt, the largest naval invasion in history and not to be eclipsed until the 20th century D-Day invasion, of Normandy. As with the previous attempt, a great typhoon came up and destroyed the Mongol fleet. As many as 70,000 men were captured. The Mongols never again attempted the invasion of Japan. To this day, we know this “Divine Wind”, as “Kamikaze”.
Tamerlane
Berke, grandson of Ghenghis and brother of Batu, converted to Islam, creating a permanent division among the descendants of the Great Khan.
Timur-i-leng, “Timur the Lame”, or “Tamerlane”, professed to be a good Muslim, but had no qualms about destroying the capitals of Islamic learning of his day. Damascus, Khiva, Baghdad and more he destroyed. Many, have never entirely recovered. Best known for pyramids of skulls left behind, as many as 19 million fell to the murderous regime, of Tamerlane.
The violence of the age was so vast and horrific it’s hard to get your head around. World War 2, the deadliest conflict in human history, was a time of industrialized mass slaughter. From the battlefields to the death camps, WWII ended the lives of 40 to 72 million souls, killed in a few short years. Roughly 3% of the inhabitants of earth. By comparison, the Mongol conquests killed 30 million over 162 years, mostly one-by-one with edged or pointed weapons. When it was over, 17% of the entire world’s population, had vanished.
The Celtic warrior Calgacus once said of the Roman conquests, “They make a desert, and they call it peace”. Likewise could be said of the Mongol Empire. A time when “A maiden bearing a nugget of gold on her head could wander safely throughout the realm.” A time of peace for those who would submit, and pay tribute.
The Catalan Atlas depicts Marco Polo traveling to the East during the ‘Pax Mongolica’.
This “Pax Mongolica” lasted through the reign of the Great Khan and his several successors, making way for the travels of Marco Polo. The 4,000-mile “Spice Roads”, the overland trade routes between Europe and China, flourished under Mongol control throughout the 14th and 15th centuries.
In the 14th century, the “Black Death” began to change the balance of power on the Eurasian steppe. 100 years later, the fall of Byzantium and marauding bands of Muslim brigands were making the east-west overland trade routes increasingly dangerous. In 1492, the Spanish Crown hired an Italian explorer to find a water route to the east.
Mongols ruled over parts of Russia until the time of Ivan IV “Grozny” (The Terrible), but never regained the high ground of December 1241 as chieftains fell to squabbling, over bloodlines.
And yet, the Mongols never went away. Not entirely. Modern DNA testing reveals up to 8 percent of certain populations across the Asian subcontinent, about one-half of one per cent of the world’s population at this time, to descend directly from that baby with the blood clot, grasped in his tiny little fist. Genghis Khan.
Much has been written of the rise of imperial Japan and the military officers, who brought the nation to war. How different the 20th century might have turned out had those guys picked up baseball, instead.
Baseball as we know it was introduced to the nation, in 1872. To this day, the game remains the most popular sport in the country for participants and spectators, alike. In 1907, Ambassador to the United States Tsuneo Matsudaira commented: “the game spread, like a fire in a dry field, in summer, all over the country, and some months afterwards, even in children in primary schools in the country far away from Tōkyō were to be seen playing with bats and balls“.
Did I neglect to mention? The nation we’re talking about, is Japan.
Professional baseball got off to a rocky start in 1920s Japan and continued to flounder, until 1934. That’s when media bigwig Matsutarō Shōriki pulled off a “goodwill tour” with an all-star American team.
“The [1934] party included future Hall of Famers Earl Averill, Lou Gehrig, Charlie Gehringer, Lefty Gomez, Connie Mack, Foxx and Ruth, along with several other American Leaguers (asked to accompany the tour when the National League forbade its stars from coming along). Even Moe Berg, the big league catcher who would eventually work as a United States government spy, was a member of the ball playing entourage”.
H/T baseballhall.org
Much has been written of the rise of imperial Japan and the military officers, who brought the nation to war. How different the 20th century might have turned out had those guys picked up baseball, instead.
The first Japanese professional league was formed in 1936, becoming large enough to split into two leagues in 1950, the Central and Pacific.
Today, the Kansai region of Honshu is the 2nd largest metropolis, in all Japan. That’s where you’ll find the Hanshin Tigers, those perennial underdogs of Nippon Professional Baseball and arch-rival to the Yomiuri Giants of Tokyo, widely regarded as the kings, of Japanese baseball.
As a life-long Red Sox fan, this story is beginning to sound familiar.
