Eric Rauchway and I taught a World War II class last quarter. Actually, because of of some health issues on my part, Eric did almost all of the teaching by himself. But we wrote the lectures together, and here’s what I learned about WWII: it totally sucked. No, seriously, it might have been a “good war,” but it was unrelentingly awful. In that vein, I present you with the following delightful anecdote from the June 26, 1944 edition of Time Magazine:
Most Americans were horrified to learn that among the souvenirs which U.S. servicemen have sent back from the South Pacific there have been a few Japanese soldiers’ skulls. They were also shocked to read last week (in Drew Pearson’s Merry-go-Round), that Pennsylvania’s Representative Francis Walter presented Franklin Roosevelt “with a letter-opener made from the forearm of a Jap soldier killed in the Pacific. He apologized for so small a part of the Jap’s anatomy. F.D.R. did not touch it but lit a cigaret.
First, I’m uncomfortable with that spelling of “cigarette.” What’s up with that? And second, having just written a book (yes, I have a new book!*) in which atrocities committed by American soldiers feature prominently, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. And yet, I am — if only because it was Congressman Francis Walter who handed FDR this entirely appropriate gift. What, Congressman Walter, you couldn’t afford a necklace made of ears for the president? Or perhaps an iconic lamp shade fashioned from human skin? I think I need a cigaret.
* Check the sidebar.
I should probably add that I stole this post from the comments section of a friend’s facebook feed. I’m not sure what to do about links in a case like that. Nothing, right? Or do we need to convene a bloggers’ ethics panel? Either way is fine with me.
I’ve come across that spelling a few times, and Google confirms my impression that that was its acme, insofar as it had one. Perhaps someone thought it was more masculine?
Maybe the strangest word in that strange anecdote is “but” — meaning perhaps that the writer would have thought touching the trophy would have given a better reason to smoke?
Vance brings the value added to the blog! (Also, sorry you had to wait for your comment to appear. It’s nothing personal. The blog is set up to moderate every comment from a new arrival.)
Hi Ari! It seemed pretty clear the moderation was an effort to suppress memories of the days when blogging mattered, but if you say so.
Seriously, I’m glad to see you online, and look forward to reading your book. Consider that the anecdote is almost as close in time to the Sand Creek Massacre as to today….
“This book will be auto-delivered wirelessly to your Kindle on February 11, 2013.”
If you remove “cigarette” from the n-gram you can really see the peak during WWII. But I do recall it from my youth (1960s); the n-gram shows it really deciining after 1970 or so.
Meant to link.
So you think it’s not just more masculine, as Vance suggested, but also “when we smoke we don’t smoke ‘cigarettes,’ like those sissified Frenchmen, we smoke ‘cigarets!'”?
I have no freaking clue. Was just describing the details of the n-gram and my own memories of its use. There was a secondary peak about 1932 as well. In doing some of the time period searches, it appears that it must have been that way in the Life style guide for a few years in the ’40s. But even then still just a small fraction of the usage compared to “cigarette.”
Interesting that you should talk about this, given that I was just reading a book review of *Kill Anything that Moves* by Nick Turse in the Feb. 4 issue of The Nation.. Writing about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, “Turse shows that what were often presented as isolated atrocities—episodes of devastation, murder, massacre, rape torture—were in fact the norm, a continuous stream of atrocity that unfolded year after year throughout the country.” A regular heart of darkness and all that. You can quote me on this–the 20th century sucked big time.
I haven’t read Turse’s book yet. I’d like to, but I’ve been busy with shameless self-promotion. Regardless, yeah, it wasn’t a great century. Unlike the others, which were awesome!
Oh gosh — Eugene Sledge’s memoir of the Pacific war (which is VERY MUCH worth reading) is packed with far worse. One of the most awful vignettes was dramatized for HBO’s “The Pacific,” and even appalled a Ranger veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq whom I know.
The Japanese, of course, were well familiar with far worse atrocity in the same period.
Yeah, the atrocity itself isn’t even a bit surprising. As you say, the Pacific theater was brutal (actually, as I noted in the post, the whole war was a parade of horrors). But in this case, it’s a US congressman who’s giving the trophy to FDR. I mean, I hate congress as much as the next guy, but that’s some pretty dark shit.
Well in keeping with an institution that accommodated Preston Brooks, Strom Thurmond, and Ted Kennedy.
Fair point.
Here is one of my standard teaching images for WWII. Few of my photos of atrocities seem to shock my students, but this one does.
http://www.timelifepictures.com/source/search/details_pop.aspx?iid=50693116&cdi=0
Hey, Matthew! That’s a particularly effective image, I think, because of gender, class, and race: “What’s a well-dressed, white lady doing with a skull on her desk? Rehearsing for Hamlet? No, silly! It’s a souvenir her boyfriend sent her from his time island hopping in the Pacific!” Which is to say, I think it’s the context, not the presence of human remains, that retains the ability to shock.
Just to clarify what might already be clear, I think that image is shocking for the same reason as the anecdote I posted above: because no matter how much one knows about the atrocities committed during WWII, one still doesn’t expect an upper-middle class woman — regardless of her race, I think — to have the skull of a Japanese soldier sitting on her desk, just as one doesn’t expect a congressman to hand the president human remains as a token of his esteem. I’m pretty sure this is why you posted your comment, Matthew, so I’ll stop belaboring the obvious now.
I am, though, going to write a post about this later this evening, bringing things back to Sand Creek and the question of how to teach students about atrocities. Stay tuned!
Can you pretty please post the readings for that WWII class?
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