history

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Gestapo in the United States


If you find the title shocking, good! It is meant to be. Those people who call themselves ICE agents are little more than thugs. They are a lawless group of Federal Employees who act again American Citizens with impunity. Please note that I said American Citizens and not illegal aliens.

But on the topic of illegal aliens, since Trump arrived in the White house, he has consistently ignored the rule of law which in the 4th Amendment to the Constitution says:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and not Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Nowhere in that Amendments does it say “American Citizens” which simply means that by extension, this amendment applies to all people living in America. And because the Trump administration under the ospecies of Christie Noem has ignored this civil right entirely. In several reports, American citizens have been taken from their homes and summarily sent to a foreign prison.

Furthermore, the 6th Amendment provides: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.” Again, note the lace of the phrase “American Citizens.” Over the past 250 years, non-citizens have been taken to trial as is their right while living on American soil. They are convicted, serve time in an American Prison and when released are summarily deported to their country of origin.

The Trump scare tactics have used the terms “rapists, murderers, and drug runners” to bring that fear to the average, and unfortunately, an uninformed public. This is the same tactic used in Nazi Germany when the deportation of German Jews began. The idea of an Ayrian race, thow pure fantasy, was what allow non-Jewish Germans to look the other way while their neighbors were looted and dragged away to concentration camps in other counties, i.e. the French and German Jews being sent to Poland.

Right now the tail is wagging the dog. That means We the People are the dog and Trump is the tail. It is high time that Americans took back the power and started demanding of its Government both transparency and accountability. We have the power so we must act now!

Finally, it is the responsibility of the these ICE agents to call in the local police when being confronted by American Citizens in peaceful protests. It is NOT the job of ICE to quell protests that block the streets or that stand in front of ICE agents. That is the place of the local and state police in whose jurisdiction these protests arise. It is fair to say that had the local police in Minneapolis been called in to deal with the protests that Ms. Goode was a part of, there would have been no death that day because those police have mandate to not shoot at a fleeing vehicle. Somehow that principle has been ignored by ICE.

Again I repeat, we must take back the power that is rightfully given to us.

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What is Your Story?


I think I wrote about this a while ago, but it is time for me to revive it in light of my most recent posts.

Every life has meaning. Many of us think we live this dull and boring existence. I can tell you, as a historian, there is no such thing. When I was writing my masters degree thesis, I would have killed to have writings from the mill workers of Lawrence Massachusetts in 1911 to 1912. But I found only a very few in existence. For example, we do not know the name of the woman who started the walk-out at the beginning of the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike. Such a dialogue, had it existed, would be invaluable. Then there are the approximately 30,000 strikers. If I remember correctly, I only found about 6 stories, some from the U.S. House Representatives hearing on the strike, and about 2 verbal memories. My own grandmother was a part of the strike, but we have no record of either which mill she worked in nor of the strike’s effect upon her and her young children.

I always like to recount my story of taking a cross-country trip on AMTRAK from Boston to San Francisco. Somewhere in Ohio an elderly woman got on the train, and I was fortunate enough to be seated across from her in the dining car. I ask what she had done for work, and she responded that it was nothing special. But up a little more prodding from me, she related that she had been a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in southern Ohio. We talked well past the time the last of the diners had left the car. Her story was absolutely fascinating.

The point of these occurrences is that each person is a part of a much larger story. But unfortunately, precious few ever write down their experiences in life as they go along. They forget that things they experience during their lifetime have a shelf-life time that expires. For example, when I was young, all gasoline was pumped by an attendant. It is rare that you find that today. Hence, another part of our history is passing and soon the gas stations themselves will be a rare thing as electric cars take over.

You might say, “well, I’m just a ________ ” and fill in the blank. The thing with that is that your experience is unique because you are unique. There may be 10,000 people doing the same job, but each person’s experience is always different. For example, you may run across a well-known person in doing your job. Historians love to find such experiences as they give a first-hand account of what that person was like at that particular moment. You might also say that you lived in “tornado alley” and had had many experiences with that phenomenon. I have never had such an experience so find out what it is like from the common person is important.

