[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents World War II Plus 70 Years: Seminar and Discussion Forum
First session: September 1, 2009. Last date to add: September 2, 2015.
Reading assignment: New York Times articles and the occasional radio broadcast delivered daily to students on the 70th anniversary of original publication date. (Previously posted articles can be found by searching on keyword “realtime” Or view Homer’s posting history .)
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by freepmail. Those on the Realtime +/- 70 Years ping list are automatically enrolled. Also visit our general discussion thread.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Selections from West Point Atlas for the Second World War
The Far East and the Pacific, 1941: Areas under Allied and Japanese Control, 15 August 1945
The Western Pacific: Japanese Homeland Dispositions August 1945 and Allied Plans for the Invasion of Japan (Operation Downfall)

[PeterPrinciple]

This would make sense. They have been imprinted and cannot adjust. Just like our youth have been imprinted with global warming, fagetry, and other lies.

JAPANESE DELARED UNAWARE OF CRIMES

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There have been a substantial number of suicides, but none on a mass scale, he said. The he said quietly:’

”Most of those who committed hara-kiri were young men 19 or 20 ears old who could not stand defeat. The committed suicide with great innocence.”

[DBrow]

I cannot thank you enough for the work you put into this project. Seeing it unfold day by day was most illuminating.

[Vermont Lt]

Interesting article on changing the calendar. It goes to show that while in the service, there are long stretches of boredom. I guess while most guys thought of women, this guy thought of calendars.

He would have been thrilled with the invention of the HP graphing calculators.

[PeterPrinciple]

334 Ships Hit In Okinawa Battle

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I understand why this released now. It can’t be release during active war. So as the 1945 reader looks at this article, what are they thinking?

[chajin]

At the bottom of the second column on #11 is Robert Newcomb, missing. Just for the halibut I wanted to see if he was ever found. I don't know the answer to that, but I did find out he received the Silver Star, here. It seemed a small thing to look for in a very large paper, but there is a lesson to me here: there were an abundance of heroes, so many that we cannot remember or commemorate them all. I thank them today, and I thank you, HJS, for bringing them back so that we could thank them.

P.S. I know I am very much a latecomer to this gathering, and I am sorry for that. I hope I am on your ping list for any future discussions.

[Ditto]

Thank you so much for all your hard work on these threads Homer.

[untenured]

As my last post on these threads I will leave everyone with the above famous image. I think it says a lot. This is MacArthur with Hirohito at the US embassy on 9/27/1945. I am not qualified to engage in the debate on these threads over MacArthur as a military leader. But as essentially the king of Japan during the occupation I think we must rate him highly.

This picture was apparently taken at the US embassy, MacArthur having refused to deign to visit the emperor in the palace. In addition, he wears no necktie, even as Hirohito seems to have dressed up. Throughout to this point the general has let there be no doubt that he, with the power of the US at his back, is in charge.

But I have learned from reading these daily reports that he behaved both to the Japanese envoys who had flown to Manila last week and to Japanese officials on the Missouri with a remarkable decency, and an expressed desire to build a future in East Asia that could go beyond war as the arbiter of national relations.

That's just talk of course, but it might be talk that the victorious superpower America was more willing to engage in (and mean it) than the powers that have long bellowed out the nationalist, triumphalist rhetoric -- the rhetoric of overcoming humiliation or militarily triumphing over inferior social systems -- that has been so common before and after the war.

In 2015 it is unimaginable to most people outside of Korea and China (and even to some within) that a Japan where pacifism is now deeply ingrained in the people's psyche would again travel the road of conquest. Japan is a peaceful nation whose triumphs are all commercial, and to the rest of the world presents both the beauty of its ancient culture and the wonderful quirkiness of the current popular version.

Seventy years of great-power peace is not unprecedented, but it is not easy to do. That we have had it is vivid testimony to the era of American hegemony, and MacArthur for whatever flaws he had can claim a fair amount of the credit for that, as on the whole can U.S. conduct of international affairs. It could've been a lot worse.

[bus man]

Dear Professor Simpson,

Though I have not participated in the class discussions, I have avidly attended your lectures and marveled at the voluminous study materials you have provided. I dearly hope that this series will be archived in an easy-to-find way so that future students can relive America’s finest hour, and never forget the brave men and women who made it possible.

Sincerely, your grateful student

[central_va]

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.

--Ernie Pyle

Homer, thanks again for documenting these "giant creatures" from Americas glory days.

[Hebrews 11:6]

September 3, 2015:

VHSJ DAY!

Homer, you are hereby awarded the WW2 Medal of Homer, for meritorious service far above and beyond the call of duty. You:
* conceived the project, including daily table of contents, atlas, and Graybook, along with periodic literary excerpts
* created and maintained a ping list
* posted faithfully, day-after-day, year-after-year.

