Category Archives: war

by Joel | 26 December 2009 · 3:22 pm

Farmboy Seminarian on a Cattleboat to Poland, 1946

While organizing a bunch of old photos during last week’s visit to my 85-year-old father, I came across a small set I had never seen before of images from his oft-recounted trip delivering livestock to Poland in 1946. His voyage was on the S.S. Carroll Victory under the auspices of UNRRA, but he heard about the cattleboats from his Quaker contacts, who cooperated with the Church of the Brethren and Mennonites on what later evolved into Heifer International. My father was raised a Quaker, but later joined a Baptist church and spent the war years at the University of Richmond on a ministerial deferment. He graduated at the end of 1945, then enrolled in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, in February 1946.

The following is my father’s account, very lightly edited by me.

At the beginning of summer vacation in 1946 I heard about the need for volunteers to care for horses being sent to Poland by United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). The ships that transported the horses to Poland were called “cattleboats” but I do not remember any cattle on my boat. We did take baby chicks and horses. I had worked with mules as a boy but had little experience with horses. The chance to visit Europe and be paid for the trip rather than having to pay for it fascinated me as I really wanted to see other countries but couldn’t afford to travel. So, with three other seminary students I signed up for the trip. The ships were converted Liberty ships from WWII and were manned by members of the U.S. Merchant Marine. I was accepted as a “cattleman” and left Norfolk in June of 1946 on a boat with 800 horses and 3000 baby chicks. The horses were to be used for reconstruction and the chicks for supplying eggs for food in Poland which was devastated by Germany and Russia in World War II.

I had never traveled before on the ocean and was a real landlubber. The beginning of the trip was rather mild but the stench in the lower decks from horses and their excretion made for rather poor sailing conditions for one inexperienced in sea travel. I found that the more marked movements of the ship up and down were not as bad as the swaying motion from side to side. When I felt that I was going to get sick I would lie on my back and look up through the opening in the upper decks. If I could lie still and see the sky my stomach would settle down. Contrary to the reputation horses have for “horse sense,” I found them much less intelligent than mules. When a horse got sick and fell in its stall it would lie there and die. A mule would have struggled to its feet. About 30 horses died on the trip and had to be thrown overboard. For some reason which I do not remember (I probably volunteered) I was transferred to caring for baby chicks, which was more to my liking and more consistent with my experience. However, I found that chicks were even dumber than horses. They would trample each other to death as the boat rocked on the ocean, or they would drown themselves in the water troughs at the outer edges of the coops. I don’t know how many chicks we lost on the trip but I believe a goodly number managed to stay alive until the arrival in Poland. I watched with interest as the Polish men tried to handle the horses as they were lowered from the ship on to Polish soil. Their “horse sense” did not include the understanding of the Polish language and the commands they were given did not communicate well to them the desires of the handlers.

The environment on ship was anything but a churchly one. Of the 90 men on board very few were Christians and many if not most were misfits in society who were only on the trip for the month’s food and lodging and the $150 they would be paid for working on the way over to Poland. There were no responsibilities on the return trip. The four of us from the Seminary held services on Sundays. One young man played a guitar for the hymn singing and the four of us took turns preaching. The “congregation” was certainly different from any I had ever preached to before. In fact, the whole atmosphere on board ship was so foreign to anything I had ever experienced that I felt like I was in a foreign country even before we got to Poland. The food was not too bad but it was certainly not home cooking. We slept in bunks which had been built for sailors.

The trip to the English Channel took about eight days as I remember. The White Cliffs of Dover were the first sight of land that we had seen since we left the USA, and they were welcome sights. However, they offered no relief from the sea as we did not disembark in England. We could see land and cars and buildings as we slowly made our way through the almost placid English Channel, which was in a good mood that day. We approached the Kiel Canal soon and went through what was for me a fascinating experience of navigating the Canal. We could get a very good view of the north of Germany as we slowly made our way through the canal. I was taken by the beauty of the land. We went through Schleswig-Holstein where Holstein cattle grazed in immaculate pastures divided by rows of trees. In the land of my own childhood, trees were cut down on farmland and farms were not landscaped as in North Germany. The Germany I saw was vastly different from the pictures of bombed out cities on TV.

Poland was very different from Germany. We landed in Gdansk and the devastation wrought by Germany and Russia in World War II was evident everywhere we looked. We were in port about 4 days and were allowed to go ashore. On the way across the Atlantic we had been told that cigarettes were the best currency in Poland since none were available there. On ship we had been permitted to buy two cartons apiece on about three occasions. I did not smoke and did not intend to engage in blackmarket trading so I didn’t buy any. Several who asked me to buy some for them were angry when I refused. One of the Seminary students and I tried to maintain some appearance of the faith we professed while on ship and in Poland, but the two others bought cigarettes and went to Warsaw while we were in port. We had been strictly forbidden to go anywhere farther than we could return to the ship at night. The two fellow travelers were strongly reprimanded and were not given a recommendation to take another such UNRRA trip. My friend and I were highly recommended for another voyage but did not go again.