Historians love nothing better than first-hand accounts of just about anything. Today’s scholars write about historical events through the eyes of others. Why cannot that person be you? In doing a writing on the first day of the American Revolution, I came upon a diary of a young boy. His short account of what he said brought a valuable insight. But he referred to that occasion as the beginning of “hostilities” as the idea of a revolution had yet to exist in anyone’s mind.

The best way to keep an account of your life is by journaling. With today’s computer systems, that should be a very easy thing to do. By recounting what you see and hear, you are giving insight to your life at that particular moment in history. The personal accounts of people who lived through Hurricane Katrina, the California wild fires, the Mississippi floods, the 9/11 accounts, the bombing in Oklahoma and so very more, one day, will be extremely valuable for a future writer of history to have that first-hand account.

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Things I Should Have Said to My Father


My father was/is my hero. He died at the age of 57 when I was just 20. And because I was so young, it had not occurred to me to ask him a large number of questions plus just talking to him about things in general.

I am the eldest of three children my parents had and simple math shows that my father was much older than most people who were having children, particularly when considering how old a parent is when having that first child. My mother was 35 when I was born. That was in 1949 and at the time having a first child at that age was considered bordering on dangerous. Of course, it wasn’t as we know today.

My father lived in a large old house, built in 1790, a farmhouse style home, that my family occupied since 1791. The makeup of my family in 1912, when my father was born, was an upper middle-class family, a family that could afford to have a cook and housekeeper. My grandfather was a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had a strange feeling towards his children and their education. While two of my three uncles went to college, my father graduated from Wentworth Institute of Technology, a trade school in those days that had strong ties to the textile industry of Massachusetts. The industry was quite extensive at that time and my father, who graduated in 1932, became an employee at the J. P. Stevens Mill in North Andover Massachusetts, his hometown. When the war broke out in 1941, my father delayed his entry into the service because of his father’s impending death.

My father served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was part of the armament section for a B-26 which had him serving in Morocco, Algeria, Italy and finally France. He declined a promotion that would have required his transfer to the Pacific theater of operations. But when he returned home, a law which required J. P. Stevens to take him back, was ignored and he was told his position no longer existed. A patent lie but my father was a gentle man who was not one to take issue.

From what I have told you, you might think I knew so much about my father. But those unasked questions came to surface when I interviewed his sister Charlotte in 1988. Even that interview was wanting for a more logical and extensive series of questions. Still, I learned a lot about my father’s family experience through her. But still, it was not done in his words.

A sampling of questions I might have asked: What are your earliest memories of your family? What were Thanksgiving and Christmas like? Tell me about your going to the Center School (elementary) and Johnson High School. Why did you want to go to Wentworth instead of a 4-year college? Why did you end up getting our house instead of Uncle Ike or Uncle John? Why did you go into the jewelry business and watch repair? How did you learn to repair watches? I am certain that were I to sit with myself, I could easily come up with 100 questions I would love to hear the answer. But as I said, my father died when I was just 20 years old and too much “all about me” as is common among young men and women then and today.

Year later I got a master’s degree in U.S. history which brought home the idea of written family histories. My thesis would have been ever so much better had I known of personal journals of the people involved. After I retired from the Federal Government with 30 years of service, I went into teaching, and I frequently would tell the children to learn as much as they can about their family history. It is only to common for a person to say that their family history is boring. But it is not! Each of us is a part of history and we all witness history from out own unique view. That view can be crucial for future historians. This fact was brought home when I was writing a paper in grad school about the beginning of the Revolutionary War. I found the diary of a young man who lived just south of Boston and wrote down, albeit briefly, his take on the first shots of that war. That was invaluable.

Not to put too fine a point on this subject, I was taking the train from Boston to San Francisco (Oakland) when at dinner one day in one of the mid-west states, I was seated across from an elderly woman. I asked her the usual questions, where are you from and what did you do from work. From that modest beginning opened up a wealth of information, totally unexpected. She too had said hers was a boring background as she was “only” a schoolteacher in a one-room schoolhouse in southern Ohio. In the late 1980s that was a story worth telling.

