Last Man Rescued

Every once in a great while, I read something new in my studies of World War II that makes my jaw go slack. In early 1944, the Allied Strategic Bomber Offensive adopted the transportation plan attacking German synthetic oil plants whenever possible and otherwise attacking the German rail system. By February of 1945, German rail traffic was at a standstill. A few months later, while reading Richard Frank’s Downfall, I learned that in the Pacific, the U.S. Army Air Force did not adopt their version of the transportation plan until August 11 of 1945, just before the end of the war.

On August 12, bad weather made flying missions against Japan impossible. On August 13, a young Army P-47 pilot named Bill Taylor flew a mission to strafe railroad traffic on Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese home islands. His plane took a great deal of ground fire and, by a narrow margin, he managed to fly his crippled aircraft out to sea before making a crash landing on the water. He got into his one-man life raft and noticed that he was within sight of the Japanese coast. He knew full well that if the Japanese spotted him and sent a boat after him, his chances of survival would be nonexistent. The Japanese had a habit of killing downed American flyers in very unpleasant ways. At first, Lieutenant Taylor told himself he wasn’t going to pray just because he was in a bad situation. However, after twenty-four hours in the water, he changed his mind. He later related that he told God that if he lived, he would become a minister…and a gymnastics coach.

In the early morning hours of August 15, the last day of the war, a U.S. Navy ship managed to pick him up and Bill Taylor achieved the distinction of being the very last man rescued in the entire war in the Pacific. Little did he know at the time that he had almost exactly another fifty years to live. Lieutenant Taylor made good on his promises. He became an ordained minister…and a gymnastics coach. In later years, I got to know Bill Taylor pretty well. When I was a kid, he was my church’s youth minister and he taught a gymnastics program. Stop snickering people, Reverend Taylor was a good gymnastics coach and more than forty years ago, I was a pretty good gymnast. Bill Taylor is just a footnote to history. He also plays a role in a great historic “what might have been.” A great many Americans engaged in guilt-mongering over the end of the war in the Pacific with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What most people fail to understand is that the results could have been far worse. The U.S. Army Air Force only targeted the Japanese rail system for the last four days of the war. Had the bombing continued, the country would have been completely destroyed. This, along with the near-total destruction of Japanese merchant marine shipping, would have had ghastly consequences. Before the development of Japanese ocean shipping and rail in the 1850s,, the population of Japan was just under 30 million people. During World War II it was 70 million.

Readers, it staggers the imagination what would have happened to Japan’s civilian population with no effective food distribution system. Way before the end of 1945, Japan would have faced a famine reminiscent of what the Ukraine experienced in the early 1930s. Even after a Japanese invasion, please explain how the Japanese could have fed their people without a rail system. When General MacArthur arrived in late August of 1945, he soon became aware of the desperate nature of the Japanese food situation. He ordered his troops not to eat the local food to avoid exacerbating the situation and he cabled his superiors in Washington, “Send me food or send me bullets.” Only prompt American grain shipments prevented catastrophe. Even with American aid, the entire population of Japan was on very short rations until late 1946.

All things considered, General MacArthur and the American occupation authorities showed the Japanese a great deal more humanity than the Japanese ever showed any country they overran.

Stan “The Man” Wilder – Another Bodacious Bailiff

On the fifth floor of the Franklin County Courthouse, one of the more conspicuous figures is a bailiff by the name of Stan Wilder. He’s a fine professional, and I’ve always enjoyed working in his courtroom. A few months ago, I had a teenage client who showed up for court dressed like a real gangsta, with low-hanging pants that would have fit Dumbo the elephant. As we entered the courtroom, Bailiff Wilder said to my client, “Tuck your shirt in and pull your pants up.”Mr. Wilder’s tone of voice and demeanor would have made a Marine drill instructor proud. The kid immediately pulled his pants up and tucked his shirt in. If Mr. Wilder told that kid to sit down, I doubt he would have stopped to look for a chair.

A few minutes later, after we’d resolved the kid’s case, I commented to Mr. Wilder that if that kid had someone like him at home, the kid would not be in court to begin with. I managed to get Mr. Wilder to crack a smile.

