Veterans Day: 11:00 a.m., November 11, 2014 Davidson Library Platform on the Green Sam Maloney Earlier this morning I spoke at a Veterans Day student assembly at the Woodlawn School. I asked the seniors to please stand. I then asked the others present to imagine me 73 years ago as a senior in my high school on Veterans Day, November 11, 1941. I reminded them that Europe had been at war for over two years, but that we in the United States lived in peace. Then within a month, on December 7, 1941, something happened that changed my life and the whole world. Do you know what happened on that date, I asked? The students did. The Japanese bombed our fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. went to war. I told them that I mentioned this to alert them to the reality that history can unexpectedly change our lives. Several of my senior classmates dropped out of school and enlisted in the army. Two were killed by the end of summer, though I did not tell the Woodlawn students that. I had never thought of myself as a pilot. I had never made a model airplane. I was not particularly athletic. I was a nerd with my head in a book. But at eighteen I enlisted with a dozen friends in the U.S. Army Air Corps Aviation Cadet Program. At age twenty I was the pilot and Airplane Commander of a B-24, a four-engine bomber with a crew of ten, flying missions against the Japanese over Pacific islands, China, and Japan. I told the Woodlawn students, never doubt that you too can rise to the occasion when unexpected challenges come. The whole nation proved that after Pearl Harbor. Men, women, young people, industries all rose to the occasion to do everything necessary to defend our country against those who attacked us. Retired military were recalled to active duty. Teenagers and older men enlisted or were drafted. Industries that had made automobiles converted to making tanks and airplanes. Housewives replaced men on the assembly lines. Women flew airplanes from the factories to military bases. Trains became troop trains. Kids collected tinfoil. Families purchased War Bonds. Tuesdays became meatless days. Silk, once used to make hosiery, diverted to make parachutes. Lucky Strike cigarettes’ green package became white; camouflage required green dye. Items like gasoline, rubber tires, meat, flour, and bread were rationed or became unavailable. Cities covered windows at night and drivers drove with dimmed headlights. Block wardens enforced blackouts. Red and white Service Flags with blue stars in the center for each family member in the service appeared in windows. Gold stars for sons and husbands killed followed. We who fought didn’t think of ourselves as heroes. We simply did what we were asked to do. My father, who had retired from the U.S. Navy in 1937 led the 200 ships in Convoy Unit #2 on seven round-trip crossing of the North Atlantic. I, younger than all but one of my crew, flew over Pacific waters. We got shot up some; we never got shot down. Not until I read Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken did I realize that I might have been a hero of sorts. She reported that in the Pacific Theater more B-24 planes and crews were lost to accidents than to combat. I never had an accident. Young and old, male and female of all races--the whole nation had gone to war. After four years of struggle and sacrifice, the whole nation had won. A united nation had beaten the German Axis and the Japanese Empire oversees and, in the process, had beaten the Depression at home. The GI Bill made education available to all veterans. Jubilant optimism prevailed Veterans of World War II have unquestionably received more praise, recognition, and respect than veterans of subsequent wars. Why? Not that those in uniform after World War II are any less hard working, any less sacrificing, any less patriotic, any less deserving of praise and care. The difference lies in the nation wholeheartedly owning World War II, every family playing a part. Since 1974, when the draft ended, our Armed Forces alone have engaged in ambiguous conflicts never fully embraced by the noninvolved public. On a more positive note, under the new management of Secretary Bob McDonald, the Department of Veterans Affairs vows to purge the Veterans Administration of mismanagement and to serve veterans as diligently and faithfully as our veterans have served our nation. World War II veterans are becoming fewer and frailer. We are dying now at a rate of about 400 every day. Let me tell you a story, a bit of history, that you should hear. On my way back from my 494th Bombardment Group reunion in Mobile, AL, in 2010, I stopped at the National Prisoner of War Museum, a National Historic Site, in Andersonville, GA. I asked the lady at the souvenir counter where I would find the memorial plaque honoring the Americans killed by the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. She didn’t know that they had such a plaque. I then asked a Park Ranger. He had never heard that Americans were killed at Hiroshima, and he did not know that Andersonville had such a plaque. I went in search of it. It wasn’t hard to find. As I