I do not expect any young people to read this article, however, I know adults will. I implore those of you who are reading this article that you get a written history of your family of birth and that you pass on to your children your own personal experiences. The importance of having first-hand knowledge of the events of history is extremely important. What you experience is unique and worthy of being told to following generations. When history is written, it is these first-hand accounts that will give a much more full understanding of history.

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A Problem With Public Education Today


I am part of the largest group of people in the U.S. population today, Baby Boomers. We are fast retiring from the workforce. But are we done with working? To that question, many of us would say “no.” Many of us have advanced degrees which are comparable to subjects taught in high schools today. So what is the problem particularly with a national shortage of teachers today? The idea of teacher testing.

I have a master’s degree in U.S. history, a departure from my degree in engineering, a field in which I worked 40 years. In today’s job market, which until this fall, I worked as a substitute teacher. In most districts, substitute teachers are paid the same rate whether you have a high school diploma or a master’s degree. It is difficult to understand the reasoning behind that. Some districts do make a financial difference, but it is minor. Personally, I feel very underpaid and for that reason I have decided to not participate in substitute teaching this year.

Around the year 2010, after I had retired from the Federal Government and over 30 years of service, I took the Massachusetts tests for a teaching certificate. I passed 4 of the required tests, failing only one that was full of “teacher speak.” Those are terms that are peculiar to teaching and not found elsewhere. I did not retake that test as there is no handbook on such jargon. Such tests, and how courses are taught in teachers’ schools, need to be changed to align with common English phraseology.

All states have a requirement that a regular classroom teacher have taken a teaching course of study in college and have passed a certain set of exams to qualify. In the case of primary school teachers, that they have taken college courses in their desired field of instruction is entirely reasonable. But after that, such a requirement becomes less necessary upon succeeding grades, 4 through 8. In particular, where middle school education is concerned, most school districts have taken an approach to education that is similar to that of secondary education. That is, students see two or more different teachers during the day. Additionally, to their curriculum, the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) has been added as a single course. This is a response to today’s world.

Now, back to the “Baby Boomers” and their possibilities. Between STEM, mathematics, social studies, physics, chemistry, and other fields, there are many retirees who are either as knowledgeable or more than present classroom teachers. Now, especially considering the teacher shortage, states would do well to drop the impediments facing such people to joining the ranks of teachers. They instead should only be required to participate in and successfully pass an online course that teaches teaching techniques, classroom behavior, and student expectations.

I fear, however, that teachers’ unions would opposite such a move, much to their detriment. But to ignore this, as yet, untapped source of knowledgeable persons, is to shoot yourself in your own foot. Many such retirees could easily serve as much as 20 years in a school system, and, as they already have a pension, would have no need of a state supported retirement making them much more cost effective than life-long teachers.

The solution to your national teacher shortage is obvious. What is not obvious is why states refuse to consider these people and make changes to accommodate them. Personally, I feel fully qualified to step in as a teacher of U.S. History were that offered, particularly with my 15 years of experience in substitute teaching.

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Sharing Your History


Most people look at the making of history in a short of detached mode.  That is, they see historic events, like the 9/11 bombings but do not consider themselves as a part of it.  We all saw the towers collapsing, the people jumping to their deaths, the fire and police responders in the middle of everything.  Those people, of course, we central to that history as it was made.  But they we actually only a small part of a much larger scenario.  That historic event in fact went on for days, months, years.  We were all witness to it in one way or another and we all made observations about it.  It effected our lives, our movements, our perceived safety, and many other parts of our lives.  For me personally, I had to attend my daughter’s wedding 10 days after the attack and had to fly through Newark airport to get to San Antonio.  My flight from Boston to Newark involved our flying very near to where the twin towers once existed.  I saw the smoke rising from that spot and that image is indelibly imprinted on my memory.  For a historian, which I have a masters degree in, primary source material is of the first priority in understand historical events completely.  My recounting of the 9/11 events, not just my seeing ground zero from my airplane window, but how I, as a Federal Government employee at the time, is exactly what a historian covets in properly capturing historical events.

