Casey Flying Through American History

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-0983-1461-3
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 294 Seiten

'Flying Through American History' is a series of essays each of which centers on major military events in American History. From a concise account of the Civil War and Custer's last stand at the Little Big Horn, to perhaps the most thorough account of the Battle of Midway ever presented. As the story approaches the present it becomes a personal account of enlisting in the US Air Force and eventually becoming a fighter pilot.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Casey, James

Leseproben

The Right Side of American History As I see it

(Vol. I)

The following are essays that I have written over the years. There is no particular correlation other than the fact that they are subjects that I enjoy writing about. I started with the Civil War and eventually lead to Vietnam where I interject my personal history from that point on. The story ends, somewhat abruptly in April of 1982. My first two years as an Officer in the Air Force were somewhat unusual. I thought that I would gauge the reactions, (if any) to these stories before I published the rest of my personal tales.

I’ve been reading books about history since I was in High School and these essays were never intended to be a feat of scholastic achievement; so, a detailed and accurate bibliography would not be possible. Instead, I will try to recommend one or two books on each subject that stand out in my mind above the rest. Much of the information is repetitive in the essays. That’s because each was written as a stand-alone piece. I apologize in advance for the redundancy.

The Civil War essay is intended as a general overview of the fighting and its motivation. Hopefully, this will pique the reader’s interest and curiosity and provide the incentive to find more in-depth knowledge. I always frustrated my sons when they were younger. Whenever the subject of the Civil War would come up, they would ask me, “Who were the good guys?” I would usually respond with, “It’s complicated.” One of the purposes of this essay, is to explain some of that notion.

The movie, Gettysburg (1993), inspired me to write this. Gettysburg is one of the best movies of the Civil War, ever produced. The battle scenes are incredibly realistic. If the film has a flaw, it’s that it attempts to explain too much. Why are we fighting, the back stories of many of the leaders, plus the tactics and events of this monumental battle, are all explained. It may be a bit much for the average movie-goer who may only have a two-hour attention span.

If you’re only going to read one book on the civil war, it should be Shelby Foote’s narrative on the subject. This three-volume series provided much of the basis for the Ken Burns PBS Series (1990). If you don’t like reading, you can get much of the information by watching the series; but you’d miss Foote’s flawless and thoroughly enjoyable writing style. His three-volumes are a true literary work-of-art.

The Battle of the Little Big Horn essay is something that I’ve been interested in for quite some time. I used the facts to expound my own theory of that entire conflict. After watching one of the best propaganda films of all time, Dances with Wolves (1990), I felt compelled to attempt to detail the other side of the story.

The Native Americans were trapped in the stone age. Life was relatively easy for the plains Indians. They had no desire to advance beyond their own primitive technology. It really comes down to your idea of what the purpose of life is. If you believe it’s simply to sit around and be happy; then the American Indians were successful. However, if you believe that life on this planet is constantly evolving, constantly changing and is a struggle for survival and dominance, then they were total failures. It’s important to understand both sides of the equation before one forms an opinion. It’s easy to feel sorry for the losers. Shedding tears for the demise of the Native American lifestyle is about as useful as mourning the extinction of the dinosaurs.

If you only read one book on this subject, it should be “Son of the Morning Star” by Evan S. Connell.

Midway was written years ago, and I recently re-edited it. I find this one battle to be fascinating. I’ve read so much about it that I felt the need to compile everything that I’ve learned into one document. A single source for all the pertinent facts. The story got a little away from me and it came out to be much longer than I had intended. It is my hope that the facts of the battle will awe the reader as much as they awe me.