There was a redheaded boy from Franklin, Virginia, on board. I did not know him and was not drawn to get to know him. He tried to get me to go with him in Poland but his description of his planned exploits did not appeal to me. Before he left the ship he started drinking vodka and chasing it with water. Then, as he began to become inebriated, he drank water and chased it with vodka. He left the ship alone. It was not too long before some kind Polish natives brought him back to the ship dead drunk. He lay on the floor of the ship unconscious with flies attending him for most of the time we were in port. Another young man went ashore, visited a prostitute and came back and developed the “clap.” He was so drunk that I persuaded him to leave his money with me before he left again. He cursed but he gave me his money. Later he thanked me, for the suffering of venereal disease was bad enough for him without losing his money too.

We found out why they drank so much beer in Poland. Water was very scarce and what there was tasted awful. We were taken on a tour of Gdansk and as far as Gdynia. There was not much to see. We did visit a few very old church buildings. They were always located on scenic spots and were beautifully constructed. When we remarked to our obviously not very religious tour guide that the cathedrals were beautiful he said, “Yes, and cold.” They were indeed symbols of great architecture rather than ardent religion – as might be said of many church buildings in all lands and ages.

After two days I was ready to head for home. On our rather uneventful trip home we had much leisure time to think about what we had seen. There were only two incidents worthy of mention, at least the only ones that I remember, on our return trip. As we were our leaving the Kiel Canal beside another Liberty ship the captains made a bet as to who would get there first. The navigator on our ship took us a tenth of a percentage point off course and we lost. While we were changing courses near the end of the trip to get to Norfolk I was standing on the ship without a shirt on in the hot sun looking for land, and I got so sunburned that I could not bear to wear a shirt. When I arrived at my brother Bob’s and Bertha’s house with a month’s beard and no shirt on my red back Bertha did not recognize me and only my voice persuaded her to let me in.

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Filed under economics, family, Poland, religion, travel, U.S., war

by Joel | 11 November 2009 · 3:05 pm

Earl M. Finch Tribute to Windward Oahu KIAs in World War II

Back in February 2009, on a sightseeing trip with my mother-in-law, I stopped at Castle Junction in Kane‘ohe, Hawai‘i, to photograph the Kane‘ohe Ranch Building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Nearby was a small monument I had seen many times without stopping to examine it. I was curious about the relationship between one Earl M. Finch of Hattiesburg, Miss., and the AJA soldiers named on the stone, but I never followed up to find out more about him until this Veterans Day. Here are the words carved into the memorial when it was originally erected.

In Memoriam to the men of this community killed in action in World War II

Teruo Fujioka, Kahuku, Oct 26, 1944, France
Stanley K Funai, Waimanalo, Feb 8, 1944, France
Takemitsu Higa, Kahaluu, Dec 1, 1943, Italy
Genichi Hiraoka, Kaneohe, Jul 11, 1944, Italy
Edward Y Ide, Kaneohe, Nov 6, 1943, Italy
Haruo Kawamoto, Kailua, Feb 6, 1944, Italy
Sadao Matsumoto, Waimanalo, Jun 4, 1944, Italy
Kaoru Moriwake, Waikane, Nov 5, 1943, Italy
Shigenori Nakama, Kahuku, Apr 6, 1945, Italy
Yutaka Nezu, Waimanalo, Jan 10, 1944, Italy
Chuji Saito, Waimanalo, Apr 19, 1944, Italy
Takeo Shintani, Kahuku, Jul 6, 1944, Italy
Douglas Tamanaha, Waiahole, Nov 13, 1944, France
Shiro Togo, Kahuku, Oct 24, 1944, France

Presented to the Windward Oahu Community
by Earl M. Finch, Hattiesburg, Miss., March 28, 1946

June Watanabe tells more about Earl M. Finch in a Honolulu Star-Bulletin Kokua Line feature dated 17 March 2001, headlined ‘Patron saint’ of nisei soldiers became outcast.

Question: What happened to Earl Finch of Hattiesburg, Miss., who befriended the Japanese-American soldiers who were stationed in Hattiesburg during World War II? He made the soldiers feel at home when other Americans were turning their backs on them.

Answer: Finch died in his adopted home of Honolulu in 1965 at age 49.

At his funeral service at Central Union Church, then-Gov. John A. Burns delivered the eulogy before hundreds of mourners, including many veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Battalion.

Finch was a rancher and businessman in Mississippi who became an outcast when he went out of his way to befriend the nisei soldiers in 1943.

