WW2HANGAR.NET

Vandals daubed Nazi graffiti on British war graves in northern France, prompting a strong condemnation from President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday in a letter to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Police said they found swastikas and other graffiti including “SS” and an obscene drawing in pink paint on a dozen graves of British soldiers at the northern cemetery of Loos-en-Gohelle, the site of a major World War I battle.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission sent a special team to clean the graves.

Sarkozy expressed “indignation and consternation” in a letter to the queen, branding the desecrations “all the more revolting” since they came a week before he visits London for a commemoration of French resistance during World War II.

“I condemn with the greatest firmness this horrible act and ask you to pass on my feelings of sympathy and solidarity, and those of the French people, to the families concerned and to all of the British people,” Sarkozy wrote.

Numerous desecrations of Jewish, Muslim and German graves have been reported in France in recent years.

However officials said the attack on the British graves did not seem to have been politically motivated.

“I think it is a marginal act, a bit of idiocy,” said the mayor of Loos, Jean-Francois Caron. “There are a few inscriptions about all kinds of different things.”…

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A funeral with full military honors will be held for three World War II veterans whose ashes went unclaimed for years at upstate New York funeral homes.

The funeral for Hans Frederick Hanson of Clifton Park, Kimber Rhoads of Putnam County and Warren Anger, hometown unknown, is being held Friday at Saratoga National Cemetery, 20 miles north of Albany.

Veterans organizations say the unclaimed ashes of tens of thousands of veterans are kept on funeral home shelves nationwide. Some have stayed in New York funeral homes for more than 40 years.

Two of Hanson’s nephews plan to attend Friday’s funeral. They had been searching for information on their uncle for years, and only learned about his funeral this week when the Times Union of Albany published an article about it…

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Last Sunday, The Wichita Eagle published the story of Loren Corliss’ harrowing escape from death 65 years ago during World War II.

His B-24 bomber was shot down by Japanese fighter planes over the Philippine island of Mindanao. He parachuted out and spent 45 days in the jungle before an Army seaplane rescued him and his crew along a beach where the surf crashed with violent force.

The date was Dec. 22, 1944.

No reader in Wichita was more intrigued by that story than a 92-year-old former farm kid from Perry, Okla., named Harold Strub.

In a desk drawer at home in east Wichita, Strub keeps a seaplane log book.

* * *

East Wichita, May 30, 2010

A retired Boeing worker, Harold Strub has lived in Wichita the past 59 years.

He saw the date Corliss mentioned regarding his rescue: Dec. 22, 1944.

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Submitted by: tetvet68

Remember Pearl Harbor — Keep America Alert!

(Now deceased) America’s oldest living Medal of Honor recipient, living his 101st year is former enlisted Chief Petty Officer, Aviation Chief Ordnanceman (ACOM), later wartime commissioned Lieutenant John W. Finn, U. S. Navy (Ret.). He is also the last surviving Medal of Honor, “The Day of Infamy”, Japanese Attack on the Hawaiian Islands, Naval Air Station, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu, Territory of Hawaii, 7 December 1941.

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San Diego, California

Sixty-eight years ago, after he had taken part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, Imperial Japanese Navy pilot Kaname Harada was on the tail of American pilots off Midway Atoll.

Harada’s Zero fighter shot down five American torpedo bombers. But history was turning against Harada — and Japan.

Historian Dan King said Harada flew off the aircraft carrier Soryu, but that ship was then hit by U.S. aircraft and he was diverted to the carrier Hiryu for landing.

Harada jumped into the cockpit of another Zero, and shortly after takeoff, “he looks back and he sees the Hiryu explode,” King said.

The four Japanese aircraft carriers that had attacked Pearl Harbor only six months before were sunk in the Battle of Midway, June 4-7, 1942.

After Midway, the U.S. took the offensive in the Pacific.

Harada, now 94, and nine other Japanese World War II aviators were on a different mission yesterday in Hawai’i — relating the history in the pivotal battle of the former enemies and now longtime allies.

The Japanese veterans and family members were guests of honor at the Pacific Aviation Museum-Pearl Harbor for a Midway Symposium.

“This is exactly what the museum is like — it’s a living museum,” said executive director Ken DeHoff. “We live in an era where the stories are still coming out of the mouths of the people who participated in them. So having a different side of the story here adds so much more depth and wealth to what we’re doing at the museum.”

More than 100 people, including World War II veterans from the United States and Japan, visited Midway Atoll to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the battle…

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Navy Lt. John W. Finn, who received the Medal of Honor for mounting a daring counterattack on Japanese airplanes from an improvised machine gun post during the raid on Pearl Harbor, died May 27 at a veterans home in Chula Vista, Calif. No cause of death was reported.

At 100, he was the oldest surviving recipient of the nation’s highest honor for valor and was among the first to receive the award during World War II.

