A Vanished Village

Today's Washington Post has a fascinating story about a unique Polish town.

Trochenbrod, founded in the early 19th century as a way for Jews to avoid long mandatory service in the Russian army, was one of a kind. While there were large Jewish communities in many cities and tiny Jewish farming villages scattered across Eastern Europe, Trochenbrod was an all-Jewish town the likes of which had not existed since ancient times.

The town prospered until the Soviets invaded in 1939, followed two years later by the Germans.

A handful of skilled tradesmen were taken to other towns by the Germans and worked to death or executed. A Jewish historian writing in April 1945, shortly before Germany surrendered, said only 33 of the town's residents were still alive by the end of 1944. By then, the town had returned to Soviet control.

The survivors had nothing to return to. Germans and Ukrainians had burned some of the buildings in the village. Other houses had been looted, disassembled and destroyed by partisans and farmers in the area. After the war, the Soviets bulldozed what remained and turned the land into a collective farm.

Trochenbrod had ceased to exist. [Link]

The FBI Doesn't Like Wise Guys

Eberhard Fuhr was locked up for four years during World War II. His crime? Being German in America.

FBI agents arrested and handcuffed the high school senior six weeks before graduation in front of classmates and teachers. [His brother] Julius was picked up later that day.

"I never returned to school," Fuhr wrote in a 2006 online memoir. "I lost not only belongings in my school locker, but my dignity."

"What would you say to your German cousin if he came to you for sanctuary after coming up the Ohio River in his German U-boat?" he remembers being asked by one of his interrogators.

"I said a sub couldn't come up the Ohio River — it only drafts 4 feet," Fuhr recalls. "I guess I was being a smart guy. It went downhill from there." [Link]

Rip Wasn't Ready to Rest in Peace

Wim Hasman found a World War II mess tin in Germany's Huertgen Forest with the name "Emmit S. Collins" carved into it.

“Under the name — the letters RIP — I thought he was dead,” Hasman said of the information his efforts revealed.

Later, though, a very confused Hasman found mention online of Collins’ death not in 1940s Germany, but in 1999, a world away in Arkansas.

Pearl [Collins], who began communicating with Hasman early last week, was able to explain the engraving.

“That was his nickname when he was in the Army,” she told to a Courier editor when contacted by telephone last Monday. [Link]

Soldier Bagged Two Girlfriends

Egyptian tour guide Kahled Makram found a bag in the Sahara dropped by Alec Ross when he was serving there in World War II. Ross died a few years ago, but Makram is sending the bag to his sister, Irene Porter.

She has been able to read the letters - sent by her parents, herself and her brother's two girlfriends - from photographs put onto disc by Mr Makram.

Mrs Porter, 75, of Burnley, said: "I was stunned when I found out about this and it is just incredible the way the bag has come to light.

"I just wish the bag had been found a few years earlier so that Alec could have been reunited with its contents.

"He would have been thrilled, if a little embarrassed about having had two girlfriends on the go." [Link, via Neatorama]

Moldy Oldies

After Frederick H. Gage's discharge from the Navy in 1946, his duffel bag was forwarded to Ardine Richardson of Strong, Maine. Richardson had no known connection to Gage, so he stuck the bag in his barn. It was found by the barn's current owner, who tracked down Gage's widow, Mary, and returned the duffel bag with its contents intact.

She had some fun -- well, the moldy clothes weren't fun -- going through the contents. There was an empty wallet with the name "Freddy Gage" inscribed on it; a nice Blue Star Service flag; and a blue stocking cap with a name tag stitched inside: "F. Gage, Naval Radio Station."

There was a paperback book -- a War Department Educational Manual, titled "Modern News Reporting" -- and a U.S. Navy sewing kit inscribed "So Sew Sailor."

"No hidden treasure?" Mary was asked.

"Not a dime," she said with a smile. [Link]

Sons' Sub Search Successful

Here's an update of a story I blogged about last year. The sons of a World War II submarine commander have likely found their father's resting place on the floor of the Bering Sea.

The discovery of the USS Grunion on Wednesday night culminates a five-year search led by the sons of its commander, Mannert Abele, and may finally shine a light on the mysterious last moments of the doomed vessel.

