From:  Marc Yablonka

    Date:   August 23, 2019
Subject:   A Little WWII History

Regarding Dick's mention of Ike's warning to take photos of the dead Jews in the concentration camps because in the future people will deny that it happened, as the story goes, when he was leading his generals--Bradley, Patton, etc.--around one of the camps, old "Blood and Guts" Patton couldn't take it. He dropped to his knees and vomited. Of course, I'd have done the same!​​


   From:  Frank Rogers

    Date:  August 24, 2019
Subject:  A Little WWII History

Not only did Ike order pictures, but ordered officials and people of the nearby towns be taken to the sites to see for themselves so they would have the proof and could not reports. 
FrankR


   From:  Marc Yablonka

    Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Stan, 
As we all know, Hitler was not the only monster masquerading in the form of a human being. Whoever was responsible for the tragedy in Rwanda, Pol Pot in Cambodia in the late 70s, Stalin in the USSR, where he off'd millions in the 50s, the Turks wiping out a million Armenians in 1915. All have the same genocidal markings on their skin. There's the oft spoken expression my people use: "Never Again!". To me that means not turning away because it's not happening to me or my people, all of us fighting back with everything we have, and stopping monsters such as these before they spread their evil in the world ever again. 
Marc



   From:;  Marc Yablonka

    Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Amen Stan! 
Marc Phillip Yablonka


   From:  Tim Bodle

    Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Bob, 
I remember Walter Cronkite had a news show where he showed a lot of the film we took of the camps.?? How could anyone deny it ever happened?


   From:  Bob Morecook

​     Date:  August 25, 2019
Subject:  A Little WWII History

AND he ordered Army photographers to take moving film of the townspeople viewing the atrocities. I actually have some of that on video. I used to show it in my psychology classes.

Bob M


   From:  Stan Pratt

    Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Marc, 
We all need to make certain that they are stopped and that the world sees them for what they really are. 
Stan


   From:  Marc Yablonka

​    Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Totally agree. 
Marc Phillip Yablonka​

   From:  Nancy Smoyer

  ​  Date:  August 25, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Bob, 
I kind of remember seeing some of those films but I can't think what their reactions were. Can you tell us more about it? And why you used them in your psychology class? 
Nancy


   From:  Stan Pratt

    Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Marc, 
Thanks for the very personal story.  I certainly know that it happened but at the same time cannot believe that a leader of a nation could be so ruthless and even worse how the people of that nation would follow him. 
Stan


   From:  Dick Ellis

​     Date:  August 22, 2019

Subject:  Operation Magic Carpet

This email has incredible pictures of our military returning home from WWII. We can't imagine what it took to get these guys home. We now have a country who is not speaking German or Japanese because of the sacrifices these young men & women made, so we are a free country. Our children and grandchildren have no idea how patriotic us old timers feel, and will never forget.  (I turned 3 in 1945, so I can’t say I remember how I felt at the end of the war.) This is email has proof of history you'll probably never see in our children's school books today. Share it please; pictures are worth a 1,000 words. Remember what Eisenhower said at the end of the war, "Take pictures of the dead Holocaust Jewish people, a generation or two will never believe it happened!!!" 

-----------------------------------------------------------

 Operation Magic Carpet 


Returning the troops home after WWII was a daunting task.... The “Magic Carpet” that flew everyone home. In 1939, there were 334,000 servicemen, not counting the Coast Guard. In 1945, there were over 12 million, including the Coast Guard. At the end of the war, over 8 million of these men and women were scattered overseas in Europe, the Pacific and Asia. Shipping them out wasn’t a particular problem but getting them home was a massive logistical headache. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall had already established committees to address the issue in 1943. 

Soldiers returning home on the USS General Harry Taylor in August 1945

When Germany fell in May 1945, the US. Navy was still busy fighting in the Pacific, and couldn’t assist. The job of transporting 3 million men home fell to the Army and the Merchant Marine. 300 Victory and Liberty cargo ships were converted to troop transports for the task. During the war, 148,000 troops crossed the Atlantic west to east each month; the rush home ramped this up to 435,000 a month over 14 months. 

Hammocks crammed into available spaces aboard the USS Intrepid


In October 1945, with the war in Asia also over, the Navy started chipping in, converting all available vessels to transport duty. On smaller ships like destroyers, capable of carrying perhaps 300 men, soldiers were told to hang their hammocks in whatever nook and cranny they could find. Carriers were particularly useful, as their large open hangar decks could house 3,000 or more troops in relative comfort, with bunks, sometimes in stacks of five welded or bolted in 


Bunks aboard the Army transport SS Pennant


The Navy wasn’t picky, though: cruisers, battleships, hospital ships, even LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank) were packed full of men yearning for home. Two British ocean liners under American control, the RMS Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, had already served as troop transports before and continued to do so during the operation, each capable of carrying up to 15,000 people at a time, though their normal, peacetime capacity was less than 2,200. Twenty-nine ships were dedicated to transporting war brides: women married to American soldiers during the war. 


