Howard's Views
by Howard E. Morseburg
Our convoy had formed at Norfolk, Va., and from there had crossed the North Atlantic, towards the coast of Africa. It was under persistent attack by a "wolf-pack" (the name given to a group of submarines operating in concert against a single convoy) for several days as we moved in the direction of the Straits of Gibraltar. The D.E.'s (destroyer-escorts) had dropped numerous depth charges, racing up and down outside the convoy lanes as they attemped to pin-point the location of the subs below to put them out of action.
See letters from families of men in our Convoy at bottom of page.
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THE PURPLE HEARTS?
Almost
9,500 men of the Merchant Marine gave their lives for their country during
WWII. It is estimated that 12,000 others were wounded or suffered from the
effects of long periods of deprivation after their ships were torpedoed.
Some drifted for days, even weeks and months, before being rescued, others
lost limbs from exposure in icy waters of the North Atlantic or Artic
ocean. many others were captured and made prisoners-of-war, suffering for
months or years under horrific conditions imposed upon them by their
Japanese captors.
Since our men have achieved Veteran status (by an Act of Congress in 1985), and now have Coast Guard discharges for their service during WWII, I believe that the families of those who were lost due to enemy action should be awarded the Purple Heart, and those wounded who survived the war to this day, should receive it as well. It is only fitting that this be done.
A little known fact is that 77 U.S. merchant seamen lost their lives due to German/Japanese action even before Pearl Harbor! The merchant marine was already involved in the Battle of Britain, delivering food and ammunition to the British Isles, rnning the blockade of German submarines patrolling the waters surrounding that small nation. No guns, no armor, and at speeds too slow to outrun Nazi subs on the surface, they helped sustain the war effort, to keep the British supplied so that they could continue to fight.
Click to read my page titled: Purple Heart for Merchant Seamen!
S.S. U.S.O. STRUCK BY DUD TORPEDO IN INDIAN OCEAN.
No voyage is over until you're safely back home, and this one was no exception. We spotted floating and magnetic mines in the Mediterranean and mines in the Red Sea. One came so close that we held our breaths until we were safely past it, and then a Navy gunner blew it up with fire from his 20 mm gun. Pulling into the harbor at Aden was like a page from National Geographic, a beautiful harbor with the prettiest green clear water you can imagine, two huge manta rays lazily floating on the surface at the entrance to the harbor. They looked to be twenty feet across the wings, and one playfully, at least it seemed so, raised his and slapped the surface, resounding like cannon shots in the still warm air. The Red Sea and the Indian Ocean were considered fairly safe at this point in the war, so we didn't travel in convoy, but ran alone and zig-zagged at proscribed intervals. I still have my Expense Notebook from the trip, a couple of dollars ashore for taxi fare and lunch, almost ludicrous compared to today's world.The U.S.O. departed Aden, swung out into the Indian Ocean and headed for the Persian Gulf at somewhere around ten knots an hour, close to her top speed. After lunch, most of the crew that was off-duty were taking in the sun and lolling around the deck aft, the Officers' Messboy leaning over the rail looking at the sea, when there was a sudden loud noise, like a sledge hammer slamming into the side of the ship, and water splashed up and soaked the messman. Two men, the Bosun and the Carpenter's Mate, one the survivor of five torpedo attacks and the other three, flew from the hatch cover where they were playing cards and were at their life-boat stations on the deck above almost instanteously. But again, the ship pounded steadly on, and the Captain and Chief Mate, alarmed at first, decided that we must have struck a whale. Odd conclusion, but there weren't supposed to be any subs in that area. It wasn't until four hours later, when we received aa S.O.S. by radio from the ship that had left Aden four hours behind us, that we realized we had actually been struck by a torpedo, one that didn't penetrate the hull but did leave a discernable dent in the plates by the number #3 hatch.
HISTORY IS SIMPLY HISTORY, NOTHING MORE
There are those who wish to use ancient hatreds to justify warfare and revenge today for what happened to their fathers, grandfathers and ancestors fifty, a hundred or even hundreds of years ago. I do not believe that this has anything to do with today's world, except that history always gives us lessons to learn and learn well. Sweeping such things as wartimes atrocities under the rug accomplishes nothing, but neither should one try to embarrass another, a Japanese citizen as an example, by making accusations.. Neither should be deny historical things, but again, not embarrassed by them either. We are not responsible for what someone else, ancestor or not, did in the past.
