My WWII story, still in progress VERY slowly, takes place during the last 9 days of WWII. That includes the bombing of Hiroshima and three days later, Nagasaki.
I needed to look up the American reaction to the second bombing. After Hiroshima, the American public was thrilled at the power and supremacy of our nation. We were hot stuff, we'd probably gotten the Japs to their knees and were the leaders of the world. Europe and some of Asia had been ravaged by the Japanese. China had suffered incredibly...like the rape of Nanking, I think it was, where the people were slaughtered without mercy. Hitler had done his own fair share of slaughtering innocents with a true purpose in mind. He liked it. He was an animal. He had no conscience, and apparently, neither did the Japanese military.
There are films of young schoolgirls training to fend off the enemy with sharpened poles. They were told to hate us and they did.
If we were going to win the war, we had to do something drastic, not wait for Stalin to somehow get across the vast expanse of Siberia to join in the war and obliterate the Japs who were in Manchuria and Korea and other places.
So, we dropped a bomb...not just any bomb, but the most destructive force in the world.
The rest is history.
Or is it?
I looked up stuff today about the reaction to the dropping of the bombs. I had seen photos of how the people reacted when they heard about the atomic bomb and Mr. Truman's speech that fateful day to all Americans. But I wanted to find out if any fuss was made over the dropping of the second plutonium bomb, Fat Boy, on Nagasaki.
All I could find was second thought, revisionist history in which people born probably well after the war was over wrote about how big a mistake it was to drop either bomb. How unnecessary it was. How there was no need for a land invasion that would kill a million American forces. It was, in their opinions, a bunch of lies. The Japanese were on their knees already. They had no army left. They deserved to be treated differently.
Yeah. It's easy to sit in the comfort of the future and say what an unnecessary, perhaps even evil thing we did.
How is it that, seen through the cataracts of time, it was a horror?
Yes, it was brutal and we wouldn't do it now because we've made our peace with our enemies, but then, when how many brave men died for the cause of freedom, it was justified.
War is hell. Yes, it is a horror show and evil and bloody and destroys so many lives, not to mention property, because it's the lives we're concerned about. There is nothing good about war--any war, whether a Crusade or Vietnam or this mess we find ourselves in today. But it continues to happen and we continue to rise to the bait and use power against power to see who comes out on top.
What bothers me most is how these historians condemn what was done through the benefit of hindsight. Give me a break. There is nothing good about war, and absolutely nothing good about trying to excuse the outcome or what anyone does in a war. Certainly words written 60 years later will not make anything better. It won't make Hiroshima or Bataan or Burma or Saigon or any of those mud hut towns in faraway places better.
To change history is a mistake. It's not 1984, we can't make up facts, but we can change how they are reported. Facts are. They can't be erased to make people feel less guilty. No confession of evil absolves anyone.
If you can find a veteran, ask him or her how they feel about putting their lives on the line so historians can try to change their reality.
Go ahead.
Try.
Just don't ask one from our more recent conflicts. You might get decked.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Obscuring the Obvious
Back in 1956, a woman named Grace Metalious wrote the novel of her lifetime, Peyton Place. It had it all...rape, incest, promiscuity, money, poverty, New England (four towns thinly disguised) and murder. Instantly, it became a bestseller, sitting on the NYT bestseller list for 59 weeks. Just goes to show you what the reading public wanted back then.
Move ahead to 1957 when it was dramatized for television. So many characters, so many threads, so many arcs to follow, but one sticks in my mind.
Recently widowed, Constance MacKenzie comes back to her hometown with a baby girl, Allison. She is beautiful and tries to live the quiet life...for a reason. Her widowhood does not bear close examination because Allison was born out of wedlock...way out of wedlock and back then, in 1957, by all accounts, that was enough to have a scarlet letter sewn on her dress. She hides her daughter's illegitimacy by buying a framed photograph at Woolworth's of a soldier and standing it on the mantel of their fireplace.
Time passes. Allison (Mia Farrow) grows up, goes to high school. She is pursued by the son of the richest man in town, Rodney Harrington. Now, in the book, old Rod is killed in a car crash. He lives quite well in the TV show, played by the actor who now plays Bones's father (Ryan O'Neal) on the show of that name. He has a younger brother, but the father, the richest guy in town, of course favors his older son, much to the regret of the younger. That comes into play later.
