American Empire
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: "In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one."....
There was heated argument in the United States about whether or not to take the Philippines. As one story has it, President McKinley told a group of ministers visiting the White House how he came to his decision:
Before you go I would like to say just a word about the Philippine business. . . . The truth is I didn't want the Philippines, and when they came to us as a gift from the gods, I did not know what to do with them. . . . I sought counsel from all sides -- Democrats as well as Republicans -- but got little help. I thought first we would only take Manila; then Luzon, then other islands, perhaps, also. I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way -- I don't know how it was, but it came: 1) That we could not give them back to Spain -- that would be cowardly and dishonorable. 2) That we could not turn them over to France or Germany, our commercial rivals in the Orient -- that would be bad business and discreditable. 3) That we could not leave them to themselves -- they were unfit for self-government -- and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was; and 4) That there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed and went to sleep and slept soundly. The Filipinos did not get the same message from God. In February 1899, they rose in revolt against American rule, as they had rebelled several times against the Spanish. Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipino leader, who had earlier been brought back from China by U.S. warships to lead soldiers against Spain, now became leader of the insurrectos fighting the United States. He proposed Filipino independence within a U.S. protectorate, but this was rejected. It took the United States three years to crush the rebellion, using seventy thousand troops -- four times as many as were landed in Cuba -- and thousands of battle casualties, many times more than in Cuba. It was a harsh war. For the Filipinos the death rate was enormous from battle casualties and from disease. The taste of empire was on the lips of politicians and business interests throughout the country now. Racism, paternalism, and talk of money mingled with talk of destiny and civilization. In the Senate, Albert Beveridge spoke, January 9, 1900, for the dominant economic and political interests of the country:
Mr. President, the times call for candor. The Philippines are ours forever. . . . And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either. . . . We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world. . . . The Pacific is our ocean. . . . Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer. . . . The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East. . . . No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco. . . . The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal. . . . I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . . My own belief is that there are not 100 men among them who comprehend what Anglo-Saxon self-government even means, and there are over 5,000,000 people to be governed. It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse. . . . Senators must remember that we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals. The fighting with the rebels began, McKinley said, when the insurgents attacked American forces. But later, American soldiers testified that the United States had fired the first shot. After the war, an army officer speaking in Boston's Faneuil Hall said his colonel had given him orders to provoke a conflict with the insurgents. In February 1899, a banquet took place in Boston to celebrate the Senate's ratification of the peace treaty with Spain. President McKinley himself had been invited by the wealthy textile manufacturer W. B. Plunkett to speak. It was the biggest banquet in the nation's history: two thousand diners, four hundred waiters. McKinley said that "no imperial designs lurk in the American mind," and at the same banquet, to the same diners, his Postmaster General, Charles Emory Smith, said that "what we want is a market for our surplus." William James, the Harvard philosopher, wrote a letter to the Boston Transcript about "the cold pot grease of McKinley's cant at the recent Boston banquet" and said the Philippine operation "reeked of the infernal adroitness of the great department store, which has reached perfect expertness in the art of killing silently, and with no public squalling or commotion, the neighboring small concerns." James was part of a movement of prominent American businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals who formed the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898 and carried on a long campaign to educate the American public about the horrors of the Philippine war and the evils of imperialism. It was an odd group (Andrew Carnegie belonged), including antilabor aristocrats and scholars, united in a common moral outrage at what was being done to the Filipinos in the name of freedom. Whatever their differences on other matters, they would all agree with William James's angry statement: "God damn the U.S. for its vile conduct in the Philippine Isles." The Anti-Imperialist League published the letters of soldiers doing duty in the Philippines. A captain from Kansas wrote: "Caloocan was supposed to contain 17,000 inhabitants. The Twentieth Kansas swept through it, and now Caloocan contains not one living native." A private from the same outfit said he had "with my own hand set fire to over fifty houses of Filipinos after the victory at Caloocan. Women and children were wounded by our fire." A volunteer from the state of Washington wrote: "Our fighting blood was up, and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' . . . This shooting human beings beats rabbit hunting all to pieces." It was a time of intense racism in the United States. In the years between 1889 and 1903, on the average, every week, two Negroes were lynched by mobs -- hanged, burned, mutilated. The Filipinos were brown-skinned, physically identifiable, strange-speaking and strange-looking to Americans. To the usual indiscriminate brutality of war was thus added the factor of racial hostility. In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:
The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog. . . . Our soldiers have pumped salt water into men to make them talk, and have taken prisoners people who held up their hands and peacefully surrendered, and an hour later, without an atom of evidence to show that they were even insurrectos, stood them on a bridge and shot them down one by one, to drop into the water below and float down, as examples to those who found their bullet-loaded corpses. Early in 1901 an American general returning to the United States from southern Luzon, said:
One-sixth of the natives of Luzon have either been killed or have died of the dengue fever in the last few years. The loss of life by killing alone has been very great, but I think not one man has been slain except where his death has served the legitimate purposes of war. It has been necessary to adopt what in other countries would probably be thought harsh measures. Secretary of War Elihu Root responded to the charges of brutality: "The war in the Philippines has been conducted by the American army with scrupulous regard for the rules of civilized warfare. . . . with self-restraint and with humanity never surpassed." In Manila, a Marine named Littletown Waller, a major, was accused of shooting eleven defenseless Filipinos, without trial, on the island of Samar. Other marine officers described his testimony:
The major said that General Smith instructed him to kill and burn, and said that the more he killed and burned the better pleased he would be; that it was no time to take prisoners, and that he was to make Samar a howling wilderness. Major Waller asked General Smith to define the age limit for killing, and he replied "Everything over ten." In the province of Batangas, the secretary of the province estimated that of the population of 300,000, one-third had been killed by combat, famine, or disease. Mark Twain commented on the Philippine war:
We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjugated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name of the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag. And so, by these Providences of God -- and the phrase is the government's, not mine -- we are a World Power. American firepower was overwhelmingly superior to anything the Filipino rebels could put together. In the very first battle, Admiral Dewey steamed up the Pasig River and fired 500-pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Dead Filipinos were piled so high that the Americans used their bodies for breastworks. A British witness said: "This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery." He was wrong; it was war. For the rebels to hold out against such odds for years meant that they had the support of the population. General Arthur MacArthur, commander of the Filipino war, said: " . . . I believed that Aguinaldo's troops represented only a faction. I did not like to believe that the whole population of Luzon -- the native population, that is -- was opposed to us." But he said he was "reluctantly compelled" to believe this because the guerrilla tactics of the Filipino army "depended upon almost complete unity of action of the entire native population."
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Book Portfolio Quarter 3
The book I read for quarter three was "What Work Is" by Phillip Levine. This book was really good, and I didn't think I'd like it. It was made up of a bunch of poems, ranging from themes of God, working, trying gin for the first time, and growing up in general. I don't really know if there is one theme you can go with throughout the book because there really wasn't one. It seemed like there was a different theme in each poem, varying from life lessons learned and growing up.
The first few poems were about him working in industrial factories and about the work he had to do which consisted of him getting down and mixing such elements such as hydrochloric acids. The first few poems were really interesting to know what kind of work happened in factories like that. It also described in detail how hard some of the work was. The author used a lot of detail in all of the poems. Some of the poems were really confusing and you really couldn't tell if it was a man or a women talking because some of the poems were very confusing. Something that I noticed about this book is that some of it was placed in the time period of World War Two and it was hardly mentioned at all. It talked a tiny bit about the military draft, but he must not of gone. The book was really descriptive about trying stuff for the first time, like his experience with gin. They didn't know why everyone made such a big deal about it when it really wasn't that good.
The best poem in the whole book, in my opinion, was "What Work Is." I loved this poem, it really says so much within it's two pages. It describes waiting in a line for a job, just to be declined, and seeing someone who looks just like your brother, but who is really not. Then it describes the last time you saw him, bringing on a flood of emotions, and it ends with you didn't do the simplest task of hugging and kissing him because you just don't know What Work Is. This is simply the best poem in the entire book, and really caught my attention the most.
A lot of the poems were really kind of dull at first and then they got interesting, each of them telling a small story or fact of life in a page or so. They caught your attention at the end because it proved the purpose the author had for writing them. The poem "Facts" was also another really good one just stating facts about his life, and just random facts, which was really interesting, and comical.
I think the authors purpose for writing this book was to describe life in a way that is surrounded around his personal life stories. It was really good, and very interesting. There were a few god references and that is what the book ended up with was a poem about god. I think that the author didn't really do a good job making the theme pop out, so it was easy to see, but maybe that was the way it was supposed to be.