The movie Midway (1976), is a reasonably good portrayal of what transpired. In fairness to the film’s makers it’s difficult to get many of the facts into a dramatic screenplay. There are some glaring omissions and additions. Apparently, the screenwriters didn’t feel as if the story was entertaining enough in its own right, so they wove in a fictitious Romeo and Juliet tale of star-crossed lovers. This romance was between a young naval aviator and his Japanese American girlfriend. The girl and her hard-working, loyal to the red, white and blue Japanese American parents, have been thrown into a concentration camp on the island, by hysterical American racists fueled by post-Pearl Harbor hatred against all Japanese. This sub-plot not only provided a break in the action, it fed into the self-recrimination about the way that Japanese-Americans were treated during the war that reached its zenith during the late 1970’s.

The true story of these camps and the reasons for them could fill a book by itself. Readers are encouraged to research the “Niihau incident”. This was one of the primary motivations for the camps.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, any Japanese planes that were too severely damaged to get back to their carriers were briefed to ditch their airplanes near the island of Niihau, a small island to the northwest of Oahu. The surviving crews would be picked up by a submarine there. Only 29 planes were shot down, so the operation was cancelled. But one damaged Zero made it to the island of Niihau and its pilot tried to incite the Japanese and Hawaiians on the island, to start an armed insurrection against their American overlords. He got some support initially from the Japanese in the group but, the Hawaiians eventually saw through the scheme and he was killed. The incident caused great alarm over concerns of a Japanese “fifth column”; a network of spies and saboteurs that were operating from within the United States.

As far as the camps were concerned, suffice to say that the Constitution was trampled on. Rights were violated but, these were desperate times. While historians laugh at the idea of Japan invading the mainland of the United States now, at that time, it didn’t seem so far-fetched.

There were no camps in the Hawaiian Islands, as portrayed in the movie because, the islands were put under Marshall law immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. The camps only concerned an “exclusion zone” that extended along the western coast of the Continental United States. This “exclusion zone” contained a great many vital defense plants and it seemed like the most-likely spot for Japan’s intelligence and subversion effort. The dirty, little secret of this affair is that the camps and the exclusion zone were one of the most effective and efficient programs ever launched by the Roosevelt administration. Japanese had set up an extensive intelligence operation in the Philippines, in the Hawaiian Islands and on the west Coast of the United States. This was completely negated using these camps.

Japanese Americans who renounced their Japanese citizenship and swore allegiance to the United States, were free to live anywhere else in the United States outside of the exclusion Zone. All these camps had schools and hospitals and food was always plentiful. Certainly, they were not free to come and go as they chose but they were treated far better than loyal Americans who found themselves in Japan or Germany after the war broke out. Some Japanese Americans who opted to leave the camps initially, came back and the government made them pay to stay there in order to cover their cost-of-living expenses. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who volunteered to go to a Nazi or Soviet concentration camp.

The movie MIDWAY (2019) takes a much more realistic look at the battle without going too far in the weeds with a contrived love story. The CGI presentations of the airplanes and ships are fantastic and that alone makes the movie worth watching. The film was largely financed with Chinese money and they were anxious to show how horribly the Japanese responded to the Doolittle raid against the Chinese people that helped them. This is all true. In fact, the Japanese reaction was actually much worse than depicted.

There are many great books about the Battle of Midway but, if you choose to read only one, it should be “The Shattered Sword” by Anthony Tully and Jonathan Parshall. It’s an outstanding work!

Vietnam is really the centerpiece of this work, as I see it. It represents years of research. Military or Political leaders have written most military histories. My account was written from the perspective of the lowliest airman in the U.S. Air Force doing one of the least-desirable jobs. I had no idea of the strategy or tactics until I read about them years later. I apologize in advance for the political discussion, but as I say in the essay; history must be viewed in context.

The two most-controversial subjects are the Roosevelt legacy and the Kennedy assassination.

The Rock is my, more personal view of the war in Vietnam. I folded it into the essay on Vietnam. If there are redundancies within this essay, that’s why. I enlisted in The Air Force when I was eighteen years old in February of 1972. I had a High School diploma but not a single college credit. I was assigned to do one of the least desirable jobs in the Air Force. Ten years later, I was piloting the world’s greatest fighter...