Allison doesn't know she hides a Big Secret. She would LOVE to marry Rodney, but somebody shows up who knows either 1. she's fatherless or 2. also bought the same picture frame at Woolworth's. The jig, as they say, is up.
Allison is crushed to learn she was born on the other side of the blanket from her mother. Her tiny New England town would be aghast and certainly, Rodney will shun her along with everyone else for this fact.
Little does she, and the other people in town know what the truth about marriage among the Puritans was really like.
You see, back in the old, old days, despite the bundling boards and that nonsense, something like 2/3 of all marriages took place because the woman had already conceived the intended's child. It was proof that she could bear children and thus help out on the family farm or enterprise in the future. As long as the couple were married within a certain amount of time (when were shotguns invented?) the child would be deemed legitimate. This is historical fact, though well hidden by the Victorian/American morality that was to follow our puritanical forebears. I'll try to find something to cite here, but I can't remember where I heard this or read it, so it might take awhile. (Blossoms in the Dust w/ Greer Garson as Edna Gladney)
Now, look at today. The TV censors wouldn't blink at this situation. It was hot stuff back when I had to ask what illegitimacy meant. My mother produced my father's 1918 birth certificate that had in the corner, a check box for legitimate or illegitimate. Hers, from 1920, did not have this. Thanks to someone who cared about children, this was taken off all birth certificates in the US by 1926, so that these little babies would not suffer the sins of their parents. There was a movie based on the woman responsible for this, can't remember the name, though.
Today, none of this would matter, not really.
Movie stars, rock stars, government officials...they are affianced to their baby mamas and baby daddies. Nobody blinks.
Poor Allison. She left town and Rodney in shame. Here's where Rodney could have died in a car crash, though. If she could just have held out a little longer, or possibly killed the person who knew her deep, dark secret! And then her mother, because she knew, too. Now that would have been pretty dramatic, even in 1959.
Move ahead to 1957 when it was dramatized for television. So many characters, so many threads, so many arcs to follow, but one sticks in my mind.
Recently widowed, Constance MacKenzie comes back to her hometown with a baby girl, Allison. She is beautiful and tries to live the quiet life...for a reason. Her widowhood does not bear close examination because Allison was born out of wedlock...way out of wedlock and back then, in 1957, by all accounts, that was enough to have a scarlet letter sewn on her dress. She hides her daughter's illegitimacy by buying a framed photograph at Woolworth's of a soldier and standing it on the mantel of their fireplace.
Time passes. Allison (Mia Farrow) grows up, goes to high school. She is pursued by the son of the richest man in town, Rodney Harrington. Now, in the book, old Rod is killed in a car crash. He lives quite well in the TV show, played by the actor who now plays Bones's father (Ryan O'Neal) on the show of that name. He has a younger brother, but the father, the richest guy in town, of course favors his older son, much to the regret of the younger. That comes into play later.
Allison doesn't know she hides a Big Secret. She would LOVE to marry Rodney, but somebody shows up who knows either 1. she's fatherless or 2. also bought the same picture frame at Woolworth's. The jig, as they say, is up.
Allison is crushed to learn she was born on the other side of the blanket from her mother. Her tiny New England town would be aghast and certainly, Rodney will shun her along with everyone else for this fact.
Little does she, and the other people in town know what the truth about marriage among the Puritans was really like.
You see, back in the old, old days, despite the bundling boards and that nonsense, something like 2/3 of all marriages took place because the woman had already conceived the intended's child. It was proof that she could bear children and thus help out on the family farm or enterprise in the future. As long as the couple were married within a certain amount of time (when were shotguns invented?) the child would be deemed legitimate. This is historical fact, though well hidden by the Victorian/American morality that was to follow our puritanical forebears. I'll try to find something to cite here, but I can't remember where I heard this or read it, so it might take awhile. (Blossoms in the Dust w/ Greer Garson as Edna Gladney)
Now, look at today. The TV censors wouldn't blink at this situation. It was hot stuff back when I had to ask what illegitimacy meant. My mother produced my father's 1918 birth certificate that had in the corner, a check box for legitimate or illegitimate. Hers, from 1920, did not have this. Thanks to someone who cared about children, this was taken off all birth certificates in the US by 1926, so that these little babies would not suffer the sins of their parents. There was a movie based on the woman responsible for this, can't remember the name, though.
Today, none of this would matter, not really.
Movie stars, rock stars, government officials...they are affianced to their baby mamas and baby daddies. Nobody blinks.