"Obviously, this is a very big thing," the oldest son, Bruce Abele, said Thursday from his home in Newton, Mass. "I told my wife about it when she was still in bed and she practically went up to the ceiling."

As news of the search spread, several relatives of the Grunion's crew banded together to locate others with ties to the lost men. To date, the relatives of 69 men are following the progress of the search, said Mary Bentz of Bethesda, Md., whose uncle died on the Grunion. [Link]

Relatives of every crew member save one—Byron Allen Traviss of Detroit—have been located.

Bentz knows little about Traviss beyond his birthplace, Detroit, the name of his father, Russell A. Traviss, and his 1942 address, 4344 Tireman St.

The address is now a vacant lot. Neighbors said they never heard of Traviss.

Detroit directories from the 1930s listed the name of his wife as Ann and his jobs as electrician and autoworker. [Link]

You can contact the search team through their website if you have information on Traviss' family.

Update: A day later, and a relative of Traviss has been found.

The Secret City

Like Arthurdale, West Virginia, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created by the federal government. Unlike Arthurdale, its creation was a closely guarded secret.

Home to some 75,000 workers and site of the largest building in the world, Oak Ridge didn't appear on maps during World War II, and was separated from the outside world by barbed wire and security fences until 1949. Many of the workers didn't learn what they were working on until the bombing of Hiroshima. Jay Searcy described the moment in his 1992 article, "My Nuclear Childhood."

On Aug. 6, a Monday, we were just sitting down for lunch when my father heard President Truman come on the radio. We huddled around the set. A B-29, he announced, had dropped a new kind of bomb on Hiroshima, a bomb more powerful than 20,000 tons of conventional explosives - and the main component had come from Oak Ridge, Tenn.

"It's a bomb!" my father shouted. "We've been making an atom bomb!" My sister, Mary Glenn, began to cry, partly out of fear and partly because she had been told by my father that they were making paper dolls at the plants.

The natural uranium that went into the plants by the boxcar-load was code-named "tuballoy"; the enriched uranium that came out by the ounce was called "oralloy." Keeping the purpose of the plants under wraps required absolute secrecy.

Phones were tapped. Mail was inspected. Some top scientists used aliases, and names of other key project personnel weren't allowed to appear in newspapers (only first names were used in reporting the high school's first football games). Death certificates of employees accidentally killed on the project were classified and weren't delivered to next of kin until after the war.

Due to security precautions, the football team never played home games.

Curiously, a Tennessee mystic named John Hendrix predicted the creation of a city at Oak Ridge forty years before construction began.

One day, after weeks of absence, Hendrix reappeared at a crossroads store and told a group of neighbors he'd seen a startling vision.

"In the woods, as I lay on the ground and looked up into the sky, there came to me a voice as loud and as sharp as thunder," Hendrix reported. "The voice told me to sleep with my head on the ground for 40 nights and I would be shown visions of what the future holds for this land.... And I tell you, Bear Creek Valley someday will be filled with great buildings and factories, and they will help toward winning the greatest war that ever will be. And there will be a city on Black Oak Ridge.... Big engines will dig big ditches, and thousands of people will be running to and fro. They will be building things, and there will be great noise and confusion and the earth will shake."

"I've seen it," he concluded. "It's coming." [Link]

The Good Brother

Albert Goering despised everything his brother stood for, but was able to put the family name to good use by simply writing it on official documents.

In this way he saved countless Jews from certain death in his role as a deliberately inept director at the Skoda armaments factory. The Gestapo were on to him, but he managed to slip through their clutches.

The tragedy of Albert Goering was that the surname that allowed him to make a stand during the Third Reich’s rise was the surname that condemned him following the Reich’s collapse. After he surrendered to the Americans, the interrogators refused to believe his protestations. He faced years in prison until his claims were finally verified. Following his release, his marriage collapsed and he eked out a miserable living as a translator. Nobody wanted to honour his name. He died, in obscurity, in 1966. [Link]

Nebraska's Nisei War Hero

Edward Weir tells how Ben Kuroki—a second-generation Japanese-American, or Nisei, from Hershey, Nebraska—came to be a member of his B-24 Liberator crew during World War II:

"He had been trying for months to get on a crew, and nobody else would take him because of the prejudice at that time," said Mr. Weir, now 86 and living in Denton. "He knew we needed a replacement. He came to our pilot begging for a chance."