Your efforts are in the best traditions of western democracy and free inquiry, and hundreds of readers are forever in your debt.

Sleep in tomorrow.

[BroJoeK]

Displaced Persons

"Following Nazi Germany's surrender on May 8, 1945, an estimated 11 million Europeans -- specifically non-German and non-Austrian nationals -- remained uprooted from their home countries.
They were classified as 'displaced persons' (DPs) by the Allies and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), which had been founded on November 9, 1943, to deal with anticipated DP issues.

"Seven million of the DPs were in Germany.
During the war, the majority of these people had been brought to Germany to work for the Third Reich.
About 800,000 Poles alone had been conscripted for labor by the Nazis.
Still others, including approximately 200,000 Jews, were recently liberated inmates who had survived Nazi camps and death marches.

"By the end of 1945, more than six million DPs had gone back to their native lands, but between 1.5 and two million of them refused repatriation.
The non-Jews who did not want to return home were mostly Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, and Yugoslavians.
In some cases they feared political reprisals for their Nazi collaboration; in other cases they dreaded persecution by Eastern Europe's Communist regimes.

"For Jews, returning home was scarcely an option.
Their families had been annihilated, their communities destroyed, their property confiscated.
If these Jews did try to go home again, their arrival was often greeted with hostility and physical violence from former neighbors.

"For the most part, the concept of 'home' no longer existed for Jewish DPs.
Instead, they found themselves in grim DP camps on German soil (such as the one pictured at Zeilsheim).
Most of these places were enclosed by barbed wire, overcrowded, and situated in former labor or concentration camps.
Many Jews were harassed or assaulted by former Nazi collaborators.
Jews hoped for immigration opportunities that would take them to destinations such as Palestine or the United States, but until then they endured daily drudgery and tension.

"Jewish chaplains in the U.S. Army, such as Rabbi Judah Nadich and especially Rabbi Abraham Klausner, worked tirelessly on behalf of Jewish DPs.
They successfully encouraged the Allied authorities to establish all-Jewish DP camps, where conditions for the Jewish DPs improved.
Feldafing, which housed about 3,700 people, was the first of these places.
Jewish DP camps at Landsberg and Föhrenwald sheltered another 5000 Jews each.
In the American zone of occupation, a dozen DP camps were maintained exclusively for Jews by the end of 1945.

"By 1952 most of the Jewish DP camps had closed, although the one at Föhrenwald operated under the supervision of the democratic Federal Republic of Germany until early 1957.
Before the Jewish DP camps finally were emptied, nearly 250,000 Jews had lived in them."

[Lurking Libertarian]

Homer:

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your work.

[Larry Lucido]

You’ve done a great job. You’ve put a lot of hard work into this project, and it has resulted in a lot of enlightenment. Thanks!

[Squawk 8888]

Canada Ping!

[Rebelbase]

Is this the last day of school?

[Seizethecarp]

I feel like I have been living in BBC’s Goodnight Sweetheart these past six years!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Sweetheart_(TV_series)

[EternalVigilance]

What I’ve learned in your class:

Sometimes the good guys get caught unprepared, with their pants down.

When the good guys get caught with their pants down, some very dark days may follow, with many disheartening defeats.

But through the dark days, through the defeats, the good guys can resolutely, courageously fight back, marshaling their intrinsic strength and natural power, and begin to push the bad guys back.

And that at the end of that hard process, unconditional surrender can and will be enforced on the bad guys.

Sounds like the situation we’re faced with inside America today, doesn’t it?

God bless you, sir, and thank you so much for leading this wonderful project, and carrying it through to its glorious conclusion.

May God forgive our national sins, and once again bless us and keep us.

[Mikey_1962]

Homer,

Great job!

I wish you would continue though. “70 years ago today” is a daily treat.

As we read these articles it gives us a special perspective on the “frozen peace” as Nixon called it that is our present.

I would like to see you carry on, but I am a selfish bastard.

Thanks again and take care.

[GreenLanternCorps]

Homer, I wanted to add my own thank you for your efforts over the past seven years (!) for this project.

While I haven’t been able to keep up every day due to real life commitments, following these threads has been a one of a kind education in World War II.

Following the events in real time gives a perspective that you can’t get from a book or film.

Watching the situation in Europe collapse in 1938 and 1939 and in Asia from 1940 to 1941 give new insight into the cauases of the war.

Watching the Allies lose repeatedly 1940-1942 gave new perspective on fears of losing, even theught the hard math of America’s production capabilities mean’t that America couldn’t lose unless it gave up.

I also wanted to thank my classmates for making these threads a fantastic learning experience.

Thank you all.