This is pretty cool. I didn’t know such a film existed. WWII buffs will love this.
I’d seen the still photographs of this historic event but never knew of the existence of the video until now.
My friend Buck was the communications officer on the USS Nicholas, which was one of 3 destroyers selected to escort the Missouri into Tokyo Bay for the surrender. Here is a brief story of its participation.
It’s one of his great regrets that he was not on the ship at that time – he had taken leave and was getting married back in the States, and he and his wife bickered for decades afterward about how their marriage had cost him his chance to be at such a historic event.
The Nicholas served in WWII, the Korean War, and in Vietnam before retirement, earning a total of 21 battle stars, more than any other ship in US Navy history.
Wow at the bolded.
And Jeez man, are you one of the board elders, or what?
I am 49, my father who died recently at 89 was in WW2, and I am acquainted with a couple of the guys who served with him in WW2 … though I don’t consider myself elderly.
[And I have a color acetate photo of the signing somewhere at Mom’s house]
You and he must be outliers in some respects then. I am 41 and my Dad was born in 1941. He was a 1963 graduate from West Point and served in Vietnam twice. You must have been born pretty late in the game. Both my grandfathers served in WWII, the last of whom expired in 2004, and he was born in 1912, so he was 92. His mom lived to be 97. Those stubborn Scots live forever it seems.
I’ll never forget my visit to a nursing home to meet my great-grandmother in Florida in the 1990’s. She was 92 at the time and completely lucid, though her senses were failing her.
I’ll never forget her cradling my Mom’s face in her hands to identify her, and her saying “Bonnie? That’s you, isn’t it? I can’t see you!” while my Mom choked back tears and comforted her.
It was a deja-vu moment for sure. That was the only time I saw my Mom as an adult woman interact with her grandmother. It was weird and expectedly heartbreaking for me. My Mom was a child all over again for a moment, declaring “I’m here Grandma” right to her face as I watched it.
I’ll never forget it, and I wryly smile about the fact that my Mom and Dad are now grandparents to my children in light of that. I’ve never brought it up with my Mom. Maybe I should.
Buck just turned 90, but I’m only 52.
I met him several years ago over breakfast with a mutual friend. We’ve had breakfast together almost every Sunday morning for years now. He has entertained me with hundreds of war stories and educated me on lots of other things as well – after the war he became a professor of horticulture and became one of the world’s premier experts on beets, of all things.
I was very fortunate to be able to do one thing for him. I gave him my tattered copy of a Ballentine edition of a book called Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara, thinking he might be interested on the perspective of someone who served on a similar ship on the other side of the war. I didn’t realize at the time that Buck’s ship and Captain Hara’s had actually exchanged fire in the waters off Guadalcanal. Buck thought it was a great book and was tickled pink, and bought all the copies of the book he could find (it was out of print at the time), and sent them off to a bunch of his old Navy buddies. On a later trip to Japan he arranged to have dinner with two of Captain Hara’s children and pay his respects to an old foe (Captain Hara was middle aged during the war and died back in 1980). Also, Captain Hara’s book was reprinted by the US Naval Institute partly because of the urging of one of Buck’s buddies.
I still find it amazing that the act of looking for a suitable birthday present for an old friend, and ultimately just pulling one of my own books off my shelf to become the gift, could have such widespread effects. Actually, I’m thinking this is worth its own thread.
This is in “Mundane Pointless Things I Must Share”? Wow, my definition of mundane and pointless is a lot different than yours.
Eh, sounds like the typical “nuclear bomb you bring up when you’re arguing” thing.
ETA: No joke intended, seriously!
Definitely an outlier. Mom worked in an aircraft factory engineering department during the war, her last project was the X1 as a matter of fact =) Dad went mustang for officer, and in 1947 they decided to send him to college to get some degree or another, where he met Mom. [She was working in the factory for her rumspringa, and decided she preferred the english life.] Dad joined the army because his side of the family has a tradition of one son going into military service and being the oldest, he went. They got married in 1949, and he kept shifting duty stations between US and overseas, so they never actually spent enough time together through most of the 50s to manage to have kids [and there was a series of miscarriages through the 50s.] My sister popped out when he was stationed at Fort Dix in 57, my brother popped out at Fort Ord in 59 and I popped out at Wiesbaden in 61.
My mom’s father oddly enough served in WW1, he was a runner as he was a conscientious objector and wouldn’t carry a gun. He got mustard gassed and sent back to the family farm with crappy vision and weak lungs. He lived long enough to meet my brother, but not me. My great uncle Ray was also in WW1, but he died in the early 50s. My great aunt Bessie ended up a missionary for a short time in the early 1910s, and my paternal grandmother was wierd and actually had 2 chinese roommates in college in the late 19teens :eek: In the 50s my dad ‘loaned’ the husband of one of these lovely ladies a fair amount of money that ultimately went to pay bribes to get a lot of people out after the communists took over mainland China. My family owned one of the few fabric mill companies in the US that outright refused to unionize several times [and at one point in time in the mid 60s the straw that broke the camels back and made my grandfather decide to sell out] my brother and I had a fairly valid threat of kidnapping by union organizers in an attempt to let them come in and organize. Oddly enough the reason that the factory workers in totality refused to unionize was the reason that we are not rich now - my grandfather kept the mills open, fully staffed with the payroll coming out of our own bank accounts. The only thing that really saved the family from total bankruptcy was the contracts from the government to supply the army and navy with fabrics for various purposes with the start of the war. He was able to fill several contracts with warehoused fabrics that had been made to keep his workers busy and on the payroll. The finances never fully recovered, but we had the most amazingly loyal employees.
Stubborn scot, yup. Dad’s side of the family are Welsh, Manx and Scots with a tad of English and Dutch [Van Patens from when NY was Nieu Amsterdam:D.] Mom is German from way back. We actually figured out that mrAru is actually a distant relative from back in the early 1700s in the US so we tease each other about being hillbillys 
Thanks for sharing that, aruvqan. That was equal parts interesting, explanatory, heartwarming, tragic and funny.
