Over at The American Catholic, Don McCleary does his usual quality unpacking of the more famous anniversary associated with today. The Battle of Agincourt is known for many reasons, not the least being its immortalization in Shakespeare's Henry V.
But it also marks the first day in which Japan unleashed its last desperate measure against the American advance in the Pacific War. It was on this day, in the Philippine Sea, that the dreaded kamikazes first arrived over the US Fleet. Though they failed to stop the US, they did tremendous damage - far more than the remnants of the Japanese fleet - and struck terror into the hearts of US seamen and US citizens hearing of the attacks back home.
I've said that by the time I entered high school, WWII was ancient history. In fact, pretty much anything before about 1970 was treated as ancient days of yore, with the 70s being a decade of nostalgic memories and bad taste.* WWII, except for the decade anniversaries (1981, 91, etc), was largely the domain of old white haired guys musing about the good old days.
The real war of wars of my youth was Vietnam. It was in the late 70s and through the 1980s that we spent most of our time grappling with this first loss in American history and what it might mean for the future of the Cold War. But WWII? Again, that was the stuff Archie Bunker prattling on about, not serious veterans remembering the true horrors of war. Most of WWII was, after all, brought to us in vivid B&W, while movies like Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter and Platoon brought Vietnam home in all the gory detail of post-70s realism.
So it was quite a wake up when, in my college days, I came to realize kamikazes were more than the punch line they usually were reserved for in pop culture. When you heard them referenced at all, it was in connection with some joke or witticism. It wasn't until studying the war in college that I came to realize how horrifying they were both for US servicemen and their loved ones on the home front.
Nonetheless, I had no idea that the first attacks coincided with the anniversary of Agincourt. Given the famous speech Shakespeare ascribes to Henry V, I wonder if the decision to launch on this day was not known and intentional. Certainly the events of the war suggested it was coincidence. But the day being so precise, it makes me wonder. Future reading will be in order.
*My sons have maintained this is why a 'Back to the Future' 2025 would not work. Just how much real difference is there between 1995 and 2025, compared to 1985 and 1955? Like it or not, they maintain progress has more or less stagnated over the last few decades, compared to the leaps and bounds changes that happened from the 1780s all the way through the 1970s. When I think on things, I believe they are more right than we might want to admit.
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| The last flight of kamikaze commander Yukio Seki, and his handiwork: the sinking of the USS St. Lo. Surigao Strait, October 25, 1944 |
WWii was not treated as ancient history when and where I was in high school. The teachers in American history classes commonly ran out of time around about 1945, so the terminal lectures concerned WWii.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to disagree with your sons in re Back to the Future. What distinguished 1955 from 1985 would have been the degree of evanescence in human relations, the manners, the tastes, the default assumptions about public life. What distinguishes 1995 from today is that young people tend to be heavier, to stare at their devices 24/7, to be more receptive to the perverse, and less open to argument. In both 30 year spans, there was a significant decline in the quality of people in all segments of the populace. Our elites were in 1995 unedifying. Now, they're insane.
Culturally it was for me. Hitting high school in the 1980s, some teachers still dwelt on it, much to eye rolls and yawns from a growing number of my peers. In pop culture it was mostly forgotten, again replaced by an overwhelming focus on Vietnam (speaking of forgotten - Korea, which wouldn't have been known of had it not been for MASH).
DeleteAs for BttF, the boys will sometimes add one caveat: It could be remade today, but whereas the original noted the changes and celebrated the advances, the version today would have scant little to celebrate.
I'm not sure what your sons consider 'advances'.
DeleteThe quality of human relations had deteriorated during the intervening decades for just about everyone in one way or another. People of some dispositions gained, everyone else lost out. The thing is, the people who gained were people with the most hedonistic dispositions, people most inclined to talk back to authority, and women who were the most willful. No society has an optimal allocation of status and discomfort. Ours got rather less optimal after 1955. Blacks were not in 1985 boxed in by law and social convention in the way they were in 1955; they had more options in the housing and employment markets and were less subject to intimidation by white authority. That's a good thing. That black neighborhoods in 1985 were a wreck to a degree they weren't in 1955 is a bad thing. Part of the reason those neighborhoods were a wreck, though, is because blacks were less intimidated. Not all white authority was or is abusive.
Which brings me to the severity of street crime and school disorder in 1985. It was vastly worse than it had been 30 years earlier.
The society at large was more affluent in 1985 than it was in 1955. I had a dear co-worker whose father and mother worked a 10 acre farm to provide for themselves and their four daughters. They had a fifth daughter in 1953 and that prodded him to find factory work and quit farming. They had a hardscrabble existence of a sort that was rare as hen's teeth 30 years later. My memory is bad, but I don't recall that sort of thing being treated in BTTF.
If you're sons are referring to technology, There were personal computers (which most people did not own in 1985), there was cable television (which was in about 1/2 the homes in 1985), you had ATM machines, you had some improvements in auto safety, you had some in air quality, you might have even had some in the reliability of automobiles. Air travel was vastly more common in the lives of ordinary people. Higher education was more prevalent (though less valuable).
Culturally it was for me. Hitting high school in the 1980s, some teachers still dwelt on it, much to eye rolls and yawns from a growing number of my peers.
DeleteNo clue why it would generate more eye rolls than any other historical event. IMO, then as now, it's difficult to interest the young in liberal education. Some can be motivated to read the material. The rest should be sluiced to voTech if they've mastered English grammar, arithmetic, and elementary algebra. Other students could be placed in more specialized programs where they can dispense with certain subjects.