A FEW JAPANESE ATROCITIES TO RESEARCH IN ORDER TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THEIR BRUTALITY, INHUMANITY AND SAVAGERY.
History books today tell little of the barbaric atrocities committed
by the Japanese military during World War II. In Japan they eliminate all
reference to the horrendous deeds of their fathers and grandfathers, as if
it never happened. Soldiers were hardened to such savagery by their
officers, training them by forcing them to bayonet live prisoners bound to
poles. They observed no conventions of warfare, condoned the most brutal
of acts, and used the same brutality on a daily basis against the people
of lands they seized as they did in battle. To properly understand the
reason for the use of Atomic bombs against Japan, one has to first know
what type of enemy we were fighting, their ferocity, their cunning, their
willingness to die for their Emperor, and that the Allies simply could not
risk what might be a failure in an invasion, or simply the vagaries of
warfare, the suddeness that the tide of battle might turn on a simple
error, a change in weather, or quite simply--chance.
There is hardly a day goes by that we are not reminded of the
atrocities of the Germans during World War II, mostly the Holocaust.
However, there is seldom anything said about the horrible treatment and
almost inhumane conduct of the Japanese troops during the war.
While I
harbor no ill-will towards the Japanese people today, when it comes to any
reference to the use Atomic Bombs I believe that it is necessary to take
everything in historical context and for those who question our use these
weapons, for them to understand the very nature of the war we were
fighting at the time. They don't seem to do so. They're always ready to
condemn their own country first, for some misguided reason or other.
The close to 150,000 helpless prisoners who died in Burma, building
the Burma railway, is about equal to the number of casualities in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So be it.
One has to examine the Japanese
attitudes and the actions of their military forces in occupied
territories. Prisoners and subjugated people were often used as slave
laborers, beaten, robbed, raped, starved, beheaded, bayoneted as a part of
military drills, subjected to all manner of torture, summarily executed, a
litany of horrors so extensive that no history could ever cover them in an
adequate manner. The Japanese military, in almost all instances, were
inhumane in their treatment of conquered nations. It's a historical fact,
and we should not allow apologists to rewrite or ignore it, and attempt to
make us feel guilty.
On the other hand, I believe that General Douglas MacArthur's treatment of the defeated Japanese nation was the correct course to follow, and that as a result of his policies we now have an entirely different attitude on the part of the Japanese people, and that today we are seeing them at their very best. If it was not for our demanding an unconditional surrender, and keeping an occupation force in Japan while they set about making a democracy out of the country, they would not be where they are today.
They are an interesting and dynamic people. Today's generation of Americans owes no apologies for the actions that we, as a nation, took in those days, nor does anyone who was responsible for the development and use of Atomic weapons. There is nothing for us to apologize for, nor to forgive; all is in the past and should remain in the past. For those who criticize our generation, let them examine the full story of the Japanese army from the turn of the century up until their surrender.
JAPANESE FISHING BOAT SUNK OFF PEARL HAROR 2001
In the year 2001 our government stupidly spent $60 million to raise a
Japanese fishing boat, accidently struck and sunk in Hawaiian waters by a
U.S. submarine (right off Pearl Harbor), in order to recover six bodies.
Our cost was $10 million for each body! It was sheer lunacy. Those of us
who went to sea understood that death at sea meant that the sea became
your burial ground.
When did that change? It is ludicrous that our
government would waste millions to raise a fishing boat in order to
recover six bodies! That's beyond comprehension, or understanding, and it
has nothing to do with race, or the fact that they were Japanese, because
even to do it for American bodies would be just as ridiculous. What a
precedent to set! In fact, it is abject stupidity, and if it was
done to mollify the Japanese government or families, it was wrong and
always will be wrong. Whoever made that decision was
wrong.
ATOMIC BOMB & THE TROOPS
** They had fought their way across Africa and then through Europe, some had been away from the U.S. for two or three years. Most of them were heading home for a leave and then...a reassignment to the Pacific Theatre of Operations to prepare for the inevitable invasion of Japan. You know that every single soldier here was joyous to hear that our Commander-in-Chief, President Harry S. Truman, had had the courage to make that decision and issue an order that called for the Atomic bomb to be used to end the war!It was the most important and most correct decision of the entire conflict. The enemies' casualties were of little consequence to us then; the single most important goal was to save the lives of our men and to do so by ending the War. And, the War did end, quickly and decisivly, because of that decision. Veterans that I have discussed this with have all been in agreement that President Harry S. Truman made the right decision and that we too can live with it.