November 2, 1985 was a time of unbridled joy for delirious Tigers fans, following Hanshin’s 6-2 drubbing of the Seibu Lions to win the ultimate prize, the Japan series pennant, of 1985.
Now you may not know this, but the Japanese people are crazy, about Kentucky Fried Chicken. Japan is the third largest market on the planet for the Colonel’s yard bird, #3 only behind the United States and China. Not bad for a fast food outfit that opened its first Japanese franchise on July 4, 1970.
Which brings us back, to baseball.
The Boston baseball fan is well acquainted with the “Curse of the Bambino”, the 86-year World Series championship drought, second only to the “Curse of the Billy Goat” denying victory to long-suffering Cubbies fans, for 106 years.
Since 1985, Japanese mothers have scared wayward children into acting right with the curse, of Colonel Sanders.
The Hanshin club emerged victorious in 1985, due in large part to the efforts of American slugger, Randy Bass. Delirious after unexpected victory in game one and superstitious as baseball fans the world over, Hanshin supporters gathered at the Ebisu Bridge over the Dōtonbori river in Osaka, to partake in one of the most bizarre spectacles, in the history of sports.
Fans would shout out the names of Tigers players and someone who resembled that player, even vaguely, would jump into the river. There being no Caucasians in attendance to represent Mr. Bass, the crowd took hold of a storefront statue of Harlan Sanders, and threw it into the River.
A young fan of the Hanshin Tigers dives into the Osaka river to celebrate the team’s first league championship win in 18 years 15 September 2003. Tigers defeated Hiroshima Carp 3-2. AFP PHOTO/JIJI PRESS (Photo credit should read STR/AFP via Getty Images)
What the hell. They were both white guys and they both wore beards, right?
Thus began the curse of Colonel Sanders, a losing streak brought on by the ghost of a man who didn’t appreciate being tossed, into a river. Brief rallies in 1992 and again in ’99 brought hope once again to the Hanshin faithful, (gosh, this story sounds Really familiar now), only to have cruel fate, block the way. Repeated efforts were made to retrieve the Colonel from the river, only to be met, with failure.
The curse, dragged on.
“Dangerous! Do not dive into this river. Osaka Regional Development Bureau and Osaka-Minami Police station” sign at the new Ebisubashi bridge H/T Wikipedia
The joy of victory smiled upon the land of Hanshin once again in 2003, when Yomiuri Giants MVP Hideki Matsui was traded to the New York Yankees, clearing the way to a Central League pennant for Hanshin. Even so, final victory remained elusive. The Japan series went to the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks that year, in 7 games.
Celebration turned to tragedy that year, when thousands of Tigers fans jumped into the river. 24-year-old Masaya Shitababa, drowned. The Osaka city council ordered construction of a new bridge over the Dōtonbori beginning in 2004, making further such jumps, next to impossible.
Divers discovered the upper part of Harlan Sanders’ statue on March 10, 2009 and the lower piece, the following day. And yet one hand and the Colonel’s eyeglasses, were nowhere to be found.
Colonel Sanders’ left hand and spectacles remain missing to this day and the KFC where it all started, is closed and gone forever. The October 26, 2021 English language edition of thehanshintigers.com blog mournfully reports: “Game 143 vs. Dragons: Lifeless Last Game, Pennant Lost”. So it is for long suffering fans of the Hanshin Tigers. The curse of Colonel Sanders, lives on.
For years, everyone believed that semi-submersible craft in Fall River must have been a kamikaze vessel, from World War 2. The story that funny little boat had to tell was very different. The tale of a history, that never was.
If you’re ever in southeastern Massachusetts, be sure to visit Battleship Cove in Fall River, the largest collection of World War 2 naval craft, in the world. The Battleship Cove museum sports some sixty exhibits, preserving the naval heritage of these iconic vessels and the veterans who served them.
To inspect battle damage visible to this day on the decks of USS Massachusetts is to realize United States armed forces once exchanged shots in anger with our French ally, at a place called Casablanca. The attack sub USS Lionfish once performed “lifeguard duty”, the rescue of downed fliers, off the coast of Japan. Her captain was Lieutenant Commander Edward D. Spruance, son of Admiral Raymond Spruance who commanded US naval forces during one of the most significant naval battles of the Pacific, the battle of the Philippine Sea.
To walk aboard USS Massachusetts or USS Lionfish, is to experience a side of WW2, fast disappearing from living memory.
