LOST THOUGHTS OF WAR RETURN:   A DIARY OF THE MIND

 

Third Diarium:  Spreading false rumors about servicemen who died at Pearl Harbor

 

 Tanka 4 to Tanka 9

 

 Date: December 1941, Brooklyn, New York City:

 

 

 Tanka 4

 

you sir are lying

our sailors were not shipped here

they were buried there ~

Pearl Harbor is far away

the men were not dead cargo

 

 Tanka 5

 

his grinning mouth lied

he told of rotting corpses

tossed into the holds

awaiting men to move them

could we stand decaying flesh

 

 Tanka 6

 

I spoke in anger

we respect our dead sailors

each man is honored ~

each placed in a clean coffin

lies will help the enemy

 

 Tanka 7

 

we must know the truth

each dead man is treated well

and prayers are offered ~

what reason had he to lie

and upset the families

 Tanka 8

 

who knows the reason ‑‑

why men lie differs with each

but we must say stop ~

the harm of such lies cuts deep

our dead must be put to rest

 

 Tanka 9

 

our fight must start here

we cannot permit falsehoods

the truth must be told ~

many did die in battle

but they all were put to rest

 

Scratchy Itzkowitz, my friend from junior high school, asked me to come with him and his girlfriend, Shirley, to visit her aunt in Brooklyn. Their apartment was in Williamsburg, a part of Brooklyn, just over the East River.   There would surely be some homemade cake and coffee, and since I had nothing better to do, we paid the two‑cents for the fare and took the trolley that ran across the Williamsburg Bridge and we were soon there.

After the coffee and cake, as Scratchy and I were sitting in their living room, her uncle came in and grinned at us, and his appearance seemed to be contentious.  He was a wizened, ratty‑looking man who was married with children and since he worked at a defense plant, could not be drafted.  He approached Scratchy and me, peered at us and asked us with a knowing smile, "Hey, how would you guys like to make a lot of money?"

When we asked where all that money could be earned, he enthusiastically told us that one of his friends worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and had seen ships coming in for unloading — he then paused and, with a malicious grin, asked us whether we knew what they needed men to

unload.  We looked at him blankly, Scratchy shrugged, and said we had no idea.   He told us with a sarcastic smirk, almost seeming to express delight, that the holds were filled to the top with the rotting corpses of the men killed at Pearl Harbor, and they couldn't find enough men for the unloading.

At first, I sat there stunned and silent, but I slowly became enraged as he continued to tell us of the huge salaries untrained men could earn if they could stand the stink from the rotting bodies of the soldiers and sailors killed in Pearl Harbor.

I just couldn't take it any longer, so I looked straight at him, and despite the fact that I was a guest in his home and he was Shirley's uncle, I couldn't control myself and blurted out that he was just a stupid liar.   "There's nothing like that going on in the Brooklyn Navy Yard or anywhere else.  Why haven't we seen that in the newspapers?"  He looked shocked.  He didn't anticipate an insult so direct and blunt, and he bristled and asked me, "How the hell do you know?  How did you get so smart?

Every guy in the Army and Navy wore dog tags which contained their names and serial numbers and these were used to identify each man before burial.   Every man was treated with dignity, and the Navy would identify each body with its dog tag.  Beside, if the bodies were going to be sent anywhere, the Navy had enough men to do it without advertising for longshoremen.

He left the room in a pique, and Scratchy and I soon returned home.   I apologized to him on the trolley ride home for the angry comments I had directed against Shirley's uncle in his home.   I said that I couldn't control myself because it was unthinking fools like him, pretending to be knowledgeable, who would adversely affect our nation's morale.

 

   Sir Sidney Weinstein

_____________________________________________________________________________

 

  The philosopher's response:

               For those who have had no personal experience with war, or perhaps wish not to think about the terrible tragedy, the burial of the dead is pushed from their minds.  More than 3000 died at The Battle of Midway, June 4 ‑ 6 June 1942. The carriers Akaga, Kaga, and Soryu were sunk on the first day.   USS Lexington had been sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea, now USS Yorktown was sunk. The crippled carrier Hiryu sank on the second day.   Some on both sides suffered terrible deaths, many from burns caused by exploding fuel tanks.  Some were rescued.  Some who could have survived chose to die. The admiral and flag captain of the carrier Hiryu chose to stay on their sinking ship. On both sides there was honour and bravery.   On both sides there were brilliant and complex commanders.   The victor at Pearl Harbor, leading away six carriers, would not have believed four of them would be lost at Midway. But such are the fortunes of war: Isoroku Yamamoto's star had set; Chester Nimitz's star was rising.

 

                                *****

 

"Why does everything that human beings do and make have to end so unsatisfyingly?   I saw only shadows, I held nothing in my arms. I yearned, the marrow of my bones was dried out like a drought stricken field, cracks opened up in my back. Each time I heard the radio warn that a large formation of three hundred or five hundred B‑29s was on the way, what, only five hundred, I would think. Why isn't it three thousand or five thousand yet? That's nothing, I would think, restless and unsatisfied. I took pleasure in imagining a raid by a formation so large that the whole sky would be overspread by a cloud of bombers."

 

 "Senso‑ to hitori no onna"  One Woman and the War:  Sakaguchi Ango  [ISBN 0 ‑8048‑1921‑1]

 

                          In violent hate,

                       Achilles dragg'd dead Hector ‑

                       but the Gods intervened

 

Achilles is the passionate, violent soldier; Hector is the noble warrior. In Homer's The Iliad, the Gods intervene and restore Hector's body to beauty at death, so returning him to his father, Priam.   I have read all of Sir Sidney's tanka, and I have seen that he was an honourable soldier, always respecting the enemy dead, as he had respected his own dead.

 

Hugh Bygott