Overall this was a very good book.
The first few poems were about him working in industrial factories and about the work he had to do which consisted of him getting down and mixing such elements such as hydrochloric acids. The first few poems were really interesting to know what kind of work happened in factories like that. It also described in detail how hard some of the work was. The author used a lot of detail in all of the poems. Some of the poems were really confusing and you really couldn't tell if it was a man or a women talking because some of the poems were very confusing. Something that I noticed about this book is that some of it was placed in the time period of World War Two and it was hardly mentioned at all. It talked a tiny bit about the military draft, but he must not of gone. The book was really descriptive about trying stuff for the first time, like his experience with gin. They didn't know why everyone made such a big deal about it when it really wasn't that good.
The best poem in the whole book, in my opinion, was "What Work Is." I loved this poem, it really says so much within it's two pages. It describes waiting in a line for a job, just to be declined, and seeing someone who looks just like your brother, but who is really not. Then it describes the last time you saw him, bringing on a flood of emotions, and it ends with you didn't do the simplest task of hugging and kissing him because you just don't know What Work Is. This is simply the best poem in the entire book, and really caught my attention the most.
A lot of the poems were really kind of dull at first and then they got interesting, each of them telling a small story or fact of life in a page or so. They caught your attention at the end because it proved the purpose the author had for writing them. The poem "Facts" was also another really good one just stating facts about his life, and just random facts, which was really interesting, and comical.
I think the authors purpose for writing this book was to describe life in a way that is surrounded around his personal life stories. It was really good, and very interesting. There were a few god references and that is what the book ended up with was a poem about god. I think that the author didn't really do a good job making the theme pop out, so it was easy to see, but maybe that was the way it was supposed to be.
Overall this was a very good book.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Am. Studies neww
The Marines on Guadalcanal
TOM LYONS, 1st Parachute Battalion
Converted for the Web from "Into The Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat" by Patrick K. O'Donnell
Jump to: The Marines on Guadalcanal John Sweeney, 1st Raider BattalionRobert Youngdeer of E-Company John Sweeney commands B-CompanyDave Taber at Bloody Ridge Ira Gilliand throwing grenadesJohn Mielke defends Henderson Field Tom Lyons, 1st Parachute Battalion"Horse Collar" James Smith Frank Guidone and the mortar squadDean Winters, 2nd Raider Battalion Ray Bauml on the Long Patrol
Outnumbered and running out of ammunition, Edson's three hundred defenders faced their gravest threat when a large element of the Japanese III Battalion, 124th Infantry seemed poised to overrun the left side of the knoll. Edson ordered the Marine parachutists holding that side of the knoll to counterattack immediately. But the parachute battalion's commanding officer was nowhere to be found. He was relieved on the spot by Edson, and Captain Harry Torgerson was placed in command. Torgerson assembled two companies of parachutists and launched them in a desperate counterattack, saving the left flank of the line. After the Marines regained the line, the fighting became hand-to-hand, as parachutist Tom Lyons vividly remembers.
When they started raking us with a machine gun, that pissed me off, so I got up and crawled through the grass. The grass was about a foot and a half tall off the side of that hill, and I crawled up and around to the side of the machine gun. Bullets were flying everywhere, but the grass was high enough that it would partially hide you. I got almost to the machine gun before I was detected. They didn't see me until I stood up. There were so many people running around you couldn't shoot anybody. I stood up and threw a hand grenade, and just as I threw the grenade, they swung the gun around and ripped me up through the middle. I took several bullets; most of them went all the way through, and one missed my heart by about a half an inch. It knocked me ass over tin cup down the hill. The first one stung like hell. It really hurt. But the others after that didn't hurt at all. It seemed like I just left my body and was floating up in the air looking down at everything going on.
I saw a Jap come out, and he stepped on my stomach and he stabbed me in the throat with his bayonet. It went through the side of my neck and into the ground behind me but it didn't hurt. Jesse Youngdeer [Robert Youngdeer's brother] was coming up the trail with a box of hand grenades, and this Jap stepped off me and instead of finishing me off, he made a thrust at Youngdeer. [Youngdeer] stopped it with the box of hand grenades, and then he grabbed the Jap's rifle and was trying to wrestle it out of his hands. The Jap had stabbed him just above the knee. Another Marine ran up with his bayonet, and he tried to stab the Jap, and he got confused and stabbed Youngdeer right in the leg.
