Charlie Rose

JohnGelles  06/10/2011 05:30 AM Report

CORRECTION:

..... ..... "her book and David's book are two of a kind: American history writ as large as can be -- especially for me."

The day we heard aboard the USS LST 1142, nearing an invasion fleet anchorage of what seemed like (and may have been) 10,000 American warships, troop carriers and freighters, after crossing the whole Pacific ocean alone at 10 Knots) -- heard that we had dropped an atom bomb on Japan, I told my ship mates the war would over immediately.

I was an ensign and the most junior officer on board. I was the boat officer, with six 36 foot Higgins boats in quick-launch davits on both sides of the LST, and 24 enlisted men to man them. We had trained in Florida and come aboard the brand new LST at Mobile Alabama, and proceeded to the invasion fleet by way of Hawaii, where we picked up gasoline in 50 gallon drums to bring to the invasion of Japan as are first assignment.

When I heard of the bomb my first reaction was to remember Lawrence and the cyclotron at the University of California and of the bomb that uranium could make. I immediately realized that I had seen nothing of the bomb for three or four years -- whereas before I joined the Navy I had read much of it in the magazines of the day when I studied physics in high school. I followed th war closely in the papers from September 1939, when I turned 14 until I enlisted in 1943 when I was 17. I was commissioned at 18, after several years of college (and Army ROTC) and after 90 days at Midshipman's School, the latter at Cornell College in Ithaca, NY.

To my mind the absence of stories about the bomb, that had been frequent before it was known it could be built, meant that what was speculation in 1939 had become fact in 1945.

In all events my theory proved right and the war was over almost immediately. We left the invasion fleet, unloaded our gasoline, and proceeded in short order to bring the Seventh Marine Division Headquarters company to China and re-patriate Japanese civilians from Tsingtao and Shanghai.

Needless to say, the bomb was a blessing to us -- no invasion, just occupation. The cost of the war to Japanese civilians from fire bombing and from the two atom bombs was tragic. They were under the spell of a military dictatorship and an Emperor who was seen as a God.

Jennet Conant's grand father was a giant and hero to us. At Roosevelt's side he had helped to guide thousands of our most brilliant scientists into roles that won the logistical side of th war. Many of them also fought the bloody war their weapons and systems allowed us to win.

David McCullough told us why we had to win (if possible) and what civilization is good for. His is the voice of reason and remembrance of the best of America's contribution to humanity that we are privileged to enjoy.

He and Charlie Rose are not doom-sayers -- and need not be. Too many of those are heard today -- it is almost as though the world that that Japan and Germany fought for was the one they think we have given them. We have not.

The world that Jennet Conant's grandfather made possible, that has been less than perfect, defeated fascism black and red, and is now ready for the science he headed up that will usher in economic democracy if only Charlie Rose gets it together and brings us the voices of economists from the University of Missouri at Kansas City who remember how functional finance as an embryo guided the Keynesian tools of WW II. Conant's Harvard has deserted us and offers ancient models. But America is ready for a new birth of freedom from wage slavery and debt burdened money.

Money and debt are first cousins. Both are promises. But money can promise full employment or less than that. When Conant ruled the world of science, Abba Lerner was teaching us how money can deliver full employment and must -- if the democracy we fought for in the last century is not to perish in this one.

JohnGelles  06/10/2011 04:25 AM Report

It's 1:20 am in Ventura California. I got out of bed and went to the dining room computer so as not to disturb Linda. I wanted to write that the David McCullough conversation was Charlie's finest show ever. David offered the meat. But Charlie helped us to eat it -- he was a fine chef in assistance.

I knew I would have to write on someone else's page. Thank God I only had to delay ten minutes -- and that Jennet Conant is who she is and wrote what she did. I am pleased to say her book and David's book a to of a kind: American history writ as large as can be -- especially for me.