He became known as a “one-man USO” (United Service Organization), “the Patron Saint of the Japanese-American GI” and “a citizen of the world.”

“Unpopular though it may have been with his neighbors, Earl recognized that those who were willing to make sacrifices in the face of adversity deserved no less than the hand of friendship,” Burns eulogized.

In 1946, after the war, many of the soldiers he befriended chipped in to pay his way to Hawaii, where he was given a hero’s welcome. At the time of his death, the Star-Bulletin noted that Finch’s arrival in Honolulu 55 years ago was “the biggest reception ever accorded a visiting private citizen.”

Among Japanese Americans, Finch was so beloved that many parents named their sons after him. Finch eventually made Hawaii his home, running a small trading company and acting as a talent broker.

Seiji Finch Naya, director of the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, was an orphaned college student in Japan who met Finch when the college’s boxing team traveled to Hawaii in 1951.

Finch was so impressed with the young man, he sponsored a four-year scholarship to the University of Hawaii for Naya and eventually adopted him.

Finch also adopted another young man from Japan, Hideo Sakamoto.

Windward motorists may be familiar with the huge boulder, with a plaque, sitting on the makai side of Castle Junction.

Finch and Windward Oahu groups erected the memorial in honor of those who died fighting in World War II and, later, the Korean War.

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Filed under Hawai'i, Japan, military, U.S., war

by Joel | 9 November 2009 · 9:17 pm

Watershed Face-off: 1979 vs. 1989

While Europeans and Americans are remembering the major transformation of international relations in 1989, economic historian Niall Ferguson argues that 1979 marked a much greater watershed.

The real question about Russian policy today is not whether Russia will invade Ukraine, but whether Gazprom’s strategy of investing in new pipelines and gas fields will pay off. Should Gazprom focus on developing its dominant position in the European natural-gas market? Or should the vast gas fields of Russia east of the Urals (Yamal, Arctic, Far East) be given precedence with a view to capturing market share in China? Could Russia one day establish an Organization of Gas Exporting Countries, modeled on the Saudi-dominated oil cartel? Or is the simpler strategy simply to stoke trouble in the Middle East, covertly encouraging the Iranians’ nuclear ambitions until the Israelis finally unleash airstrikes, and then reaping the rewards of a new energy price spike?

These questions themselves indicate the limited long-term significance of the Soviet collapse of two decades ago. By comparison, the events of 10 years earlier—in 1979—surely have a better claim to being truly historic. Just think what was happening in the world 30 years ago. The Soviets began their policy of self-destruction by invading Afghanistan. The British started the revival of free-market economics in the West by electing Margaret Thatcher. Deng Xiaoping set China on a new economic course by visiting the United States and seeing for himself what the free market can achieve. And, of course, the Iranians ushered in the new era of clashing civilizations by overthrowing the shah and proclaiming an Islamic Republic.

Thirty years later, each of these four events has had far more profound consequences for the United States and the world than the events of 1989. Today it is the Americans who now find themselves in Afghanistan, fighting the sons of the people they once armed. It is the free-market model of Thatcher and Reagan that seems to lie in ruins, in the wake of the biggest financial crisis since the Depression. Meanwhile, Deng’s heirs are rapidly gaining on a sluggish American hyperpower, with Goldman Sachs forecasting that China’s GDP could be the biggest in the world by 2027. Finally, the most terrifying legacy of 1979 remains the radical Islamism that inspires not only Iran’s leaders, but also a complex and only partly visible network of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers around the world.

In short, 1989 was less of a watershed year than 1979. The reverberations of the fall of the Berlin Wall turned out to be much smaller than we had expected at the time. In essence, what happened was that we belatedly saw through the gigantic fraud of Soviet superpower. But the real trends of our time—the rise of China, the radicalization of Islam, and the rise and fall of market fundamentalism—had already been launched a decade earlier. Thirty years on, we are still being swept along by the historic waves of 1979. The Berlin Wall is only one of many relics of the Cold War to have been submerged by them.

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Filed under Afghanistan, Britain, China, economics, energy, Iran, Islam, Middle East, Russia, U.S., USSR, war

by Joel | 31 October 2009 · 10:40 am

Japanese Soldier Ethnographer in Indonesia, 1944-45

From: Peter T. Suzuki and Reiko Watanabe Reiger (2003), A Japanese Soldier’s Ethnography of Molu Island (Tanimbar): Ken Sasaki’s Account (1944-1945), Archipel 66: 161-199 (doi: 10.3406/arch.2003.3789).