Historians can argue the issue; they weren't the ones whose lives were at risk.
Historians can debate the alternatives, but there were no certaintities in that war, as there aren't in today's wars.
Historians can cry over the thousands of innocent women and children incinerated that day, but it was not any different than the 580 men incinerated on that single Liberty ship carrying ammunition.
Historians may ignore the atrocities of the Japanese, and historians may not believe in vengeance, but in wartime, those who fight often do. As a Nation, we certanly seemed to believe in it, and it began with revenge for the December 7th 1941 attack upon Pearl Harbor!I heard no cry-babies at that time bemoaning the plight of the poor Janapese. All I heard were cries of joy and relief that the war was over. I heard cries of joy that so many nations had finally been freed from the tyranny and cruelty of the Japenese occuption. I read stories of Chinese, Korean and Maylasians, as well as Allied troops, freed from torturous living conditions as prisoners of war, some so horribly abused that they died even as they were finally being carried out from the prison camps to freedom. Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a small price for the Japanese to pay for their transgressions, really a very small price considering all the atrocities they had committed as their victorious troops swept across Asia and the Pacific in the early part of the war. At that point we became the victorious conquerors, but the United States was also the most merciful of any nation over the centuries. The Japanese were cruel to each other, even when they defeated other Japanese warlords on their own islands. We can hold our heads high in the centuries to come, that we have never taken advantage of a defeated enemy.
ARMED U.S. MERCHANT SHIPS MIGHT CLASSIFY AS AUXILLARY NAVAL
SHIPS! Today, although given Veteran's status by Congress in
1985, the VFW still stubbornly refuses to accept merchant seamen as
members, even though literally 100% of them served overseas and they were
in every theatre of war that any of the Allied forces served in.
After
some months of the war, every ship went to sea with Navy guns and Naval
Armed Guard. Wouldn't that classify them as Auxillary Naval Ships? They
fought off both air and sea attacks, and merchant seamen helped man the
guns, trained by the U.S. Navy gunners.
This would be no different than
Congress arming merchant ships back in the late 1700's and early 1800's,
and authorizing them to attack enemy vessels.
Most Merchant Marine
seamen were enlisted in and trained by the U.S. Maritime Service, paid by
the U.S. Government during training at the same pay scale as members of
the Armed Forces, until their training was completed and they were
released to sail as civilian seamen. This would seemingly give legitimacy
to the claim that if they were trained by the U.S. Government, armed by
the U.S. Navy, and served as assistant gunners on board these vessels,
that the relationship should be recognized and the same area and battle
ribbons authorized to veterans of WWII who served in the merchant
marine.
QUESTION: WHAT EFFECT DID ADMIRAL KING'S FAILURE TO FOLLOW THE RECOMMENDATIONS SENT TO HIM BY THE BRITISH FOR PROTECTING THE AMERICAN MERCHANT FLEET IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR HAVE ON THE WAR EFFORT?
Admiral King was an known Anglophile. The British Admiralty conveyed their experiences and recommendations (convoys, etc.) for reducing losses to German submarines, and it is reported that he deliberately refused to make use of this advice in the early months after America's entry into the war. It was a mistake in judgment, and costly in ships, as well as in lives of the men of the Merchant Marine.
The Germans were sinking ships with impunity right outside of New York harbor, off the coast near Coney Island, and within sight of tourists (from their hotel windows) in Miami Beach.
Ref: ** SS Paul Hamilton Personnel Lost at Sea - 20 Apr 1944 **. ... US Merchant Marines, Crew of SS Paul Hamilton - 47; US Navy Armed Guards - 29; US Army Air Corps - 504. ... www.geocities.com/lks_friday/HAMILTON-001.htm - 10k - Cached - Similar pages by Lynna Kay Shuffield A great WEBsite.
Be Not Afraid - Read this about the Boy Scouts.by Howard E. Morseburg
One of the men who was lost on the S.S. Paul Hamilton, is pictured here, Staff Sergeant Frederick W. Sleyster, with the 32nd Photo Squadron, 5th Reconnaissance, US Air Force. Died April 20, 1944. Some of the men aboard were said to have been demolition specialists, headed for Anzio, perhaps to clear mine fields and dispose of ordinance in the area.
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