Three Shifts At Sycamore War Plant in 1943

From the August 29, 2018, MidWeek  "Looking Back."

1943, 75 Years Ago.

"The south mill of the Anaconda  in Sycamore is now on a three-shift basis.  The mill is engaged in filling an important war contract and is engaged in nothing else at this time.

"More help is needed there.    Not only because of the war time shortage but because several younger workers are planning to return to school this fall.  Many women are on duty in all three shifts.  They are of all ages, from young to gray haired."

My Answer:  Dead Pirates.  --GreGen

Mission Regensburg-- Part 3: They Mission They Almost Did't Make It Back

The B-17 bomber called Just -A-Snappin is one of the better known planes in 100th lore.

She is best remembered for bringing her crew back from Bremen on October 8, 1943, as is described in this account by Lt. Harry H. Crosby:  "Leading a large formation of B-17s, we were hit hard over the target, spun out of control and saved from crashing by the superb efforts of our pilot and command pilot.

"With two engines knocked out, we were forced to head home alone at low altitude, our plane riddled by over 1,200 shell holes by actual count, one crewman mortally wounded and five severely injured.

"When we were attacked repeatedly by Luftwaffe fighters along the way, our gunners shot down ten of them.  Unable to ditch in the North Sea because of our wounded or to make it over our own airfield, we crash-landed at a 'dummy' airfield on the English coast."

Quite An Accomplishment.  --GreGen

Mission Regensburg-- Part 2: North Africa Instead of England

After being postponed several times by unfavorable weather, "Mission No. 84" was a strategic bombing attack by B-17 Flying Fortresses led by the 4th Bombardment Wing commander Colonel Curtis E. LeMay on August 17, 1943.

The Regensburg attack group was able to successfully hit their targets, and then, to fool the Germans, they flew on to Africa instead of doubling back through Germany to return to England.

After a week in North Africa, the bomber group returned to England on August 24.  They bombed Bordeaux, France, en route home.

--GreGen

Mission Regensburg-- Part 1: Bombs Away!!

From the Paralyzed Veterans of America 2018 Calendar Heroes of the Air featuring the aviation artwork of  Gil Cohen.

And his artwork is spectacular.

Inside the somewhat claustrophobic nose compartment of Just-A-Snappin, Bonbardier Lt. Jim Douglas, the lead bomber of the 100th Bombardment Group, signals Navigator Lt. Heuropeaarry S. Crosby with a thumbs-up after releasing his salvo of bombs on the Messerschmitt factory in the city of Regensburg, Germany.

Crosby then records the time of the bomb release in his log before charting a course for North Africa.

With quiet heroism and amid the tumult of the deadly flak bursts just outside the plane's windows, these men are simply doing their job.

--GreGen

War on the Weeds in Sycamore in 1943

From the August 8, 2018, MidWeek  (DeKalb County, Illinois)  "Looking Back."

1943, 75 Years Ago.

"Again, it was proven beyond all reasonable doubt that if the business men or any other group  of Sycamore, make up their minds to do something in a big way, they do it, and with a vengeance too.

"About 40 business and factory men went to Sycamore Park after work, armed with hand sickles, sycthes, rakes, and mowers and after a last minute meeting strategic meeting between the generalissimos, Emil Cassier as superintendent of the par, Vernon Weitzel, Ed Boies and a few more, the attack on the tall grass, obnoxious weeds and other objectionable began with a vim that meant a decided victory for the attackers, and a noticeable improvement in the grounds."

Don't Mess With Those Sycamore Guys.  Must Have Been Axis Weeds.  --GreGen

Access to USS Arizona Memorial Still Closed in May

From the May 15, 2018, Hawaii News Now  "Access to USS Arizona Memorial remains closed as repairs continue.."

These are short term repairs.  They are hoping the memorial will reopen by the end of the week.

Tour boats still go by it, but don't let passengers off.

Rhonda Householder had an uncle who died on the Arizona and said, "We're from Ohio, so we're a little disappointed."

Imagine going all the way to Hawaii from the mainland and not being able to visit the memorial.

Authorities are looking for long term solutions to the problem.

--GreGen

Gordon Jones Pushed for A USS Pearl Harbor-- Part 2: And He Got It

He died August 24, 2018 in Chula Vista, California, at the age of 96.

Mr. Jones was at Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii tending  PBY Catalinas (flying boats) on December 7, 1941, when the attack came.  Looking forward to liberty, he was in his dress whites when the first plane came swooping in very low.  At first, he thought it was a Marine pilot harassing the Navy.  That is, until the bullets started flying and bombs going off.

Most of the 30 PBYs at the base were destroyed and almost 20 of the men were killed.  There were dozens wounded, including his brother Earl, who was hit in the back by bomb shrapnel and disabled.

