Claude Choules

The world's last known surviving male combatant of World War One died today aged 110.

He was a British born navy man who, like my grandfather, transfered to the Royal Australian Navy and came to live here. He served on the same ship as my grandfather, who died when I was a child but was still younger than Choules, and almost certainly knew him (my grandfather was later head of naval police in Sydney).

Choules leaves behind 13 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and 3 great-great-grandchildren.

Now that's a life.

He vocally loathed war and considered it a waste of lives, time and money - and recommended the politicians be sent to fight the ones they start.

The funeral will be held in St John's Church in Fremantle.

Robert Griffing

You may know of this artist, but I only discovered his work the other evening...

Robert Griffing. His subject is native Americans in the northeast part of the continent around the late 18th century, and their interaction with settlers.

I particularly like this one of a scout with a Scottish soldier. Something about the dazzle of sunlight playing over their clothes and the ground.

More of Griffing to be found here.

1588

A bit of an indulgence here... I found this on YouTube.

As our red-haired lass clings onto power but may not keep it... this is the second of two films about another famous red-headed ruler. As a ship nut I love the Spanish Armada scenes. The music is Arirang, which is a Korean folk tune. Strangely, the music and these scenes go perfectly together.



A famous Sci-Fi novel called Pavane decribes an alternate 20th century in a world where Spain had actually conquered England in 1588. It's not a pleasant world.
On the other hand, some of what is bad in ours is not present.

Unsinkable Sam

Do you hate those movies where whole cities get blown up but the narrative manages to focus on the family pet?

Well I do. "Civilisation might be ending but the dog's okay... hooray, pass the popcorn." Annoys me no end. And yet...

It's an impressive story of survival when it happens for real (and I want to preface this tale by saying I don't want to trivialise the fact that bloody events surround it, it's just a remarkable story).

It begins - as far as we know - in the port of Gdynia in Poland, then a German naval base which the Germans called Gotenhafen. From there the much feared German battleship Bismarck left port on March 18th 1941, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.

The Bismarck was sunk in the mid Atlantic after a frantic mobilisation and much loss by the Royal Navy on March 27th. Only 115 men out of over 2000 survived the sinking.

Heading back to base, the British destroyer HMS Cossack picked up one more survivor - a black and white cat.
It had belonged to an unknown member of the Bismarck's crew and was found clinging to a bit of debris. The Cossack's crew named him "Oscar" and made him the ship's mascot.

HMS Cossack served as a convoy escort in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, and Oscar remained aboard. Presumably he looked for mice and played with the crew. On October 24th 1941 the German submarine U-563 torpedoed HMS Cossack. The hit caused a massive explosion in the forward section which killed 159 of the crew. Oscar was rescued with the crew who were transfered to HMS Legion, and taken to the British base at Gibraltar.

By now this cat had a reputation, and started to be known as Unsinkable Sam.

The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal had been a key vessel in the hunt for the Bismarck, and it became Unsinkable Sam's new home. It is my guess that Unsinkable Sam would rather have remained at Gibraltar.

On November 14th 1941 the Ark Royal was torpedoed by another German sub, U-81, on the way back from Malta. The sinking was slow and nearly all the crew survived, and... found floating on a plank in the middle of the sea... was one supremely pissed-off cat.

Unsinkable Sam was described as "angry but quite unharmed".

Sam was transfered to HMS Lightening and then HMS Legion (again). Both were later sunk.

Someone took pity on this poor feline, who had presumably started life in Poland, had travelled the Baltic, North Sea, North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, been as far east as Malta, and had had three ships blown up under him and ended up floating in the sea twice, and he was sent to the office buildings of the Governor General of Gibraltar to do mouse-hunting work.

Sam survived the war and was sent to the United Kingdom, living out his days in a seaman's home in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He died in 1955.
For all we know... he might have just been picked up on a whim off a street in Poland by a German sailor all those years previously.