But what else is there?  First of all, history is something that in on-going.  It does not start and stop with particular memorable events, but is a continuous series of small events.  Most people believe their lives are uneventful and of no particular interest to historians.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  The fabric of history is intertwined with the lives of every living people.

For example, back in 1989 I decided to take the train cross-country, Boston to San Francisco via Chicago.  The Boston to Chicago leg on the Lake Shore Limited started in the late afternoon of one day and finished in Chicago in the early afternoon of the following day.  On the morning of that second day, I travel from my compartment to the dining car to have breakfast.  I was seated across from an elderly lady and we of course struck up a conversation.  I asked her where she came from and what she had done when she was working.  I remember her commenting how her life was unremarkable, or so she thought.  She told me that she had taught school in a one room school house in southern Ohio.  I told her that her experience was special and worthy of being remembered on paper.  I told her that the one room school house was a thing of the past and that only those who experienced such things could properly relate to coming generations who would have no concept, no perspective of such a thing.  I was sad that I had no way to capture her memory but told her that her memories were valuable and worthy of being written down.  I have carried that belief with me since.

My own family has a rich history but most of it is limited to brief snippets which do not do justice to their experiences.  To that end, I decided to interview my Aunt Charlotte.  Aunt Charlotte was my father’s sister.  My father died in 1970 and I was too young prior to that to have asked him much about his prior life.  That meant when he died so did every single memory of his.  I have at least 1000 questions of him which of course can never been answered.  But I decided that I could gain insight by interviewing my aunt who was extremely close to her brother, my father.  I had the good sense to take a mini-recorder with me when I interviewed her so I could capture her every word.  I then found someone who could transcribe the recording.  I have a complete written transcript of that interview which was invaluable for my gaining insight into my paternal family.   During that interview an interesting thing happen.  She used the word “pung” which has slipped from the modern lexicon.  That is because a pung is a sled which was used when she was a child, 1910s and 1920 to transport milk cans from the dairy farms to the creamery.  Although it was a part of her memory it of course was not a part of mine, or anyone else of my generation and succeeding generations because paved roads put an end to their use.

My own personal history includes my having worked in a shoe factory, a true sweat shop, when I was 16.  I was experience in the end of a particular type of manufacturing in Lawrence Massachusetts.  The pictures in my head need to be on paper so when someone wants to learn about the experience of factory workers back then they will have my first person account of it.  That experience is called by historians “primary source.”  A primary source is a first hand account of any event.  But when historians go about reconstructing an event in history rely heavily upon these primary sources.  Unfortunately, too my of history is either lacking or absence of primary source material.

When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on that bus back in 1954 her story was well documented.  But there were other people on that bus.  Their view of history as it happened at that moment is equally important in drawing up a complete picture.  It is unlikely many, if any, of their accounts were documented and that is a loss.

My suggestion to everyone is to document the histories of the elder members of their family first.  Have them tell you their experience of what it was like when they were young, from their earliest memory forward.  If nothing else, you are guaranteed to hear very interesting facts of their early life.  These oral histories, as they are referred to, are invaluable.

An excellent way of preserving your family’s history is through genealogy.  There are many sites on the internet today dedicated to genealogical study and research.  More and more people share their family’s history on-line which could possibly intersect with your own family.

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What Should We Teach High Schoolers in American History?


I received at master degree in US History from Harvard University.  That, in itself, does not make me any sort of expert on the subject.  To the contrary, it has only made me more aware of just how much there is to learn, and of how little I know.  Even so, by necessity, I was required to know a particularly high degree of knowledge about U.S. History in general.

Over 20 years ago a man named Howard Zinn wrote a treatise on the history of the United States. He offered it as a particularly honest look at American history.  Although Zinn did not say this, it seems it was intended to counter the accepted texts in existence in American schools.  And therein lies the “problem” that many see in the texts used in our public schools.  There is nothing particularly revolutionary in Zinn’s book.  But it certainly is not a text book nor could it be used very effectively as one.

I very recently saw someone put up a map of the general areas that the native Americans once occupied.  The question was asked why such things are not taught in American schools.  It is not a bad question, in itself, but there is an even more basic question that has to be asked of any published text.  That question is:  “What do we include and what do we exclude in our texts?”