Battleship Cove
Walk among the wooden-hulled PT boats of the Pacific war, and there you will find a strange little craft. One of three planned for and only two, ever built. Closed at the top and semi-submersible, a Japanese kamikaze boat perhaps, designed for suicide missions against allied warships. Museum management believed just that and mislabeled the display, for years.
The other it turns out is on display at Central Intelligence headquarters, at Langley, Virginia. Years later a retired CIA employee visiting Battleship cove spotted the error. CIA files declassified in 2011 added detail to a very different story, from that of Japanese suicide vessels. To the tale of a history, that never was.
On August 2, 1939, Hungarian physicist Leó Szilárd delivered a letter which would change history, to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Written in consultation with fellow Hungarian physicists Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner and signed by Albert Einstein, the letter warned that Nazi Germany was working to develop atomic weapons, and urged the American government to develop a nuclear program of its own. Immediately, if not sooner.
The Einstein–Szilárd letter spawned the super-secret Manhattan project, culminating in the atomic bombs “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, and ending the war in the Pacific in August, 1945.
At the time, precious few were aware of even the possibility of such a weapon. Fewer still, the existence of a program dedicated to building one. Vice President Harry Truman, second only to the Commander in Chief himself, was entirely ignorant of the Manhattan project and only read in following the death of the President in April, 1945.
Female students with the Kokumin Giyū Sentōtai, the Volunteer Fighting Corps, prepare for the Allied projected invasion
The battle for the Japanese home islands was expected to be a fight like no other. Casualties of a million or more were expected, and for good reason. Japanese soldiers fought with such fanaticism, that hundreds continued to resist, years after the war was ended. The last holdoutwouldn’t lay down his arms until 1974. 29 years, 3 months, and 16 days after the war had ended.
Such frenzied resistance would not be isolated to Japanese military forces, either. Japanese government propaganda warned of “American devils raping and devouring Japanese women and children.” American GIs looked on in horror in 1944, as hundreds if not thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians hurled themselves to their death, at Laderan Banadero and “Banzai Cliff” on the northern Mariana island of Saipan. One correspondent wrote with admiration of such mass suicides, praising “the finest act of the Shōwa period”… “the pride of Japanese women.”
This is what their government, had taught these people to believe.
Plans for the final defeat of the Imperial Japanese Empire all but wrote themselves, phase one launched from the south against the main island of Kyūshū, and using the recently captured island of Okinawa, as staging area. Phase two was the planned invasion of the Kantō Plain toward Tokyo, on the island of Honshu.
Operation Downfall
The story of the D-Day invasion begins with deception, a massive head fake intended to draw German defenders away from intended landing zones. “Operation Downfall” offered no such opportunities, for deceit. Geography dictated the method of attack, and everybody knew it. Virtually everything left of Japanese military might would be assembled for the all-out defense of Kyūshū, against what would be the largest amphibious invasion, in history.
This was to be a full frontal assault with no subterfuge and nowhere, to hide.
American military planners ordered half a million Purple Hearts, in preparation for the final invasion of the Japanese home islands. To this day, military forces have yet to use them all. As of 2003 some 120,000 Purple Heart medals still remained, in inventory.
The whole thing would begin on “X-Day”. November 1, 1945.
Which brings us back to that funny-looking boat, in Fall River. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor to the modern CIA, built two of these semi-submersibles. The vessel was called “Gimik”, part of a top-secret operation code named “NAPKO”.
GIMIK, underway
Ten teams were envisioned varying from five to a single individual. 55 Korean-Americans and Korean prisoners freed from Japanese prison labor camps were trained to infiltrate Japanese occupied Korea and possibly Japan itself, to collect intelligence and carry out sabotage against military targets in advance of Operation Downfall. None were aware even of the existence of the other teams lest any, were to fall into Japanese hands.
The GIMIK craft were built by John Trumpy and sons yacht yard of Annapolis Maryland, builders of the presidential yacht, Sequoia
Operated by a single OSS officer with two Korean operatives and up to 1,000-pounds of equipment secured inside, the GIMIK craft would be their means of insertion. 19-feet long and built of plywood to avoid radar and sonar detection, the snorkel was wrapped in steel wool to confound discovery. The craft were to be delivered on theater via submarine in large metal boxes called “coffins’. After insertion, the vessels would go fully submerged and anchor to the bottom where they were equipped to operate, for up to four weeks.
