Like the Penitent Thief who was crucified next to Jesus, Ernest Gaither (1924 – 1947), also found salvation during the closing moments of his life. While biding his time on death row, Gaither was taught a neat little trick that all doubters should try, God showed up and Gaither learned of his worth.
Hallett Abend (1884 – 1955) was an American journalist who lived in China for fifteen years. He covered the Sino-Japanese War during its early years and had seen first-hand the beastly vulgarity of the Japanese Army. After Pearl Harbor, the editor at Liberty turned to him in hopes that he would explain to the American reading public what kind of enemy they were fighting:
“In four and a half years of warfare [in China], the Japanese have taken almost no prisoners… Chinese prisoners of war are shot.”
We like to think that if the Christians who call themselves “Christian Nationalists” today were aware of what that term meant decades ago, they would immediately insist that the name be changed. The organization discussed in the attached article was the brainchild of Gerald L.K. Smith (1898 – 1976), a hate-filled man, an alleged minister of the Gospel, who denied the Jewishness of Christ and all His lessons.
“What kind of a man is Joseph Stalin? How does he get along with his family? How does he treat them? I can tell you. Because for many months I was the French tutor of Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, At Stalin’s country home. I met Stalin himself numerous times.”
“The attempt to enforce the draft in the city of New York has led to rioting. Men have been killed and houses burned; worst of all, an orphan asylum – a noble monument of charity for the reception of colored orphans – has been ruthlessly destroyed, and children and nurses have lost everything they had in the world.”
In this 1940 article, Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 – 1962) argues for a benevolent government that would see to the prenatal needs of expectant mothers and their growing children:
“But all children, it seems to me, have a right to food, shelter, an equal opportunity for education and an equal chance to come into the world healthy and get the care they need through their early years to keep them well and happy.”
For the first time since the Balfour Declaration was decreed, the Jews in British Palestine organized an avenging force and attacked numerous Arab villages after suffering random murders for 23 years. This happened in May of 1939; Collier’s ran the attached article a year later – it concerned the slow-burn that was heating-up Jerusalem.
Attached herein are a few pages from 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright (1908 – 1960). The book, published in 1942, is a poetic account of the challenging lives lead by African Americans both before the great migration and after their arrival in the North. The editors of Coronet showed their sympathies for this minority by publishing these pages, but they also showed their total racial insensitivities by running crude pigeon English captions beneath each of the accompanying photographs.
Click here to read about the first Black Marines.
Having surrendered to the Nazis during the closing weeks of the war, General Maurice Rose of the Third Armored Division, was shot dead by a German tank commander.
The U.S Marine Corps is not in the practice of sending their oldest members into harm’s way – they aren’t now, and they weren’t in 1942. But when they imparted this information to Gunnery Sergeant Lou Diamond (1890 – 1951), he would have none of it – the mere idea that the world was to be at war, and he would be excluded: not going to happen:
“Lou roared his way through the battles of Guadalcanal and Tulagi and did much to back up the Marine Corp’s contention that he is far and away the the most expert mortar sergeant in any branch of the service.”
“For risking his life twice to save his platoon when they were pinned down by Jap fire during the Battle of Finegayan on Guam, Pfc. Frank Peter Witek, USMCR, has been posthumously awarded the Congressional medal of Honor.
The editors at Yank (an Army possession) seldom wrote about the Marines – and they loved dissing their weekly magazine, The Leatherneck. However, they did recognize an historic moment when they saw one. As remarked in another article on this site, the Navy was the most prejudiced of all the branches of service, and the Marines had previously rejected all Black recruits, but that changed in 1942, and this article served to introduce their readers to this consequential lot. The first African American Marines trained at Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, NC from August 26, 1942 until the camp was decommissioned in 1949. The greatest number of black Marines to serve in combat during the Second World War was during the Battle of Okinawa (2,000 strong).
This is a 1940 article that recalls William Powell’s climb to the top of the Hollywood pantheon:
“When the talking pictures came in, the transition didn’t bother him at all. Many of the silent stars turned out to have voices that squeaked like the brakes of a 1914 automobile. Powell had been training his voice ever since the fateful days of high school.”
Looking back twenty-one years at the W.W. I commands of General Charles Summerall (1867 – 1955), historian Fletcher Pratt pointed out that it was the general’s unique understanding of artillery that served as the key to his success in battle.
“Upon his first arrival in Paris, Picasso met with success. It was ’99… At that time he had a face of ivory, and was as beautiful as a Greek boy; irony, thought and effort have brought slight lines to the waxen countenance of this little Napoleonic man… At that time, Picasso was living the life of the provincial in Paris… He had won fame there by his portraits of actresses in the public eye. Jeanne Bloch, Otero – all the stars of the Exposition. Those paintings are priceless today; the intelligent museums have bought them.”
Abigail Spannjard was an American citizen of Jewish heritage who was incarcerated in Bergen-Belsen with her husband and teen-age son. They were released early in 1945 as part of a prisoner-swap, and the account she gives of the abuses they endured is chilling.
Here are the observations of Patrick Gordon Walker (1907 – 1980), a broadcast journalist with the BBC who was present with the British Army when they liberated the Bergen-Belsen Death Camp on April 15, 1945.
“Men were hung for hours at a time, suspended by their arms, hands tied behind their back in Belsen. Beatings in workshops were continuous, and there were many deaths there. Just before I left the camp, a crematorium was discovered.”
The USS RICH (DE 695) was a Destroyer Escort performing her duties off the coast of Utah Beach on the 6th, 7th and 8th of June, 1944. On the morning of the 8th she was ordered to move further inland to aid a ship that had hit a mine. while moving into position the RICH also fell victim to a mine. Watertender First Class Donald Joseph Lawrence recalled that morning:
“I was at GQ in the fireroom … I had just made an entry in the log at nine o’clock and had turned away when an explosion rocked the ship. It felt like we were picked out of the water and then violently thrown back again. The coffee pot flew across the room. Buckets crashed around our heads, and the floor plates came loose. The floor plate in the engine room was ripped up and hurled into the condenser. Then the lights went out, and as I picked myself up I could hear the hiss of overheated steam.”