On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, then-Chief Petty Officer Finn was in charge of aviation ordnance and munitions at the Kaneohe Bay air station 15 miles from Pearl Harbor and Battleship Row.

He was in bed with his wife, Alice, that Sunday when, just before 8 a.m., he heard the rumble of low-flying aircraft and sporadic machine gun fire coming from the hangar a mile away.

Amid the confusion, he threw on a pair of dungarees and his chief hat, and started driving as calmly as possible to the nearby hangar, maintaining the base’s 20-mph speed limit…

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On Aug. 6, 1945, Jeppson and another man armed the bomb called ‘Little Boy’ aboard the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay. The bombing is credited with bringing an early end to WWII. Morris “Dick” Jeppson, a weapons specialist who was mid-flight when he completed arming the first atomic bomb, which the Enola Gay B-29 Superfortress dropped on Hiroshima in World War II, has died. He was 87.

Jeppson, a retired scientist and businessman, died March 30 of complications related to old age at Summerlin Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas, said his wife, Molly.

The historic combat mission on Aug. 6, 1945, was the only one Jeppson ever flew.

Worried about his family’s safety, he remained silent for decades about his role in the attack that killed at least 80,000 people, leveled two-thirds of the Japanese city and ignited controversy for having unleashed atomic power as a weapon.

When the Army Air Forces unit that flew the mission gathered in 1995, Jeppson attended and spoke in public about the bombing for the first time.

“You had a job to do, you just did it,” Jeppson had often said since then.

The mission is credited with helping to bring an early end to the war. Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, another B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, prompting the Japanese surrender.

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Not even three months since its official release, local author James Diehl has announced that his book honoring Sussex County war veterans has begun its second print run.

Strong retail sales in late fall and early winter have propelled an earlier than anticipated print run for “World War II Heroes of Southern Delaware.”

“I am very excited and encouraged about the reaction so far to this project,” said Diehl, who is currently working on the second installment of the series.

“I want more than anything for people to pick up this book and read about the sacrifices made by the men and women of the 1940s. The choices they made then still affect how we live today, and we owe them all our gratitude and our respect.”

Featuring more than 48 profiles that originally ran in the Seaford and Laurel Star newspapers in 2007-2008, the book is published by DNB Group, Inc., Diehl’s company, and is available for sale throughout the county and online at www.ww2-heroes.com.

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The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the valley as the thermometer stubbornly refused to rise out of the teens on Saturday.

Men in uniform fell to the ground. Because there was no blood to mark the wounded, chilly viewers at the two re-enactments of the Battle of the Bulge had to watch carefully to see whose helmet was on the ground instead of on his head. At this re-enactment, that was the signal that a soldier had been wounded.

The battle, this year commemorating the 65th anniversary of the last major Nazi offensive against the Allies, is presented annually by the Allied and Axis Living Historians of the World War II Federation.

Between mid-December 1944 and late January 1945, more than a million troops were involved in the historic battle that stretched through Belgium, France and Luxembourg before the Allies were able to declare victory.

And so it was at Saturday’s re-enactment. Both sides “lost” many men before victory was declared.

As realistic as the chill felt and the gunfire sounded, there’s no way to depict adequately what really happened on that faraway World War II battlefield, according to Alex Kisse, 85, a resident of New Carrolton, Md.

Kisse knows. He fought at the real Battle of the Bulge.

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The state is moving ahead with repairs on the World War II Memorial at the Capitol in Olympia, despite the artist’s attempt to stop the work.

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U.S. tanks broke down the gates of the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in the Philippines on Feb. 3, 1945, freeing 3,700 prisoners who were held there by the Japanese.

These people weren’t soldiers who fought on the Pacific front of World War II. They were Western civilians who got trapped in the capital city of Manila after Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which pulled the United States into the conflict.

About 500 of them were children, including 8-year-old Tom Crosby.

As the tanks approached, the prisoners feared that their captors might kill them. After a standoff, though, they were spared in exchange for the guards’ safe passage to the Japanese front lines.

“The rescue teams got to us just in time,” said Crosby, now 75 and living in the South Bay neighborhood of Palm City. “It was a relief to be reunited with my mother. I didn’t know if I would see her again.”

Friday is National POW/MIA Recognition Day, an annual commemoration that dates to 1979 but typically garners little public notice.

Crosby works to raise awareness of POWs by speaking at local schools about his captivity, meeting with community groups and volunteering as a docent at the Veterans Museum and Memorial Center in Balboa Park, where his childhood ordeal is documented in a permanent exhibit.

He feels the pressure of time.

Of the roughly 138,000 Americans taken prisoner during wartime since 1941, fewer than 23,000 were alive at the end of 2007, the last time the Department of Veterans Affairs gave an estimate…

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Paul Parker has never forgotten the morning 64 years ago when he climbed into a P-47N Thunderbolt and roared off at sunrise bound for Tokyo.