Operated by a single OSS officer with two Korean operatives and up to 1,000-pounds of equipment secured inside, the GIMIK craft would be their means of insertion. 19-feet long and built of plywood to avoid radar and sonar detection, the snorkel was wrapped in steel wool to confound discovery. The craft were to be delivered on theater via submarine in large metal boxes called “coffins’. After insertion, the vessels would go fully submerged and anchor to the bottom where they were equipped to operate, for up to four weeks.
The NAPKO operation was conceived and run by OSS Colonel Carl Eifler, who hope to have as many as seven teams, operational. Tactical focus would then be placed on those best positioned, for ultimate success. As it turned out only two teams were ever ready, for the operational stage.
“Code-named ‘Kinec’ and ‘Charo.’ Both were very similar in concept, differing primarily in intended points of penetration and operating areas. Kinec envisioned landing five agents at Chemulpo Bay, about 20 miles outside Seoul on the country’s west coast; Charo was focused on Pyongyang following penetration via Wonsan and utilized three, rather than five, Korean agents. Typical of NAPKO missions, the teams were to carry minimal equipment and supplies: 100,000 yen, a radio, appropriate clothing for passing as locals, and a Japanese-manufactured shovel for burying the team’s equipment after landing.”
Hat tip former Special Forces NCO Steve Balestrieri, writing for SOFREP.com
The mission was extremely dangerous for obvious reasons. Training was carried out during the summer of 1945 on Catalina Island, off the California coast. The two boats, nicknamed “Gizmos”, were tested at night against the US Naval base in Los Angeles. Even this part was dangerous, since no one was told about the trials. Should such a vessel be detected entering the American installation, it would be treated as an enemy vessel, and destroyed.
In the end, the Gizmo teams never left American waters. Several such tests were carried out without detection, leading to a scheduled departure date of August 26, 1945. It was never meant to be.
A parallel and equally secret plan to end the war literally burst on the scene on August 6, 1945. The war would be over, in another nine days.
The “Mukden incident” was entirely staged, a “false flag” operation and bald pretext to war, carried out by Japanese military personnel and identical in purpose to that carried out against Poland by Nazi aggressors some eight years later, nearly to the day.
As Japan emerged from the medieval period into the early modern age, the future Nippon Empire transformed from a period characterized by warring states, to the relative stability of the Tokugawa Shōgunate. Here, a feudal military government ruled from the Edo castle in the Chiyoda district of modern-day Tokyo, over some 250 provincial domains called han. The military and governing structure of the time was based on a rigid and inflexible caste system, placing the feudal lords or daimyō at the top, followed by a warrior-caste of samurai, and a lower caste of merchants and artisans. At the bottom of it all stood some 80% of the population, the peasant farmer forbidden to engage in non-agricultural activities, and expected to provide the income that made the whole system work.
Into this world stepped the “gunboat diplomats” of President Millard Filmore in the person of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, determined to open the ports of Japan to trade with the west. By force, if necessary.
Gunboat Diplomacy, Commodore Perry
The system led to a series of peasant uprisings in the 18th and 19th centuries, and extreme dislocation within the warrior caste. In time, these internal Japanese issues and the growing pressure of western encroachment led to the end of the Tokugawa period and the restoration of the Meiji Emperor, in 1868.
Many concluded as did feudal Lord (daimyō) Shimazu Nariakira, that “if we take the initiative, we can dominate; if we do not, we will be dominated”. In the following decades, Japanese delegations and students traveled around the world to learn and assimilate Western arts, sciences and technologies. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, Japan was transform from a feudal society into a modern industrial state.
The Korean peninsula remained backward and “uncivilized” during this period, little more than a tributary state to China, and easy prey for foreign domination. A strong and independent Korea would have represented little threat to Japanese security but, as it was, Korea was a “a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan” in the words of German military adviser to the Meiji government, Major Jacob Meckel.
The first Sino-Japanese war of July 1894 – April 1895, was primarily fought over control of the Korean peninsula. The outcome was never in doubt, with the Japanese army and navy by this time patterned after those of the strongest military forces of the day.
The Japanese 1st Army Corps was fully in possession of the Korean peninsula by October, and of the greater part of Manchuria, in the following weeks. The sight of the mutilated remains of Japanese soldiers in the port city of Lüshunkou (Port Arthur) drove their comrades to a frenzy of shooting and slashing. When it was over, numbers estimated from 1,000 to 20,000 were murdered in the Port Arthur Massacre. It was a sign of things to come.
An illustration of Japanese soldiers beheading 38 Chinese POWs as a warning to others by Utagawa Kokunimasa.
Russian desire for a warm-water port to the east brought the two into conflict in 1904 – ’05, the Russo Japanese War a virtual dress rehearsal for the “Great War” ten years later, complete with trench lines and fruitless infantry charges into interlocking fields of machine gun fire.
Subsequent treaties left Japanese forces in nominal control of Manchurian railroads when, on September 18, 1931, a minuscule dynamite charge was detonated by Japanese Lt. Kawamoto Suemori, near a railroad owned by Japan’s South Manchuria Railway near Mukden, in modern Shenyang, China. The explosion was so weak that it barely disturbed the tracks. A train passed harmlessly over the site just minutes later, yet, the script was already written.
The Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of the incident, launching a full scale invasion and installing the puppet emperor Puyias Emporer Kangde of the occupied state of “Manchukuo”, one of the most brutal and genocidal occupations of the 20th century.
The “Mukden incident” was entirely staged, a “false flag” operation and bald pretext to war, carried out by Japanese military personnel and identical in purpose to that carried out against Poland by Nazi aggressors some eight years later, nearly to the day.
As Western historians tell the tale of WW2, the deadliest conflict in history began in September 1939, with the Nazi invasion of Poland. The United States joined the conflagration two years later, following the sneak attack on the American Naval anchorage at Pearl Harbor, by naval air forces of the Empire of Japan.
Eastern historians are more likely to point to a day eight years earlier, when this and subsequent invasions and the famine and civil wars which ensued, killed more people than the modern populations of Canada and Australia, combined.
Perhaps we’re all capable of more than we realize, or less, but we may never know which. Not until we have been tested. For Neerja Bhanot the test came on September 5, 1986.
Is a hero born that way, or do circumstances bring out something that was in there, all along? What are we ourselves capable of, should circumstances require? Perhaps we’re all capable of more than we realize, or less, but we may never know which. Not until we have been tested.
For Neerja Bhanot the test came on September 5, 1986.
Neerja was born in Chandigarh, India and raised in Bombay, now Mumbai. The only daughter of Punjabi Hindu parents Hareesh and Rama Bhanot, she was the ‘laado’ of this family of five: the youngest, and most pampered.
Gifted with exceptional good looks it was all but foreordained that she would enter a career in modeling. She was a natural in front of a camera. It was hard to turn on a TV in mid-1980s India without a glimpse of this smiling spokeswoman, equally at home pitching cold cream, savings banks or the latest in saree fashion.
An arranged marriage proved abusive in early 1985 and Neerja left two months later, to move back with Rama and Hareesh.
It was barely a blip on the screen of a stellar modeling career and soon, Neerja decided on another. Her friend Naomi was interviewing, to become a flight attendant. Neerja helped her with her make-up and spontaneously decided to interview, herself. So it is Neerja Bhanot became a flight attendant with Pan Am. And why not? She was young and the whole world, lay before her. There was no reason she couldn’t handle two careers.
Neerja traveled to Miami Florida for training with the airline and returned, a purser. At 22 she was not only air hostess but now responsible for cash receipts, taken in-flight.
On September 5, 1986, Neerja donned the crisp blue uniform for the last time and boarded Pan Am Flight 73. She was senior flight purser for this trip, a route flying from Mumbai to the United States via Karachi, Pakistan and Frankfurt, Germany.
A vile, alien ideology enters this story on the stopover, in Pakistan. Four armed men in a van disguised as airport security, members of the Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal Organization. The four crossed the tarmac passing the pushback tug and catering trucks to enter the aircraft in pairs, two via the front stairs and two up the back.
Firing their weapons in the air and into the floor at their feet the militants ordered all doors, closed and locked. Unseen in the moment Neerja signaled the code for ‘Hijack’ and flight attendant Sherene Pavan phoned the cockpit. Fellow air hostess Sunshine Vesuwala watched as one now grabbed hold of Neerja with a gun, to her head. 393 passengers and crew were now captives, of four armed terrorists.
Pilot, co-pilot and flight engineer were able to flee via an overhead hatch. Many would criticize these three for fleeing in the days to come but flight steward Dilip Bidichandani, takes the opposite view. At least three lives were now saved and the situation was safer on the ground, than in the air. The terrorists themselves later claimed an intent to fly the aircraft into a building, a tactic unheard of, in 1986.
(From top left): Nupoor, Sunshine, Sherene, Dilip. (In group shot – far left): Massey. (Credits: Solo shots – individuals’ own; group shot: Pan Am crew Facebook page) H/T BBC
Twelve flight attendants were now in charge of the hijacked aircraft, none older than their early to mid-twenties.