Many decades ago a social anthropologist name Clifford Geertz wrote a scholarly work called “A Thick Interpretation of Cultures.”  His entire point was that history, and related works, needed to consider all facts involved with any situation before coming to any sort of conclusion.  He used the Battle of Waterloo, where Wellington defeated a superior force with a superior field general, Napoleon, and asked a simple question, how?  It was not enough to say bad luck, or a superior battle plan, or any other single thing.  He suggested that something as simple as weather conditions played an important role in Napoleon’s defeat.   The point it, to properly tell the story of this single engagement would, at the very least, require several text pages.  By extension, if every very important situation that has been experienced in the United States is to be faithfully related, we would need text books that would count in the multiple of volumes to discuss any single era, let alone our entire history.

The answer to the question of the map of Native American tribes is simply that a good historian would have to devote at least an entire book to explaining who these people were, how they came to live where they started and where they ended up, along with a lot of details about their encounters with the European settles, French, English, and Spanish.  How do we succinctly explain how the Cherokee nation, originally in Georgia, ended up in Oklahoma?  How do we explain the native cultures of the northeast and their interaction with French and English settlers, their involvement in the American Revolution, their assimilation into  American culture, and so forth?

More recently we could concern ourselves with the internment of tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans in 1942.  You would need to start by informing the reader of the fears of the average American, why they feared the Japanese any more than the millions of German-American or Italian-Americans at the same time.  And then finish it up by explaining who the Tuskegee Airmen were, and why they in particular were a breakthrough group in both race relations and military hierarchy.

People love to focus on some of the egregious mistakes the United States has made in its history.  That this mistakes were made is undeniable.  That every American probably should be aware of them at least to some degree, also true.  But when you are teaching 14, 15, and 16 year-olds basic American history, you have to give a rather high-level view of the history, an unfortunately very general view.  I would love to see a more comprehensive view of American history taught, but to do so would require at least two years and not just the single year now required.

I have read a comprehensive study done on texts used in American public schools, and reviewed many of the texts myself.  Their conclusion, as-well-as mine, is these text need heavy revisions.  But those revision do not include a much more comprehensive text, but mostly a more intelligible and well-written text.

The best thing any individual who believes our children are not taught as much history, or some particular history, should endeavour to insure that their own children are taught those portions first, then, see about getting public seminars in that particular area of history which they believe needs addressing.

Teachers can, and many do, suggest readings outside the assigned text.  They typically assign research projects for their students.  But the limit of a teacher’s ability to teach, is the student’s desire to learn.

It is too easy to complain about what you think is wrong.  But it makes a lot more sense to actively do something about it rather than complaining.

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Why History is Boring — And What Can Be Done About It


I remember when I was in high school, a very long time ago, history as it was taught bored me to tears and nearly put me to sleep.  I did not know then that I not only had a lot of interest in history, but that I had the ability to be an exceptional researcher.  Like most people, history seemed to be an endless string of dates to be memorized and that was something I really detested.  I could not understand why I had to remember dates at all and why all that history was important in the first place.

I now have a master’s degree in U.S. History.  The irony of that was not lost on me and I considered for a long time why I had been previously so bored by history.  The reasons were quite simply actually.  Historians typically wrote in a very narrow manner.  That is, they would attach a single or maybe two events to why something historic happened.  That methodology was challenged in the later 1970s by Clifford Geertz, a sociologist, who wrote a treatise on why Napoleon was defeated by Wellington at Waterloo.  He contented that his “thick interpretation” took into account every factor involved in the battle and did not allow the fact that Wellington had the high ground to be the most important fact leading to Napoleon’s defeat.  This thick interpretation of history changed the way many historians chose to retell events from then on.  Dates became secondary and circumstances or all sorts primary.

A couple of years ago I reviewed five different texts commonly used in high schools.  What I found was a group of texts that were mediocre at best, and some, published by well-known publishers, to be complete failures.  These text engaged in disparate ideas that were not logically presented and poorly tied together.  None of the texts took the time to define some of the most basic concepts presented to the students, i.e. what is a civil war, what is the definition of a revolution, and why is the event they are presenting important historically.  The books assume understanding by the students where it might actually be lacking.