Moru Shima Ki: An Account of Molu Island by Ken Sasaki

Following is a description of my time on Molu Island from June 19, 1944 to May 20, 1945. Seven Japanese soldiers, myself included, were stationed there with a cannon. I never thought it would become the subject of my research because we were constantly engaged in the battlefront. My notes and sketches were of necessity brief, taken during times when I had the opportunity. The only things I carried away from Molu were my notes, 200 sketches, and 30 pieces of folk craft from the island. Only now am I attempting to assemble these and my disjointed memories (although I can remember clearly the beauty of the sea, which had the color of emerald green coral reefs) into a coherent account….

Kapala [Mal. kepala] means head or boss, soa means a blood relative. There are class distinctions and associated titles, such as orankaya [Mal. orang kaya] (upper class); kapalasoa [Mal. kepala soa] (head of a kin group); jurutolis [Mal. juru tulis] (his associate); togama (?); kapalakanpon [Mal. kepala kampung] (village chief). Those holding the titles of kapalakanpon or jurutolis are public officers in a village, appointed by family lineage or natural ability. In contrast, orankaya and jurutolis hold feudalistic power among villagers in a family clan and have general authority….

Religion

Seven villages of the eight villages in this island are Protestant. It seems that only Kilon is shunned by others since it is the only Muslim village. Their association with other villages does not seem to be congenial. In the past they followed a primitive religion in which they worshiped the sun and the moon as gods (Ubila) like any other village. They said they made commitments to Ubila. But later new religions such as Islam and Christianity were introduced into the island. It seemed that the power of religions influenced and also renewed everything such as food, clothing, housing, ceremonial occasions, and language.

It is hard to imagine a new religion having this kind of widespread effect in Japan. I could not help realizing how strong religious powers can be….

It is clear Christianity came to this island 35 years ago.

Even though the power of Islam could not change the lifestyle of the villagers much, Christianity rapidly changed people’s lifestyles on Molu, which had not progressed much from a primitive way of living.

People started being very enthusiastic about learning to read and write, wearing shoes, having lamps, wearing pants instead of grass skirts and singing hymns. And they started hiding necklaces and swords. Jacob told me that the younger generation would not believe the ways the older generation used to live, saying, “it is quite different today.”…

Language

The daily language of Molu is called Larat, the island just northeast of Tanimbar, but Larat is also the language of Tanimbar, Sera, and Fordata.

The languages of Tanimbar are divided into three groups : Sera, Yamdena, and Larat. Of course they speak to us in Malay, but since Malay is a second language which was taught at school, it is hard to understand much of high Malay.

High Malay is only used seriously by guru, who are priests and teachers in a village during the celebration of subayan.

They use the alphabet for writing, and since it became widespread, most adults under 50 years old have no trouble spelling….

Food

Rice, corn, bread, potatoes, and sago are served as main dishes. Side dishes are bananas, fish, and coconuts. Vegetables and fruits are melons, eggplant, tomatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, papaya, and pineapples. A large quantity of mangos is also grown….

Sago grows wild, and belongs to the palm tree group; it grows in flocks in damp ground. Mature trees about 20 years old are cut and smashed at the trunk with axes (111. 6), then washed with water, and soaked till the starch is precipitated. This fruit is also prepared in various ways, such as gruel (babeda), like rice (nasi), deep fried goren [Mal. goreng], toasted rice cake, and renpen which is baked (or cooked) in a stone mold. Sago can be substituted for flour. Renpen looks like a Japanese snack ; foxtail millet toasted until crispy. When it is still hot, it is plump and tasty. They steam the stored renpen, until it becomes soft and like konyaku, a Japanese food made of yam which is gelatenous.

Little food is stored in the village. Because they have different crops, harvest time spans the whole year. As long as they gather the food, they do not have to face starvation. Since they do not have to transfer food (sago) from one place to another, they do not trade and they do not store food. But since sago has a short life, its starch must be gathered right away and the juice (toman) from sago is eaten soon, otherwise it is prepared as renpen for a portable meal.

Fresh fish must be eaten the same day it is caught. They do not catch more than they need each day. And yet sometimes small fish are put between chopped branches and smoked on a fire. This is called ian-bata-batan, and used for soup stock. People eat cooked fish, but not raw fish. They do not have knowledge of preserving fish with salt. Making dried fish is not common, but they make dried octopus, which is prepared by cutting and then spreading it open….

Fire

Matches are known by the Moluans, but they are rare and considered valuable. Tobacco is lit by flint, rock, and metal much in the same way as in ancient Japan.

For starting general-purpose fires the Moluans use a method which involves rubbing bamboo :

Split dry bamboo into two and put on the ground or straw surface side up. Make a small crack on the center of the bamboo then shave some surface off from around the crack.

Rub with a bamboo spatula at right angles with the bamboo for about 15 minutes till the bamboo starts to smoke and starts on fire.

It seems this is an excellent way to start a fire since this island has plenty of bamboo. But this method requires two persons and great strength. People usually have a raised floor, which allows them to keep a pilot light burning constantly….