Karachi flight director Viraf Doroga took up a megaphone and attempted to negotiate as security personnel took positions, around the aircraft. The four wanted to fly to Cyprus and on to Israel where some of their cohorts, were held in prison. They demanded a pilot and, when none materialized, 29-year-old American passenger Rajesh Kumar was dragged from his seat, driven to his knees before an open door and shot in the head, his lifeless body kicked onto the tarmac, below.
In the face of such bestiality, ordinary people rose to new levels of common decency, and courage. Nupoor Abrol told BBC News, “My first instinct was to open the wing exit and slip out with as many passengers as I could, but I realized that this would leave the rest of the passengers vulnerable.”
The terrorists made it known they were after Americans. They instructed flight attendants to collect passports so they could identify, which were Americans. Sunshine, Madhvi Bahuguna and Neerja began to collected passports. In they came in shades of green and burgundy, of black and blue. The unique navy blue of the American passport, chosen in 1976 to match that of the stars and strips was missing, quietly omitted or tucked under seats or secreted, in flight attendant’s uniforms.
Infuriated at the inability to find an American the terrorists now chose a Brit, Mike Thexton, who was forced to sit on the floor with his hands crossed, over his head. Thexton received a vicious kick to the side for his efforts but he would survive the ordeal. Twenty-two of his fellow captives, would not.
Mike Thexton
The stalemate dragged on for seventeen grueling hours until the aircraft ran out of power and the savages, ran out of patience. As the hijackers became visibly more agitated Neerja and others communicated means of deploying emergency exit ramps, to passengers seated by the exits.
Pandemonium broke out on the aircraft as four terrorists, now opened fire. Neerja was directing passengers out one exit as one of them grabbed her by the ponytail. She wasn’t just shot in the crossfire she was murdered, point blank. According to one eyewitness her last act was an attempt to shelter, three children.
Her 23rd birthday came and went, two days later.
Twenty two passengers and crew were killed that day with another 120, wounded. The nation of India awarded Neerja Bhanot the Ashoka Chakra Award, India’s highest award for bravery in the face of an enemy, during peacetime. She is the youngest recipient of such an award and the first, female.
Five terrorists were subsequently caught and tried by Pakistani authorities. They were all released against the express wish of American authorities and deported, to Palestine. The terrorist leader, to hell with his name, was extradited to the United States where is serving a 160-year sentence.
One of the children Neerja Bhanot sheltered with her body was seven years old, that day. The boy was inspired by the selfless courage of the woman who had saved his life and grew to become a pilot, with a major airline.
Paralyzed with grief and wracked by uncontrollable fits of weeping, Emperor Shah Jahan went into secluded mourning. He emerged a year later with back bent and beard turned white. Then began a 22-year period of design and construction for a mausoleum and funerary garden: a tribute worthy, of his Queen of the World.
The Mughal state was an early modern Empire ruling first over northern India and later, much of South Asia. Founded by military conquest in 1526, the Mughal Emperors ruled for 200 years marking much of the period, before the rise of the British Raj.
Prince Khurram was born on January 5, 1592, the son of Rajput princess Jagat Gosaini and the fourth Mughal Emperor, Jahangir.
Literally born to the throne, the infant prince was taken from his mother at the age of six days by the baby’s grandfather Akbar, the third Mughal Emperor who ordered the baby be raised by his first wife and chief consort, the childless Ruqaiya Sultan Begum.
Khurram was given the education befitting a Mughal prince and enjoyed a close relationship with his surrogate mother.
According to the later memoirs of his father Jahangir, the barren Empress loved his son Khurram, “a thousand times more than if he had been her own [son]”.
Arjumand Banu was the daughter of a wealthy Persian noble and niece to Nur Jahan, the 12th wife of Emperor Jahangir believed by many to be the real power behind the throne. Arjumand and Khurram were betrothed in early 1607 when she was 14 and he, a year older.
In an age of politically arranged marriages, theirs was a love match though the marriage would wait, another five years. Five years was an unusually long engagement for the time but court astrologers had deemed the date propitious, and so it was.
Meanwhile, Khurram ascended to the throne and adopted the regnal name, Shah Jahan. Shah Jahan married the Persian Princess Kandahari Begum with whom he had a daughter, but this was a political marriage. So it was with his other eight wives.