Poor Allison. She left town and Rodney in shame. Here's where Rodney could have died in a car crash, though. If she could just have held out a little longer, or possibly killed the person who knew her deep, dark secret! And then her mother, because she knew, too. Now that would have been pretty dramatic, even in 1959.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
The vacation
To me, a vacation is doing something I really want to do with boring times stuck in between the good things. It means writing my story, researching and contemplating while relaxing, perhaps visiting a museum or touring different countryside.
It does not mean being stuck in a place where I can't do any of these things. That, I would say, is more like being in prison.
I need quiet. I need time to think. I need a space to write and create. I need some small diversions other than eating.
We just got back from vacation.
I actually managed to hand write three legal size pages of drek. That was all I could do.
If watching the last half of Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark could be considered research, well, that's my research.
I could say a few choice words, all of them blue, because my lovely ideas and plans did not come to fruition. Now, I have to settle down and get with the story.
Oh, just one little bluey stuck in here.
Shit.
It does not mean being stuck in a place where I can't do any of these things. That, I would say, is more like being in prison.
I need quiet. I need time to think. I need a space to write and create. I need some small diversions other than eating.
We just got back from vacation.
I actually managed to hand write three legal size pages of drek. That was all I could do.
If watching the last half of Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark could be considered research, well, that's my research.
I could say a few choice words, all of them blue, because my lovely ideas and plans did not come to fruition. Now, I have to settle down and get with the story.
Oh, just one little bluey stuck in here.
Shit.
Monday, June 30, 2014
More from the Mermaid Arms
Best they
left in the morning, even if he was a louse to throw them out. She’d only make things worse. Her and her girls.
Going around to the side of the house, he
looked up toward the light coming from Number Five.She was there, silhouetted, leaning against the window, traced in silver from starlight.
To his eternal shame, his body reacted to the vision of her, wanting to take her in his arms and hold her, smell her hair, feel the softness of her body against his.
Christ!
How much torture could one man take?
Saturday, June 21, 2014
The rabbits in my life
Every day once the snow melts I look out my window at the back yard gardens. Every day is something new, something different, and as the days grow longer and the green gets greener, our furry friends appear.
Only they aren't cute and cuddly. They want to destroy our plants and eat our green beans and tomatoes.
It used to be the squirrels. Either they're dead or they have moved on.
Sometimes it is the groundhog...I don't know what it eats, but it is HUGE and lives under our neighbor's shed. Big brown slug of a thing...it must eat anything it wants to eat or can find.
And then, there are the bunnies. Yes, they are cute and clever and furry and funny, but once they find our gardens, they become instruments of the devil.
They take one bite from a perfectly ripe, round tomato and leave it on the vine to rot or draw insects or get moldy. They gnaw off the green beans, while leaving the eggplant and peppers alone. I haven't seen anything attack the broccoli or cabbages, but the white butterflies lay their eggs on them and then the plants die for having their roots destroyed.
Forget what happens to our squash! Those IOTD are invisible, possibly worms or a virus even. I love squash and hate to see perfectly good fruit shrivel and die.
But today I happened to see a preciously little bunny chase under the pool deck and wait, wait to get into the garden. It slipped across the yard, beyond the garden then came racing pall mall back through the yard into the perennial garden and hopefully out the six foot chain link fence we had to put up to keep the bloody white tail deer out.
All this for some tomatoes, beans and peppers.
Squash, cabbages and broccoli.
And flowers.
Seems like a lot of work, doesn't it?
Bunnies belong in hutches, not my yard. Grrrr!
Only they aren't cute and cuddly. They want to destroy our plants and eat our green beans and tomatoes.
It used to be the squirrels. Either they're dead or they have moved on.
Sometimes it is the groundhog...I don't know what it eats, but it is HUGE and lives under our neighbor's shed. Big brown slug of a thing...it must eat anything it wants to eat or can find.
And then, there are the bunnies. Yes, they are cute and clever and furry and funny, but once they find our gardens, they become instruments of the devil.
They take one bite from a perfectly ripe, round tomato and leave it on the vine to rot or draw insects or get moldy. They gnaw off the green beans, while leaving the eggplant and peppers alone. I haven't seen anything attack the broccoli or cabbages, but the white butterflies lay their eggs on them and then the plants die for having their roots destroyed.