When it comes to BttF, we understood that first, it was fantasy. Second, we didn’t see it as saying in 1985 everything was perfect and better than 1955. In fact, just the opposite. Some of the changes were shown or alluded to showed change that maybe wasn’t for the better. That little scene when a car pulls into a filling station and a half dozen fellows jump out and service the car while the driver waits – we got that was a ‘regress’ in terms of where things went. And of course some things never change – a popular theme. We also saw that the cityscape of 1985 maybe wasn’t all smiles and roses either. Some was better. The dig about 'a black mayor' was laughed at because, by our time, we knew we'd have a black president someday and didn't think twice of it. Something that was a good change. But it was different. Radically different on many levels between the decades.. Compared to now. And it isn’t us old timers noticing, but the young’uns who notice it as well. My youngest, born in 2009, has said he sees little difference in the output from the 2000s and what he sees in his time now. When I was his age – 8th grade – the same period backwards (c. 1960) seemed like a different universe. And again, what changes have happened don’t make for good fantasy comedy movies.
DeleteAs for kids never caring about history, not in the 1980s. At least not regarding the 1960s. The 1960s was all the rage, and I’d say ¼ of the my peers lived like hippies from Woodstock. It was, after all, 20 years ago today. It’s just that the meme was history beginning for the New America with the election of Kennedy. Before that, the ancient days, the dark times. So history, in that cultural focus on the 1960s, was quite popular. Just everything before that was dismissible, and until the 1990s that included WWII as opposed to the much more focused on Vietnam War.
I thought the point of the original BTTF was simply to spotlight the inevitable generation gap between parents and their children. It was not so much about "life in the 50s" per se as it was about Marty realizing that his parents were once teenagers with many of the same concerns he had about school, friends, etc. It's also about the critical choice Marty's father makes to stand up to the bullying Biff and how it gave him a new sense of confidence that had ripple effects on the remainder of his life. The '50s vs '80s culture comparison is IMO secondary at best.
DeleteElaine S.
Bookworm, that was certainly part of it. That old 'everyone has always done it - including your parents' was part of it. And for that generation, likely true. But it was in the context of the massive differences, what was new in the 50s and common by the 80s. The social changes - a black worker being mocked for saying he'll be mayor, when by the 80s Jessie Jackson would be running for president. Seeing the army of employees rushing out and servicing a car at a gas station when, by the 80s, that was a thing of the past. It was all in that context of 'look how different, usually better, we are now than then'. Along with the idea that if one stands up to bullies, one can shake off those boring old family values and get with the times - you know, smiling happily as your teenage son is going to spend a weekend sleeping with his girlfriend, but now making it official and open. After all, with all the huge changes, why not have one more positive change.
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ReplyDeleteIn the end, the kamikazes added infamy without advantage. The ships lost were small and unarmored (not that their crews should be less mourned). The kamis bounced off the hulls of battleships and larger cruisers, and never hurt the Silent Service (the US subs that sunk 90% of the Japanese tonnage in the war). The tactic bought the Empire no time, and probably helped seal the decision to use atomic weapons.
The biggest damage was in many ways psychological. The thought of it terrified the servicemen and I think you're right. The suicide culture we had experienced, the horrors in the Marianas and on Okinawa, and the Kamikaze attacks, all built the case that radical measures had to be taken to save the US and Japan from a long, protracted war with such attitudes at play.
DeleteYou're sons are not alone. I've heard others debate and theorize when culture seems to have "locked" in and stagnate. The most common answers are anywhere between the mid 90s and mid 00s.
ReplyDeleteYep. It's not just my sons either. Nor the oldest. Our youngest has said he sees little difference between the 2000s and now. Something that for me at his age - 1980 looking back at the 1960s - would have been absurd to say. Even if things were slowing by then (we were pretty sure we weren't going to have moon colonies by the end of 1999), we saw a stark difference on many levels between life in 1980 and life in 1960 or 1950. I do think we are at the stagnation point that comes before the decay.
DeleteI can accept that the experiences of my childhood were not universal. You, however, seem to be of the opinion that at least 95% of America went to your high school.
ReplyDeleteIf it was only my school, that would be a good point. But apart from some anniversaries on the tens in press stories, find the overwhelming focus on the pre-60s, or the WW2 era, in the 80s through the 90s. It just isn't there. As a huge fan of studying the second world war, it wasn't easy in those lean years. There was little cultural output, and not much better in the academic worlds, other than those who were devoted to that particular period of history - a minority to be sure. But just because someone might have liked the Beatles in the 1960s, it doesn't stand to reason that her best bet is to assume her like of the Beatles was a thing unique to a few people, and hardly a universal. It might not have been a universal in the sense of the entire human race, but I'll bet a Beatles fan from the 60s, with little concern, can assume he or she wasn't unique in that category. Same with me.
DeleteYou want to count MASH as about Vietnam. Fine. But you want to ignore Bah Bah Black Sheep, because it doesn't fit your narrative. You want to count Platoon, but to ignore The Final Countdown, because it doesn't fit your narrative.
DeleteBending facts to fit your narrative is popular, but it's still not a good look.
I remember BBBS. I watched it as a kid. I saw the movie Midway in theaters - one of my first. Still some overlap back then. The Big Red One being the last big cultural product I can recall from that time. I would be well into the 90s, later 90s to be exact, that WW2 made a comeback in any substantial way. And while MASH was set in Korea, the movie was certainly an anti-Vietnam war movie, and the TV show borrowed heavy elements of the anti-war/anti-American feel of the film. Everyone knew the cultural trappings were from the 50s, but many of the issues and topics were straight out of the Woodstock era.
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