The books, and the teachers, fail to engage students in the pursuit of historical knowledge.  Today’s students find it difficult, for example, to understand the fear that existed when America started its revolution with England.  My proof came when I presented that subject to a group of students.  To give the students perspective, I told them how many people lived in Boston, Cambridge, Lexington, and Concord.  Then I presented them the size of the British army that was descending upon the residents of those towns.  This simplest of processes allowed the students to gain a quick understanding of the situation in 1775.  I further engaged them by relating how boys as young as 14 were a part of the patriot force.  This, of course, is unimaginable to them but it kept their attention.

I have found that the way to engage people in a way that gets their interest in a particular historical event, is to lay out the sights, smells, temperatures, and when possible, the individual accounts of that event.  Tell people, for example, that “strikers awoke to the acrid smell of coal-burning, the stink of horse manure in the street, and the biting cold of the day, that they chose the warmest clothing with the fewest holes,” gives a person today a much better feel for the actual day.  It makes it come to life.

History is a truly amazing subject and, when properly related, is more gripping than anything the best “reality tv” or movie drama can give us.  In my blog about 10 must read books, I put in one historical novel, “Ghettostadt.”  I found that book to be a page turner.  That was entirely because the author took the time to relate what the people saw, how they felt, among all the other details of the Lodz Ghetto.  It took that historical event down to a personal level, and in my opinion, there is no better way to relate history.

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The Original Tea Party


On December 16, we will celebrate the 238th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.  At the time, however, no one referred to this event as “The Boston Tea-party.”  In fact, it was called many things.  One newspaper referred to it as “the Boston Harbor teapot.”  I think that is as close as it ever came to tea party at the time.

The destruction of tea in Boston Harbor was really the initial salvo upon the power of the crown over the colonies.  Not even the “Boston Massacre” rose to that level.  John Adams defended the British soldiers who were indicted on charges of murder for the events at the massacre and won them acquittal.  He proper pointed out that the soldiers had been put into a position of defending themselves against a mob and their action were well justified.  His cousin, Samuel Adams, of course, vehemently disagreed with him.  That was in 1770.

In 1773 the political atmosphere in Boston and Massachusetts had changed significantly.  The original Townshend Acts, which introduced the tea tax, had been largely reversed by the crown to assuage the colonists.  But the English parliament saw the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a particularly defiant group who were intruding upon English commerce which all of them, to a degree, were involved in.  They had taken aim a Boston in particular by creating a law called “the Boston Port Act” which limited the ability of Massachusetts to trade.  When parliament had required the tax collectors to be English officials the people of Massachusetts had found ways around them.  Certain English laws required goods sold in the provinces to have been made in England.  The Massachusetts citizenry were particularly contemptible of this law and lead the way in the original “Buy American” revolt.  This was particularly felt in the selling of fabric.  The homespun fabrics of local manufacture were literally quite rough compared to the machine made fabric imported from England.  It was because of a Boston merchant selling only English goods over “Made in America” that had brought on the Boston Massacre.

The men who led the attack on the three British cargo ships transporting tea were led by none other than Samuel Adams.  The supposed disguise they used, dressing up as Indians, was a particularly poor job even by their own estimates.  Even more so, immediately after the tea was destroyed, Samuel Adams stood in the pulpit of the Old South Church and recounted the events of that day leaving no doubt that he was the leader.

Americans felt their access to tea was a right and not a privilege and that it should be defended as such in parliament.  It was not.  The people of England paid no tax on their tea.  Conversely, not only were Americans required to buy their tea from English merchants, American ships had been bringing tea to America, they were also required to pay a small duty on it.  To be sure, the duty in itself was not unreasonable nor did it make the tea too costly.  But the fact that their English brethren did not pay a tax infuriated Americans.  By this time Americans were clamoring for a say, a seat, in parliament which they believed they had a constitutional right to as they were as much English citizens as were their brethren in England.  The whole attack on the ships carrying the tea was based on that one simple principle.