My eyes were wide open. I could see everything that was going on. I thought I was seeing it from fifty feet above. When they started firing the 105s [artillery] right in my area, I got some shrapnel in the right side of my chest. The bullets and shells were passing right over where I was floating around up there, and I was afraid they were going to hit me.
Morning came, and they came around, and all the Japs were gone. There were dead Japs all around me. They were picking out the Marines and throwing all the bodies on a truck, and they cut all our dog tags off. They hauled us down to the cemetery in the coconut grove, and they dumped our bodies out. I ended up at the top of the pile. The driver came around close to the tailgate and thought I was coming alive, so he started running into the jungle screaming, and he didn't come back. This is really disturbing. They thought the guy was dead, and then the driver ran away. -Carissa Parkins 3/26/09 11:52 AM
An hour or so later, two corpsmen came by in a jeep, and they put me on a stretcher and hauled me to the hospital. They put me under a palm tree. From the stretcher, doctors told them to take this one out and bring in someone they can save. So I was there under a palm tree, and fresh troops started coming up the road. A ship came in with reinforcements, and an officer came over and said, "Take all the people out of the field hospital and put them on my ship and I'll take them back to Buttons [Base Buttons in Esp�ritu Santo]." And he said, "And that one under the palm tree, put him in my cabin and call the ship surgeon." He said, "You're going to be on the bridge all the way back to Buttons." I was conscious but couldn't talk. My mouth was full of caked blood. I was wearing the same clothes for almost two months.
This ship surgeon got my lung uncollapsed, and he pumped all the blood out of it and had me all cleaned up. After we made port, they put me on a plane to New Zealand. My mother got a check from my insurance saying I was dead the same day she got a letter from me written by a nurse at hospital in New Zealand.
TOM LYONS, 1st Parachute Battalion
Converted for the Web from "Into The Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat" by Patrick K. O'Donnell
Jump to: The Marines on Guadalcanal John Sweeney, 1st Raider BattalionRobert Youngdeer of E-Company John Sweeney commands B-CompanyDave Taber at Bloody Ridge Ira Gilliand throwing grenadesJohn Mielke defends Henderson Field Tom Lyons, 1st Parachute Battalion"Horse Collar" James Smith Frank Guidone and the mortar squadDean Winters, 2nd Raider Battalion Ray Bauml on the Long Patrol
Outnumbered and running out of ammunition, Edson's three hundred defenders faced their gravest threat when a large element of the Japanese III Battalion, 124th Infantry seemed poised to overrun the left side of the knoll. Edson ordered the Marine parachutists holding that side of the knoll to counterattack immediately. But the parachute battalion's commanding officer was nowhere to be found. He was relieved on the spot by Edson, and Captain Harry Torgerson was placed in command. Torgerson assembled two companies of parachutists and launched them in a desperate counterattack, saving the left flank of the line. After the Marines regained the line, the fighting became hand-to-hand, as parachutist Tom Lyons vividly remembers.
When they started raking us with a machine gun, that pissed me off, so I got up and crawled through the grass. The grass was about a foot and a half tall off the side of that hill, and I crawled up and around to the side of the machine gun. Bullets were flying everywhere, but the grass was high enough that it would partially hide you. I got almost to the machine gun before I was detected. They didn't see me until I stood up. There were so many people running around you couldn't shoot anybody. I stood up and threw a hand grenade, and just as I threw the grenade, they swung the gun around and ripped me up through the middle. I took several bullets; most of them went all the way through, and one missed my heart by about a half an inch. It knocked me ass over tin cup down the hill. The first one stung like hell. It really hurt. But the others after that didn't hurt at all. It seemed like I just left my body and was floating up in the air looking down at everything going on.
I saw a Jap come out, and he stepped on my stomach and he stabbed me in the throat with his bayonet. It went through the side of my neck and into the ground behind me but it didn't hurt. Jesse Youngdeer [Robert Youngdeer's brother] was coming up the trail with a box of hand grenades, and this Jap stepped off me and instead of finishing me off, he made a thrust at Youngdeer. [Youngdeer] stopped it with the box of hand grenades, and then he grabbed the Jap's rifle and was trying to wrestle it out of his hands. The Jap had stabbed him just above the knee. Another Marine ran up with his bayonet, and he tried to stab the Jap, and he got confused and stabbed Youngdeer right in the leg.
