BOOK Report! “Black Snow” by James M. Scott

 

Both of my parents lived through the nightmare that was World War II. Maybe yours did too.

And if not, you’ve surely been taught and hopefully learned about it. You’ve heard about how Japan attacked our fifty-first state’s Pearl Harbor in the Pacific for no real reason. Clearly one of the most horrific events in history, which we do not, as humankind, want to repeat.

What may not apply to all of the above are the intricate details which led up to the USA effectively ending the war via the application of the world’s first atomic bomb. This book report is about the hardcover book which I just finished reading, “Black Snow” by James M. Scott [Norton, $35.00, 978-1-324-00299-4].

“Black Snow” is not a book about a race riot during a New England winter (pun intended), but an historical and well-researched factual account of the American response to that surprise Pearl Harbor attack, as well as the effect it had on the Japanese island’s population.

I hadn’t thought much about “the BIG one” recently, except when, upon watching a PBS news show, I see the atrocities going on in Ukraine – where I visited ten years ago before Russia’s invasion – at the hand of a despot who I call “Paranoid Putin”. His all-too-frequent use of the word “nuclear” is, at the very least, reckless and demented. Another in that club is the North Korean guy, who I call “Kim Young (mentally) Ill” who also gave me pause when I perused “Black Snow” at my local public library. I borrowed it with curious enthusiasm of the read which played-out as if watching a movie about the war!

The research that author James M Scott must have done to humanize and connect the people who lived in Tokyo with the people in our US Army Air Force (there was not a separate “Air Force” at the time), and Navy, to describe their intersection towards a common direction to end the war at that juncture is, in and of itself, worth the read!

Black Snow is not meant as a thorough history of what lead up to Pearl Harbor, but instead, it focuses more upon three main American military commander men: General Hayword Hansell,Jr., Brigadier General Emmett “Rosie” O’Donnell, Henry “Hap” Arnold, and General Curtis LeMay and their strategies, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, to punish Japan for their unprovoked, misguided attack in 1941 and the events that led up to, and including the first use of the atom bomb.  

However, the central character (protagonist maybe?) in this book, in my opinion, is the B29 “Superfortress” airplane, without which we could have never conducted the successful campaign to bring stubborn Japan to its knees. The surrounding result and vivid descriptions of the effects on the targets is so much worth your reading time!   There is a tactic that they used successfully, which I will not mention in this review, fore that would betray part of the plot and insights.

These so-called “leaders” of countries in the current news, who rattle sabers of war, should accept living within their borders, pay attention acutely to the brutal lessons of eighty years ago and also read this book, for the sake of peace on Earth forevermore, “lest we repeat the mistakes of the past” as my father, “The Major”, used to caution at the dinner table while watching Walter Cronkite on CBS’s Evening News.

It is the hope and prayer of this book report’s author; we’ve all been fortunate to have come such a long and successful way.  Thank you for reading and please lend your comment.  Highly recommended for English language enthusiasts due to the many dictionary reaching words, world history buffs and educators.  

~ Peace.

Independence Day 2015 Thought From An Original American

I believe that,

Too many undesirable immigrants have come!

Look at what happened as,

In many big USA cities,

We look like a third world country.

Ever since I played this Neil Diamond song

On the radio in the early 1980s.

Too many I say because

Theses newbies do not assimilate

Why we are and who from,

America is independent!

I would be an isolationist President.

No today’s settlers only seek to rape;

Our storied culture instead of learning

Sending back to their poor country,

Money here they are earning.

Not wanting to be true “Americans”.

Shamefully we let them do this after nine-eleven,

Running scared instead of doing

A Harry Truman-like,

Enola Gay blast versus our enimies.

Wiping the asswipes from threatening us.

“Today”, Neil sings and yet

This  4th of July holiday,

We, our government has done little to

Annihilate the constant threat

That undid the life I was promised by

Our parents after World War II.

Now down is up,

Up is down and America,

Who once historically

Separated from overbearing British England

Is now seen by many

As a nation of clowns.

September 11, 2001, How I Would Have, If President, Banned a Taliban forever

I loved the World Trade Center towers and had many occasions to visit them and even DJ/co-emcee at a party there once upon a night.  Granted that hindsight is 20/20, but I said this then on September 11, 2001, and I say it now, and had our “leader” been as bold as he talked tough or as those in the war-torn past century, we wouldn’t be pouring money needed here in “the States” into an unwinnable war in Afghanistan today, or Iraq yesterday.  I would have chosen the Truman option; I’d have nuked the hell out of wherever we thought Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts were and possibly leveled Afghanistan by September 15, 2001.

The Japanese in WWII were as brutal to our troops and civilians as Al Qaeda/Taliban was on “9/11”, and that is all the justification I would have needed.  The United States strayed from being no-holds- barred under President Clinton who wrongly instituted “political correctness” at home and abroad.  All that did was make this country look vulnerable and weak.  There are no “safe” wars, and innocents will get killed if you are to win.

I always hear my Dad, the late WWII U.S. Army Major (one of few Black American men to achieve that rank back then) say about our fighting in Vietnam that “we are fighting with one arm tied behind our backs.”  I am sure he would say the same thing today about the USA pouring resources needed at home into fighting those who are engaging in a mythical “holy war”  if he were still with us here in the physical world.  He had another prophecy that he expounded to my Mum and I back in the early 1990s, “They are building a silent army and Trojan Horse over here…”  By “they” back then he meant “Arabs” because we didn’t speak in terms of “Muslims” unless talking about the U.S./Chicago-based Nation of Islam.  Noticing the influx of these new “immigrants”, he felt that they had meaner intentions than those who came to Ellis Island earlier in the twentieth century when he was a young man.  Prophecy fulfilled.

If you are the big, bad “superpower” and you let some upstart fanatic bloody your lip and don’t squash them then and there, you get what we have now and you are not so “super” anymore.  Where was the Enola Gay when we needed her – and the guts to use it?

With all the fuss over whether Iran is building a nuclear program, I wonder why, when if you have the ability to use one when attacked viciously, you don’t.  I do not see that as the high road, but an off-ramp.