Category Archives: people

Theodore Roosevelt  and fake news

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Please pardon us for some introductory observations that recall our very recent past, but—

Our most current former president got pretty prickly when somebody had the temerity to suggest he was wrong (which has led to one observer in our social circle suggesting the official White House pet should have been a porcupine).

No matter how much he complained about “fake news,” there’s nothing fake about his exit from the biggest pulpit he will ever have.  He came along several decades late because—

This country once had a law against using “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about our government or the flag or the armed forces or making comments that led others to hold the government in contempt during wartime. There are some today who think that’s a dandy idea, particularly as the longest war in our history appears to have seized back the headlines and complaints about “fake news” and a new war—against a virus—has ignited even more hostility toward those who tell us this war won’t just go away.

And a lot of people apparently side with the President who labels anything in the press that runs counter to his remarks or ideas to be “fake news” published by “enemies of the people.”  But the president has done a pretty good job, himself, of violating the century-old law against speaking poorly of the government. And his most recent tirade, mostly “fake facts” of the kind of which he has thrived, and its consequences are unforgiveable.

The Sedition Act of 1918 was an extension of the Espionage Act of 1917, both products of World War One.  People could go to prison for twenty years for expressing an opinion somebody found un-American.

Kansas City Star editor William Rockhill Nelson had a good friend named Teddy Roosevelt who was concerned about the nation’s readiness for war.  Nelson convinced Roosevelt he should put his ideas in print with the Star, which would then circulate the editorials throughout the country.  Roosevelt promptly called himself the newest “cub reporter” on the Star staff.  He typed his first column in the Star newsroom while he was in town for a visit in September, 1917.  His column published the next May 7 made the case for people to say bad things about a President if they thought he deserved it. His column resonates today (we have emphasized the part about free speech and the press and underlined a particularly important word):

The legislation now being enacted by Congress should deal drastically with sedition. It should also guarantee the right of the press and people to speak the truth freely of all their public servants, including the President, and to criticize them in the severest terms of truth whenever they come short in their public duty. Finally, Congress should grant the Executive the amplest powers to act as an executive and should hold him to stern accountability for failure so to act, but it should itself do the actual lawmaking and should clearly define the lines and limits of action and should retain and use the fullest powers of investigation into and supervision over such action. Sedition is a form of treason. It is an offense against the country, not against the President. At this time to oppose the draft or sending our armies to Europe, to uphold Germany, to attack our allies, to oppose raising the money necessary to carry on the war are at least forms of sedition, while to act as a German spy or to encourage German spies to use money or intrigue in the corrupt service of Germany, to tamper with our war manufactures and to encourage our soldiers to desert or to fail in their duty, and all similar actions are forms of undoubtedly illegal sedition. For some of these offenses death should be summarily inflicted. For all the punishment should be severe.

The Administration has been gravely remiss in dealing with such acts.

Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where the people are themselves free. Our Government is the servant of the people, whereas in Germany it is the master of the people. This is because the American people are free and the German are not free. The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

During the last year the Administration has shown itself anxious to punish the newspapers which uphold the war, but which told the truth about the Administration’s failure to conduct the war efficiently, whereas it has failed to proceed against various powerful newspapers which opposed the war or attacked our allies or directly or indirectly aided Germany against this country, as these papers upheld the Administration and defended the inefficiency. Therefore, no additional power should be given the Administration to deal with papers for criticizing the Administration. And, moreover, Congress should closely scrutinize the way the Postmaster-General and Attorney-General have already exercised discrimination between the papers they prosecuted and the papers they failed to prosecute.

Congress should give the President full power for efficient executive action. It should not abrogate its own power. It should define how he is to reorganize the Administration. It should say how large an army we are to have and not leave the decision to the amiable Secretary of War, who has for two years shown such inefficiency. It should declare for an army of five million men and inform the Secretary that it would give him more the minute he asks for more.

All of this is from a man who, as President, filed a libel suit against Joseph Pulitzer after Pulitzer’s New York World disclosed that a syndicate involving friends of Roosevelt and his favored successor, William Howard Taft, made a lot of money from the United States’ purchase of land from France for the Panama Canal.  The Indianapolis News also was sued.

When an Indiana judge threw out the suit against the News, Roosevelt called him “a crook and a jackass.”  Sounds pretty contemporary to us.

Roosevelt dictated his last column for the Kansas City newspaper on January 3, 1919. Three days later he died.

When You’ve Been President—-

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What else is there?

It’s the old, “What do you get somebody who has everything?”

Our current president will be our most immediate past-president soon and his lack of interest in giving up control of (1) the office, (2) the country, and (3) the Republican Party has sent us off to find out what ex-presidents for the past century have done after departing the biggest stage in the world.

What we have found is that past-presidents didn’t exactly disappear but many did keep or have kept low profiles. Others remained politically visible although none has tried to maintain power as our current president wants to do.

CALVIN COOLIDGE (1923-1929) succeed Warren G. Harding on Harding’s death.  Coolidge is remembered as “Silent Cal” for his disdain for lengthy public pronouncements. In one of his stage presentations, Will Rogers referred to Coolidge as “a tight chewer and a close spitter.” His announcement, “I do not choose to run for President in 1928” is part of our political tradition. Rutgers University History Professor David Greenberg has written, “He was never one who loved power or fame and was ready to be ‘relieved of the pretensions and delusions of public life.’” He spent his first four years out of office writing his autobiography and in 1931 wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column. He died January 5, 1933.

HERBERT HOOVER (1929-1933) was only 58 when he left the presidency, the fall guy for the Great Depression. He was wealthy enough that he did not need to work and  historian David Hamilton at the University of Kentucky says, “Few Republicans in the 1930s wanted Hoover involved in party politics because of his negative standing in the popular mind.”  He independently became a strong critic of Roosevelt’s New Deal and considered many of its programs “fascistic.” In 1938 he met Adolph Hitler and let him know in no uncertain terms that he strongly disliked Hitler’s shouting during their private meeting.  He did not favor American intervention in Europe until the attack on Pearl Harbor, at which point he—as did most “America First” figures—changed his mind. Roosevelt appointed him to head an international relief organization for Poland, Finland, and Belgium. He continued working under President Truman on food issues for the war-torn countries and in 1947 became the chairman of a commission to reorganize the executive branch of government. The Hoover Commission as it was called, disappointed Congressional Republicans who hoped it would dismantle FDR’s programs. Instead, the commission strengthened the Executive Branch, laying the groundwork for the modern presidency. He was critical of Truman’s decision to intervene in Korea. Hamilton says he supported a buildup of naval and air power, felt Europeans could do more to defend themselves against the Soviet Union. He supported Ohio Senator Robert Taft for President in 1948 and 1952, Eisenhower in ’56. He wasn’t fond of Richard Nixon and endorsed Barry Goldwater in 1964, shortly before his death at the age of ninety.