The portrait is a pastels painting of Unsinkable Sam, called "Oscar, the Bismarck’s Cat". It is at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich England.

Further perspectives on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I had thought to leave this topic as it stood in my earlier post, but the comments that it provoked prompted this one...

There is prevailing rationalisation for the use of the atomic bomb which asserts that it was less costly, to both sides, than a conventional invasion would have been. This position is so pervasive that I think most people who have ever given thought to this are swayed by it to some extent.

It is predicated, however, on largely unthinking assumptions which are in fact untrue, or at least questionable.

The first key assumption is that the dropping of the bomb and full scale invasion were mutually exclusive alternatives, and that one made the other unnecessary. Any reputable presentation of war plans shows that this was not the intention at the time. Both were actually part of the same planning from the time the bomb became available.

The second key assumption was the bomb demonstrated such awesome power that it, of itself, persuaded the Japanese government to surrender. That is not, strictly speaking, entirely true either. An associated assumption is that the US government actually expected that outcome. Again, not strictly true.

As the war came closer to the Japanese homeland, conceptual plans for invasion were drawn up. Early planning did not account for the atomic bomb, the project being top secret and known to a very few. As it became a reality, though, that changed...
General of the Army George Marshall considered using it.

To support the invasion - not instead of invasion.

At this time there was no single commander who held total military authority over the whole Pacific theatre. Command was shared among several men. There was a sharp divide between the opinions of the US Navy and the opinions of the US Army. Broadly speaking, MacArthur and the Army wanted invasion. Chester Nimitz and the Navy wanted a blockade. The Army said not invading would prolong the war indefinitely. The Navy said invasion would be too costly.
Political considerations gave the Army the edge, and planning moved to a thought process of how to defeat Japan quickly. The plan was called Operation Downfall, split into two sections, Operations Coronet and Olympic. Olympic would take Kyushu, the southern island. Coronet would take Honshu, the main island, via Tokyo Bay.

Marshall did not believe that dropping the bomb would make Japan surrender, and ordered work to begin on how they might be used tactically instead of strategically.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "strategic" hits. Using them tactically meant dropping them on the areas they intended to deploy troops.

With the benefit of what we know now about the effects of atomic weapons, this idea is utterly appalling. Allied troops could have been in the effected areas in as little as 48 hours, meaning that after a vicious ground war, surviving veterans would have been falling down dead years later from the effects of radiation. The operational plan probably would have come unstuck very fast as massive numbers of forces committed to the invasion fell sick immediately, in a land where nearly 30 million Japanese civilians had been indoctrinated to fight as irregular military. An irradiated nightmare of a battlezone.

MacArthur was confident and believed Japanese resistance would not be as strong as reports suggested. Nimitz on the other hand had grave doubts. Marshall looked to Truman and fretted that the latter would not greenlight the invasion. Projections of Allied casualties ran as high as 4 million, and Truman could not support that politically given the deleterious effect it would have on civilian morale.

The first two atomic bombs were dropped. Japan did not immediately surrender and invasion plans continued apace.

However on August 9th 1945, the emperor, Hirohito, was advised the Soviets had declared war on Japan. What ran through the mind of a man told from infancy that he was a living god and inseparable from the material and spiritual existence of his country is hard to say, but he authorised surrender to the Allies - with the one condition that the Soviets would absolutely not have agreed to: the continuance of the throne. Earlier it had even been hoped by Hirohito that the Soviets would mediate as neutrals.

Fact: If that condition was not met - or Hirohito had believed it would not be met - it was his stated intention to continue the war. He said so. Another dozen bombs could have been dropped and the war would possibly have continued still.

Had he been killed, there would have been no surrender, for it was the office of the emperor, and his voice heard for the first time on public radio, that was the transcendent authority in Japan, their one way out, their sole means of processing total national catastrophe, the only thing that would make them "endure the unendurable".

The question is not what 'made' Japan surrender. The question is how they came to choose to surrender.