My eyes were wide open. I could see everything that was going on. I thought I was seeing it from fifty feet above. When they started firing the 105s [artillery] right in my area, I got some shrapnel in the right side of my chest. The bullets and shells were passing right over where I was floating around up there, and I was afraid they were going to hit me.
Morning came, and they came around, and all the Japs were gone. There were dead Japs all around me. They were picking out the Marines and throwing all the bodies on a truck, and they cut all our dog tags off. They hauled us down to the cemetery in the coconut grove, and they dumped our bodies out. I ended up at the top of the pile. The driver came around close to the tailgate and thought I was coming alive, so he started running into the jungle screaming, and he didn't come back. This is really disturbing. They thought the guy was dead, and then the driver ran away. -Carissa Parkins 3/26/09 11:52 AM
An hour or so later, two corpsmen came by in a jeep, and they put me on a stretcher and hauled me to the hospital. They put me under a palm tree. From the stretcher, doctors told them to take this one out and bring in someone they can save. So I was there under a palm tree, and fresh troops started coming up the road. A ship came in with reinforcements, and an officer came over and said, "Take all the people out of the field hospital and put them on my ship and I'll take them back to Buttons [Base Buttons in Esp�ritu Santo]." And he said, "And that one under the palm tree, put him in my cabin and call the ship surgeon." He said, "You're going to be on the bridge all the way back to Buttons." I was conscious but couldn't talk. My mouth was full of caked blood. I was wearing the same clothes for almost two months.
This ship surgeon got my lung uncollapsed, and he pumped all the blood out of it and had me all cleaned up. After we made port, they put me on a plane to New Zealand. My mother got a check from my insurance saying I was dead the same day she got a letter from me written by a nurse at hospital in New Zealand.
:)
The Marines on Guadalcanal
TOM LYONS, 1st Parachute Battalion
Converted for the Web from "Into The Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat" by Patrick K. O'Donnell
Jump to: The Marines on Guadalcanal John Sweeney, 1st Raider BattalionRobert Youngdeer of E-Company John Sweeney commands B-CompanyDave Taber at Bloody Ridge Ira Gilliand throwing grenadesJohn Mielke defends Henderson Field Tom Lyons, 1st Parachute Battalion"Horse Collar" James Smith Frank Guidone and the mortar squadDean Winters, 2nd Raider Battalion Ray Bauml on the Long Patrol
Outnumbered and running out of ammunition, Edson's three hundred defenders faced their gravest threat when a large element of the Japanese III Battalion, 124th Infantry seemed poised to overrun the left side of the knoll. Edson ordered the Marine parachutists holding that side of the knoll to counterattack immediately. But the parachute battalion's commanding officer was nowhere to be found. He was relieved on the spot by Edson, and Captain Harry Torgerson was placed in command. Torgerson assembled two companies of parachutists and launched them in a desperate counterattack, saving the left flank of the line. After the Marines regained the line, the fighting became hand-to-hand, as parachutist Tom Lyons vividly remembers.
When they started raking us with a machine gun, that pissed me off, so I got up and crawled through the grass. The grass was about a foot and a half tall off the side of that hill, and I crawled up and around to the side of the machine gun. Bullets were flying everywhere, but the grass was high enough that it would partially hide you. I got almost to the machine gun before I was detected. They didn't see me until I stood up. There were so many people running around you couldn't shoot anybody. I stood up and threw a hand grenade, and just as I threw the grenade, they swung the gun around and ripped me up through the middle. I took several bullets; most of them went all the way through, and one missed my heart by about a half an inch. It knocked me ass over tin cup down the hill. The first one stung like hell. It really hurt. But the others after that didn't hurt at all. It seemed like I just left my body and was floating up in the air looking down at everything going on.
I saw a Jap come out, and he stepped on my stomach and he stabbed me in the throat with his bayonet. It went through the side of my neck and into the ground behind me but it didn't hurt. Jesse Youngdeer [Robert Youngdeer's brother] was coming up the trail with a box of hand grenades, and this Jap stepped off me and instead of finishing me off, he made a thrust at Youngdeer. [Youngdeer] stopped it with the box of hand grenades, and then he grabbed the Jap's rifle and was trying to wrestle it out of his hands. The Jap had stabbed him just above the knee. Another Marine ran up with his bayonet, and he tried to stab the Jap, and he got confused and stabbed Youngdeer right in the leg.
