Thursday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

The Japanese commander at Iwo Jima was General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. As with many Japanese officers he was Harvard educated. On the evening of March 25, 1945 he sent this radio message to Tokyo from a cave on Iwo Jima.

“We have not eaten or drank for five days. Our weapons have been destroyed. We will mount our final charge tonight. May Japan exist for a thousand years.”

At 3:00a on March 26 General Kuribayashi led a Banzai charge that was totally annihilated. His corpse was never identified.

This is one of the very few battles involving the US Marines where they suffered more casualties (killed, wounded or captured) than the enemy. The total for the Japanese was 18,844 killed and 216 captured. The Marines was 6,821 killed, 19,217 wounded. Think about it.

I was watching a cooking show titled “Pioneer Woman”. This woman's husband is a cattle rancher in Colorado (I think) and she cooks frequently. She has a web site with a question and answer section. She said that she gets questions about good and bad relationships, love (or the lack of it) and a myriad of other circumstances that has nothing to do with food. I think I will contact Bobby Flay and ask him what is the best bait to use for shell crackers in the canal at Santee-Cooper in the Fall.

The cops in Mount Pleasant, SC stopped a moped with two men aboard carrying a 36 inch flat screen TV, two bags of coffee beans with a hotel logo stamped on the bags, four beach towels with the same logo and a green bed spread. That is a pretty heavy load for a moped. The cops went to the hotel indicated by the logo and to no one’s surprise, all the above was stolen. What were these two jackasses thinking? But on second thought, they were stupid to start with.

      This Date in History   August 6

1945 A year earlier under the utmost secrecy the United States Army Air Force organized the 509^th Composite Group and based them at Westover Air Base in the remote Utah Desert. They were under the command of Colonel Paul Tibbets. Colonel Tibbets had been assigned “Operation Silverplate” which would require ultra-precision bombing accuracy but Tibbets did not tell anyone the purpose of the mission. After intensive training with the aircraft carrying a single 10,000 bomb and dropping it with extreme accuracy, Colonel Tibbets was satisfied with the level of expertise with his crews. He moved the whole Group to the small central Pacific island of Tinian where the US Navy Seabees had hacked out an airfield from nearly pure coral. Tinian’s neighboring island was Saipan which the United States Marines had won from the Japanese in a battle a few months earlier. That battle went down in history as one of the bloodiest ever documented. Colonel Tibbets continued training until he called his crews together and told them their mission which was to drop the first atomic bomb in history. They had been given a list of three targets that was prioritized. The first target was Hiroshima, Japan. At 2:30A on this date three aircraft departed about an hour apart. They were B-29’s named “The Great Artiste”, “Necessary Evil” and the “Enola Gay”. “The Great Artiste” carried all the instrumentation to monitor the effects of the bomb, “The Necessary Evil” was the weather recon aircraft that would go ahead and take a look at the weather over the target and call back with what they observed. The actual bomb was aboard the “Enola Gay” piloted by Colonel Tibbets himself. The three aircraft rendezvoused over Iwo Jima and headed for Hiroshima. President Harry Truman had been ambivalent about the use of the bomb but after he read about the American casualties in the battle for Okinawa and what the Japanese were willing to sacrifice, he knew that the atomic bomb was the only alternative to an invasion of Japan that would probably cost 1,000,000 American casualties and authorized the use of the bomb while attending the Potsdam Conference. The weather over Hiroshima was clear and when the “Necessary Evil” passed over an air raid warning was issued but it was only one aircraft so everyone on the ground went on with their business. The “Necessary Evil” reported back to the “Enola Gay” that all was well over the target. At about 8:20a the “Enola Gay” released the Uranium bomb known as “Little Boy”, 47 seconds later the bomb detonated at 2,000 feet above the surface for maximum effect. For a microsecond a light brighter than the sun was seen over the city and a wall of heat and wind rushed over the city and leveled it in the blink of an eye, not to mention over 70,000 Japanese were incinerated and an additional 35,000 died of radiation poisoning a few weeks later. On August 9, this whole scenario was repeated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki with similar results only this time they used a plutonium bomb nicknamed “Fat Man”. On August 12 of the first time in history, the Japanese emperor broadcast on the radio and uttered the word “surrender”. This was the first time the Japanese people had ever heard the voice of any of their emperors especially saying these words. The Second World War was finally over.

Born today:

1868 French writer Paul Claubert: He said “It is fortunate that diplomats have long noses because they usually can’t see past them.” Good observation, Paul.

1911 US comedienne Lucile Ball. She said “The secret to staying young is to eat slowly, live honestly and lie about your age.”

1928 Polish artist Andy Warhol. He said “Richard Simmons is carrying Rex Reed’s baby.”

Died today:

1637 English writer Ben Jonson. He said “A man who educates himself has a fool for a teacher.”

1945 The former governor of California Hiram Johnson. He said “The first casualty of war is truth.”

Quotable quotes:

“Drew Barrymore sings so badly that deaf people refuse to watch her lips move.”

Woody Allen

Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow