There’s been something on my mind for a really long time that raises a lot of questions I wish I could figure out the answers to. It doesn’t puzzle me continuously, but it does come up with somewhat regular frequency, usually but not exclusively at high school commencement exercises, baseball games or any other event where some singer, when nearing the end of the National Anthem, insists on going up to that high A flat at “o’er the land of the freee-HEEEE!!!” My questions are: Who told them to do that? Who ever convinced them that was a good thing to do? Why do they think anyone wants to hear them? How can we eradicate this behavior?
I don’t see much difference between a guy putting a flag tie around his neck and a guy putting a flag around his shoulders. Both are irritating, and if the guy doing it is at the Olympics, it's even more irritating. But that’s just me.
Of course, I'm not saying you should rely solely on movies to give you your history, but I think it can help. I once read an article (non-fiction, so it’s true, but I can’t remember who wrote it) by a guy (I think he was a teacher) who said he was sitting there in the living room watching some World War II movie on tv. His high-school-aged daughter has her friend over, and while the daughter is doing something or other, the friend wanders into the living room and starts watching the movie. After a minute, she says, “What’s this?”
The teacher, a little surprised, but knowing that some students get historical facts mixed up, says, “You know, when we fought the Japanese and the Germans back in the 1940s.” He goes back to his movie, and the girl watches silently for a few minutes.
I didn’t know him. If I had, I would’ve found a heavy book, like an encyclopedia or a world atlas, and chucked it at his head in the hopes that some of the knowledge contained therein would, by momentum, make its way into his brain.
I once thought of writing a book about “History According to
So I enjoy World War II films (as long as they have actors in them that I like), and I think they are important for getting some sense of how people back then experienced the war, but I sometimes question what I see. For instance, I was a little skeptical when I first saw Back to Bataan. In that film, John Wayne refuses to surrender to the Japanese with the rest of the Army and becomes a guerrilla fighter instead. Okay, I have no problem with that, because he did the same thing in They Were Expendable, which is based on a true story, so I know that not every American got herded into concentration camps.
He then rescues Anthony Quinn from the Bataan Death March and Anthony Quinn (playing the fictional grandson of a real Filipino hero) joins the guerrillas, too. All right . . . I'm still with them.
What made me look askance was that Beulah Bondi (most people know her as James Stewart’s mother in It’s a Wonderful Life), who portrayed an American school teacher in the Philippines in Back to Bataan, also hooked up with John Wayne’s outfit and lived, marched, and fought with them for the next three-plus years. I wasn’t sure I could believe that. First of all, can you just picture James Stewart’s mother slogging through the jungle with a gun slung over her shoulder?
Secondly, all the accounts I’d heard of before, both factual (I'm thinking of the woman who wrote The Drainpipe Diary, and the ex-Army doctor I knew back in Provo in the 1970s who spent the war with her two little children in a camp near Manila) and fictional (movies like So Proudly We Hail and Cry ‘Havoc’), led me to believe that American and pro-Allies European women and children in the Philippines were pretty uniformly rounded up and sent to camps.
All that changed for me a couple of weeks ago when I read Guerrilla Wife by Louise Reid Spencer. It’s an autobiographical account, pretty well told and extremely interesting, of a group of Americans in the Philippines – some attached to the Army, some (like Spencer’s husband) working for a mining company there, and some serving as missionaries – who all refused to surrender and who instead took their chances living in the jungle, moving around occasionally to avoid capture.
In addition to describing what they went through for two and a half years, the trials they faced and the loneliness, illnesses, and the losses they suffered, Spencer gives due credit to the Filipinos who sympathized with the Americans and helped them survive, even at the risk of their own lives. The book has humor and suspense and some really sad parts, and it opened my eyes. Now, indeed, I can believe in Beulah Bondi as a guerrilla fighter, right up there with John Wayne.
I also have a collection of World War II movies, and I think it’s a little sad that Guerrilla Wife isn’t one of them. Really, this story would make an excellent film or, even better, a miniseries.
And I also think it’s noteworthy that, in all those patriotic films, regardless of all the flag-waving – and there’s a lot of flag-waving – no one ever screeches the National Anthem. Ever.
9 comments:
hahaha. dad has several of those flag ties. i'm glad i finally know the deep meanings of your post titles :P
i still don't know the deep meanings of your post titles, but i feel like this one is very familiar. like invader zim or something.
it always really bothered me at football games when the singers would feel the need to kick up to that extra note during the national anthem. it made me want to kick them.
you have a lot of world war ii books. would i be interested in reading any of them now? (as opposed to when i actually lived at home...)
it is invader zim! about the ww2 books, I don't know what aspect of the war interests you particularly, but I still recommend 'thirty seconds over tokyo', and of course 'guerrilla wife'. I also really like 'three came home' (the author was in a camp in Borneo), but it's mostly very sad. and my favorite john steinbeck book ever, more than his novels, is his collection of war dispatches called 'once there was a war'.
I liked your post. It was informative and I had a few giggles. My favorite kind. I wish you had taken a video of Ian playing taps. And I would totally watch a movie about the guerrilla wife. But I should probably read some more books first... and about the anthem kick-up thingy, I had noticed they do that so often, but mostly I've numbed myself to it - as I do with lots of stupid things people do.
Hi! I've never "posted a comment" anywhere, but I just read Guerilla Wife and I loved it! It was very exciting and I liked the "innovative" idea (for these days) that the missionaries were decent cooperative and likeable people as opposed to the mad religious fanatics they're portrayed as these days.
Thanks for the oportunity to express myself!
So glad to find someone that has an appreciation for Guerilla Wife. I also wish someone would make a movie of this book, as it is written. It would do very well at the box office.
Leant a friend my copy of "Guerilla Wife" and it's still not found it's way home! Got on Amazon to see if they had a copy for sale and lo and behold if I didn't see your post of appreciation for the book!! Found my copy at a Salvation Army store. I have also thought the same thing, "this would make a wonderful movie".
Sincerely,
Miss Read
I love the set of WWII books that you have shown is it possible to get a list so that I can read them. I noticed that you also have another Guerrilla Wife on the bottom row-- blue cover. With the web it is so much easier to get copy of the book, my first one was found for a dollar at Goodwill during years of searching. I keep loosing them as I loan them out for people to read. I am constantly looking for more information on that time and in that area of the war. My dad talks very little about it and my grandparents died a while ago. But if *I come up with a little info he sometimes elaborates on it. Look forward to seeing your reading list. Thank you
Cliff Schuring Jr.
Cliff - I don't know if you'll see this response, since I didn't see your comment until 15 months after you wrote it (sorry about that), but just in case, here's a list of the books pictured in the photos:
The Drainpipe Diary, by Tressa Cates – a nurse who was a prisoner of the Japanese, she kept a secret diary during her captivity
State of the Nation, by John Dos Passos – he travels around the US interviewing people; sort of a “what’s happening on the homefront” approach
Of Men and War, by John Hersey, five true stories of WWII, but told from the participants’ point of view
Into the Valley, by John Hersey – Hersey’s account of the Marines on Guadalcanal
I Never Left Home, by Bob Hope – account of his travels entertaining the troops
Three Came Home, by Agnes Newton Keith- she, her husband and son were prisoners of the Japanese in Burma
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, by Ted Lawton – Dolittle’s raid on Tokyo from the viewpoint of one of the pilots
Up Front, by Bill Mauldin – newspaper cartoonist at the front in Europe
The Man Who Never Was, by Ewen Montagu– British intelligence fooling the Nazis about the invasion of Sicily
Ill Met By Moonlight, by W Stanley Moss – undercover operation (kidnapping a German general) on the island of Crete
Here Is Your War, by Ernie Pyle – classic dispatches from a correspondent
Brave Men, by Ernie Pyle – more dispatches
Last Chapter, by Ernie Pyle – final dispatches
Air Gunner, by Andy Rooney – Rooney’s experience in the air force
Flight to Arras, by Antoine de Saint Exupery – philosophizing during a reconnaissance flight over occupied France
Guerrilla Wife – you know about this one
Once There Was a War, by John Steinbeck – dispatches from London, North Africa, and Italy
Destination Chungking, by Han Suyin – Chinese woman’s early life and marriage, then the Japanese invade and she and her husband must escape
Guadalcanal Diary, by Richard Tregaskis – classic account of the fight for Guadalcanal
Wear It Proudly, by William Shinji Tsuchida – letters home from Tsuchida, who served as a medic in the 44th Division
Yours Is the Earth, by Margaret Vail – American woman who married a French count and is caught in the Nazi invasion of France; tells how she and her daughter survive and later escape France
The Incredible Year, by Donald J Willis – memoir of an infantry captain in the ETO
They Were Expendable, by William L White – story of the crews of Torpedo Boat Squadron 3 in the Philippines during the battle of Bataan
American Guerrilla in the Philippines, by Ira Wolfert– story of a PT boat officer who headed for the hills on Luzon after the fall of Corregidor, and how he and others organized a guerrilla outfit
Soldier Poetry of the Second World War – reprinted from a Canadian Army newspaper published during the war
Pilot Bails Out, by Don Blanding – poems related to WWII
Poems from the Desert, by members of the Eighth Army - written whil serving in the western desert in 1942-43
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