HARRY TRUMAN (1945-1953), plain-spoken in the White House, remained plain-spoken in private life. His library in Independence was built with private funds. He enjoyed spending time at his office there and in talking with groups that came for tours, especially school children. After losing the New Hampshire Primary in 1952, he withdrew as a candidate for a full term and pushed for Adlai Stevenson to be his party’s nominee. Stevenson lost to Dwight Eisenhower and lost again in ’56. Truman often criticized Eisenhower policies. Alonzo Hamby, an Ohio University history professor, says he got along better with John Kennedy although he once thought Kennedy was too young and too Catholic to be a successful candidate for the job. Hamby says he was more comfortable with Lyndon Johnson and his antagonistic attitude toward Richard Nixon was often made clear. He died the day after Christmas, 1972.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1953-1961), who switched his first two names early in life (he was born David Dwight Eisenhower) retired to his farm adjacent to the Gettysburg battlefield. He and Mamie wintered in Indian Wells, California. They travelled. “Ike” remained a World War II icon for thousands of American veterans. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson consulted him.  But he was not aggressively involved in politics—as Truman had been—beyond that.

LYNDON JOHNSON (1963-1969) stunned the nation with his announcement on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek another term as President.  The Vietnam War and the heavy public criticism of his policies led him to announced, “With America’s sons in the fields far away, with America’s future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world’s hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office—the presidency of this country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” Johnson was not a well man when he left the presidency. He spent his remaining days writing his memoirs, overseeing the development of his presidential library, tending to his investments, and enjoying life at his beloved Texas ranch. He died on January 22, 1973. University of South Carolina historian Kent Germany recalls his death happened one day before the Paris Peace Accords ended the Vietnam War and two days before what would have been his second term had be run and been re-elected.

RICHARD NIXON (1969-1974) was deeply in debt when he resigned in disgrace and returned to California with a lot of unpaid lawyers’ bills. He survived some health problems later that year and regained his financial footing by penning his autobiography and by accepting $600,000 for a series of interviews with David Frost, a British television personality. Researcher Ken Hughes at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center recounts the international community had trouble grasping the seriousness of Watergate, leading to Nixon’s cautious re-entry on the public stage with his 1976 trip to China, where he was warmly received. He made his first public speech to a small group in Kentucky in 1978 and in 1980 moved to New York, then to New Jersey. Nixon became a trusted but non-publicized advisor to later Presidents Carter, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush as a recognized expert on foreign policy. He wrote several books. When he died in 1994, President Clinton eulogized him, “”May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.”

GERALD FORD (1974-1977) seemed to settle into a comfortable retirement in California. He was a frequent lecturer and wrote an autobiography and some other books.  He raised eyebrows as a potential Vice-President for Ronald Reagan, a bid that fizzled when word of it became public. He continued to write extensively and served on various corporate boards.  In 2001 he co-chaired the National Commission on Federal Election Reform. Ford died the day after Christmas, 2006, thirty-four years to the day after the death of Harry Truman.

JIMMY CARTER (1977-1981) is regarded by some as a much better former-president than a president. He returned to his home state of Georgia where he “emerged as a champion of human rights and worked for several charitable causes,” according to Washignton and Lee University Professor of Politics Robert Strong. He founded the Carter Presidential Center at Emory University  which is known for studying matters related to human rights and democracy. His work with Habitat for Humanity is widely known and he has served as an unofficial international ambassador mediating disputes between our State Department and “the most volatile of foreign leaders including Libya’s Muammar Qaddaffi and North Korea’s Kim Il Sung.  He also has written several books. Since 2015 he has been treated for concer of the liver and the brain and has battled other health issues—all the while continuing to teach Sunday School when he can at Atlanta’s Maranatha Baptist Church. Last October first, he became the first past-president to reach his 96th birthday (he was the first to reach 95,too).

RONALD REAGAN (1981-1989), who popularized the so-called “Eleventh Commandment” created by California GOP chairman Gaylord Parkinson, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican,”  a commandment pulverized by his current successor in the White House, retired to live the good life riding his horses on his California ranch, organizing his memoirs, and writing his autobiography until August, 1994 when he issued an open letter to the American people that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Toward the end of his letter, he said, “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”  He mostly withdrew from the public eye after that and died almost ten years later, his final years the impetus for millions of dollars in donations for Alzheimer’s research. It was a graceful exit for a former actor.

GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH (1989-1993) enjoyed retirement back in Houston, Texas where he became just another private citizens—as much as a former president can become one. Professor Stephen Knott at the United States Naval War College recalls he sat on various boards, including a Houston hospital board, and was active, with wife Barbara, in their church. They also enjoyed summers at their place in Kennebunkport, Maine. He and Bill Clinton, who defeated in his re-election bid, became close friends when they jointly raised money for tsunami relief in Southeast Asia. He was not active in politics until his two sons became governors of Florida and Texas, with George W. making to the White House as the first son of a former president to hold the office since John Quincy Adams was elected in 1824. He was 94 when he died in 2018, seven months after the death Barbara, his wife of 73 years.

BILL CLINTON (1993-2001) has been one of our most visible ex-presidents as a frequent speaker, political analyst, and founder of the Clinton Presidential Foundation. University of Virginia Professor Russell Riley says the foundation’s agenda “includes combating HIV/AIDS, fostering racial and ethnic reconciliation, and promoting the economic empowerment of poor people.”  It was impossible for him to stay out of the political spotlight although he was not the center of attraction in 2016 when his wife, Hillary, polled more popular votes than Donald Trump but lost in the electoral college.