Deborah Pryce

A few months ago, I was having lunch with my father at the independent living center where he resides. He pointed out to me that Deborah Pryce, who is the Congressperson for this district. He also mentioned to me that Representative Pryce had adopted a biracial child and commented in his most sage voice, “She’s going to have problems later on.” I managed to refrain from banging my head on the table in exasperation. Instead, I let out a very deep sigh and patiently explained to my father that as a lawyer who spends a great deal of his time in juvenile court, I know more than any sane human being about what it takes for a child to wind up in a PCC (Permanent Change of Custody). Unless someone resents some charge of positively horrendous conduct on the part of Representative Pryce, I would say that the child she adopted has won the grand price in the adoption sweepstakes. I realize that my father’s perceptions of race relations are rooted in his experiences growing up in Arkansas in the 1920s and 1930s. I also manage to mildly comment that if my father knew anyone of any color or social status who went through life without having any problems, I would very much like to know who they are.

Visit to Lucasville

More than ten years ago, a woman retained me to look into the case of her one-time boyfriend who was serving thirty years to life in Lucasville. (That’s Ohio’s maximum-security prison.) I learned that he’d taken a plea bargain to avoid a possible death sentence. He had been charged with stabbing a convenience store clerk to death in order to steal a case of beer. Shortly after that incident, his girlfriend discovered that she was pregnant. Welcome to the world, kid. You are so screwed. I found the visitor’s waiting room at Lucasville one of the most depressing places I’ve ever seen. A great many women with children, and most of the white women had biracial kids. Well, maybe one of those kids will grow up to become President, but that’s not where the smart money goes.

I did speak with the young man at some length and found no basis for an appeal. Trying to be useful, I did manage to make one helpful recommendation: that when his first parole hearing rolled around in twenty years, that he might want to get rid of the three-inch swastika tattooed on the back of his left hand.

Just recently, another lawyer pointed out to me that, perhaps, that young man’s tattoo was not so much a political statement as an effort to protect himself from would-be predators.

James Trimble and Christina Ricci

In the movie The Addams Family, Christina Ricci played Wednesday Addams and, in once scene, arrives at an Addams family Halloween party dressed in her every day clothes. When a sweet old lady asks the young lady, only 11 years old, what she has come dressed as, Ricci replies, in a matter-of-fact voice, “I am dressed like a psychopathic serial killer…We look the same as everybody else.”

I was reminded of Ricci’s comment a few years later. I was once a member of a National Guard contingent in Athens, Ohio. The platoon sergeant was a man named James Trimble. I thought he knew his job quite well and I couldn’t help but notice he wore the 82nd Airborne patch on his right shoulder. Years before, he had seen combat in Grenada. One month, I noticed Trimble wasn’t around and I made some inquiries. To my shock and horror, I learned that he was in London Correctional Facility for having molested his own seven-year-old daughter. I enquired further and, with the permission of Trimble’s family, I consulted with his defense counsel. I actually read the confession he had signed. I even visited Trimble in prison. While he was evasive, he did not deny the charge against him. That conversation took place almost twenty years ago. I still cannot fathom how anyone could commit such a horrible act against any child, let alone their own. Perhaps Christina Ricci and the writers of The Addams Family had a point: sometimes psychopaths look just like everyone else.

Sherman’s Straight Shooting

General William Tecumseh Sherman is remembered today, 125 years after his death, for two quotations. One is “War is hell,” and the second is, “The Sherman Statement.” Sherman was a great soldier who had absolutely no political ambitions. This is a rather ironic because both his adopted father and his older brother John were U.S. Senator. He once commented that if he had the choice between serving three years in Washington, D.C. or the same amount of time in prison, he would gladly choose the latter. After triumph of President Grant’s second term, some Republicans tried to encourage Sherman to be a candidate for President. Sherman wouldn’t hear of it. He stated categorically, “I will not run if nominated and will not serve if elected.”

This put the kibosh on any “draft Sherman” movement. Today, any time a politician denies having Presidential ambitions, reporters will follow up by asking, “Are you willing to make a Sherman statement?” I have yet to hear anyone do so. General Sherman set a standard for straight shooting that will never be exceeded, unparalleled in the past century.

Walter Brennan’s Secret

Some of my readers might remember Walter Brennan as a character actor in Westerns who usually played the excited old codger who bursts into the sheriff’s office, proclaiming, “Sheeeriff, Sheeeriff! Black Bart’s come into town and says he’s aiming to kill ya! What you reckon we oughta do?” It comes as no surprise that in the 1930s, Walter Brennan won three Academy Awards as Best Supporting Actor in the short space of five years. A few actors have won three times, but no one has ever done so in such a short period of time. I recently learned Walter Brennan’s secret. Back in the 1930s, film extras were allowed to vote for Oscar winners and, apparently, Brennan was extraordinarily nice to the extras on his films. Shortly after, Brennan won his third Oscar, the Academy changed the rules and eliminated the film extras from the voting pool. I’ve never seen any of Brennan’s Oscar acceptance speeches, but I hope he remembered to thank the little people.