Forget what happens to our squash! Those IOTD are invisible, possibly worms or a virus even. I love squash and hate to see perfectly good fruit shrivel and die.
But today I happened to see a preciously little bunny chase under the pool deck and wait, wait to get into the garden. It slipped across the yard, beyond the garden then came racing pall mall back through the yard into the perennial garden and hopefully out the six foot chain link fence we had to put up to keep the bloody white tail deer out.
All this for some tomatoes, beans and peppers.
Squash, cabbages and broccoli.
And flowers.
Seems like a lot of work, doesn't it?
Bunnies belong in hutches, not my yard. Grrrr!
Saturday, June 14, 2014
More stupidity
Okay, so we were in Wildwood. The weather was lousy, rainy, cold, foggy. There were times when the ocean disappeared. So I had some time alone to write.
And I did! Sixteen hundred words toward ending WWII, but really not that much closer.
I have to think and "see" the scenes before I write them. The movie in my head doesn't always work. These two fabulous scenes came about because someone's love story inspired me and I forced myself to write the other one. Good character development, though, since this is women's fiction.
To my regret, we did not get to Long Beach Island because the motel claimed not have gotten our reservation. So we came home early.
Even so. I had a good time. My characters had a great time and got further along in their story. BUT, and this is a big one...I don't know where these scenes belong.
And I did! Sixteen hundred words toward ending WWII, but really not that much closer.
I have to think and "see" the scenes before I write them. The movie in my head doesn't always work. These two fabulous scenes came about because someone's love story inspired me and I forced myself to write the other one. Good character development, though, since this is women's fiction.
To my regret, we did not get to Long Beach Island because the motel claimed not have gotten our reservation. So we came home early.
Even so. I had a good time. My characters had a great time and got further along in their story. BUT, and this is a big one...I don't know where these scenes belong.
Monday, June 9, 2014
Stupid, stupid me
I think I mentioned here before that I did a stupid thing with my newest manuscript. I got off the first six chapters then I got sick, so I stopped writing.
Months of research, I copied everything onto paper because I like that and can work on it without a computer. Reams of information about WWII, the Merchant Marine, Long Beach Island. I did interviews with people who were alive then. I went to two museums and searched records. Sally and I drove around, placing where buildings were located all those years ago and what is there now. That way, I could actually let my people walk to places and it would be correct. We found two Victorian houses, mirror images of each other, that will be perfect for the guest house in the story. Writer's privilege to move them around. There were actual houses and guest houses on the beach, which was much wider, but some of them got wrecked during the hurricane of '44. So, I have just about everything set.
Last year, I made a timeline.
But, my big mistake was writing out of sequence. I just wrote here and there, whatever I felt like writing. Little scenes, big scenes.
Anything but not in order. I tried to put what I had done onto the timeline, but I have since not learned my lesson and have written out of sequence again and these things are not on the timeline yet.
DON'T DO THIS, people. Write in sequence. Do not write whatever you want to write then get stuck having to fill in the big gaping holes in the storyline!!!!!!
I need to somehow make sense of the timeline which is written on legal paper, sideways. I can't even copy it. I may have to write it all over again, somehow, but not sideways or vertically.
Regrets, I have a few...for doing it my way.
Months of research, I copied everything onto paper because I like that and can work on it without a computer. Reams of information about WWII, the Merchant Marine, Long Beach Island. I did interviews with people who were alive then. I went to two museums and searched records. Sally and I drove around, placing where buildings were located all those years ago and what is there now. That way, I could actually let my people walk to places and it would be correct. We found two Victorian houses, mirror images of each other, that will be perfect for the guest house in the story. Writer's privilege to move them around. There were actual houses and guest houses on the beach, which was much wider, but some of them got wrecked during the hurricane of '44. So, I have just about everything set.
Last year, I made a timeline.
But, my big mistake was writing out of sequence. I just wrote here and there, whatever I felt like writing. Little scenes, big scenes.
Anything but not in order. I tried to put what I had done onto the timeline, but I have since not learned my lesson and have written out of sequence again and these things are not on the timeline yet.
DON'T DO THIS, people. Write in sequence. Do not write whatever you want to write then get stuck having to fill in the big gaping holes in the storyline!!!!!!
I need to somehow make sense of the timeline which is written on legal paper, sideways. I can't even copy it. I may have to write it all over again, somehow, but not sideways or vertically.
Regrets, I have a few...for doing it my way.
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