My eyes were wide open. I could see everything that was going on. I thought I was seeing it from fifty feet above. When they started firing the 105s [artillery] right in my area, I got some shrapnel in the right side of my chest. The bullets and shells were passing right over where I was floating around up there, and I was afraid they were going to hit me.
Morning came, and they came around, and all the Japs were gone. There were dead Japs all around me. They were picking out the Marines and throwing all the bodies on a truck, and they cut all our dog tags off. They hauled us down to the cemetery in the coconut grove, and they dumped our bodies out. I ended up at the top of the pile. The driver came around close to the tailgate and thought I was coming alive, so he started running into the jungle screaming, and he didn't come back. This is really disturbing. They thought the guy was dead, and then the driver ran away. -Carissa Parkins 3/26/09 11:52 AM
An hour or so later, two corpsmen came by in a jeep, and they put me on a stretcher and hauled me to the hospital. They put me under a palm tree. From the stretcher, doctors told them to take this one out and bring in someone they can save. So I was there under a palm tree, and fresh troops started coming up the road. A ship came in with reinforcements, and an officer came over and said, "Take all the people out of the field hospital and put them on my ship and I'll take them back to Buttons [Base Buttons in Esp�ritu Santo]." And he said, "And that one under the palm tree, put him in my cabin and call the ship surgeon." He said, "You're going to be on the bridge all the way back to Buttons." I was conscious but couldn't talk. My mouth was full of caked blood. I was wearing the same clothes for almost two months.
This ship surgeon got my lung uncollapsed, and he pumped all the blood out of it and had me all cleaned up. After we made port, they put me on a plane to New Zealand. My mother got a check from my insurance saying I was dead the same day she got a letter from me written by a nurse at hospital in New Zealand.
TOM LYONS, 1st Parachute Battalion
Converted for the Web from "Into The Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II's Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat" by Patrick K. O'Donnell
Jump to: The Marines on Guadalcanal John Sweeney, 1st Raider BattalionRobert Youngdeer of E-Company John Sweeney commands B-CompanyDave Taber at Bloody Ridge Ira Gilliand throwing grenadesJohn Mielke defends Henderson Field Tom Lyons, 1st Parachute Battalion"Horse Collar" James Smith Frank Guidone and the mortar squadDean Winters, 2nd Raider Battalion Ray Bauml on the Long Patrol
Outnumbered and running out of ammunition, Edson's three hundred defenders faced their gravest threat when a large element of the Japanese III Battalion, 124th Infantry seemed poised to overrun the left side of the knoll. Edson ordered the Marine parachutists holding that side of the knoll to counterattack immediately. But the parachute battalion's commanding officer was nowhere to be found. He was relieved on the spot by Edson, and Captain Harry Torgerson was placed in command. Torgerson assembled two companies of parachutists and launched them in a desperate counterattack, saving the left flank of the line. After the Marines regained the line, the fighting became hand-to-hand, as parachutist Tom Lyons vividly remembers.
When they started raking us with a machine gun, that pissed me off, so I got up and crawled through the grass. The grass was about a foot and a half tall off the side of that hill, and I crawled up and around to the side of the machine gun. Bullets were flying everywhere, but the grass was high enough that it would partially hide you. I got almost to the machine gun before I was detected. They didn't see me until I stood up. There were so many people running around you couldn't shoot anybody. I stood up and threw a hand grenade, and just as I threw the grenade, they swung the gun around and ripped me up through the middle. I took several bullets; most of them went all the way through, and one missed my heart by about a half an inch. It knocked me ass over tin cup down the hill. The first one stung like hell. It really hurt. But the others after that didn't hurt at all. It seemed like I just left my body and was floating up in the air looking down at everything going on.
I saw a Jap come out, and he stepped on my stomach and he stabbed me in the throat with his bayonet. It went through the side of my neck and into the ground behind me but it didn't hurt. Jesse Youngdeer [Robert Youngdeer's brother] was coming up the trail with a box of hand grenades, and this Jap stepped off me and instead of finishing me off, he made a thrust at Youngdeer. [Youngdeer] stopped it with the box of hand grenades, and then he grabbed the Jap's rifle and was trying to wrestle it out of his hands. The Jap had stabbed him just above the knee. Another Marine ran up with his bayonet, and he tried to stab the Jap, and he got confused and stabbed Youngdeer right in the leg.