Hunting

Probably the only wild animal on Molu is the wild pig (babi). The garden plots on Molu are surrounded by a four foot-high fence made of logs and is designed to prevent wild pig incursions. Since most villagers are Christian, they hunt and are fond of eating the meat of the wild pig.

Usually a javelin is used for hunting wild pig. It has an iron tip, which is connected to the handle with a strong rope….

Luxury items

Among the islanders one of the most popular goods is tobacco (roko) [Mal. rokok], then chewing sirih comes next. Sirih is a tree leaf, which is similar to a pepper tree. Next in popularity is alcohol (sobi).

All men over the age of 10 years smoke tobacco. But it is common to see old women chewing tobacco also. Tobacco is produced in a mountain field. It is planted in places in the burnt field among the weeds. A weedkiller is used only on the roots of the plant. Of course no fertilizers are used….

Chewing betel nut: kimna is called sirih, sweet corn (betel—J.); only bigger lime is coral reef that is burnt and crushed; sirih-daun [Mal. daun sirih (leaf betel—J.)] is a creeper which is similar to yam (yamaimo in Japanese) leaf. As soon as it is put in one’s mouth and chewed for a while, it will bring a keen cooling sensation to the inside of the head, and will give you a sharp taste on the lips, and when one spits, it appears bloody red. Lips and teeth also take on the red color, and with prolonged use, turn a creepy-looking black. On Molu, it is very popular among both men and women, but only women over 15 years old are seen practicing this habit….

There is a tree, which is called karupatebu, which is similar to a hemp palm tree and a palm tree. This sugar palm tree is grown mainly for gathering sugar, but a wine can be brewed from it, too … By the way, comparing coconut milk to sugar palm tree milk, the latter has a rich white color and thickness like milk, and a greater sweet-sour taste. Nothing can beat its taste, not even the best versions of kalpis, and it has a pleasant intoxicating effect. However, the great taste of this version of kalpis enticed me to drink ten glasses of the tempting drink, and helped me to end up sleeping the night in the jungle.

During the ridiculous war, I secretly kept this wine in a water bottle for the contingency of a suicide attack, and I often gave myself encouragement by sipping it.

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Filed under food, Indonesia, Japan, language, Papua New Guinea, scholarship, war

by Joel | 22 October 2009 · 6:48 am

Orthodox Salonica’s Surrender to the Turks, 1387

From Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950, by Mark Mazower (Vintage, 2006), pp. 26-27:

The Turks’ attitude to religion came as a pleasant relief to many Orthodox Christians. Held captive by the Ottomans in 1355, the distinguished archbishop of Salonica, Gregory Palamas, was surprised to find the Orthodox Church recognized and even flourishing in the lands under the emir. Prominent Turks were eager to discuss the relationship of the two faiths with him and the emir organized a debate between him and Christian converts to Islam. “We believe in your prophet, why don’t you believe in ours?” Muslims asked him more than once. Palamas himself observed an imam conducting a funeral and later took the opportunity to joust over theology with him. When the discussion threatened to overheat, Palamas calmed it down by saying politely: “Had we been able to agree in debate we might as well have been of one faith.” To which he received the revealing reply. “There will be a time when we shall all agree.”

As Byzantine power waned, more and more Orthodox Christians felt caught between two masters. Faced with an apparent choice between the reviled Catholics (their sack of Constantinople in 1204 never to be forgotten) and the Muslim Turks, many opted for the latter. Written off as an embarrassment by later Greek commentators, the pro-Turkish current in late Byzantine politics was in fact a powerful one for the Ottomans, who could be seen as protectors of Orthodoxy against the Catholics. The hope for political stability, the desire for wealth and status in a meritocratic and open ruling system, admiration for the governing capacities of the Ottomans, and their evident willingness to make use of Christians as well as Muslims explain why administrators, nobles, peasants and monks felt the allure of the sultans and why many senior Byzantine noble families entered their service. Murad II‘s grand viziers were well known for their pro-Christian sympathies; Murad himself was influenced by dervish orders which preached a similarly open-minded stance, and the family sheykh of the Evrenos family was reputed to be a protector of Christians. In the circumstances, it is not surprising why surrender seemed far more sensible an option than futile resistance against overwhelming odds, and why the inhabitants of Salonica themselves were known, according to at least one Byzantine chronicler, as “friends of the Sultan.”

In the second half of the fourteenth century, one Balkan town after another yielded to the fast-moving Ottoman armies; the Via Egnatia fell into their hands, and even the canny monks of Mount Athos submitted. Salonica itself was blockaded for the first time in 1383, and in April 1387, surrendered without a fight. On this occasion, all that happened was that a small Turkish garrison manned the Acropolis. The town’s ruler Manuel Palaeologue had wanted to resist, but he was shouted down by the inhabitants, and forced to leave the city so that they could hand themselves over. Manuel himself paid homage to the emir Murad, and even fought for his new sovereign before being crowned emperor.