Political relationships with women who themselves enjoyed the status of royal wives but it was his second, Arjumand Banu, with whom the Emperor was inseparable. He called her “Mumtaz Mahal”, Persian for “the chosen one of the Palace”. At the royal court and on military campaign she was his constant companion and advisor. She was his ‘Malika-i-Jahan’ the “Queen of the World”, with whom he fathered 14 children in nineteen years.
It was on campaign on the Deccan Plateau where Mumtaz Mahal went into labor with the couple’s 14th child. The delivery was a terrible trial for the Empress Consort, a 30-hour ordeal resulting in uncontrolled postpartum hemorrhage.
Shah Jahan’s Queen of the World died on June 17, 1631.
Mumtaz Mahal was buried in a walled pleasure garden called the Zainabad. Paralyzed with grief and wracked by uncontrollable fits of weeping the Emperor went into secluded mourning. He emerged a year later with back bent and beard turned white. Then began a twenty-two year period of design and construction for a mausoleum and funerary garden, suitable for the Queen of the World.
That child who would never know her mother grew to be the Princess Jahanara who, at the age of seventeen, began to distribute gemstones to the poor. A plea for divine intervention on behalf of the woman who had died, giving her birth. Meanwhile, a grand edifice to the undying love of an Emperor rose along the southern banks of the river Amuna.
English poet Sir Edwin Arnold described the place as “Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passion of an emperor’s love wrought in living stones.”
20,000 artisans were employed on the project at a cost equivalent to 70 billion modern rupees, equal to $956 million, today. The ivory marble mausoleum was the centerpiece of a 42 acre complex including a great reflecting pool, a mosque and guest house, all set within a formal garden and surrounded on three sides by crenellated walls.
Years later, Shah Jahan would rejoin the love of his life in her final resting place. A treasure of Islamic art and architecture in India, one of the seven “Modern Wonders of the World” we know, as the Taj Mahal.
If I asked you about the most heavily bombed nation in history, who would you guess. Japan or Germany during World War 2? Iran or Iraq? You might be surprised who it is. It is none of those.
Deep in the heart of the Indochinese peninsula of mainland Southeast Asia lies the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, (LPDR), informally known as Muang Lao or just Laos. To the north of the country lies the Xiangkhouang Plateau, known in French as Plateau du Tran-Ninh, situated between the Luang Prabang mountain range separating Laos from Thailand, and the Annamite Range along the Vietnamese border.
Twenty-five hundred to fifteen-hundred years ago, a now-vanished race of bronze and iron age craftsmen carved stone jars out of solid rock, ranging in size from 3 ft. to 9 ft. or more. There are thousands of these jars, located at 90 separate sites and containing between one and four hundred specimens each.
Most of these jars have carved rims but few have lids, leading researchers to speculate that lids were formed from organic material such as wood or leather.
Lao legend has it that the jars belonged to a race of giants, who chiseled them out of sandstone, granite, conglomerate, limestone and breccia to hold “lau hai”, or rice beer. More likely they were part of some ancient funerary rite, where the dead and about-to-die were inserted along with personal goods and ornaments such as beads made of glass and carnelian, cowrie shells and bronze bracelets and bells. There the deceased were “distilled” in a sitting position, later to be removed and cremated, their remains then going through secondary burial.
These “Plain of Jars” sites might be some of the oldest burial grounds in the world, but be careful if you go there. The place is the most dangerous archaeological site, on earth.
With the final French stand at Dien Bien Phu a short five months in the future, France signed the Franco–Lao Treaty of Amity and Association in 1953, establishing Laos as an independent member of the French Union.
The Laotian Civil War broke out that same year between the Communist Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao Government, becoming a “proxy war” where both sides received heavy support from the global Cold War superpowers.
Concerned about a “domino effect” in Southeast Asia, US direct foreign aid to Laos began as early as 1950. Five years later the country suffered a catastrophic rice crop failure. The CIA-operated Civil Air Transport (CAT) flew over 200 missions to 25 drop zones, delivering 1,000 tons of emergency food. By 1959, the CIA “air proprietary” was operating fixed and rotary wing aircraft in Laos, under the renamed “Air America”.
The Geneva Convention of 1954 partitioned Vietnam at the 17th parallel, and guaranteed Laotian neutrality. North Vietnamese communists had no intention of withdrawing from the country or abandoning their Laotian communist allies, any more than they were going to abandon the drive for military “reunification”, with the south.
Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “If we lose Laos, we will probably lose Thailand and the rest of Southeast Asia. We will have demonstrated to the world that we cannot or will not stand when challenged”.