GEORGE W. BUSH (2001-2009), “Bush 43” as some call him, is comfortably retired, commenting, “I think part of having a fulfilling life is to be challenged. I’m challenged on the golf course, I’m challenged to stay fit, and I’m challenged by my paintings…I am happy.”  He left office with sixty percent of the American people think he was a below-average President and with an approval rating of 33%.  University of Louisville Professor Gary Gregg II says Bush, “no typical politician, he seemed to enjoy the relaxation and time away from power.”  He has, for the most part, stayed away from politics, becoming just another private citizen hosting barbecues at his home and going to local events. He was inspired by one of his heroes, Winston Churchill, to take up painting. He’s gotten some national attention for his portrayals of world leaders he met during his time in the White House and of his pets. Gregg says the George W. Bush Center at Southern Methodist University continues “discussions about the best policies to foster economic growth, human freedom, education, global health, and various women’s initiatives. He is active in charity work such as an annual 62-mile bike ride and a golf tournament that raises money for wounded veterans. He’s also gone to Africa to hike awareness of cervical cancer.

He has stayed aloof from politics and issued a statement after the 2020 election saying in part,     “The fact that so many of our fellow citizens participated in this election is a positive sign of the health of our democracy and a reminder to the world of its strength. No matter how you voted, your vote counted. President Trump has the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, and any unresolved issues will be properly adjudicated. The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”

BARACK OBAMA (2009-2017) left office ranked in one poll as the second-most popular President since World War II (Ronald Reagan was a point higher). Rhodes College Professor Michael Nelson notes a C-SPAN survey of  91 presidential scholars, presidential historians, and political scientists ranked him as the 12th best president in American history (Reagan was 8th).  He and his popular First Lady, Michelle, have written best-selling autobiographies. Both have been highly visible as public speakers with the former president catching flack for taking $400,000 for one speech although Jeff Wallenfeldt writes for the Encyclopedia Britannica that “supporters countered that those high gees contributed to making it possible for Obama to donate some $3 million to job-training programs for low-income residents of the Chicago area.”

As his successor appeared intent on rolling back many programs of the Obama administration policies, Wallenfeldt says, Obama “for the most part honored the unwritten tradition of former presidents refraining from criticism of their successor’s actions” although he did object to some Trump policies. He became more vocal in his criticisms during the 2020 campaign and served as Joe Biden’s wingman in the closing months of the effort to unseat President Trump expressing confidence in “the character and leadership ability” of his former vice-president.

(These preceding assessments are based on writings for the University of Virginia’s Miller Center except for the Wallenfeldt assessment of the post-presidential career of Obama.)

Donald Trump exit from the office will become an addition to a trick trivia question: “How many Presidents did not die in the United States?”  The new answer, for now, will be five—Carter, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, and now, Trump.

All of our past presidents have given up power gracefully although several remained outspoken about the course of the nation after their return to civilian life. The nation has been able to move beyond them, allowing a new leader to rise or fall on his own. Whether the nation moves beyond Donald Trump, who believes he can continue to run the country by his own means outside of the Oval Office, is something the nation will have to prove for itself—and can prove for itself if it acknowledges service in its highest office is a gift from its citizens of temporary authority, not a grant of perpetual power.

Things seemed so normal then

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Remember how normal things seemed the last time we gathered on a chilly Monday on the south front of the Capitol lawn for the inauguration of a new governor?

Eric Greitens, a young Republican populist, riding the wave of the Donald Trump-led populist surge nationally, was sworn in as governor in what he referred to in his opening remarks as “our republic’s most revered ritual: the peaceful transfer of power.”

Greitens, who saw the governorship as one step in his eventual trip to the White House, promised to “be loyal to your needs and priorities—not to those who posture or pay for influence.”

Former sheriff and former senator Mike Parson, days removed from open-heart surgery, surprised some of us by being on the platform, taking the oath as Lieutenant Governor.

Jay Ashcroft, son of a former state auditor, attorney general, governor, and U. S. Senator John Ashcroft (only Mel Carnahan matched him by holding four statewide offices in his career), was sworn in as Secretary of State.

Former Senator Eric Schmitt became the new State Treasurer that day.

And University of Missouri law professor Josh Hawley took over as Attorney General after a campaign in which he vowed he would not use the office as a stepping stone to something higher.

Nobody wore masks that day, four years and two days ago.

Eleven days later, another inauguration saw Donald Trump rise to the Presidency, a surprise to many in the Republican establishment and a frightening possibility in the eyes of many who were not his deepest believers.

How normal things seemed even then—despite the uneasiness many felt about the tenor of the campaigns that put Greitens and Trump in office on those days.

A few months after that bright but chilly January day, Greitens was gone, resigning before he could be impeached after refusing to reveal records of his campaign and ongoing finances, and being dragged through the headlines generated by a sex scandal.

His resignation triggered unprecedented chair-swapping in state government.  Mike Parson moved up to governor and appointed term-limited Senate leader Mike Kehoe as the new Lieutenant Governor, an appointment later ruled legal by the Missouri Supreme Court.

Josh Hawley, forgetting his promise not to use his office as a stepping stone, rode the continuing Trump wave to victory over Claire McCaskill two years later, leading Governor Parson to appoint State Treasurer  Schmitt to replace Hawley in the Attorney General’s Office. The House budget chairman, Scott Fitzpatrick, was appointed to become the new Treasurer.

Only Jay Ashcroft remains where voters put him four years and two days ago.

Today is far different from that day four years ago.

Our capitol has emerged from months in a giant plastic cocoon in which workers cleaned and replaced stone put in place more than a century ago, ended serious water leakage problems, and even restored Ceres, the patron goddess of agriculture, to the top of the dome so she once again welcomes those attending today’s ceremonies.

Mike Parson is being sworn in for a term of his own as governor, bearing the scars of dealing with a pandemic, a state economic collapse it caused, and the pain of the budget cuts he had to make–all in an election year.

Eric Greitens’ wife left him; he reportedly is hoping he can rehabilitate himself to seek public office again, although his thoughts of a presidency might be much dimmer than they were when inauguration day was HIS day full of hope.

Josh Hawley, with his own dreams of White House glory, is under intense criticism from former supporters in the public and present colleagues in Washington for his attempt to capitalize on Donald Trump’s conspiracy theories that have led to one of the most alarming political incidents in our lifetimes.

Donald Trump is isolated and increasingly alone, living the bitter final days in power he fears giving up, the idea of a peaceful transfer of power completely foreign to him.