Had the city remained uninterruptedly under Ottoman control from this point on, its subsequent history would have been very different, and the continuity with Byzantine life not so decisively broken. Having given in peacefully, Salonica was not greatly altered by the change of regime, its municipal privileges were respected by the new rulers and its wealthy monastic foundations weathered the storm. The small Turkish garrison converted a church into a mosque for their own use, and the devshirme child levy was imposed—at intervals Turkish soldiers carried off Christian children to be brought up as Muslims—which must have caused distress. But returning in 1393, Archbishop Isidores described the situation as better than he had anticipated, while the Russian monk Ignatius of Smolensk who visited in 1401 was still amazed by its “wondrous” monasteries.

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Filed under Balkans, Greece, religion, slavery, Turkey, war

by Joel | 16 October 2009 · 6:46 am

Religious Cleansings and an Early Modern World War

From Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430-1950, by Mark Mazower (Vintage, 2006), pp. 47-48:

WHEN THE ENGLISH expelled their Jews in 1290, they inaugurated a policy which spread widely over the next two centuries. In 1492 Ferdinand and Isabella’s edict of banishment forced thousands from a homeland where they had known great security and prosperity. Sicily and Sardinia, Navarre, Provence and Naples followed suit. By the mid-sixteenth century, Jews had been evicted from much of western Europe. A few existed on sufferance, while many others converted or went underground as Marranos and New Christians, preserving their customs behind a Catholic facade. The centre of gravity of the Jewish world shifted eastwards—to the safe havens of Poland and the Ottoman domains.

In Spain itself not everyone favoured the expulsions. (Perhaps this was why a different policy was chosen towards the far more numerous Muslims of Andalucia who were forcibly converted, and only expelled much later.) “Many were of the opinion,” wrote the scholar and Inquisitor Jeronimo de Zurita, “that the king was making a mistake to throw out of his realms people who were so industrious and hard-working, and so outstanding in his realms both in number and esteem as well as in dedication to making money.” A later generation of Inquisitors feared that the Jews who had been driven out “took with them the substance and wealth of these realms, transferring to our enemies the trade and commerce of which they are the proprietors not only in Europe but throughout the world.”

The expulsion of the Jews formed part of a bitter struggle for power between Islam and Catholicism. One might almost see this as the contest to reunify the Roman Empire between the two great monotheistic religions that had succeeded it: on the one side, the Spanish Catholic monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire; on the other, the Ottoman sultans, themselves heirs to the Roman Empire of the East, and rulers of the largest and most powerful Muslim empire in the world. Its climax, in the sixteenth century, pitted Charles V, possessor of the imperial throne of Germany and ruler of the Netherlands, the Austrian lands, the Spanish monarchy and its possessions in Sicily and Naples, Mexico and Peru, against Suleyman the Magnificent, who held undisputed sway from Hungary to Yemen, from Algiers to Baghdad. Ottoman forces had swept north to the gates of Vienna and conquered the Arab lands while Ottoman navies clashed with the Holy League in the Mediterranean and captured Rhodes, Cyprus and Tunis, wintered in Toulon, seized Nice and terrorized the Italian coast. The Habsburgs looked for an ally in Persia; the French and English approached the Porte. It was an early modern world war.

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Filed under Austria, Europe, Mediterranean, migration, religion, Spain, Turkey, war

by Joel | 11 September 2009 · 6:27 am

Tahiti, 1802: Hogs for Firearms

From Sailors and Traders: A Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples, by Alastair Couper (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2009), pp. 78-79, 81:

When Captain Wallis arrived at Matavai Bay in 1767, he assumed that the formidable woman Purea was queen. When Cook came in 1769, he also had the European predilection toward identifying a single ruler. He met with the Otou (Tu), who ascended to the chieftainship of the northwest of the island of Tahiti, in which lies Matavai Bay. According to H. E. Maude, “Cook seems to have been the originator of the myth of Tu’s kingship.” Tu was accorded favors, gifts, and guns by all subsequent arrivals and from 1790 was acknowledged as King Pomare I.

Pomare was able to extend his territories. He recruited European sailors as mercenaries, including several Bounty mutineers during 1789–1791, and in 1792 the crew of the whaler Matilda wrecked in the Tuamotus, and the crew of the Norfolk grounded at Matavai Bay in 1802. In addition numerous ship deserters and many convicts who escaped from Botany Bay were available. The relative political stability of Tahiti under Pomare I, the apparent abundance of foodstuffs, and the general friendliness of the people came to the attention of Governor King of New South Wales. He studied Cook’s account of the islands and received reports from missionaries who arrived in Tahiti during 1797, as well as from whalers calling at Sydney. The penal colony required regular provisions, and following a trial shipment, Governor King dispatched HMS Porpoise in 1801 to obtain salt pork under a formal contract with Pomare I. The king imposed taboos on the consumption of pork by the common people and tried to concentrate all trade through royal channels.