Troops performing a lifeboat drill on board the Queen Mary in December 1944, before Operation Magic Carpet

The Japanese surrender in August 1945 came none too soon, but it put an extra burden on Operation Magic Carpet. The war in Asia had been expected to go well into 1946 and the Navy and the War Shipping Administration were hard-pressed to bring home all the soldiers who now had to get home earlier than anticipated. The transports carrying them also had to collect numerous POWs from recently liberated Japanese camps, many of whom suffered from malnutrition and illness. 

U.S. soldiers recently liberated from Japanese POW camps

The time to get home depended a lot on the circumstances. USS Lake Champlain, a brand new Essex-class carrier that arrived too late for the war, could cross the Atlantic and take 3,300 troops home in a little under 4 days and 8 hours. Meanwhile, troops going home from Australia or India would sometimes spend months on slower vessels.


Hangar of the USS Wasp during the operation 

There was enormous pressure on the operation to bring home as many men as possible by Christmas 1945. Therefore, a sub-operation, Operation Santa Claus, was dedicated to the purpose. Due to storms at sea and an overabundance of soldiers eligible for return home, however, Santa Claus could only return a fraction in time, and still not quite home - but at least to American soil. The nation’s transportation network was overloaded, trains heading west from the East Coast were on average 6 hours behind schedule, and trains heading east from the West Coast were twice that late. 

The crowded flight deck of the USS Saratoga 

The USS Saratoga transported home a total of 29,204 servicemen during Operation Magic Carpet, more than any other ship. Many freshly discharged men found themselves stuck in separation centers but faced an outpouring of love and friendliness from the locals. Many townsfolk took in freshly arrived troops and invited them to Christmas dinner in their homes. Still others gave their train tickets to soldiers, and still others organized quick parties at local train stations for men on layover. A Los Angeles taxi driver took six soldiers all the way to Chicago; another took a carload of men to Manhattan, the Bronx, Pittsburgh, Long Island, Buffalo and New Hampshire.  Neither of the drivers accepted a fare beyond the cost of gas. 

Overjoyed troops returning home on the battleship USS Texas


All in all, though, the Christmas deadline proved untenable. The last 29 troop transports, carrying some 200,000 men from the China-India-Burma theater, arrived to America in April 1946, bringing Operation Magic Carpet to an end, and an additional 127,000 soldiers still took until September to return home and finally lay down the burden of war. GOD BLESS THE GREAT GENERATION (Above) And the Generations that have served this Great Nation since WW II ! 

A Veteran - whether active duty, retired, served one hitch, or reservist - is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The Government of the United States of America", for an amount of "up to and including their life." That is honor, and there are too many people in this country who no longer understand it -Author unknown. And God Bless America

   From:  Marc Yablonka

     Date:  August 22, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Dick, My late dad once told me that when the troop ship that brought him home from the South Pacific after the war crossed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Bay, there were so many troops aboard ship that it was (his words) "Damn near listing at 45 degrees."

Marc


AFVN Group Conversations

World War 2 - A Little History

August 2019

   From:  Steve Sevits

    Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

"Never again” doesn’t seem to have much sense of validity when we reflect upon the atrocities of Pol Pot and Rwanda. It seems humanity seems to have less reaction when the victims are oriental or Africans. 
We must endeavor to remember they, too, are human beings who hurt and bleed just like us. They, too, deserve the same human rights and freedom from travail just like us. 
It takes a truly evil system and truly evil individual to perceive other human beings as lesser. Unfortunately there seems to be no means of preventing either, evil systems or evil individuals, the best we can do is remember the atrocities of the past and vigorously oppose them whenever they arise.

​​

   From:  Steve Pennington

​     Date:  August 22, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

My Dad came back from the Aleutians in late '42. He went up in '41 before the War started. He told me that the passenger ship he was on had to lay to, and wait for a tide change so they could sail over Ripple Rock. Ripple Rock was finally blown up in 1958. Cheers.

Steve


   From:  Marc Yablonka

  ​  Date:  August 26, 2019

Subject:  A Little WWII History

Except to those who were there and, by the grace of God and their own fortitude, survived, Stan. My grandmother was one such person. She my (future) mother and aunt, were holed up in a small French village at one point, where only the Catholic priest, knew they were Jews. My grandmother would go to Mass every chance she got and take communion just to keep up appearances. There were other occurrences for which my mom and aunt owe her their lives to her as well. 
Marc Phillip Yablonka