And today we wear masks, our nation still under siege from a terrible virus that has forced us to withdraw from friends and family.

Oddly enough, a sentence from the inaugural address of Eric Greitens on January 9, 2017 comes to mind.

“This state in the heart of America has proven that the worst in our history can be overcome by the best in our people.”

Let us hope and fervently pray that on that, at least, he will be correct.

 

Stop the Steal—Missouri, 1941

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The sordid contemporary events that will forever be a lamentable chapter of American history strongly remind us of a similar lamentable chapter in our own state’s history.

This year is the 80th anniversary of the attempt by majority Democrats to steal the governorship from Republican Forrest Donnell, who had won the governorship by the narrowest margin in state history.  Here is how it went down:

Forrest Donnell, a Sunday-school teacher and lawyer from St. Louis officially defeated one of the pupils in his church class, Lawrence McDaniel, by 3,613 votes. McDaniel was backed by St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann’s political machine that Donnell attacked as a potential successor of the infamous Pendergast Machine of Kansas City, badly weakened because “Boss Tom” had been sent to federal prison for violating tax laws.

Shortly after the election, State Democratic Committee Chairman C. Marion Hulen of Moberly announced the committee would investigate reports of “election irregularities.”  Committeeman Frank H. Lee of Joplin announced he had evidence that McDaniel had actually won by 7,500 votes.

In those days, the Speaker of the House, not the Secretary of State, made the official announcement of winning candidates. The legislature convened on January 8, 1941 but Speaker Morris Osborn made no pronouncements. At a joint session on the tenth, Osborn certified the Democratic candidates for statewide office as winners but refused to certify Donnell.

Traditional inaugural ceremonies on January 13th were cancelled.  Lt. Governor Frank Harris took his oath for a third term in the Missouri Senate, where the Lt. Governor is the chamber President.  The other statewide office holders took their oaths at the Supreme Court.  Donnell refused to be sworn by a Justice of the Peace and, instead, asked the court to order Osborn to declare him the winner. A second lawsuit asked the court to forbid a legislative committee from starting a recount.

Two days later, an angry Stark to a joint legislative session,

Your every thought and every effort should be to prove to the people of this great commonwealth that their faith in democracy is not misplaced, that democracy does and will work in Missouri. Nothing should be done at any time to shake the faith of our people in their democratic form of government. In these perilous times, it is doubly necessary that every public official in the state and in the nation should lean backward in an effort to serve the people strictly according to the constitution and the laws of the land without partisan bias and with only the welfare and the safety of our democratic form of government in mind.

Democrats started a recount anyway.  February was half-gone when the Supreme Court ordered Osborn, under the Constitution, to declare Donnell elected, allowing McDaniel to file a notice contesting the election, triggering a legal recount.  The Joplin Globe editorialized, “Larry McDaniel has at once forfeited the moral support of thousands of Democrats who from the first have been nauseated from the stench from the original office-stealing effort.”

Donnell (left) finally was sworn in on February 26, much to the delight of Lloyd Stark who said he was tired of “living out of a suitcase” while his fellow Democrats tried to overturn the election.

McDaniel’s 226-page contest petition was filed March 4, citing fraud, erroneous tabulations, irregularities, and vote-buying in 56 counties. He claimed that a complete would show that 24,263 votes cast for him were “wrongfully rejected” by election officials and that he was the real winner—by 30,000 votes.  Donnell’s 50,000-word response filed about three weeks later threw McDaniel’s claims back at him claiming problems in 91 counties such as irregular registrations, voting by minors, non-residents, and wards of the government. He claimed he should have an additional 9,000 votes.

The recount started in mid-April and by May had turned into a disaster for McDaniel.  Checked returns from St. Louis City and 81 counties had inflated Donnell’s victory margin by four-thousand votes.  A new joint legislative session was called after McDaniel had arranged for hastily-drawn letters withdrawing his contest. He said he had become convinced that reports by his party leaders and others that there had been massive fraud were “greatly exaggerated” and that he was convinced “beyond question of doubt” that Donnell had been elected. Because the recount was never completed, Donnell’s victory margin remains in our history books and in the official record as 3,613 votes, the second-closest race for governor in state history (Frederick Gardner defeated Henry Lamm by 2,263 votes in 1917).

Forrest Donnell was elected to the U. S. Senate, succeeding Democrat Harry Truman.  He served until 1951 and returned to St. Louis and his law practice. He was the last Republican Governor until Christopher Bond took office in 1973.  Donnell, then 88 years old, attended Bond’s inauguration and took part in the celebration late into the night.  He died in 1980 at the age of 95.

Democrats paid a price for their 1941 shenanigans.  Republicans took control of the House in the 1942 elections by a large margin.

One of the other casualties was St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann who was heavily criticized by winner William Becker for trying to use the election contest of 1941 to establish St. Louis machine control of state government.

A new constitution drafted during Donnell’s term in office took away the power of the Speaker of the House to declare election winners and placed it in the hands of the Secretary of State, the top Missouri elections official, where it resides to this day.

(Photo credit):  Bob Priddy Collection

 

What is a public servant worth?

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The people we elected two months ago to write our laws begin their work at noon today, joining those we elected two years ago.  They are paid $35,915 a year and receive $119 a day per diem. Is that enough?  Knowing that there are those who think they should receive nothing, is there nonetheless a minimum that is appropriate for the burden they shoulder on behalf of all 6.1-million Missourians?

Somebody once told your faithful observer that ministers who think they should be paid more than the average salary of the congregation are not long for that pulpit. That is more likely to work at the church on the corner than at the church on the television.

The latest figures we could find from the Census Bureau says the median household income in Missouri, in 2018 dollars was $53,560.  The per-capita income from 2014-2018, in 2018 dollars, was $29,537.  That means that each adult earned that much. And so did any children, even those asleep in their cribs.

We mention these things because one of the first major challenges to confront the Missouri General Assembly in 2021 will be their salaries and those of others in state government.

Years ago, before the small fire of distrust in politics had been turned into a blowtorch, the legislature established a 21-member Citizens’ Commission on Compensation for Elected Officials to meet every couple of years and study salaries paid to statewide officials, legislators, and judges and recommend any adjustments.  The idea was to lessen voter criticism that lawmakers were feathering their own nests by voting themselves pay increases.