Afterwards, he island-hopped across the Pacific and kept a diary.

That would be interesting reading.

--GreGen

Pearl Harbor Survivor Who Pushed for a USS Pearl Harbor Dies-- Part 1: Gordon Jones

From the August 28, 2018, San Diego Union-Tribune "Gordon Jones, Pearl Harbor survivor who pushed Navy to name ship after the attack dies" by John Wilkens.

Gordon Jones, a naval aviation mechanic who was at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked sent letter after letter to the Navy over a 15 year period of time, requesting they name a ship after the attack was turned down over and over again, but persisted until he got his wish, has died at age 96.

The Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship was commissioned in 1998 and is still in use.

He was born in 1922 in Philadelphia and went to high school in New Jersey and joined the Navy while still in school.  At his graduation, he wore his uniform.

--GreGen

A Pearl Harbor Survivor Dies at 101: Alton Lee Stone

ALTON LEE STONE, 101

Died July 19, 2018, 4 days short of his 102nd birthday in Monroe, North Carolina.  He was born July 23, 1916, and grew up in Broadway, N.C..

He and his younger brother James joined the Navy and both survived Pearl Harbor.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find out any specifics about their experiences or where they were during the attack.

--GreGen

My Take on Japanese-American Internment

I agree that it was not one of our finer moments and was extremely unfortunate, especially with how much they lost of their possessions during the internment.  But those who completely condemn what was done are looking at what happened from a long distance in the future.

Unless you were there and experienced what happened at the time, you should not put your feelings on the case on top of theirs.

You gave to remember, the United States suffered a huge sucker punch.  Pearl Harbor was not expected, though it should have been.  I still have questions about that aspect of the attack.  How could you not look at Japanese living in the U.S. without some modicum of suspicion?

I am sure that I would have and would have probably favored the relocation.

Again, Put Yourself In Their Shoes.  --GreGen

The Census Bureau and Japanese Internment-- Part 5: The Bureau's Role

In 1988, President Reagan signed legislation issuing a formal apology for the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans.  Former internees also received $20,000 in reparations for property seized during the roundups.

The mass incarceration of them, the majority of whom were American citizens is now considered a major stain on American history.

The Census Bureau obviously had a part in this roundup.  They came under scrutiny again after 9/11 when the bureau gave information to the Department of Homeland Security about neighborhoods that had large percentages of Arab-American populations.

--GreGen

The Census Bureau and Japanese-American Internment-- Part 4: A threat to FDR

Under the March 1942 Second War Powers Act, which suspended the confidentiality protections for census data, the chief clerk had the authority to release census data to other agencies.  According to researchers, then the information released  was not illegal, but ethically questionable.

On August 4, 1943, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau requested the names and addresses of all individuals of Japanese ancestry living in Washington, D.C..  The request was to aid in a Secret Service investigation of threats made against President Roosevelt.

That request was triggered by an incident that had taken 17 months earlier when a Japanese-American man  being forced from Los Angeles to the Manzanar Internment Camp had said, "we ought to have enough guts to kill Roosevelt."

The man was later committed to a mental hospital for schizophrenia.

Information about 79 people in the D.C. area was released.  This request was filled in just seven days, very fast for a Washington bureaucracy.

The confidential provisions were reinstated in 1947.

--GreGen

Willard C. Aves, USS Arizona Victim, Kingston, Illinois Resident

From the  August 1, 2018, MidWeek  "Looking Back."

1943, 75 Years Ago.

"Charles T. Aves, well-known Kingston resident, received an Order of the Purple Heart citation, posthumously  awarded his son, Willard C. Aves, member of the crew  of the U.S.S. Arizona."

A DeKalb County Casualty Right At the Beginning of U.S. Involvement In World War II.--  GreGen

LST-325 Comes to Dubuque, Iowa, This Weekend

The famed World War  II LST-325 is coming to Iowa this weekend and will be at Dubuque and is currently moored there.  It will be open for tours from Thursday, Aug. 23 to Monday, Aug. 27.

Then it will visit Bettendorf, Iowa, from August 30 to Sept 3 and then to Chester, Illinois, September 6 to Sept. 9.

Hoping to visit it in Dubuque.

This ship, the LST stands for Landing Ship Tank, for one of its major jobs,  and was at D-Day and the follow up.  6 June 1944, it carried 59 vehicles,  30 officers and 396 enlisted men to the beach at Normandy, and then returned with 38 casualties.

Over the next nine months, the ship made more than 40 trips across the English Channel carrying thousands of men and pieces of equipment.

Then, later it was in the Greek navy.