My eyes were wide open. I could see everything that was going on. I thought I was seeing it from fifty feet above. When they started firing the 105s [artillery] right in my area, I got some shrapnel in the right side of my chest. The bullets and shells were passing right over where I was floating around up there, and I was afraid they were going to hit me.
Morning came, and they came around, and all the Japs were gone. There were dead Japs all around me. They were picking out the Marines and throwing all the bodies on a truck, and they cut all our dog tags off. They hauled us down to the cemetery in the coconut grove, and they dumped our bodies out. I ended up at the top of the pile. The driver came around close to the tailgate and thought I was coming alive, so he started running into the jungle screaming, and he didn't come back. This is really disturbing. They thought the guy was dead, and then the driver ran away. -Carissa Parkins 3/26/09 11:52 AM
An hour or so later, two corpsmen came by in a jeep, and they put me on a stretcher and hauled me to the hospital. They put me under a palm tree. From the stretcher, doctors told them to take this one out and bring in someone they can save. So I was there under a palm tree, and fresh troops started coming up the road. A ship came in with reinforcements, and an officer came over and said, "Take all the people out of the field hospital and put them on my ship and I'll take them back to Buttons [Base Buttons in Esp�ritu Santo]." And he said, "And that one under the palm tree, put him in my cabin and call the ship surgeon." He said, "You're going to be on the bridge all the way back to Buttons." I was conscious but couldn't talk. My mouth was full of caked blood. I was wearing the same clothes for almost two months.
This ship surgeon got my lung uncollapsed, and he pumped all the blood out of it and had me all cleaned up. After we made port, they put me on a plane to New Zealand. My mother got a check from my insurance saying I was dead the same day she got a letter from me written by a nurse at hospital in New Zealand.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Q's
1. How does a person make money on an investment?
-Buy low and sell high.
2. What makes 'cheap credit' mean?
-Cheap credit is mean because they are targeting people who have troble with their credit and they have very high interest rates.
-
3. What is 'buying on margin' mean?
-The person does not have the money to pay back the loan, and the only reason they can pay it off is because they made money off of it.
- You figure that you can sell the product, and you are out the 30 dollars.
(refer to board)
-Stung the economy.
Betting the margin will keep going up4. How is 'speculation' different from 'investment'?
-People would buy and sell quick stocks quickly to make a quick buck.
Because of the buying and selling stock value increased.
5. How does 'panic selling' start?
-When everyone tried to sell everything at the same time.
-When everyone tried to sell, and no one wanted to buy, or could afford to buy.
6. How can high unemployment start a negative economic cycle?
-When people don't have jobs you have no money to buy stuff.
The more people that get fired, the more stuff that doesn't get sold.
Unemployment goes up^ and productivity goes down.
7. How did increases in technology contribute to overproduction in the 1920's?
-We came up with everything and all the ideas -----> Then they made it.
- Before we made it and they came up with it.
-It gives people jobs, and more people are working to produce stuff.
8. What is meant by 'uneven distribution of wealth? Is it a bad thing?
-That some people have more money than others.
- Yes, this is a bad thing because more money is going to some people, than others.
9. What is a tariff, and why don't they seem to work in the modern economy (post-WWI)?
-A tariff raises the price.
-It's an import tax.
10. What is 'rugged individualism? Is it real?
-Rugged individualism is an idea. In america we like to think that we are self made man and women.
-We make ourselves and our own destiny.
-It is true of all america and it mostly with republican.
-11. What is a Hooverville, and why is it called that?-10000 to 20000 have lost there homes and jobs.
-homeless people grouping together=hooverville
-Buy low and sell high.
2. What makes 'cheap credit' mean?
-Cheap credit is mean because they are targeting people who have troble with their credit and they have very high interest rates.
-
3. What is 'buying on margin' mean?
-The person does not have the money to pay back the loan, and the only reason they can pay it off is because they made money off of it.
- You figure that you can sell the product, and you are out the 30 dollars.
(refer to board)
-Stung the economy.
Betting the margin will keep going up4. How is 'speculation' different from 'investment'?