The commission is required to be diverse in makeup.  State law says:

One member must have experience in the field of personnel management, one must represent organized labor; one must represent small business in the state, one must be the chief executive officer of a business doing an average gross annual business in excess of one million dollars; one must represent the health care industry; one must represent agriculture; and two must be over the age of 60 years; two public members appointed by the Governor must be citizens of a third class county (third class counties are small ones) north of the Missouri River, two must be citizens of a third class county south of the Missouri River; one member from each congressional district must be selected at random by the Secretary of State; one member must be a retired judge appointed by the judges of the Supreme Court.

An effort is made to avoid  conflicts of interest.

No state official, no member of the general assembly, no active judge of any court, no employee of the state or any of its institutions, boards, commissions, agencies or other entities, no elected or appointed official or employee of any political subdivision of the state, and no lobbyist as defined by law shall serve as a member of the commission. No parent, spouse, child, or dependent relative of any person ineligible for service on the commission may serve on the commission.

But the commission’s work usually is all for naught for one reason.

The legislature has the power to reject the recommendation.  And it does, time after time, because it fears the folks at home will accuse them of nest-feathering.

The legislature has to reject the recommendations by February 1.  And it’s an all or nothing deal.  Pay hikes have failed for fourteen years not only for legislators but for other elected officials,  because the legislature has rejected every recommendation.

This year’s report, eighteen pages long, does not place a heavy burden on taxpayers. The commission estimates recommended raises for the 197 members of the legislature, all of the state judges, and the six statewide elected officials would cost the state about $200,000 a year, a pittance in a state budget that totals something north of $31-Billion before federal pandemic relief funds were added.

For the people we elected as our State Representatives and State Senators on November 3, the recommendations will mean nothing. They cannot accept pay raises during their current terms in office.  So all 163 members of the House and half of the Senate (17) will not get raises if the recommendations are accepted. For them, the raises will kick in only if they get re-elected.

The commission suggests $37,111 would be fair for legislators, given the responsibilities lawmakers bear year-around, not just during the January-May sessions. The increase amounts to $1,096 for our legislators. That works out to $78.30 a year for the fourteen years since the last raise.

Only eighteen governors have lower salaries than Governor Parson has–$133,821. The commission’s recommendation would give him about $7,000 more.

For those who think government should be run as a business is run, let’s make this a business structure.

Governor Parson is the CEO of MOGOV INC. This is a $35.3 Billion multifaceted company serving people in every county and every town in the state of Missouri and has 197 employees assigned to serve every one of those counties and towns. It has a legal department to make sure the things it does for the people in those counties and towns are fair and proper under the law.  The company has thousands of workers in its central office and branch offices.

Some folks who are not part of the corporation think a lot of those 197 employees are just part-timers. But they’re not.  Those 197 people are at their customers’ beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their heaviest work period is usually January-May but they’re on duty all the time and they have no job security because their contracts that can be terminated every two or every four years. And on top of that, most of them are forced to leave their jobs after eight years regardless of their level of excellence. Once they go out the door, they can never come back. Ever, no matter how competent they are.

Somebody has come along, however, and says fourteen years is a long time to go without a raise; most of these people have never had one, in fact.  Two-and-a-half percent isn’t much of an increase after all these years.

But they’re afraid to take it because their neighbors might talk. And so they’ll probably say, sometime this month, “That’s nice, but, no, that’s okay, you keep it.”

It is true that most of our 197 legislators have jobs in the real world. Only a few live on the salaries that have been frozen for more than a decade.  But that’s not the issue.

You and I choose these people to represent us in one of the most difficult jobs a person can have. We entrust them to enact the policies that govern our lives from birth (or before) to death (and sometimes after). The way they go about it is often sloppy and ugly and not very dignified. But it’s their job and we expect them to find a way to satisfy enough of us that we’ll renew their contract every few years until we are prohibited by an unfortunate constitutional provision to do so.

How much should we pay the people who run a $35 Billion corporation that touches our lives every hour of every day?

They have not come to us to ask for a raise. People who represent us in this corporate structure think it’s time, after fourteen years, to give them a 2.5% bump. After fourteen years.

But they likely will consider it unseemly to take even a little pay raise when the thousands of employees in the central office and the branch offices are still among the lowest-paid in the country and company finances are shaky. This also isn’t a good time because of the problems caused by a pandemic and its impact on the livelihoods of those they work for in each county and town.

The commission has made a nice gesture.  But our public servants are not likely to accept it. Again.

Someday, if enough of the public that has been encouraged for so long to mistrust the people they elect to serve them discovers most of their mistrust has been misplaced, there will be a little raise.  But probably not this time.

Fear of the Mob

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This will be brief.

The U. S. Senate meets Wednesday to confirm the results of the Electoral College. Many Republican Senators and Representatives are up for re-election in 2022.  We’ve been hearing that some of those people don’t want to antagonize our president and his base by quietly agreeing to the results of the election. He already has threatened to “primary” some Republican office-holders who have repudiated his repeatedly-rejected (by the courts) claims of election fraud.

Those who bow to his intimidation are, in effect, signaling that they fear standing against mob rule, for it is clear that this president is unafraid to promote mob behavior in the streets, on the internet, or even in the front yards of elected officials who dare to stand for the truth.

And when the mob becomes a motivator for political decisions, especially if they are decisions focused on individual political futures, it is a slap in the faces of our founders and endangering the constitutional republic they gave us and for which millions have sacrificed their lives to defend.

This is a time to stand against the mob and against the one who thinks it is an acceptable tool to obtain or retain power.  There is never a time for cowardice. There is always a time for courage.

Wednesday will be one of those times.

(We hope Dr. Crane can resume his normal place on Mondays next week.)

Us vs. It—part XII What’s next?

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It’s been a while (August) since we had a Us vs It entry but with vaccines starting to go into people’s arms, we have reached a new stage in this siege.

Even as we remain absorbed by the fight against the Coronavirus, we must start thinking of what comes after.

We will be different when we emerge from this plague. We will see in a glaring spotlight the shortcomings in our American system of doing things.  The list of issues, which must be addressed in ways that bridge a chasm of partisanship, will be long and should be inescapable.