The ship is 327 feet long and has a 50-foot beam.

A Lot of History Here.  --GreGen

The Census Bureau and Japanese-American Relocation-- Part 3

According to the researchers, the FBI and military intelligence agencies began pushing in 1939 to relax census confidentiality rules, but that was opposed by Census Bureau Director William Lane Austin.

After the 1940 presidential election, Austin was forced to retire and he was replaced by J.C. Capt, who backed efforts to remove confidentiality provisions..  His efforts helped clear the way for other agencies to access information on Japanese-Americans.

Documents were found that the Census Bureau provided information on where those of Japanese ancestry lived in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Arkansas.  (Why Arkansas?)

Then, it was found that the Bureau gave out micro-data about individuals and their addresses.

--GreGen

Census Bureau and Japanese Internment-- Part 2: 120,000 Relocated

Information from the 1940 Census was secretly used in one of the worst violations of constitutional rights in U.S. history --  the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

In papers presented by historian Margo Anderson in 2000 and 2007, evidence was found that census officials cooperated with the government providing data to target Japanese-Americans.

The Japanese-American community has long suspected that the Census Bureau played a role  in banishment of 120,000 of heir people, mostly living along the West Coast to nearly a dozen internment camps following the bombing of Pearl harbor on December 7, 1941.

Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Norman Mineta was one of those people banished to internment camps. He was 11 and living in San Francisco when his family was sent to live in an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

For decades, census officials had denied they had supplied information.

This was not a great day in American history, but in war all sorts of things happen.

--GreGen

The Census Bureau In On Japanese-American Internments-- Part 1

From the April 12, 2018, Chicago Tribune  "Disclosure count against Census Bureau" by Lori Aratani, Washington Post.

The Census Bureau plans to ask people in the 2020 count if they are U.S. citizens, bringing about fears that the information might be used to target those in the country illegally.

This has not been done since 1950.

It is illegal to use that information that would identify individuals or families for target purposes.

And target is exactly what the government did at the beginning of U.S. involvement in World War II.

--GreGen

Three Destroyers Named for Civil War USS Marmora Sailors Awarded Medals of Honor

I have been writing a lot about the USS Marmora from the Civil War in my Running the Blockade Civil War Navy blog.  Also, I have been writing about three of its sailors awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for their action on land at the March 5, 1864, Battle of Yazoo City in Mississippi.

The three sailors names were  William J. Franks, Bartlett Laffey and James Stoddard.

It turns out that all three of them had World War II destroyers named after them.

USS Franks  (DD-554)

USS Laffey  (DD-459)  Sunk at the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942

USS Laffey  (DD-724)

USS Stoddard   (DD-566)

I'll have to write about these ships.

You can read about the Civil War USS Marmora and what these three sailors did in my Running the Blockade Civil War Navy blog.

--GreGen

USS Marmora (IX-189)-- Part 2: Action in the Pacific

Now back in U.S. service, the USS Marmora was assigned to the Service Force, United States Pacific Fleet and departed Pearl Harbor 28 January 1945 and went to the Marshall Islands and arrived at Eniwetok on 13 February for duty as a mobile floating storage ship.  Four days later she went to Saipan in the Mariana Islands and began unloading aviation.

On  31 March, the Marmora departed for the Caroline Islands and reached Ulithi on 3 April.  Then it was on to  the Ryukyu Islands, operating out of Okinawa to the Japanese surrender on August 15, 1945.

She continued operating out of Okinawa until  1 November 1945, when she went to the U.S. Gulf Coast via Pearl Harbor and the Panama Canal.  The Marmora arrived at Mobile, Alabama  4 January 1946 and was decommissioned in February and delivered to the War Shipping Administration and her first name restored.

She was scrapped after that in 1947.

There is a rown named Marmora  in New Jersey which must be where the name originated.

--GreGen

USS Marmora (IX-189)-- Part 1: Lend-Leased to Soviet Union

From Wikipedia.

I have been writing about the Civil War USS Marmora a lot in my Running the Blockade Civil War Navy blog.this past week.  There was one other USS Marmora which served during World War II.

From Wikipedia.

U.S. Navy tanker serving between 1944 and 1946.  Saw service as a mobile floating warehouse in the aftermath of the war.  Built as the SS Montrolite in Seattle, Washington in 1918.  Renamed  the SS J.S. Fitzsimmons in 1926 while involved in commercial service.

Standard Oil of California chartered her to the U.S. government in 1942.  Under the Lend-Lease Act the ship was transferred to the Soviet Union on 14 October 1942. and was renamed the SS Valerian Kuybyshev in their service.

Transferred back to the U.S. 13 December 1944 and name changed to USS Marmora (IX-189).

--GreGen