Vanishing Generation, Part 7 - Okinawa - Episode 7

Tee Senn, cryptologist, speaks of the tank battles, about the reality, not TV, and seeing a tank explode. "...For years...you wake up...it gets to you...it's something that you don't ever want to have happen again...but we do...I'm anti-war."

John Hammond Moore, LSM-R 193, recalls that on May 11, 1945, "the Japanese...it was their last big blast of kamakazes...on that day, they threw everything they had left at all the positions, including us...I saw this plane...completely out of place...off in the distance...a group of ships, two destroyers...our ship, and then two smaller ships...in the unit...we were about 50 miles off northwest of Okinawa... according to that citation, we were attacked by 156 planes...one of the destroyers set a record for the war....shot down 23 planes in 23 minutes." He continues, "...they abandoned ship, which they shouldn't have done...we went alongside and took the wounded and eventually towed the ship into the harbor." He continues the story about a friend from the Boston area who seemed to make Moore responsible for what was going on. 

Standards

• Along with the rest of the world, the United States and South Carolina experienced economic instability during this period. As a result, political instability and worldwide conflict consumed the world in the 1940s. Following World War II, the United States emerged as a world leader through political policies and economic growth.
  • 5.3.CX Contextualize the technological and geographic influence on military strategies in the Pacific and European theaters of war of World War II.
• This indicator was designed to promote inquiry into military and economic policies during World War II, to include the significance of military bases in South Carolina. This indicator was also developed to foster inquiry into postwar economic developments and demographic changes, to include the immigration of Jewish refugees following the Holocaust.
  • 8.5.CO Compare South Carolina and U.S. wartime contributions and demobilization after World War II.
• This indicator was constructed to facilitate inquiry into how economic conditions prompted an evolution of fiscal and monetary policy featuring significant turning points. This indicator also supports inquiry into the laissez-faire policies of the 1920s, the balance of free markets and government intervention of the 1930s, and the command economies during World War I and World War II.
  • USHC.4.CO Develop a comparative analysis of the motives for and outcomes of American policies regarding foreign intervention.

Resources