As the American war ramped up in Vietnam, the CIA fought a “Secret War” in Laos, in support of a growing force of Laotian highland tribesmen called the Hmong, fighting the leftist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese communists.
Primitive footpaths had existed for centuries along the Laotian border with Vietnam, facilitating trade and travel. In 1959, Hanoi established the 559th Transportation Group under Colonel Võ Bẩm, improving these trails into a logistical system connecting the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north, to the Republic of Vietnam in the south. At first just a means of infiltrating manpower, this “Hồ Chí Minh trail” through Laos and Cambodia soon morphed into a major logistical supply line.
In the last months of his life, President John F. Kennedy authorized the CIA to increase the size of the Hmong army. As many as 20,000 Highlanders took arms against far larger communist forces, acting as guerrillas, blowing up NVA supply depots, ambushing trucks and mining roads. The response was genocidal. As many as 18,000 – 20,000 Hmong tribesman were hunted down and murdered by Vietnamese and Laotian communists.
Air America helicopter pilot Dick Casterlin wrote to his parents that November, “The war is going great guns now. Don’t be misled [by reports] that I am only carrying rice on my missions as wars aren’t won by rice.”
The proxy war in Laos reached a new high in 1964, in what the agency itself calls “the largest paramilitary operations ever undertaken by the CIA.” In the period 1964-’73, the US flew some 580,344 bombing missions over the Hồ Chí Minh trail and Plain of Jars, dropping an estimated 262 million bombs. Two million tons, equivalent to a B-52 bomber full every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years. More bombs than US Army Air Forces dropped in all of World War 2 making Laos the most heavily bombed country, per capita, in history.
There were all types of bombs from 3,000-pound monsters to smaller “big bombs” weighing hundreds of pounds to “cluster munitions”, canisters designed to open in flight showering the earth with 670 “bomblets” the size of a tennis ball packed with explosives and pellets. It’s estimated that 30% of these munitions failed to explode. 80 million of them, the locals call them “bombies”, set to go off with the weight of a foot, a wheel or the touch of a garden hoe and every one packing a killing radius, of 30 meters.
Unexploded cluster sub-munition, probably a BLU-26 type. Plain of Jars, Laos
Since the end of the war some 20,000 civilians have been killed or maimed by unexploded ordnance, called “UXO”. Four in ten of those, are children.
Removal of such vast quantities of UXO is an effort requiring considerable time and money and no small amount of personal risk. The American Mennonite community became pioneers in the effort in the years following the war, one of the few international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) trusted by the habitually suspicious communist leadership of the LPDR.
On February 18, 1977, Murray Hiebert, now senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. summed up the situation in a letter to the Mennonite Central Committee, US: “…a formerly prosperous people still stunned and demoralized by the destruction of their villages, the annihilation of their livestock, the cratering of their fields, and the realization that every stroke of their hoes is potentially fatal.”
Years later, Unesco archaeologists worked to unlock the secrets of the Plain of Jars, working side by side with ordnance removal teams.
In 1996, United States Special Forces began a “train the trainer” program in UXO removal, at the invitation of the LPDR government. Even so, Western Embassy officials in the Laotian capitol of Vientiane believed that, at the current pace, total removal will take “several hundred years”.
On May 14–15, 1997, the Lao Veterans of America and others held a two day series of events honoring the contributions of ethnic Hmong and others to the American war effort, formally dedicating the Laos Memorial, at Arlington National Cemetery. It was a stunning reversal of policy, an acknowledgement of a “secret war”, the existence of which which had been denied, for years.
In 2004, bomb metal fetched 7.5 Pence Sterling, per kilogram. That’s eleven cents, for just over two pounds. Unexploded ordnance brought in 50 Pence per kilogram in the communist state, inviting young and old alike to attempt the dismantling of an endless supply of BLU-26 cluster bomblets. For seventy cents apiece.
Today, Laos is a mostly agricultural economy with rice accounting for 80% of arable land. Other crops include corn, cotton, fruit, mung beans, peanuts, soybeans, sugarcane, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and opium. Increasingly, highland farmers are turning to coffee, a more profitable crop bringing with it the expectation, that the farmer will be able to educate his children.
Profitable yes, but not without risk. The CIA’s “secret war” in Laos has been over for near a half-century. To this day cluster submunitions and other UXO kill and maim dozens, every year.
A boy digs for ant larvae to use in soup on a hillside overlooking the Plain of Jars. The area was intensively bombed and dozens of large craters can still be seen in the background.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
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