In a short time Pomare I emerged as an astute business entrepreneur who recognized the forces of supply and demand in establishing exchange values. His son Otoo (Tu), under the complicated system of inheritance in Tahiti, ascended to power before Pomare died in 1803. Pomare II was less efficient, but more ruthlessly dedicated to the nascent new economic order based on foreign trade. The journal of Captain John Turnbull of the brig Margaret provides accounts of the commercial milieu of the time. The journal gives an understanding of the complexities of the trade and the hazards involved. It thereby shows the difficulties that the chiefly entrepreneurs faced when they entered the established shipping business, despite their strengths from the control of island resources and labor.

The voyage of the Margaret over the year 1802–1803 was, in brief, from Port Jackson to King Island in the Bass Strait to land a gang of sealers. From these the ship went to Norfolk Island for victuals that were unobtainable at Port Jackson. The seafarers arrived at Matavai Bay, Tahiti, on 23 December 1802. At this anchorage Turnbull spoke with Lieutenant William Scott of HMS Porpoise, who was on his second voyage for salt pork. He learned then of the internecine war raging in the group. On his first voyage in 1801, Scott had carried many iron tools and clothing, plus a few “old arms.” In 1802 there were major changes in the types of goods carried for trade; he delivered a formidable array of muskets, pistols, ammunition, bayonets, and even military jackets, reflecting something of the support that Governor King was giving to Pomare. When Turnbull started to trade his general cargo, which included domestic items and axes, he was ridiculed. It was made clear to him that hogs could be obtained only in exchange for armaments….

Wars led by chiefs against the despotism of the Pomares increased in Tahiti. In 1808 Pomare was forced to evacuate Matavai Bay with his forces and take refuge on Moorea Island. The chiefs who now occupied Matavai Bay rashly raided the ship Venus from Port Jackson to obtain cannons. Unlike Pomare, they failed to appreciate that, in order to continue trading with the New South Wales colony, they had to guarantee the safety of vessels. Pomare reiterated such a guarantee from his base in Moorea. This appeared in the Sydney Gazette of 5 May 1810, after the ship Mercury arrived from Moorea. Pomare also made the judicious decision to embrace Christianity in 1812 and obtain the support of the missions. The latter were not only engaged in religious conversions but also traded armaments for food at this time. Captain Thomas Hanson of the mission ship Active even exchanged two cannons for 126 hogs.

This account leaves me thinking how little has changed for strong men ruling weak states between 1800 and 2000. Nowadays they trade oil and other natural resources for weapons of all kinds.

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Filed under Britain, economics, Europe, military, nationalism, Pacific, Polynesia, religion, war

by Joel | 10 September 2009 · 7:20 am

Baptist Becomes Buddhist U.S. Army Chaplain

In The Tennessean of 8 September 2009, Bob Smietana profiles a new type of chaplain for the U.S. Army:

When Thomas Dyer heads to Afghanistan in December, the former Marine and one-time Southern Baptist pastor won’t take a rifle with him. He won’t take a Bible, either.

Instead, Dyer, a Tennessean National Guardsman from Memphis and the first Buddhist chaplain in the history of the U.S. Army, hopes to bring serenity and calm, honed by months of intensive meditation.

That preparation, he says, will help him bring spiritual care in the midst of a war zone. “We’re going to put it to the test,” Dyer said.

Dyer’s deployment is another step in the U.S. military’s attempt to meet the diverse spiritual needs of America’s fighting forces. It’s no easy task. For one thing, the military chaplaincy is facing all the complications that have affected American religion over the past 40 years. The decline of mainline Protestants and their aging clergy. The ongoing Catholic priest shortage. The explosion of religious diversity. The emergence of people with no faith. The ease with which people move from one faith to another.

The military is trying to adapt to these changes, while trying to find ministers willing to serve in a war zone, and who can minister to American troops without offending Muslim allies.

My elder stepbrother is a chaplain in the U.S. Army—and the son of a chaplain. And one of my Southern Baptist missionary “uncles” in Japan became very interested in Japanese Buddhism, later publishing a book entitled Zen Way, Jesus Way. One of his daughters is a believer in Tibetan Buddhism. Whenever Christians ask me why I am not a believer, I usually respond, “In which religion?”

UPDATE: There were Christian chaplains in the Imperial Japanese Army, along with Buddhist and Shinto chaplains. (The pastor of the Hiroshima Baptist Church, where my parents served as missionaries, was a Christian chaplain with the Japanese Army in China.) However, there were no Buddhist or Shinto chaplains in the U.S. Army’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team, only Protestants, even for all the “Buddhaheads” from Hawai‘i.