The pilot, Jake Epting of Tupelo, Miss., wanted the blessing of his crew, so he called for a vote, Mr. Weir said.

"He asked the other crew members, 'Do you want him?'" Mr. Weir said, recalling that day in 1942. "And we held up our hands and said yes." [Link]

Kuroki went on to fly 58 combat missions in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific, was featured in Time magazine in 1944, and received three Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Air Medal. In 2005, he was awarded the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal based on Weir's eyewitness testimony. A documentary about Kuroki, Most Honorable Son, airs on PBS in September.

He Was Looking For a Fight

At 106, Frank Buckles is the youngest of three surviving American World War I veterans. He tried to sign up with the Marines when he was 16, telling them he was 18. They told him he was too young, so he tried again a week later.

"I went back to the recruiting sergeant, and this time I was 21," he said with a grin. "I passed the inspection ... but he told me I just wasn't heavy enough."

Then he tried the Navy, whose recruiter told Buckles he was flat-footed.

Still, Buckles would not quit. In Oklahoma City, an Army captain demanded a birth certificate.

"I told him birth certificates were not made in Missouri when I was born, that the record was in a family Bible. I said, 'You don't want me to bring the family Bible down, do you?"' Buckles said with a laugh. "He said, 'OK, we'll take you."' [Link]

He was too old to serve in the military in World War II, but managed to get captured by the Japanese while on a business trip to the Philippines, and spent 3 1/2 years as a civilian POW.

The Battle of Niihau

I'm a bit of a World War II buff, so I enjoyed reading this evening about The Niihau Zero—a Japanese plane that crash-landed on the westernmost of Hawaii's main islands while returning from the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Having terrorized the islanders who refused to return his papers, the pilot was dispatched by Bene Kanahele and his wife Ella, making the "Battle of Niihau" the first American victory of the war.

A sidebar to the Air & Space print article explains why the pilot couldn't successfully land his plane on the island. It was all because of the pre-war prediction that, if captured by the Japanese, Niihau would make a perfect base for attacks on the other Hawaiian Islands.

To preclude that, Alymer Robinson, Keith's uncle, began plowing up Niihau. "They started with mules," Keith Robinson says. After the Japanese sinking of the USS Panay in China's Yangtze River in 1937, the Robinsons added the tractor power. In all, over 50 of the island's 70 square miles were rendered unusable, all at the family's personal expense.

From a helicopter today, you can still see traces of Niihau's furrows, especially along the island's drier barrens. It was these that denied Shigenori Nishikaichi a safe landing, sending his Zero crashing into brush and boulders that December 7 morning. While Pearl's mighty defenses fell, Niihau's held.

Fellow buffs might want to read more about The Niihau Incident at HistoryNet.com.

The Battle of Iwo To?

Here's more proof that everything I know about history is wrong. After sixty-something years of letting it be called "Iwo Jima," the Japanese are finally changing the famous island's name back to Iwo To.

The new name in Japanese looks and means the same as Iwo Jima - or Sulfur Island - but sounds different, the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute said.

Before the war, however, the volcanic island was known as Iwo To by the 1,000 or so civilians who lived there.

They were evacuated in 1944 as U.S. forces advanced across the Pacific. Some Japanese navy officers who moved in to fortify the island mistakenly called it Iwo Jima, and the name stuck. [Link]

A D-Day Discovery

A D-Day "time capsule" was recently found hidden in the roof lining of a French car being restored at the Llangollen Motor Museum.

An Allied banknote issued on the eve of the landings and a packet of Navy Cut cigarettes were discovered in the yellow 1926 Citroen B12 Bolangerie.

Allied troops taking part in the D-Day landing were typically issued with a number of social survival items, including the five-franc note - known as occupation money - and cigarettes.

Often, a condom would also be included in the pack, but there was no sign of one in the Citroen, which has been in the museum for nine years. [Link]

The Beast of Omaha Weeps

If your relative fell on Omaha Beach on D-Day, there's a good chance that machine-gunner Hein Severloh was responsible. Anywhere from half to three-quarters of the American casualties that day fell before his gun.

