A former fetus, the “wordsmith from nantucket” was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1968. Adopted at birth, wordsmith grew up a military brat. He achieved his B.A. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles (graduating in the top 97% of his class), where he also competed rings for the UCLA mens gymnastics team. The events of 9/11 woke him from his political slumber and malaise. Currently a personal trainer and gymnastics coach.
The wordsmith has never been to Nantucket.
Thank you Wordsmith. I’ve seen parts of these scenes over the years on various discovery and learning channels and even some clips at other places. The Denver Post usual has some also but at the moment I can’t find the links for that. Pictures mostly at the Denver Post.
“Semper Fi”
Deserves its own post.
Miss you Grandad. Thanks for fighting to keep us free.
Pearl Harbor was the event that prompted my Dad to join the Marines. He saw heavy action during the invasion of Okinawa.
Thanks for posting the videos. Alas, the footage isn’t all authentic. Large portions are courtesy of “Tora Tora Tora”. Also note that TBF torpedo attack at 0:07 and the SBD strafing at 0:29.
Sadly, the evidence is coming out that this was not a surprise, but in fact was a ploy arranged by FDR and his buddies in order to pull the USA into the war. They were reluctant to try to simply take the US into the war directly because of isolationist thinking in America, but if they could arrange for a Japanese attack …. then they would have all the necessary excuse. It was arranged, they knew it was coming, but they did nothing to stop it or warn our people. All those people died so that they could maneuver the country into WW II.
It takes a huge ego, and the willingness to assume the guilt for the death of lots of people to do something like this. Who but a leftist could do this? FDR fills the bill quite nicely. Be very careful because we have another extreme leftist in office right now, and thousands of deaths are just the cost of the program for these folks.
@Dr.D: You said:
Might we see some of this evidence?
@ anticsrocks
Here is a URL for an article that came out in the past day or so:
http://tinyurl.com/2bke5l2
It includes references to various other sources within the article. I might add that this is simply the most recent such article that I have encountered; I have been coming across them for a number of years in various places.
Sorry Dr.D, but you haven’t convinced me. The article you linked was full of supposition and leaps of logic. Even the man who the article mentions prominently, Harry Elmer Barnes, seems to be working on the idea that he believes FDR made it happen and the he (Barnes) looks for evidence to prove it.
I looked up the website that offered the article. The New American is a think tank that is evidently against personal liberties –
I’m just not one to put any stock into conspiracy theories.
Please, allow me to be the first.. and perhaps only… one to condemn DrD as the scum of the earth of the day. Thank you for that note of conspiracy, meant solely to demean those that have given their lives on the “day of infamy”.
Ass hole….
Oh, BTW, allow me to add… may future generations of America’s finest soldiers be just as committed to safeguarding American freedoms as they were then… except for yours, of course.
Mata, I certainly like your style. 🙂
Everyone should remember that Dr. D believes that 9/11 was an inside job too.
He’s our very own truther two-fer.
So, tell me Dr. D is there a dark spirit reigning over 1600 that causes these men to turn against their country or were they evil before their furniture was packed for the move?
Inquiring minds want to know:
Was the Great Chicago Fire actually set by US Grant as a way to convince people that dairy cows were dangerous?
Was the Johnstown flood orchestrated by Benjamin Harrison in an effort to help Clara Barton get her newly established Red Cross organization off the ground?
Was the San Francisco earthquake caused by Teddy Roosevelt driving herds of cattle up and down the streets?
These mysteries of history demand answers!
Please tell us!
@ Mata — I said absolutely nothing derogatory about the thousands that lost their lives on 7 Dec 1941. My negative comment was about the leadership of the US, the President and his top advisers only. You are one mean-hearted, ill mannered woman! You read what plainly was not there at all. For shame on you.
@ Aye, you have a great imagination. I said none of those things.
If you will think a little bit more calmly, you might recognize that the US has long since ceased to function as the Constitutional Republic described in the Constitution. When we were in school, we all studied the separation of powers between the three parts of the government and the system of checks and balances. It was a beautiful system. But it all relied on the idea that decision making was a joint activity, not the action of a single man or a small group. How have we gotten away from the original system? Single individuals (or small groups) have demanded power to control the whole process, by hook or by crook. They think they know better than the entire Congress, Executive, & Court, and are willing to manipulate circumstances and events as needed to get their way. We are seeing it today with George Soros. Do you not see this? It has happened repeatedly through history as people have set themselves above the whole, assumed their judgment was superior, and made huge efforts to manipulate history.
Now, why is it so strange that a progressive President, FDR, sure that the US must get involved in WW II but also sure that Congress will not support the idea, why is it so strange that he would allow a “sudden” Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor? That is no stranger than the idea that it is right to give citizenship to illegal aliens so that they will support the party in power in Congress right now (stay tuned for the vote in the Senate this morning.).
Dr d, I found what you wrote in stunning bad taste. This is a thread meant to honor the WWII generation and their sacrifices. Instead, you come back with a very old story (it’s not new… just recycled for you, I guess) about this being engineered and allowed in order to garnish public support for involvement.
Then you ‘splain away your comment by saying it’s not about the troops, but the US leadership. Funny thing about that… I hear the same from lib/progs and Iraq…. when discussing their lack of support for that battle theatre, but then saying oh, it’s not about the troops…. right.
You cannot state such a theory or belief and separate that from those that served. You have just said they were dupes to serve, or lost their lives for nothing.
This mean spirited woman will stand by her retort. Your comment was thoughtless and disrespectful.
Guess you didn’t follow the link. Are you saying that the Dr. D comment from Sept 13th on Wordsmith’s post, which asked for FA readers to share their thoughts on what they were doing on 911, is not you but an imposter?
Aye’s linked your comment, which you used to again scream “conspiracy”. Most notable is your final paragraph:
So I guess it’s no surprise you would take this opportunity to, again, disrespect the spirit of yet another thread.
I don’t think the Pearl Harbor attack was an “inside job”, but I have some questions. Why, during a time of war, did we not have carriers to the West, North, and South of the fleet? Why did we not have observation planes in the air during daylight hours? Why were the battleships moored in a row? Was this customary?
The Japanese must have been frightened of our carrier fleet, they decided against finishing the job and retreated: if this was an inside job, it would have been set up to damage the carrier fleet or else they have known the carriers were 500 miles away and they had the opportunity to send in more planes for at least twelve hours with relative safety.
Why would Japan agree to antagonize the only country that had a chance of defeating them, when that country was content to sit out the war? They had already defeated everyone in the Pacific except for Australia and that would have been primarily a logistics problem.
In twentieth century warfare, did combatants declare war or attack?
Was the biggest part of our outrage from being attacked or being caught asleep? I understand the outrage, but we had Admirals who screwed up big time at Pearl. If we had maintained aerial recon, we could have scrambled fighters and damage would have been minimal and the Japanese would have probably lost all their pilots and planes from fuel shortages. They barely had enough to make it back to their carriers and several them ditched as it was.
Some of our Naval historians might discuss these questions that have plagued me for years.
Does anyone think that the Japanese would accept an invitation to attack with the possibility of a ready and waiting air wing right there to destroy them. We would have declared war anyway and they would have lost their carriers. The idea is laughable and sounds like boys playing at war games
It’s true that FDR had a bromance with the mass murderer Stalin and was surely worried about his welfare against the National Socialists, but to think that he would let our Pacific Fleet be destroyed and have our Pacific Coast vulnerable to attack is comical.
I read an account of one of the Zero fighter pilots who participated in the attack and survived the war, he said he began to think they had made a mistake when he was strafing the air field and a Marine faced his incoming cannon and machine gun fire armed with a 45 ACP and emptied his weapon as the Zero flew over the top of him. He said to himself that this was not going to be easy, because he had never seen the courage it took to stand up to the firepower of a Zero with just a pistol. I think the book was titled “Samurai”.
I salute that Marine and all the Naval and Marine personnel of Pearl that were there on that day so long ago.
@Dr.D: I agree with Mata, what you said and did was disrespectful to the men and women that gave their lives that day.
To purport that FDR knowingly allowed thousands of Americans to die, so that he could get America into the war is preposterous.
What were his motives?
He didn’t get rich off the war.
He died in office while serving as Commander-in-Chief, so that was some motivation, huh?
Why do you feel the need to denigrate the memory of the men (and women) in uniform, both then and now with the idea that they served and some gave their lives for a farce? For if you feel both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor were planned, then isn’t that what they did?
How blind you all are!! I said nothing at all disrespectful of those who died on Pearl Harbor Day or the rest of WW II. I lost family members in that war, and I remember exactly what a grim business that war was because I lived through it. I have a very high respect for all of those who fought and particularly for those who gave their lives, but I don’t have much use for those that I think set them up for that war, the President and his advisers. There is a huge difference there; can you not see that?
Anticsrocks asks for a motivation. How about this. FDR was a Progressive, and just like Progressives today, he was sure that he “knew better” than all those ordinary people out there in this land we call the USA. He was sure we should go to war, particularly in Europe, Asia maybe, maybe not. But he knew that Congress would not buy it because of a spirit of isolationism from WW I 20 years earlier. When you “know” what has to happen, you feel justified in manipulating the situation to make it happen (sound like Obama?). His motivation was to obtain the power to take the country to war when he thought it should happen, even if the majority of the country was opposed. He made it happen. Yes, he died in office, but that proves nothing in one way or the other. He did not get rich; he was already rich.
Anticsrocks asks “if you feel both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor were planned, then isn’t that what they did?” I think that is a pretty poor way to put it. I would say that there are people in government who are willing to go to extreme lengths to manipulate appearances to make us think things are different from what they appear to be. That includes thousands of people without batting an eye. That does not take away from the value of the sacrifice of our armed forces in carrying out orders. It means that our political system is highly corrupt and not to be trusted. The two are not the same at all.
Aye, several times you have brought up the “truther” charge. Yes, it is true I think the Twin Towers were brought down by internally placed explosive charges. In your mind, the very fact that I believe this seems to invalidate everything I say. That is unfortunate. I have made a limited study of the destruction of the Twin Towers (certainly not exhaustive), but what I have read causes me to lean toward the explosive demolition explanation, without any finger pointing as to who would have done it. Let me say that I bring to that study over 40 years as a college professor of engineering and as a practicing engineer, registered in two states. I have a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin so I have a good bit of background to bring to the study of the fall of the towers. If you would like to discuss the technical aspects of this sometime, perhaps we could do this by means of e-mail rather than here in FA. The fact that you do not agree with me does not bother me at all. I’m happy enough with that. What I do not understand is the repeated ad hominem attacks.
When I first came to FA quite some time ago, I was impressed with the substantive content of the comment. Sadly, that has significantly changed. It seems that anyone who is not in line with the management’s orthodoxy is subject to a vicious tongue lashing, a stream of ad hominem attacks – read Mata’s #10 for a prime example. It does not take much intelligence for that, only a supply of venom.
See you around — I’m out of here.
@Dr.D:
Really?
Outside of this thread, I don’t believe I have even discussed the topic.
At all.
Ever.
Links please.
Panic not when you do not receive those links, Aye. Notice that the exiting doc d takes my single comment as a “stream” of ad hominem attacks. My second was a response to his personal offense.
Nor did I expect him to answer anticsrock’s direct question about dying for a “farce”, either. That would be too large a wheel of spin to manage.
That the doc d considers himself so enlightened, and we are mere blind sheeple for not ascribing to his conspiracy theories, is not considered an “attack” in his book.
Then, of course, he’s also not bright enough to consider that he insults that generation for equally being the blind sheeple to serve and support such a purported mad man at the CiC helm.
But mostly, after a heartwretching almost two weeks of helping give primary hospice care for my WWII father (he died at home last month), I’m in no mood for such back handed slaps at the WWII generation. I don’t like hearing it from those playing that game with the Iraq war (which doc d apparently also doesn’t like, according to his linked comment above), and I’ll be darned if I’m going to let such poor taste fly thru on this thread about that generation, with nary a word.
Apparently, the heat is a bit too much in the saloon for the former doc d. ta ta, doc. You can dish it out – assuming we are too dumb to notice we were insulted – but you sure can’t take the right cross to the jaw in return.
Mata, I am sorry for your loss. My Dad is a WWII Vet as well. He was in the invasion of Okinawa and saw a lot of action. It was only recently that he opened up about some of the action he saw. He told me how there was a Japanese soldier who had been caught behind enemy lines because he was injured. My Dad and the guy he was on rear guard duty following their unit with came across this fellow who was moving, just moving slowly – crawling really. Evidently his unit had abandoned him. My Dad and the other American soldier had a decision to make, they could leave the guy and hope that he did not give away their position or they could kill him, thereby protecting their fellow soldiers. The other guy with my Dad went to do it and his gun jammed, so Dad had to dispense with this enemy soldier. He said it was the hardest damned thing he had ever had to do.
My respect for the Military knows no bounds. They are subjected to the hell that is war and then expected to come back home and be a regular civilian again. It just ain’t always that easy.
What makes things harder is that just before Thanksgiving, my Dad had a stroke. He is doing better and giving the therapy folks at the hospital fits because he works so hard. He is determined to come back home and not go to a nursing home. Between you and me, I think this 85 year old man will do it. He has a will of iron.
Thank you, anticsrocks. Painful to lose him, but he died of 95 years of a good life, and 63 years of marriage to the love of his life. I always tried to keep that in mind in those last weeks, and count myself a very lucky lady for my parents, and my family/siblings. Still not quite ready to go there and “share”, but I learned much about hospice in the process.
I’d say your Dad will, indeed, keep his independence. And I hope you help him find ways to do so… there are so many things that can help these days. Not only from churches and charity volunteers, plus the little alert systems you can wear around your neck, but you might even check into the hospice services that do help with some of these things as well. Hospice does not always have to be for those facing imminent death. And your Dad should live out his life, exactly the way he wants. He’s got a lot of years left in him at 85. They came from pretty good stock! As did you.
And I’m quite sure Medicare would be much happier with the smaller aid services as bills, than the full blown nursing home bills. Besides, I don’t trust most of those places….
I shall very much miss the stories from Dad. When he couldn’t hear, couldn’t see, and his mind would be forgetful, you could bring up WWII, and it was like it was yesterday for him. They will always be an amazing generation.
Wordsmith-glad to see that you are back on line-=
Great video-thank you…
C-CS
@Dr.D:
Good riddance. You twoofers annoy the crap out of me…even more then a BraindeadROB does (that is quite an accomplishment).
I could care less how much emaducation you have. For ANYONE to believe that the towers were brought down by some evil conspiracy is beyond stupid, it’s lunacy. You want us to believe 100’s of people kept quiet about a conspiracy of such magnitude when our government can’t keep secrets from being released by a fucking 20 year old Lance Corporal and creepy anarchist?
Geez louise….the insanity of some people.
/rant
And I second what many have said….to have brought your insanity to this thread honoring those who died at Pearl Harbor is just beyond the pale.
Hell, if you don’t leave on your own accord I would ban your ass.
/rant really off now.
👿
I hate Twoofers.
Stupidest MFer’s on the planet.
👿
I hate Twoofers.
Stupidest MFer’s on the planet.
May God bless our vets, and may God give solace to our Mata, and her family.
My father is a WW II vet who served as a naval gunnery officer at Tarrawa, Saipan, Okinawa, and Iwo; he swears he was never in any danger except for losing a sister ship during a typhoon and that some things were too horrible to talk about. We always talk to each other on every Dec 7 and wish each other Pearl Harbor Day comments, he is 88 and says he never expected to live so long.
He wishes we would have found those Japanese carriers and have sunk them or run them off and let all those fighters and dive bombers ditch in the middle of nowhere. He’s still pretty damn mad about Pearl.
Mata, my condolences for your loss.
Right after returning from Florida, Mata sent me this card:
http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=1221321706636&source=jl999
Spacey as I can be, I neglected to thank her for it, so, thank you from the bottom of my heart Mata. While grieving for your great loss, you think of others, that’s just how you are. I play this almost everyday, played it three times this morning. I also thank you for defending and protecting the legacy of the men that stood watch and fought for us.
My dad would have been 90 this year, we lost him in 2000 and we still miss him, our family’s anchor, still. He served onboard the USS Columbia as a gunner. He climbed up one of the flag poles to replace a flag after a kamakazzee hit it. He later received a letter from President Truman, commending him in his own way. In the letter he remarked that he didn’t know if my dad was brave or crazy. We found that letter in a box of stuff after granny passed and had it framed for him.
His craziness started at the age of four with climbing. Granny was fond of telling us how she found him up on top of the windmill and lured him down with the promise of cookies then she spanked him.
He and his brother both enlisted in the Navy because of Pearl Harbor, a brief history of his ship:
http://www.usscolumbiacl-56.com/
MATA, SORRY TO HEAR THAT: YOUR LOVED FATHER IS NOW FULLY IN SPIRIT,
SO PURE AS THE LIGHT OF THE SON OF GOD;
THE SEED WAS COVER WITH A SHELL TO PRESERVED IT SO HE CAN BE PROTECTED, WHILE HE SPROUT TO BUILD A STRONG WELL ROOTED PLANT, AND IT DIE AFTER DOING HIS TASK,
BUT WAIT, LOOK AT WHAT CAME OUT FROM THAT LONELY SEED, THE INCREDIBLE
ACHIEVEMENT OF SO MANY WELL ROOTED BRANCHES, THAT CONTINIUE TO GROW UPWARD TOWARD THE LIGHT, FOREVER.
MISSY, what a beautiful card,from MATA, SHE IS OUR EAGLE HERE, WE ALL LOVE HER,
PERFECT FLIGHT ALL THE TIME, NEVER SWAYED BY THE HARSH WINDS WE CAN HAVE HERE AT FA; AND SHE CHOOSE TO, SHE DESCEND IN ONE STRAIGHT LINE DOWNWARD TO ATTACK
THE OPPONANT, FROM TOP TO BOTTOM, NO ONE CAN RESIST, AND THEY ARE ALL DEFEATED
AND RENDERD UNABLE TO DO ANY RESPONSES.
LOVE THAT COLORFUL EAGLE.
THANK YOU FOR SHARING IT WITH US
DR.D, I dont believe you are DR.D, YOU ARE AN IMPOSTER WHICH STOLE HIS NAME FOR SURE
YOU ARE DIFFRENT, AND NOT LIKE THE REAL ONE
Thank you all for your very kind thoughts on Dad. I’m still blessed to have Mom, 9 years his junior. I treasure each and every moment, every email (since we’re a nation apart in locations…). I hope you all do the same.
I also love hearing the stories of your fathers or grandfathers during WWII. If we do not keep these stories going thru our children, they will be lost… forever distorted by revisionist history books.
Missy and Bees…. yes, that is one extraordinary way to “send flowers”. And who knew what a beautiful bouquet it would be to compile all the state flowers into one? Jacquie Lawson can always wow me with her tasteful creativity, but I think she out-did herself on this one. I’m glad you both liked it.