Tough and thorough evaluations need to be made at the federal and state levels of the conditions of our readiness in the current situation and our preparations for readiness for the next wave. The evaluations are too important for Congress or for state legislatures. We need the brutal honesty of something like the Kerner Commission of the late 1960s.

Given social unrest that has flared during this time of the plague, it is good to recall the Kerner Commission not only to prove the point of this post but to highlight what it said more than fifty years ago that is tragically too close to life today.

Many, if not most, of those who read these entries might be too young to remember the commission appointed by President Johnson and headed by former Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. It was formed after disastrous racial violence in 25 cities that far exceeded anything we saw in Ferguson a few years ago or that we have seen in some cities more recently.  The commission’s final report was brutal. It warned that this country was so divided that it was on the verge of becoming two “radically unequal societies—one black, one white.”

We won’t discuss here how accurate that forecast might still be—because we are talking about a different issue that deserves the same tough examination and, if necessary, the same brutal honesty in its assessment.  There are many who think the Kerner Commission’s report, and its severe final assessment, fell on deaf ears. The assessment of what our state and nation need to do in the face of massive threats to our health and to our economy deserves the same severe approach but certainly not the same outcome.

We might need new laws and new regulations to make us better prepared in the public and the private sector for the next pandemic.  It would be unwise to dismiss such things as once-in-a-century events.  Our world has changed and is changing and it’s clear that nothing seems to be constant anymore. And we do not know if our changing world produces a climate more susceptible to new and deadly viruses.

Even now, we recognize the failure to find ways to keep rural hospitals open and the inadequacy of internet communications in many areas (that provide telehealth services, in particular) can no longer be ignored and tolerated.  We are learning that science cannot be dismissed and that those whose roles involve anticipating the next sweeping illness or the next world outbreak must regain their numbers and their status.  We are learning that our healthcare system always must be prepared, staffed, and equipped for the worst—and must not be in a position of determining who lives or dies based on personal financial standing.

We need to be ready at the state level. But pandemics have a tendency to overcome even the best state preparations and financial capabilities. A national crisis requires national leadership, national empathy, and national cooperation with states. It is unfortunately true that states can’t print money but the federal government can and money is a gigantic factor in fighting pandemics all the way down to the smallest communities.

Our experiences might teach us new things about distance learning and suggest some significant changes in our country’s elementary and secondary (and collegiate) education systems.

The economic paralysis should teach us to look more closely at a trend in jobs that we have noticed but to which we haven’t given enough attention—-the growing tendency to use independent contractors instead of having fulltime employees.  The independent contractors often get no fringe benefits and that can have some long-term impacts on retirements but especially (as in times like this) on healthcare.  The number of people who live on commissions and tips who have neither opportunities to create retirement plans nor the money to buy health insurance will grow as our economy changes and their lives should not be imperiled when our country is next ravaged by a new pandemic.

Likewise, the pandemic-caused work-from-home operations will have taught us things about large offices and the need for them.  The entire business model of large buildings for a single business, or single floors in a large building for one company might change because of what we have learned about working away from a central headquarters. The sweatshop still exists in our country but it is rare because of labor laws, fire safety codes, unions, and minimum wage laws that have curtailed those conditions.  Will the Coronavirus doom cubicle farms tomorrow?  Will is lead to a rise in union activity?

What will all of this mean in terms of society—-social gatherings, organizational memberships, business-employee relationships, civic clubs, churches?

We will be remiss if we do not anticipate tomorrow’s society based on what we are learning from today’s pandemic.

Our world is changing in so many categories—climate, economics, education, health, communications—that we cannot continue to have society as usual.

If it takes new laws and new regulations to do something as simple as making sure our healthcare institutions and services maintain adequate supplies of protective apparel, equipment and facilities for treatment,  let’s have them.

To those who would say such positions represent government overreach, there is a basic response.  Government has a role when the private sector abuses its liberties or fails its responsibilities. There is no lack of discussion in these times that such things have happened.  There also is no lack of discussion about how government, itself, has failed to meet its responsibilities to the people who entrust it with their well-being.

All of these issues and more need to be addressed so we know what will come after the virus has gone away.  That’s why new Kerner-type Commissions are needed at the state and federal levels. We are at a point in our existence where the blunt findings are needed and cannot be put on a shelf.  And we, as people, cannot be afraid to address the issues that will be forcefully put in front of us.

Here is a key point:

These commissions should not include elected officials as members.  Partisan Foxes do not belong in Pandemic Assessment Hen Houses.

We appreciate the work our public officials are trying to do in difficult times. It is time to work on the instant issue without wasting time casting blame.  But it is time also to start thinking of what comes after, and what comes after must be an unblinking hard assessment of what is present and what is needed to deal with the next health or economic or health/economic crises that will visit us. We cannot be afraid to do what is needed.

It might make no difference to our generation if we fail to act.  But other generations will sicken and die if we don’t.

Dr. Crane on a New Year, At Last

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(By the end of this week we will have shed ourselves of 2020 and, we hope, soon will shed ourselves of the physical and political ills that have robbed us of our personal and national spirit. The movement of the second hand from one side of midnight to the other side three days hence can move us socially and spiritually to a new place—-at least in our minds, at least for a while. Association Men, the official magazine of the Young Men’s Christian Association, carried this article in its January, 1919 issue, as Dr. Frank Crane reflected upon—-)

THE NEW YEAR AND OPPORTUNITY

The New Year spells Opportunity.

That is its great, outstanding message.

Once a year the old Clock of the Universe strikes, at 12 o’clock on December 31st, and as its strokes thunder around the world they say to men and women everywhere:
“Now, you have a chance to try it again! Begin, begin again!”

Twelve words.

Discouraged boy, tired of waiting, ready to give up, with your heart down and the
devil whispering to you, “What’s the use?” Listen! Don’t you hear the clock? Up
and at it once more! Slough off your discouragement, as a dirty coat, roll up your
sleeves—the world’s your hickory-nut, full of meat, and you’re the boy to crack it.

Young man, wrestling with the Snake called Bad Habit, that is slowly throttling
you, poisoning you, ruining your career, breaking your mother’s heart, and turning
gray your father’s hair—listen! The twelve bells peal across the snow-fields of the earth,
ring out in the mountains and echo in the valleys. They are to you, for you. Begin
again! The Almighty Father thinks of you in every stroke, every beat is a heart pulse
of His meaning, and says, “Life is yours. The Future is yours! Step on your dead
self and rise. All things are yours, for you are Mine.”