The tea cargo itself, in today’s dollars, would be worth well over a million dollars.  The crown simply could not overlook that fact and told the leaders of Massachusetts that the debt was owed to the damaged merchants.  The colonists responded that they did not know who had perpetrated the crime and that it was inherently unfair to put such a burden on all the people of Massachusetts when only a few had committed the crime.  Of course, as I said before, the leaders of Massachusetts were fully aware of exactly who had committed the crime.  Curiously, the names of those involved was never documented and no attempt to pay the debt was ever made.

The incident on that day may have never gained a name except that well after the Revolution members of Boston society still celebrated their afternoons with what they referred to as “high tea,” an old custom first practiced in England.  These events in Boston society became a who’s who in society in the late 18th and early 19th century.  We do not know who, but some in the press started to derisively refer to the “high tea” as “tea parties.”  Someone made the connection between those tea parties and the dumping of the tea and the name stuck.  The “tea party” was never meant to be complimentary.

In 1773 Massachusetts, few people who engaged in that original “tea party” had any thoughts about separating from the English government.  It was only meant to tell parliament that Americans had the right to be heard as a voting group in parliament.  It was supposed to be an attention getter and nothing more.  They were not even looking to have the tea tax reversed, which is why I find it peculiar that today’s Tea Party seems to be all about that.  The group more exemplary of that original “tea party” is the “Occupy Wall Street” group who are not looking for political power but to be heard.  I cannot help but wonder how that had become lost in the translation today.

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What the Attack on Pearl Harbor Really Did to America


December 7, 2011 marks the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan.  Most people see that as America’s entry into World War 2.  That is actually not true, as I will show later.  But just as importantly, the attack changed the complexion of America forever.  It was America’s coming of age in the world, if you will.

Prior to December 7, 1941 America was an isolationist country that had not ever fully participated in a war in Europe or Asia.  You may say, but we were in World War 1, and you would be correct.  But our participation in that war was fairly brief.  Even though we declared war on Germany on April 4, 1917, it was not until the spring of 1918 that the first US troops arrived in Europe.  A little over six months later the war ended, and while the US did sustain substantial casualties, its involvement more hastened a battle weary Germany to the armistice.

The post World War 1 scenario had the US taking a decidedly isolationist role in the world.  US troops strength was greatly reduced, its air service was almost discontinued, and its navy gutted.  Although the US and England had assumed leadership of the oceans, the US largely left such duties to the English.  Although the US doubled its troops strength between 1920 and 1940, those troops were not prepared to fight a war.  While the navy had built some new ships to replace its old ships, as Pearl Harbor illustrated, the majority of the Navy was a fleet of obsolete ships.  All the battleships at Pearl Harbor on that day were of World War 1 heritage or older.  The aircraft carriers that the Japanese had as their highest priority were, to say the least, underwhelming.  On December 7, 1941 the Navy had a total of eight aircraft carriers on its roster which included the first carrier it ever owned.  That carrier, the USS Langley, was sitting in the Philipines and never saw action.  Two of the three remaining carriers were the ones stationed at Peal Harbor.  These ships, the Lexington and the Enterprise, were at sea at the time of the attack.  The USS Saratoga was en route to San Diego.  The rest of the fleet was assigned to Norfolk Virginia.  The Japanese feared the carriers in particular and the reason was for exactly what they did to Pearl Harbor they realized could be visited upon Japan.

To say the least, the US never saw the attack coming, although there had been plenty of warnings.  Not the least of which was by one General William Mitchell who at his own court-martial in 1926 had predicted that the Japanese would attack the US at Pearl Harbor.  US leadership scoffed at the idea citing the close relations the US enjoyed with Japan at the time.   But between that time and 1941 Japanese militarists had taken virtual control of their government and had begun a campaign of imperialism in China and southeast Asia.  It needed the raw materials necessary to maintain a sizable army and navy.  These included oil, iron, and rubber, none of which Japan had within its borders.  After Japan invaded Japan the US cut off oil and scrap metal exports to Japan.  While the US viewed the action as diplomatic, Japan’s leadership viewed it as a virtual act of war.  By 1939 Japan knew it would have to deal with the US in military actions and prepared for that.  Its attack upon Pearl Harbor was an action it had practiced in great detail for well over a year prior, to include finding a port area on its own shores that doubled as a Pearl Harbor look-alike where it performed many bombing runs.