-People would buy and sell quick stocks quickly to make a quick buck.
Because of the buying and selling stock value increased.
5. How does 'panic selling' start?
-When everyone tried to sell everything at the same time.
-When everyone tried to sell, and no one wanted to buy, or could afford to buy.
6. How can high unemployment start a negative economic cycle?
-When people don't have jobs you have no money to buy stuff.
The more people that get fired, the more stuff that doesn't get sold.
Unemployment goes up^ and productivity goes down.
7. How did increases in technology contribute to overproduction in the 1920's?
-We came up with everything and all the ideas -----> Then they made it.
- Before we made it and they came up with it.
-It gives people jobs, and more people are working to produce stuff.
8. What is meant by 'uneven distribution of wealth? Is it a bad thing?
-That some people have more money than others.
- Yes, this is a bad thing because more money is going to some people, than others.
9. What is a tariff, and why don't they seem to work in the modern economy (post-WWI)?
-A tariff raises the price.
-It's an import tax.
10. What is 'rugged individualism? Is it real?
-Rugged individualism is an idea. In america we like to think that we are self made man and women.
-We make ourselves and our own destiny.
-It is true of all america and it mostly with republican.
-11. What is a Hooverville, and why is it called that?-10000 to 20000 have lost there homes and jobs.
-homeless people grouping together=hooverville
Monday, February 9, 2009
DRUGGG WARRR STUFFFFFF
In 1971 President Nixon declared the War on Drugs.
"When Reagan assumes office and prioritizes the war on drugs, extradition becomes the greatest fear of the Colombian traffickers."
"Reagan responds by creating a cabinet-level task force, the Vice President's Task Force on South Florida. Headed by George Bush, it combines agents from the DEA, Customs, FBI, ATF, IRS, Army and Navy to mobilize against drug traffickers. Reagan later create s several other regional task forces throughout the U.S."
"Reagan responds by creating a cabinet-level task force, the Vice President's Task Force on South Florida. Headed by George Bush, it combines agents from the DEA, Customs, FBI, ATF, IRS, Army and Navy to mobilize against drug traffickers. Reagan later create s several other regional task forces throughout the U.S."
"Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" anti-drug campaign becomes a centerpiece of the Reagan administration's anti-drug campaign. The movement focuses on white, middle class children and is funded by corporate and private donations."
"1986
Anti-Drug Abuse Act - Mandatory Sentences
President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, instituting mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes.
In conjunction with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, the new law raised federal penalties for marijuana possession and dealing, basing the penalties on the amount of the drug involved. Possession of 100 marijuana plants received the same penalty as possession of 100 grams of heroin.
A later amendment to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act established a three strikes and you're out policy, requiring life sentences for repeat drug offenders, and providing for the death penalty for drug kingpins. "
Anti-Drug Abuse Act - Mandatory Sentences
President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, instituting mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes.
In conjunction with the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, the new law raised federal penalties for marijuana possession and dealing, basing the penalties on the amount of the drug involved. Possession of 100 marijuana plants received the same penalty as possession of 100 grams of heroin.
A later amendment to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act established a three strikes and you're out policy, requiring life sentences for repeat drug offenders, and providing for the death penalty for drug kingpins. "
The drug war of nowwww:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/16/eveningnews/main4672172.shtml?source=search_story
Thursday, February 5, 2009
- What are the problems America Faces?
- We are facing sustained inflation
- Fixed income
- Unemployment
- tax system tax
- public spending
- deficits
- economic upheavals
- economy.
- Government
- What are Reagan's solutions?
No groups singled out
Interest group-
Healthy vigorous growing economy.
Revived economy
What policy decisions might Reagan make according to this-
MILITARY!!!!
Using strength.
:D
What does this event reveal about Reagan's Relationship to the country as a leader?
How did this event effect Reagan's roll with the Am. public?
Who is the audience for this speech?
The audience for the speech is a group of christians.
;)
What is the argument Reagan makes here?
He is talking a lot about god and communism and he was using god to argue. I think he does this so he can make his speech seem more important, and to make the religious groups pay more attention to what he was saying and his argumentt.
What do you think Reagan's agenda is in this speech?
I think Reagans agenda was to get the attention of everyone watching, and to make a huge point.
10. What is the message here?
11. How does the ad use Carter?
12. What does the ad suggest about the character/morals of the country?
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