Heartsick woman, with your lap full of shattered dreams, there’s resurrection in the New Year. Out of the broken fragments of your hopes you can make something
more beautiful. Heaven and earth are full of unexhausted resources. They are yours.
Only be strong and of a good courage. Don’t give up. No soul can be cheated of its
divine inheritance.

Old man, you’re never too old to come back. A man is only as old as his Will.
Buck up! Don’t you hear the Clock? Opportunity is ringing. There’s a place for
you, work for you, a need for your purpose, a goal still for your high emprise.

No man sinks in the waters of fate but the one cramped with fear. Kick, and
you’ll float.

No man is discharged in the great war of life. Only deserters fight no more.

Come! The Infinite is your friend, surrounds you, presses upon you like the
atmosphere, and will breathe into you tides of power, if you will but open your soul.
And the opener of souls is Courage.

No insuperable calamity can befall me except I be afraid and give up.

What! Have you not lived until this day? Have not the Everlasting Arms held you up till now, even though you be spent, and hungered, torn, bloody, desperate? Still you have Life—then look up to that Concealed One who gave you your Life, and has so far upheld it, and cry, as you tighten your belt, and adjust your gas mask against the asphyxiations of despair, and grasp your good rifle-cry out to Him, who though He seem distant and unknown, is yet “nearer to you than hands and feet, and closer to you than breathing.”

“So long Thy power hath held me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone, –
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

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Dr. Crane in his later years believed himself to be as thorough a Christian as anyone, even though he considered the dogmas and creeds of the churches to be “of little or no consequence.”

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS—-

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—-From two old people waiting for their shots…..

And their two furry companions, who got theirs at the veterinarian store a few weeks ago.

Minnie Mayhem and Maximus Decimus McCattimus have been good but occasionally mischievous company in these times of separation.  They’re not worth a hoot at Mexican Train Dominoes, Rumikub, Five Crowns, or other table games we used to get together with human friends to play but then, our human friends didn’t purr when we rubbed their tummies.

Nancy has gardened in the warm weather, and has continued her work with the church bell choir.  But her trombone in the city band hasn’t been touched for almost a year because the band can’t perform well in masks—except for the percussion section. Bob is trying to find acceptable compromises with the publisher of his book about the history of the Missouri Capitol. This year, his research uncovered the fact that Cole County was not named for the person it had been claiming to be named for, for at least 150 of its 200 years.

We are enjoying Christmas with family and friends as much as possible——in this era of church services on Facebook, and meetings and family gatherings at such strange places as Zoom, Webex, Skype, and GoToMeeting.

Our children and our grandchildren (two of the former, four of the latter) have adjusted, as have millions of others, to the “work from home” lifestyle that includes times of involuntary home-schooling when the public schools decide to do remote learning.

The virus has touched our family only lightly but we have lost some friends and acquaintances to this pandemic and will miss their faces when we emerge from this siege. We wish not to lose any more.

We are glad for several reasons to let go of 2020 and look forward to the return of spontaneity to our lives in 2021—and, perhaps, the opportunity to see friends and family we have dearly missed this year.  We wish the blessings of the season for all of you and only good news in 2021. We encourage you to do the things that will make it possible for us to be together again:

Wear a mask:

Socially distance:

And wash your paws.  Often. Max and Minnie do. You should, too.

Most of all:  Be safe.

Merry Christmas from:

Bob, Nancy, Max and Minnie.

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A seldom-told story of the end of WWII

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This year has been the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.  We’ve see a lot of publications about the anniversary, including V-J day, Victory over Japan day.  We have yet to see one that tells you the story we are about to tell you.

Most of us probably have seen photographs of General MacArthur signing the peace treaty with Japan in ceremonies on the deck of the USS Missouri.

But few of us probably have seen these pictures:

A few weeks ago my long-time friend, Hugh David Waggoner, called to see if I would be interested in an old trunk full of pictures from World War II that had belonged to a man named R. Sheldon Gentry (his first name was Rusaw, which might explain why he used “R” so he wouldn’t have to explain or repeat “Rusaw.”)  The name rang a faint bell with me but I have not been able to pin down who he was.

The pictures you see above are from the trunk.  The photographs and some 70-plus years old newspaper clippings tell the story behind the famous pictures of the surrender on the Missouri.  This story from that trunk is a story not often told, one I had not heard. So we’re going to tell it today because we doubt many of you have heard it, either.

One of the people in the third picture above is of extremely special interest because without him the war might have gone on longer than it did with consequences of immensely tragic proportions beyond the tragedies that had been occurring since Japan invaded China in 1931, the real beginning of the war.

A word, first, about Gentry, who went into the Army as a Second Lieutenant and came out a Major. He was a decorated photo intelligence officer who wound up with two Presidential Citations and two Legions of Merit among his medals because of his expertise in advising bomber crews about their targets. In fact, he went on several missions and helped guide crews to their targets in the southwest Pacific Theatre as the allies closed the noose around Japan.

Three days after the second Atomic Bomb was dropped, Gentry was in an American bomber fifty feet over Nagasaki assessing the damage.  A few days after that, Japan accepted the surrender terms laid down at the Potsdam Conference by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The notification was announced on August 15 by President Truman, the same day the Emperor dramatically announced to his nation that he had ordered all Japanese military forces to stop fighting. It also was the day General McArthur was designated the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

MacArthur immediately ordered the Japanese Imperial Government to send envoys to Manila on the 17th to put the surrender into effect. The delegation was to travel from Japan in a white airplane with green crosses on the fuselage and wings to the island of Ieshima where they would transfer to an American plane that would take them to Manila. The Japanese were granted some extra time to make preparations for the flight—painting an airplane, for example.  On the morning of August 19, the sixteen-member delegation boarded two re-painted Mitsubishi G4M “Betty” bombers and flew to IeShima (the Japanese called it IeJima or Iye Jima), an island in the Okinawa Prefecture.

