January 2011

“The Biggest Theater” includes a map depicting the “almost unimaginably huge theater of operations during the first months of war: the orange area… held by Japan.” Japan itself is shown in red. This implies that Korea, Manchuria, and Hong Kong were not held by Japan in 1942, that they were neutral or hostile to Japan. In fact, Korea had been annexed by Japan in 1910 and called Chosun. Manchuria, though the theoretically independent Manchukuo under the last Chinese emperor, Henry PuYi (the subject of the recent film The Last Emperor ), was in reality a satellite state of the Japanese Empire—and had been so since 1933. Hong Kong had fallen to the Japanese less than a month following Pearl Harbor.

Thus, Japanese Imperial power in the Pacific was even greater, and its threat to America even larger, than the map reveals.

Thank you for the stimulating articles about World War II in the December issue. The most fascinating to me was Fulton Oursler, Jr.’s “Secret Treason,” which reveals the Duke of Windsor’s sentiments in favor of peace with Hitler’s Third Reich.

The article cites the interview between Mr. Oursler, Sr., and the Duke in December 1940. Other evidence shows that the Duke had already been considered, by Hitler himself, as part of a scheme to force a peace treaty.

In July 1940, as he was considering the invasion of Britain, Hitler actually planned to kidnap the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and spirit them to Berlin, whence the Duke would then appeal to the British people to change governments and seek peace—whereupon the Duke would return to the British throne.

The Duke and Duchess were in residence in Portugal during the summer of 1940, and the German plotters were attempting to lure them back to Spain where the Nazi-sympathetic Franco regime would permit such a deed to go unhindered.

Three fine studies of the old district are: World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe, The Downtown Jews by Ronald Sanders, and Poor Cousins by Ande Manners.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located in an actual tenement building at 97 Orchard Street that was home to successive generations of immigrants from the 1860s until the 1930s, gives walking tours of the neighborhood, presents exhibits and dramas, and publishes a newsletter of Lower East Side history. The museum is planning a restoration of the sixteen cramped apartments on its upper floors into a permanent display of the varieties of Lower East Side tenement life. Its phone number is 212431-0233.

In the fall of 1960, a novelty-song about Custer’s Last Stand climbed its way inexplicably onto the Billboard charts. To the ominous beat of a tom-tom, an Andy Devine sound-alike named Larry Verne, portraying a trooper of the 7th Cavalry, implored, “Please, Mr. Custer. I don’t want to go,” in a cracking, hopeless chorus.

All through the 60s, they kept replaying “Mr. Custer,” and I suppose it was meant to be funny. But every time Custer himself shouted, “Squad ho!” in the distance, and war whoops rose in an engulfing crescendo, a chill crawled up the spine of at least one American adolescent entertaining premonitions of the draft and Vietnam.

Oursler, Sr.’s clandestine visit was not the last time FDR heard reports about Windsor’s pro-Nazi leanings, as a couple of notes in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library attest. In 1941 Harry Hopkins, the President’s best friend and closest adviser, tried to shock FDR out of extending his fondness for European royalty to the Windsors, whose ambivalence about a British victory he detested. “Mr. President,” he wrote succinctly, “Here is a copy of a letter I received from Swope about your friends the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.” Attached was an April 21 letter from the great newspaperman Herbert Bayard Swope:

“ PERSONAL —Dear Harry:

“This is straight. It can be relied upon:

“The Duke and Duchess of Windsor are, by some who know, listed among the appeasers. When they come here they see that type, especially at Palm Beach. Capt. Alastair Mackintosh and Eric Loder (both English, and both away from duty) were their hosts, and they were received by Charlie Munn, Mona Williams and others of that group which properly can be called pro-Nazi.

The archeological dig at the Little Bighorn culminated in a 1989 exploration around the site where Reno was supposed to have disposed of his extra supplies after relief arrived on the twenty-seventh. But the Reno dig produced no riches, and one rainy day a frustrated volunteer named Monte Kloberdanz decided to take a wistful stroll down to where Reno and his men forded the Little Bighorn on their retreat to the ridge. As he was climbing up the embankment, he noticed something protruding from the roots of a cottonwood tree and found a human clavicle, humerus, and skull.

Archeologists identified the skull as that of a Caucasian from the 1870s and sent a cast to a forensic sculptor in Norman, Oklahoma, named Betty Pat Gatliff, who produced a bust of the fallen trooper. The historians at the battlefield pared the list of candidates down to two: Sgt. Edward Botzer of Company G and Pvt. William Moodie of Company A, of whom no photographs seem to exist.

The reenactment of the Battle of the Little Bighorn will be held on June 26, 27, and 28; contact the Hardin Chamber of Commerce, 200 N. Center Avenue, Hardin, MT 59034 (406665-1672) for details. The visitors’ center at Custer Battlefield National Monument is open daily from 8:00 A.M. to 8:00 P.M. Memorial Day to Labor Day and from 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. the rest of the year. For more information about “Custer Country” call Travel Montana, 1-800-541-1447.

Four years ago, before heading to Savannah to write one of our travel columns, I sifted through the brochures sent by the city’s tourist office and noticed among the offerings a mention of a blackheritage tour. I confess that I was amazed. That was my first indication that what this Northerner considered the deepest South was starting to acknowledge and even to promote an aspect of its history that might trouble or challenge the traveler in a way tourist offices rarely seem to want to do. In Savannah I visited several of the places listed and was moved and enriched and grateful.

IN VERMONT
The Ethan Allen Homestead

off Route 127, a few minutes’ drive north of downtown Burlington, is where Alien lived the last two years of his life (1787–89). He may or may not (nobody knows for sure) be buried in the nearby cemetery on Colchester Avenue along with the gaggle of other Aliens there. The site includes the restored farmhouse as well as gardens, exhibits, and an ongoing archeological dig.

Open May through October, 10:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. (1:00 to 5:00 P.M. on Sundays). Telephone number: 802-865-4556.

The Bennington Battle Monument

Walking Manhattan’s Lower East Side is like browsing through a family album of American Jewry. Irish, German, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, and, in the last 40 years, increasingly large numbers of Spanish-speaking and Asian immigrants have shared this four-mile-square enclave, but it is not ethnic effrontery to call the old city quarter the Jewish Lower East Side; none of the other sometime residents have laid such a heavy sentimental the claim to the ground as have American Jews. These blocks are as seedy and down-at-the-heels today as they were a hundred years ago, and the members of the immigrant generations who lived in them would be surprised by the wreath of glowing nostalgia their descendants have placed here.

PORTALS TO A NEW WORLD