A large part of the latter 20th century spun on the whim of this one man, and the catalyst for his choice was not some dreadful new weapon, it was the choice between the Soviets or the Allies. I know who I would have chosen.

A few other related considerations:

Australia wanted Hirohito hanged. Cooler heads in Washington resisted.
Retention of the emperor enabled what was probably the most benign occupation of a former enemy in the history of the world. With the only use of atomic weapons in anger still within living memory, Japanese today by and large nonetheless regard the United States as Japan's one true friend - an extraordinary reversal. This in a world where there are peoples nursing murderous grudges over things done to them by other peoples generations or centuries earlier.

Footage of the effects of the bomb were suppressed in both the United States and Japan for more than 20 years. In occupied Japan the reasons are obvious. In the US the reasons are less clear.

In a 1944 poll 13% of Americans wanted Japanese exterminated (the source cited for this is here). However, attitudes flipped dramatically in the years after the war. While enmity persisted, common images of Japan went from subhuman adversary to a land of paper houses and tinkling kimonos. By 1959 there was a Broadway play, "A Majority of One", adapted to a 1962 film, wherein the mother of a American killed in the war is romanced by a Japanese widower aboard a cruise ship, to the consternation of the woman's daughter.

Perception is endlessly mutable. Truth is not.
The atomic bomb did not force capitulation so much as the emperor's authority enabled it, inspired by self-preservation under the shadow of the Soviets.

It was not a case of "use the bomb OR invade". It was "use the bomb TO invade". Active assumptions in Washington were that the first two detonations would NOT result in capitulation.

Finally.. let's call a filthy cruel weapon a filthy cruel weapon - not a silver bullet for peace. We are still, all of us, living in danger of these things today. At any time a city in the US, Europe or elsewhere could be leveled by nuclear terrorism. These things are not a solution and never were.

By the way the segment below is a scene from The Bridges at Toko Ri. My intention here is not to be cute, but to contrast this with the above mentioned poll, taken just 10 years earlier....



Thanks for reading.

Perspectives on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A lot of people - particularly of the 'armchair general' type who like to say "war is hell" - believe the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were entirely justified.

I used to have that opinion too.

However, these are the opinions of William Leahy, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D Eisenhower and Carter Clarke:

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons...The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
- William Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."
- Norman Cousins, a member of General Douglas MacArthur's Staff

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Dwight D Eisenhower

"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."
- Brigadier General Carter Clarke

My grandfather was a war hero, awarded the Order of the British Empire (among other decorations) for his conduct in fighting the Japanese, who could have landed in Australia. He lost a great many of his friends and brothers in that conflict. He did not believe it was the right thing to do either.

I regard these opinions as being of consequence.

Apsara Dance

Posted for no reason other than the world is an interesting place...

Apsara dance is from Cambodia. Apsara are something like the female woodland faerie of Celtic tradition.

In its Khmer traditions it dates back to about the 12th century. It vanished for 500 years after the Angkor kingdom was sacked during the 15th century by invaders from what is now Thailand.

During the mid 20th century, Queen Sisowath Kosamak Naryrath decided to recreate the dance, which was preserved in temple bas-reliefs, and her granddaughter became the first professional Apsara dancer of the modern era.

It was nearly wiped out again during the murderous rule of the ultra-Left Khmer Rouge regime. In 1995 it was seen again in public for the first time.

Like Western ballet it requires skills that can only be learned by rigorous training.

Here is a related video with some nice images. Song is by an artist named Sen Ranuth and is in the Khmer language.

Howard Fogg

My father was a railway enthusiast. Or "railroad" in American English.
He was British-born, but was especially interested in the US railroads of around 1950 - most of all the Denver and Rio Grande Western. He was a prodigious collector of brass model locomotives.

A favourite railroad artist of his was Howard Fogg, who was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1917, later settling in Boulder, Colorado where he lived until he passed on in 1996. I don't know any more about Mr Fogg than that.