The Betty was the main bomber used by Japan, often as a torpedo bomber—as it was at Pearl Harbor. It was fast, 265 mph, could fly 3,250 miles. One of its most notable accomplishments was the shocking sinking of the British battleships, Prince of Wales and Repulse during the earliest days of the war, the first battleships sunk in a wartime air attack. But the plane had no armor and no self-sealing fuel tanks, making it vulnerable to a few well-placed shots.  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy at Pearl Harbor and Midway, was sought out and shot down in a Betty over Bougainville in 1943.

But that’s straying from our story.

The pictures at the top of this entry were in Gentry’s trunk.  They show the two disarmed Betty bombers, as the Americans called them—Americans gave male names to Japanese fighter planes and female names to the bombers—being escorted by two Army Air Force B-25s.  The second pictures shows one of them landing.

The delegation was met by American officers who escorted them to one of our C-54s for the flight to Manila.   Notice, in the third picture, the man in the white suit, in the center, wearing glasses. He was the only civilian among the seven men who sat at the negotiating table in Manila, across from seven American military representatives who worked out the final agreement in two sessions the evening of the 19th and the morning of the 20th.

In the trunk is the first teletype message that negotiations for Japanese surrender had been completed and Japanese negotiators would arrive later on the 20th in Tokyo.

But things almost did not turn out well.

The man in the white suit at the negotiations was Katsuo Okazaki, a 5,000 meter runner at the Paris Olympics of 1924.  Although MacArthur’s directive was for negotiators only from the Army and the Navy, the Japanese government decided to have a representative of its own with the group and selected Okazaki, the former second secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Washington and then the director of the research bureau of the foreign office.

The surrender flight to Ie Jima had been a nervous trip for those aboard the two bombers. “At that time the Kamikaze corps was still strong.  We had to make our preparations in secret lest the Kamikazes attack us on the way.  It took longer than we expected…

“We flew from Kisarazu airbase,” he recalled in a late 1947 interview with Ray Falk of the North American Newspaper Alliance. “A little after noon we were off Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, where we were met by American planes. We had been given the call signal, ’Bataan.’”

(The Battle of Bataan in the Japanese Philippine campaign of 1942 ended with a 65-mile forced march of 75,000 captured American and Filipino troops to concentration camps. The march was infamous for the brutality of the Japanese, who beat bayonetted the starved and weak prisoners who were too weak to walk. Thousands of them died on the march or in the camps.)

“When we called, ‘Bataan! Bataan!’ the American pilots answered, ‘Yes, we are Bataan’s watchdog—follow us…’”

The group returned to IeShima after the Manila conference to find one of their planes was undergoing repairs and split up, with half of the group going back to Japan and the other half waiting to fly back later.

“Half an hour before our expected landing time in Japan, the pilot came back and said, ‘I am sorry but we found our gasoline tank is leaking, and we have very little gas left.’ We were flying over water. We didn’t know whether we could reach land. We knew the bomber would not float more than one or two minutes.  Come what may, I was entrusted with all the documents.”

“Fifteen minutes later, the plane crashed, and I made a compete somersault. A second crash and another tumble followed.  I was ready to jump out when the pilot came back and said, ‘Please remain calm and swim ashore.’  We had landed in shallow coastal water.”

The pilot had managed to land the plane near a beach at Hamamatsu, about 285 miles south of Tokyo.

Okazaki went into the water and swam ashore, holding the vital documents above his head. “We couldn’t see where we were for it was so dark,” he continued. “Eventually a full moon rose and we went ashore. Two fishermen from Hamamatsu helped us to get to the Hamamatsu airbase.  The villagers had been reluctant to help us when they saw the plane crash because they thought I was a B-29. We were lucky not to have been attacked as enemies.

“Anyway, we reached Prime Minister Prince Higashi Kuni’s office at 9 o’clock the following morning, only seven hours late.  The cabinet had waited for us all night.

“I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had drowned. General headquarters already was mistrusting us because we were two days late in getting to Manila. What measures the allied armies might have taken are pure conjecture. But they would have been unpleasant. It might have caused the war to continue in view of the fact that our party had to escape from the anti-surrender Kamikaze corps which wanted to continue the war.”

There might have been conjecture on Okazaki’s part in 1947 but there was no conjecture on the part of the allies of 1945 who already had been planning one of the largest amphibious operations in history, Operation Downfall, to start in November.  The second phase would have been launched in early ’46 near Tokyo. Japan knew the invasions were coming but hoped the cost to the allies would be so great that the war would end with an armistice, not a defeat.

The forecasts for casualties varied widely. One estimate from Secretary of War Henry Stimson forecast 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities and as many as four-million total casualties, not counting the 100,000 allied prisoners of war who were to be executed if Japan was invaded.

But for Russia’s late-war invasion from the north and the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with threats of more such attacks—and a swimmer named Katzuo Okazaki—history might have been a great deal more “unpleasant” as Okazaki put it in 1947.

The first advance party of American soldiers arrived in Japan on August 26 with greater numbers arriving two days later, with the surrender ceremonies taking place on an American battleship in Tokyo Bay September 2. Okazaki was part of the Japanese delegation on the Missouri that day.

And what became of him?

The man in the white suit was elected to the Japanese House of Representatives in 1949. Two years later, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida name him Chief Cabinet Secretary and state minister without portfolio. He became Foreign Minister in 1952 and during his three years in that office, signed a Mutual Security Assistance Agreement with American Ambassador John Allison. He retired but was called back to service to be Japan’s delegate to the United Nations from April, 1961 to July, 1963.  He died two years later at the age of 68.

And the Betty bomber, the Mitsubishi G4M1 that carried Okazaki and the others on those historic surrender flights? The Japanese called it the Hamaki, meaning “cigar,” a reference to its shape. Wrecked remains of hundreds of them are scattered throughout Southeast Asia and in the Southwest Pacific. The Smithsonian Air & Space Museum has pieces of one it is slowly restoring. A wrecked one is on display at an air museum in Chino, California.  Two years ago Warbird Digest reported two of the bombers had been recovered from the Solomon Islands for possible restoration. There are no flyable Bettys in existence.

There are more stories in that old trunk, It now resides at the Museum of Missouri Military History at the Ike Skelton Training Center near Jefferson City. We might tell more about Gentry in some later entry.  We haven’t learned much about his post-war years, but his trunk sure has some interesting things about that part of his life and the war he saw and helped fight. Now his trunk and the stories in it are at a place where they will be cared for and appreciated.