In 1939 when Germany attacked Poland President Roosevelt already knew he would have to fight a war in Europe eventually.  But FDR and his advisors knew very well that the people of the United States were in no mood for a foreign war.  To that end, when he ran for president in 1940 he did so saying he would keep the US out of the war in Europe.  Even though he had already accepted that we would have to fight a war in Europe, neither he, nor anyone else, suspected that the impetus to fight that war would come from Asia.

While FDR knew that any substantial increases in Naval strength would be noticed by the world community, he felt that updating the air service could be done fairly easily.  The truth to this is the fact that only two new aircraft were developed between 1941 and 1945, the P-51 and the B-29.  The entirety of the remaining inventory was in production at the outset of the war.  The Army Air Corps actually had more aircraft than pilots at the outset of the war.

After England and France sustained huge loses at Dunkirk, England requested immediate assistance from the US in the form of troops and material.  Then, as now, the president could not commit troops.  FDR recognized he also could not send ships and other material without getting the wrath of the Axis and the American people.  To circumvent this, FDR entered into a “treaty” with England that became known as the “Lend/Lease Act.”  The act allowed FDR to lend or lease mothballed ships to England.  Once that commenced merchant marines and other cargo carriers supplied England with the aircraft and other materials it needed to sustain the war with Germany.  By mid-1941 the US was in a virtual fighting war with Germany already as German submarines had attacked many of the convoys.  The US Navy had been escorting these convoys and had returned fire.  For all intents and practical purposes we were at war with Germany but since there had been no signficant loses of American lives, FDR could not declare war.

It is not unreasonable to infer that where America was, and is, an immigrant nation, and that a significant portion of the US population were first or second generation immigrants from the warring nations, a substantial portion of Americans might view such a war against their relatives as being undesirable.  The biggest reason, however, was that the average American could not imagine a scenario where Germany would bring the war in Europe to America’s shores.  The US population did not have a stomach for a foreign war as it still had a good memory of how ugly World War 1 had been.

Americans in November 1941 were apparently blissfully unaware of the presence of German submarines patrolling the US Atlantic coast.  The war in Europe was at our doorstep even though it had taken no aggressive action.  Americans may have also been lulled into a false sense of security by the British having sunk Germany two most dangerous warships, its battleships Bismark and Tirpitz.  Germany had no active aircraft carriers and had only one unfinished in a port.  At the time trans-Atlantic flight was confined to small aircraft and all larger aircraft made the trip via Gander Newfoundland or Ireland.  The US did have such capability but this was not something the average American knew.  This fact is shown by the fact that on December 7, 1941, while the attack on Pearl Harbor was underway, a number of B-17s were flying into Pearl Harbor from the US west coast.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was enough to completely change the American attitude of going to war.  The fact that American ships had been sunk and American lives lost was more than enough.  But the Roosevelt administration felt the average American could not understand the extent of the death and damage done at Pearl Harbor so the details of the attack and pictures of the attack were kept from the American public for well over six months, and even then it was judiciously released.  The few pictures that were released were done in the Saturday Evening Post, and other such picture magazines.  FDR got the press to agree to an embargo on information and to censorship.  For the duration of the war all press releases had to be authorized through the War Department.  Few objected.

Now, exactly 70 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it can be difficult for us to imagine the American landscape on that day.  America was truly a sleepy country but it leapt into action, and, as Japanese Admiral Yamaguchi, who headed the attack on Pearl Harbor, clairvoyantly said, “I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant.”  American sprang into action and almost overnight industry was converted from making cars and refrigerators to making tanks and aircraft.  America woke up and vowed never to be asleep at the switch ever again.  America built war ships at a mind numbing rate.  At one time Henry Kaiser, who built the “Liberty Ships,” completed a ship in slightly less than five days.  The US took the lead militarily and has never looked back.  Americans have since overcome any urge to revert to isolationism as well.  Pearl Harbor did a lot more than bring the US into the war.