The era of steam has a romance all of it's own, and Fogg's paintings are utterly exquisite. I've put just a few here, but if you'd like to spend an evening in the enchantment of rail in days gone by.... put "Howard Fogg" into your search engine and you will find all you need.

Enjoy.

Thoughts on the US economic crisis

I'm not keen on describing the influence of the USA as the "American empire". The allure of words like "empire" can warp what it is they attempt to describe. Yet I've heard the word used a lot recently, whereas once it would only have been used by hawkish politicians to describe something such as the old USSR.

Niall Ferguson, the British historian, uses the word "empire" a lot. Mostly in the context of the (theoretical) imminent decline and fall of America, and what world will come after.

Much of what he says about the US economic situation, however, is hard to refute...

His speech in Sydney last night presented the following:

"The most obvious point is that imperial falls are associated with fiscal crises - sharp imbalances between revenues and expenditures, and the mounting cost of servicing a mountain of public debt.
Think of Ottoman Turkey in the 19th century: debt service rose from 17% of revenue in 1868 to 32% in 1871 to 50% in 1877, two years after the great default that ushered in the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans. Consider Britain in the 20th century. By the mid 1920s, debt charges were absorbing 44.5% of total government expenditure, exceeding defence expenditure every year until 1937, when rearmament finally got under way in earnest.
But Britain's real problems came after 1945, when a substantial proportion of its immense debt burden - equivalent to about a third of gross domestic product - was in foreign hands.
Alarm bells should therefore be ringing loudly in Washington, as the US contemplates a deficit for 2010 of more than $US1.47 trillion - about 10% of gross domestic product, for the second year running.
Since 2001, in the space of just 10 years, the US federal debt in public hands has doubled as a share of GDP from 32% to a projected 66% next year"

Ferguson addresses a particular point of interest to me: the amount of US debt that is exiting the country....

"Remember, half the US federal debt in public hands is in the hands of foreign creditors. Of that, a fifth (22 per cent) is held by the monetary authorities of the People's Republic of China, down from 27 per cent in July last year."

I found that shrinkage curious but Ferguson clarifies "Quietly, discreetly, the Chinese are reducing their exposure to US Treasury bonds. Perhaps they have noticed what the rest of the world's investors pretend not to see - that the US is on an unsustainable fiscal course, with no apparent political means of self-correcting."

In other words... they're leaving a sinking ship.

I was pondering that when I read that the Governator has declared a state of fiscal crisis in what was the wealthiest state in the USA, that state workers are being forced to take three days unpaid leave per month and that a budget cannot be delivered - bizarrely because it takes a two thirds majority to pass a budget.

California bankrupt? If it was a country it would have the 8th largest economy in the world, and it has come to this..

Meanwhile the loony Right is running around saying taxes for the rich have to fall further. What is it with these idiots that they think the only way out is to let unelected plutocrats have what ever they want in the vague hope it will somehow translate into prosperity for the man on the street? If trickle-down economies ever worked it was in a peculiar set of circumstances... much as a broken clock still shows correct time twice a day. The rest of the time it is completely wrong.

One thing will save America: massive revitalisation of production coupled with investment and overhaul of infrastructure. A controlled economic course. The alliance of government and industry that is at the heart of Obama's vision.

I am less than certain the will exists though. The linkage of the American sense of identity to uncontrolled free markets is so strong it is near faith-like, blinding and perverting, a rhetorical tool of those who do not feel prosperity is for everyone.

No United Nations?

A former US defence adviser called Edward Luttwak will speak in Melbourne in September about the conduct of the war in Afghanistan.

I have actually read a well-known book by this guy called The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire. I have a taste for history and it presented a controversial theory about how the Romans solidified their borders which I found interesting but faulty.

Can't say I agree with what he has to say about the conflicts of our times either...
He said building schools and other civilian infrastructure in Afghanistan was "infinitely more outrageous than bombing".

...uh.. yeah, you read that right....