One image still brings tears to his eyes. A young American had run from his landing craft and sought cover behind a concrete block. Severloh, then a young lance-corporal in the German army in Normandy, aimed his rifle at the GI. He fired and hit the enemy square in the forehead. The American’s helmet flew away and rolled into the sea, his chin sank to his chest and he collapsed dead on the beach.

Tormented by the memory, Severloh now weeps at the thought of the unknown soldier’s death. [Link, via MetaFilter]

Vintage Propaganda at Ancestry.com

I've just noticed that Ancestry.com has a new collection of WWII 'United News'™ Newsreels, 1942-1946. The 267 newsreels—averaging about 10 minutes in length—were produced by the U.S. Office of War Information, and include shots of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, MacArthur returning to the Philippines, and Colonel Klink unwittingly letting a prisoner escape in the trunk of his car.

OK, not the last one.

Owner of ID Bracelet IDed

A bracelet given to Maureen Torreiter's father by her mother during World War II has turned up in Reichswald Forest in the Netherlands.

"I just figure it's a sign from my mom and dad that they're together and they're OK," said Torreiter, 60, whose parents are both dead.

Last December, Ben Pijls of Roggel, Netherlands, was combing through the woods of the old battlefield with a metal detector when he found a silver ID bracelet. The oval plaque hanging from the chain carried the crest of the Toronto Scottish Regiment, the name A.O. Edwards, a service number and the inscription, "Allan from Florence, Xmas 1942." [Link]

Census Bureau's Sins Enumerated

Margo Anderson and William Seltzer have found evidence that the U.S. Census Bureau handed over the names and addresses of Japanese-Americans living in and around Washington, D.C., to the Secret Service during World War II. The release occurred after Congress suspended the Bureau's legally mandated protection of confidentiality in 1942.

Anderson and Seltzer discovered in 2000 that the Census Bureau released block-by-block data during WW II that alerted officials to neighborhoods in California, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho and Arkansas where Japanese-Americans were living. "We had suggestive but not very conclusive evidence that they had also provided microdata for surveillance," Anderson says.

Anderson says that microdata would have been useful for what officials called the "mopping up" of potential Japanese-Americans who had eluded internment. [Link]

Some Things They Don't Teach at Cambridge

Centenarian Jessie Ridd of New Zealand recalls here the early days of her married life, she a Cambridge graduate fresh off the boat from England.

Her husband had removed the coalrange from his Woodville farmhouse, but because of war restrictions no replacement electric range was available. She had to cook outdoors on an open fire.

"I said to John 'What should I cook?' 'Stew,' he replied, and I asked 'How?'

"Put meat and vegies in the pot and boil it," he said.

To keep the fire going in the rain, Mr Ridd erected a corrugated iron roof over her temporary kitchen. "The carpenter was living with us, building a bathroom because I refused to marry John until I had a toilet inside." [Link]

A Family Secret Worth Revealing

Chris Dolley accidentally discovered last month that his father played a key role in winning World War II.

So, yesterday I noticed a lot of hits on my website coming from a BBC site. I clicked on the link and tried to track down the source. No luck. But I did find an unexpected reference to a Dolley and HMS Bulldog. My father had been career Navy - a CPO when he died, he'd attended Naval school from the age of 11, enlisted at 15 and went to war at 19. And I was pretty sure that he'd served on HMS Bulldog.

So I clicked the link. And found an interview with an able seaman from the Bulldog talking about the North Atlantic convoys and the day they captured the German submarine U-110. My father was listed as one of the eight men mentioned in despatches for their part in capturing the submarine. [Link]

Why was the capture of this U-boat so significant? Because it was carrying an Enigma machine complete with codebook and operating manual, which together proved crucial to deciphering Hitler's secret communications. Dolley's father carried the secret to his grave in 1960.

His Buddy Must Have Been a Yankee

Robert E. Lee of Cordele, Georgia, is honored to have the name of a general celebrating his 200th birthday this month.

But it didn't carry much honor when he was Pfc. Lee fighting in Germany with the 95th Infantry Division during World War II.

"I got a lot of kidding about it," he said. "'The famous General Robert E. Lee,' they would say."

His buddies' kidding he could take; getting shot was different.

"One [of] my buddies shot me accidentally while we were pulling back from the front for a rest," he said. [Link]