January 2011

LAST DECEMBER we published the reminiscences of some of the survivors of the terrible Bataan Death March. Among those who read the article was Felix Imonti of Los Alamitos, California. He found it particularly interesting because he knows a soldier who fought at Bataan—for Japan.

Mr. Imonti writes, “My wife is fluent in Japanese. We met Mr. Ebina in 1970, shortly after he moved from Japan to the United States. He never learned English and has adopted us in order to have someone with whom to speak. Over the years he has talked generally about the war, but we never pursued it, for he was afraid it would stir old hatreds.

On December 19 Ben Franklin’s Gazette announced the publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack , the start of a series that, along with his electrical experiments, first made him famous in Europe as well as in America. It was a standard form; there were many other almanacs in the marketplace, and Franklin borrowed liberally from all of them and from everything else he read—particularly La Rochefoucauld, Voltaire, and Swift. It may have been Lemuel Gulliver that inspired the creation of his faux-naïf spokesman, the poor but honest Richard Saunders.

1732 Two Hundred and Fifty Years Ago 1882 One Hundred Years Ago 1907 Seventy-five Years Ago

TWENTY YEARS AGO , the American economy hummed like a well-oiled machine. We actually exported automobiles and oil. Economists worried about the “dollar gap”—whether the rest of the world would have enough dollars to buy from us—and the inflation rate was one percent. The economists of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson spoke of “fine-tuning” the economy. Today the economy moves only by sputters and spurts. We have idle capacity; interest rates have been in double digits, and recently so has inflation. Economists seem to have lost their faith, and there seem to be no easy or ready answers. What happened?

The twins Loretta and Lorena Rinker were six months old in 1903 when this photograph of them was taken before the family Christmas tree. Loretta is at left. Their home was in Toledo, Ohio, where their father settled on his arrival from Germany. Loretta remembers that they lighted the candles on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, while Mama sat in a rocker by the tree with a wet cloth in case a branch caught fire, ready to snuff it out.

A place for all seasons …

Lake Placid, New York, became internationally prominent last year as the site of the Winter Olympics. Two or three generations ago, the winter—and summer—sports practiced there were less spectacular, but cameras were present even then—and particularly that of Irving L. Stedman. From the recently discovered collection of his thousands of glass-plate negatives, we offer a glittering portrait of a resort in the preelectronic age.

Remembering Mrs. Roosevelt …

In arevealing interview with A MERICAN H ERITAGE , an intimate confidante recalls the last busy years of the First Lady of the World.

Back to Bataan …

On Sunday morning, March 18, 1866, the steamer A jay. sailed into Honolulu Harbor while the bells of six different mission churches called the freshly converted faithful to worship. Among the passengers most eager to go ashore was a thirty-one-year-old knockabout journalist named Samuel Clemens, on assignment for the Sacramento Union . Mark Twain would later make the Mississippi immortal, but first Hawaii would make him famous. He spent four months and a day exploring the islands and sent back twenty-five dispatches (at twenty dollars each), recounting all that he had seen and heard. Fresh from the grime and clamor of the California mining camps, he was enraptured by the lush, silent Hawaiian landscape and was alternately amused and fascinated by the ^l native Hawaiians and the missionaries, planters, whalers, and hangers-on already seeking to displace them.

As three recent films show—one on the atomic bomb, one on women defense workers during the Second World War, one on the government arts projects of the thirties —this history of our times offers film makers arresting opportunities. Footage shot on the spot supplies a measure of raw actuality, and survivors are still available for interview. The real problem is to give abundant but diffuse materials a shape and structure. This is not, however, a problem that automatically solves itself.

In The Day After Trinity , Jon Else, the producer, director, and co-author, discloses his unifying principle in the subtitle: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb . Obviously this theme does not “force” the material. Oppenheimer and the bomb represent one of those connections that unite historical fact with artistic felicity. He was a scientific genius of rare moral and intellectual sensitivity. His rise and fall provide the story of the bomb’s birth with legitimate dramatic focus.

They arrived in America chocked and chained, deep in the hold of a French merchant ship early in February of 1949. During two wars they had served France as dual-purpose railroad boxcars hauling the military cargoes stenciled on their sides: “ Hommes 40—Chevaux 8 .” But now the cars held neither men nor horses. All had been repaired, freshly painted, and decorated with plaques bearing the coats of arms of the forty provinces of France. Across their sides, upon tricolored bands, was printed the name of the enterprise for which they stood—on one side “ Train de la Reconnaissance Française ” and on the other “Gratitude Train.”