"It is not intervening in the country to knock off the enemy and go home... this taking over Afghanistan, wanting to determine the history of Afghanistan and have it evolve the way you want it."

Yes Dr Luttwak... I would like Afghanistan's history to evolve in a way that makes it a tad less fertile for terrorist safe havens. Pure military force is failing to achieve this. Clearly he doesn't give a shit about civilians either....

Luttwak bases this view on the idea of "frozen" conflicts that never end.

He calls the creation of the UN a "colossal mistake", noting "The Israelis eventually fought hard wars with the Egyptians and they fought enough to reach a peace. They fought with the Jordanians, they reached a peace. But with the Palestinians, the rules are United Nations cease-fires - there is fighting, people are horrified … so you impose a cease-fire and the war doesn't end."

I've heard this before... mostly on the Right wing but occasionally on the Left too: The notion that all would be okay if Israel simply wipes the Palestinians out, ironically as these same jerks go on to dismiss any photo of a dead Palestinian child or other non-combatant as "fake"...

I enjoyed Luttwak's book about Roman strategy and keep it on my shelf, but anyone who sees unlimited war as the way to peace needs his head examined. The UN was created because people didn't want another conflict like WW2, and had there been no UN, there may have been none of the slight relief the world has had from famine, disease, cultural destruction, environmental destruction, child slavery and just about every other evil you care to name.

A world without the UN...? Seriously?

By the way... Luttwak stated in print of Obama prior to the election that he was "born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood".

Hmm..... very few understandings are indeed "universal", Dr Luttwak... that's why we have wars in the first place.

Friendship dolls

This is Shirley Temple in 1935, from a trip to Hawaii.

"In 1926, 12,739 dolls (composition dolls with wigs and sleep eyes and ma-ma voices)were collected from American children and sent to Japan as a token of international friendship. In return, Japanese children contributed their candy-money to have 58 dolls made to be sent to the U.S. These Torei Ningyo (ambassador dolls) were of the type called Ichimatsu (after an 18th-c. actor) and also Furisode ningyo (representing little girls in traditional festival costume); they were 32" tall and elaborately dressed, and often came with their own furniture, tea-sets, and so on. During the war, many of these ningyo were hidden away or destroyed in both countries..."

The rest of this interesting link here.

My own grandfather was career navy, a champion boxer, and later head of military police in Sydney.

In 1923 the Great Kanto Earthquake levelled Tokyo. He stayed a while, as a very young man, with a Japanese family while he and his crewmates helped relief efforts to rebuild the homes that allied planes would be dropping incendary bombs on 20 years later.

He survived the war. My wife's grandfather, in the Imperial Japanese navy, did not.

I've watched my mother-in-law pray in front of a photo of him and his young wife, who never remarried, with offerings of incence. I wonder what would the two men have made of me witnessing this, in the particular circumstance I have?

Somehow I don't think there would have been any problem.

I have a belief in a particular irony: If we were all warriors, there'd be no wars.

Centurion

Magpie doesn't see many movies. He's a busy bird.

But he loves his fight action, and he loves his history, so he's been tracking the production of this British flick about the mystery of the 9th Legion, and looking forward to it.
Location work in Scotland, where the story happens - no CGI.
Apparently some subtle and open-ended commentary on the theme of an advanced military out of their depth in lands where war is fought by other rules, and the merits or otherwise of the motives behind such enterprises.



Magpie also likes Olga Kurylenko, who is in this flick.

Guns and a point of disagreement

The Spartans were a bunch of hicks who had one of the most repressive states in history, practiced organised rape as a substitute for marriage, enforced pederasty, and were outnumbered by a slave population they ruled by regular acts of terror and atrocity.

Get another role model.

Recently I argued with a gun rights advocate who suggested Australia dump its gun controls.

Blogger-friends tend to go quiet when I talk about this... and blogger-non-friends retreat into Right-wing talking points about the ramifications of an unarmed populace, which are invariably so much empty air.