“We were in the air eight hours and 40 minutes,” said the Jacksonville resident, then a first lieutenant. “(Pilot) Bagby had radio failure so I became the flight leader. We were protecting the tail end of the 19th Fighter Squadron.” They were members of the 318th Fighter Group flying off Ie-Shima, a small island off of Okinawa, on Aug. 3, 1945, in what would become the last aerial combat mission in World War II.

“It was sort of a show-the-flag operation,” he recalled. “We went in at 13,000 feet. We could see the Japanese fighters taking off. But we didn’t have enough fuel to stay and engage them. The guys coming behind us got the action.”

Other memories — both good and bad — will be flying about beginning today as more than 50 World War II veterans of the 318th Fighter Group gather to hold a three-day reunion at the Red Lion Hotel in Medford. This marks the group’s first reunion in Oregon.

“We’ll be hashing over old times — I’ll sure be glad to see them all,” said Parker, who retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force in 1967. He later worked for the Boy Scouts of America and in the insurance industry.

One story Parker is likely to tell is the party his squadron held the next day after their Tokyo flight upon learning the war had ended.

“That was the only time I got sick drinking,” he said. “We only had medical alcohol mixed with fruit juice. It did the job but — boy!”

Born in Creswell and a 1941 graduate of Drain High School, Parker, now 86, was trained as a U.S. Army Air Forces pilot and sent to Hawaii. Shortly after Parker arrived at Ie-Shima in spring 1945, famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by a sniper on the tiny island.

Parker flew 13 missions over Japan and one over Shanghai, China.

“I was lined up on a motorized junk during the China trip and about to pull the (machine gun’s) trigger when our group commander pulled in front of me,” he said. “Everybody said I would have been the hero of the group if I had pulled the trigger. He wasn’t very well liked.”…

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Thousands of people have signed a Downing Street petition calling for a posthumous government apology to World War II code breaker Alan Turing.

Writer Ian McEwan has just backed the campaign, which already has the support of scientist Richard Dawkins.

In 1952 Turing was prosecuted for gross indecency after admitting a sexual relationship with a man. Two years later he killed himself.

The petition was the idea of computer scientist John Graham-Cumming.

He is seeking an apology for the way the mathematician was treated after his conviction. He has also written to the Queen to ask for Turing to be awarded a posthumous knighthood.

Alan Turing was given experimental chemical castration as a “treatment” and his security privileges were removed, meaning he could not continue work for the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

“This added insult and humiliation ultimately drove him to suicide,” said gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who also backs the campaign. “With Turing’s death, Britain and the world lost one of its finest intellectual minds. A government apology and posthumous pardon are long overdue.”…

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Scupltor says WWII memorial improperly maintained

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The decade-old World War II memorial on the Capitol Campus is one of the most personal works of Olympia artist Simon Kogan.

Kogan, a Russian immigrant of Jewish descent who lost relatives during the war, has received thank-you notes from veterans moved by the memorial. As he explains it, these veterans entrusted him to encapsulate the toil and sacrifice of their war experience for future generations.

Kogan, 50, said it’s this allegiance that drives his nearly 2-year-old dispute with the state Department of General Administration, which maintains all the memorials on the Capitol Campus.

He says that overaggressive cleaning in May 2007 damaged the memorial and robbed it of its most powerful feature. He has demanded that the state agency fix the damage or he will sue.

“I’m ashamed,” he said. “They paid me to do that. To me, it’s a personal responsibility which I’m not keeping up with.”

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April 4, 1945. It’s his 35th and last required mission as World War II in Europe winds into its final month. Just drop the bombs, then head back home to Akron.

He’s the 24-year-old co-pilot of a B-24 Liberator bomber nicknamed “Trouble N Mind,” flying 10,000 feet over Havelberg, Germany.

Suddenly there’s the flash of a German fighter — a jet, Messerschmitt 262, Hitler’s last secret weapon. Too few, too late to change the outcome of the war, but still deadly. The bomber’s cockpit fills with smoke and fire. Bail out! He jumps, his parachute flaming. Falling fast. Too fast. Hits the ground hard. Fatally.

Someone finds his body. Knocks out his gold fillings. Buries him in a shallow grave. Years pass. Decades. Gone — missing in action — but not entirely lost.

Now, 64 years later, 1st Lt. Alden Hershiser is finally making that long-delayed trip home.

Hershiser’s remains were dug out of the forest two years ago but were positively identified only last month. He will be brought back to his hometown for burial on Sept. 11, Patriot Day. He will be buried in Rose Hill Cemetery beside his father and mother — who went to her death in 1978 never giving up hope that somehow her son was still alive.

The discovery of his remains came as a surprise to his brother, Bill Hershiser, and niece, Susan Adair, both of Kent.

“It was just like a big WOW!” said Hershiser. “I can’t believe this.

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