History Comes To Life

 

There is a very interesting series that has been airing on the Smithsonian Network channel.  Pete and I do a lot of streaming, especially when we didn’t have the chance to watch a show when it first aired.  So, somehow, we stumbled across a show titled “The Pacific War, In Color”.  WWII is of interest to both of us since his father and my mother were active participants in WWII.  We both grew up on their war stories.

As I’ve written many times in these blogs, Mom was a Navy nurse stationed in the south and central Pacific during her time in the Navy.  This series was of great interest as it went island by island as the armed forces made their way toward Japan to end the war.  It is gruesome to watch as it leaves very little to the imagination and was certainly more real than any war movies that have made it to the theaters. 

                         

                                           Mom in her Navy whites              

 

                          Mom and her comrades on New Guinea                                  

On New Guinea

It became even more engaging for me as it told the stories of taking the islands of Saipan, Tinian and Guam, all islands in the Mariana Island chain.   Mom was stationed on Guam for a time and when she learned that I was moving there the first thing she asked was for me to send her photos of the hospital there, she wanted to see if it still looked as she remembered it.  I sent the photos and she was thrilled to recognize the building.

Since I was well aware of Mom’s connection to the island, it was very interesting to learn more, first hand after my arrival.  I remember meeting an elderly lady who had been a child when Japan took control of the island in 1941, during the early years of the war.  Adults were turned into slave labor, but the children were allowed to run free without much supervision.  Since the kids understood what was going on, they did what they could to undermine Japanese projects, like moving construction stakes around to confuse construction projects, sabotage equipment and anything else they could get away with.

I was also interested in the story of Saipan since I had visited that island while I was on Guam.  It was a lovely, quiet little island however it has a very dark history during it’s taking by the US.  The Japanese civilians that lived on the island were convinced when it became apparent the Allied troops were winning the battles, that they would become slaves with the island’s defeat.  Rather than face that possibility, family groups began throwing themselves off the cliffs into the ocean below.  Soldiers attempted to stop them and assure them that slavery was not going to happen, but they did not believe, and continued with their jumps.  The footage of this is absolutely heartbreaking.

While neither Mom nor I were ever on Tinian, its history is crucial to the end of the war in that it was where the bombs were loaded onto B-29s for dropping on Japan.  The island is just 100 miles north of Guam and on clear days when we were out sailing, we could see the island.

Plus, just before I left for Guam I had seen the movie ‘Jaws’.  There is a scene where a person is recounting a memory of horror when a US ship that had delivered one of the bombs was torpedoed by the Japanese and the crew of that ship watched and cheered as US survivors in the water were being eaten in a shark feeding frenzy.  A new acquaintance on Guam confirmed that scene as actually happening, it was not just made up for the movie. 

So, once again, history comes to life.  The series on the Smithsonian channel is really good.  Especially when you have a direct connection to the story line.