Among my retorts was a statistic that Americans are more likely than Australians to be victims of gun violence by a factor of (nearly) ten to one. I calculated that myself based on year 2000 stats.

http://guncontrol.org.au/ updates this calculation.

It's actually eleven to one. Intentional homicides with guns: fifteen to one.

As I've said before: proportionate to population this is the equivalent of three 9/11s - every year - in number of Americans who needn't have died had they had our rates of gun violence.

In an article dated back to November 2000:
"The recently released ABS statistics show a dramatic drop in Australian gun deaths for 1998. These figures are shown below. They exhibit the same tendency to decline which was shown in the 1997 figures. The continued reduction in the number of Australians being killed by guns strongly suggests that the stricter gun laws which have been put into place throughout Australia during the 1990’s have saved many hundred’s of lives. A decade ago, in 1988, just before the stricter gun laws started to operate, 696 people died from gun wounds. Last year, 1998, there were 327 gun deaths."

"But if we have gun control then only the crooks will have guns...!" is the usual refrain.
Sorry but that justification does not work for me. The statistics are testimony to the fact that a heavily armed society suffers greater casualties.

Guns kill people. More guns achieves nothing other than killing more people. Often the wrong people.

Look at the Amerikajin

I found this pic online but have no precise info. What I do know is that it's the ruins of a Japanese city, immediate post WWII, and that's a US serviceman on the right. For some reason I find this poignant.

Demolition of history

According to The Age Newspaper today:

" A skyscraper taller than Melbourne Central shopping centre will soon rise above the CBD. The Department of Planning yesterday granted the Brady property group a permit to construct what would be Melbourne's fifth-tallest skyscraper, on Elizabeth Street. The 67-storey development, opposite the Queen Victoria Market, will be on the site of the old Stork Hotel, which has been approved for demolition. The pub has operated for 150 years but is not heritage protected because of modifications to the building in 1925. "

152 years to be exact. This place served people on the way to Ballarat and Bendigo during the gold rush.

Considering 150 years is most of this city's history... this demolition is obscene.
Part of the character of Melbourne is its beautiful old buildings.

" City planning activist Maureen Capp, of Residents Rights, said city sites were being overdeveloped, leaving an ''ugly legacy for future generations''.
''The city is just being decimated of all its lovely old buildings and history,'' she said. "

Bloody oath it is.
And has anyone considered this is one less place to drink?

The justification? Construction jobs.
What? you couldn't construct anything anywhere else in the whole bloody state of Victoria?
Fucking developers.

Amazon warriors in Britain

As a story it's a bit dated. From 2004 actually. I have a great enthusiasm for things about the Roman army. This was news to me though...

The Roman army used auxiliaries of all sorts, but among them were numeri ("numbers" singular: numerus), irregular units of non-Romans using their own weapons, tactics and leaders. The term is vague and loosely applied. Feoderati were "foreign" units and there is overlap in the terminology. The remains of two Amazon warriors were found in Brougham in Cumbria, Britain, during the 1960's but not identified as such for 40 years, as archeological technology caught up.

Yeah... Amazons. Female warriors. Nothing to do with the river in South America of course, but warriors from a stretch of the Danube where Greek legend held that the legendary Amazons came from.

"One of the sets of women warrior’s remains were found with the burnt remnants of animals. Bone veneer, used to decorate boxes, was also found alongside evidence of a sword scabbard and red pottery. The possessions suggest that she was of high status and her age has been estimated at between 20 and 40 years old. The other woman, thought to be between 21 and 45, was buried with a silver bowl, a sword scabbard, bone veneer and ivory."

They are dated to the 3rd century and thus would have been in the service of the late Roman army which looked quite different to "Hollywood" Romans. By this time there was scale armour, trousers, long-sleeved tunics, boots (not sandals), swords carried on the left, and oval shields.

The full article is here. Short but fascinating.
Numeri are called numerii - double "i" - in the article. I never learned Latin so I'm unsure about whether that is right.

I can't find further reading on this find.