walked toward the mock-up of the Civil War stockade, I crossed a patio between two brick walls. Three tablets on each wall commemorated POWs of other wars. The Hiroshima tablet occupied the central position on the left wall. I returned to the Park Ranger and led him to the site. See this list of nine names, I asked. Six were my friends flying in The Lonesome Lady; I have their pictures in my album: Durden Looper, co-pilot, married with a child, from Pine Bluff, AR; Jim Ryan, bombardier, Binghamton, NY, he loved the ladies; Hugh Atkinson, radio operator, a class act from Seattle--his mother was a member of the Washington State legislature; John Long, nose gunner, New Castle, PA; Buford Ellison, flight engineer, a strong farm boy from near Sweetwater, TX; Ralph Neal, an add-on ball turret gunner for that mission, from Corbin, KY. Two names of men from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga: Raymond Porter, Butler, PA, navy pilot flying a Helldiver bomber, Norman Brisette, Lowell, MA, Helldiver rear gunner and radio operator. Lastly, Charles Baumgartner, ball turret gunner on the Taloa, from Sebring, 6+OH. I told the Ranger that there should be at least one other name: Julius Molnar, gunner on the Taloa. I hope that Ranger will show that memorial tablet to visitors in the future. Look for it when you visit there. Tom Cartwright, the pilot of The Lonesome Lady, and I exchanged emails last Saturday. Tom was a 4H farm boy from York, S.C., proud of having pointed a champion steer. Carolyn Hobson, his girlfriend, attended Queens College in Charlotte. On July 28, 1945, Tom flew a mission over Kure Naval Base, on Japan’s Inland Sea. The target the heavy cruiser Haruna. Of the 79 B-24s from Okinawa on that mission, 33 came from my my 494th Bombardment Group. Two planes did not make it back: Tom Cartwright piloting The Lonesome Lady and Joe Dubinsky flying Taloa; twenty men listed as Missing in Action. On September 1, 35 days after being shot down, Tom Cartwright showed up at the 7th Bomber Command Headquarters wearing a sailor suit. He had lost 30 pounds and had beriberi. He told me about his plane being hit, engines on fire, controls lost, his order to bail out, and his own parachuting out last and coming down in a mountain clearing. He told of being held with co-pilot Looper at a small village, marched to another village, trucked to a train station, and transported to a bustling city and a police station holding room. He told me of his surprise at seeing across the room five members of his crew, two men from Joe Dubinsky’s crew, and several Navy personnel. After days of interrogation, he and two Navy pilots were bound, blind folded, and put on a train. Two days later they were in individual cells on a large military base. One day, hustled out of his cell, interrogators asked Tom what he knew about a bomb that could destroy an entire city. They ordered him to kneel and extend his neck before a Japanese soldier wielding a saber. Tom heard additional orders and was returned to his cell. After Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech, a charcoal-burning truck transported Tom to Omori Prison Camp in Tokyo Bay. Later in August a Navy destroyer rescued a few ambulatory POWs from Omori including Tom Cartwright. The Captain of the destroyer was Lt. Cmdr. Harold Stassen, a name you may remember from gubernatorial and presidential campaigns. Flown to Okinawa, Tom would continue to Manila, and then home on the hospital ship Benevolence. Tom said he couldn’t be sure, but he thinks the police station where he and his crew were held was Hiroshima. Fast forward to the spring of 1946. I entered Davidson College as a 21 year old freshman. One April day I was sitting on the campus at Queens College, when I saw Tom Cartwright, with Carolyn on his arm, walking toward me. He was as surprised as I was. Tom had enrolled at Clemson. He and Carolyn had set their wedding date for that summer after Carolyn’s graduation. They invited me to their wedding. Then had added, I was right, we were held in Hiroshima. I have visited the families of my crew who died there. Bill Abel, the tail gunner, bailed out first, was held in a POW camp, and is home in Littleton, CO. Roy Pedersen, the navigator is still MIA. Years later Tom learned that in 1947 the Japanese had found Roy’s body with an unopened parachute. They returned his remains to his home in Atlantic, IO. Roy Pedersen’s cousin, Dean Pedersen, lives near here. Dean, are you here this morning? To close I will read the inscriptions on the plaque at Andersonville. In honor and memory of the U.S. Army Air Force and U.S. Navy airmen who lost their lives while prisoners of war at Hiroshima, Japan, the day of the bomb – August 6, 1945. This quotation follows the list of names. “The bravery, suffering, and devotion to duty. . .earned them a preeminent place in the hearts of all Americans. Their heroism is a beacon to follow forever.” - President Ronald Reagan - June 27, 1985 May God bless our veterans and our countr
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:34:00 +0000
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