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Filed under Buddhism, Islam, military, religion, U.S., war

by Joel | 26 August 2009 · 6:09 pm

Fractured Historiography of the Confederacy

In the latest issue of Civil War History (Project MUSE subscription required), University of Virginia professor Gary W. Gallagher reviews major trends in the historiography of the Confederacy. Here are a few excerpts about some of the key earlier trendsetters. Explaining defeat is always more challenging than explaining victory.

Thirty years have passed since Emory M. Thomas’s The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865 appeared on the historiographical landscape. Some of its themes had been present in his earlier The Confederacy as Revolutionary Experience, and together the two books heralded the emergence of a major figure in the field. Factors weakening the Confederacy loomed larger than evidence of Rebel persistence or strength in the scholarly literature at that time, but Thomas took seriously the idea of national sentiment in the seceding states. When defeat apparently stalked the slaveholding republic in the spring of 1862 and “their national experiment seemed almost a failure, Confederate Southerners began to respond to their circumstances by redefining themselves—or, more precisely, by defining themselves as a national people.”…

David Williams’s Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner Civil War traverses much of the same ground as Thomas’s work, offering a convenient point of departure to consider the trajectory of recent scholarship on the Confederacy. The author or editor of four previous books dealing with various aspects of Confederate history, Williams complains that generations of historians have emphasized the war “waged with the North” rather than exploring how the “South was torn apart by a violent inner civil war, a war no less significant to the Confederacy’s fate than its more widely known struggle against the Yankees.” Resolutely focused on that “inner civil war,” Bitterly Divided creates an impression of overwhelming internal fracturing that renders the presence of U.S. armies strangely irrelevant….

Internal fissures serve as the interpretive touchstone of a rich body of older work, a brief review of which reveals that Bitterly Divided plows in deep existing furrows. As early as 1867, editor Edward A. Pollard of Richmond’s Examiner denied that northern manpower and resources had settled the issue. “The great and melancholy fact remains,” Pollard observed in The Lost Cause, “that the Confederates, with an abler Government and more resolute spirit, might have accomplished their independence.”…

In 1937, while Margaret Mitchell’s pro-Confederate epic Gone with the Wind sold in huge numbers, pioneering African American historian Charles H. Wesley challenged the Lost Cause narrative of noble Rebels struggling against impossible odds. “Historians of the Confederacy have based their works mainly upon the military subjugation of the South and the heroic actions of its defenders and have neglected the contributing social factors,” maintained Wesley in The Collapse of the Confederacy….

Twenty-eight years later, Carleton Beals reprised much of Wesley’s argument in War within a War: The Confederacy against Itself. “This book is about those people who resisted, because of their love for the Union, or civil rights, or because they believed the struggle to be a ‘rich man’s war, poor man’s fight,’” wrote Beals, who featured “mountain people,” opponents of conscription, African Americans, and others at odds with the Confederate government….

Two historiographical waves established a durable framework within which many advocates of internal failure have examined the Confederacy. Between the mid-1920s and the mid-1940s, a number of scholars joined Wesley to mount a powerful collective assault on Lost Cause mythology. Although they sometimes deployed simplistic class models to support the idea of a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight, their findings contributed importantly to topics such as conscription, state rights as a divisive ideology, desertion, persistent unionism, resistance among slaves (what W. E. B. Du Bois called “The General Strike”), class tensions, and corrosive guerrilla warfare. The fact that all major titles by these authors have been reprinted at least once suggests their continuing influence.

A flurry of studies in the 1970s and 1980s, spurred in part by the new social history’s emphasis on people outside the traditional power structure, expanded on the earlier literature. Some of this work can be read as a direct or indirect response to Thomas’s The Confederate Nation, 1861–1865. Authors and editors drove home the point that no one should think of the Confederacy as a society united across boundaries of region, class, race, and gender. In a category by itself was Why the South Lost the Civil War, by Richard E. Berenger, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still—a detailed and thoughtful, if not ultimately persuasive, brief for the centrality of internal causes of Confederate failure. This prize-winning study attributed defeat to the impact of southern religion, an absence of nationalism, and, despite a level of commitment that absorbed the deaths of approximately one-quarter of all military-age white males in the Confederacy [emphasis added], weak popular will….

Drew Gilpin Faust weighed in on the topic of Confederate nationalism at the end of the 1980s. Suggesting that the “creation of Confederate nationalism was the South’s effort to build a consensus at home, to secure a foundation of popular support for a new nation and what quickly became an enormously costly war,” she identifies religion as critical to a conception of nation predicated on defining Confederates as God’s chosen people. Faust also notes the centrality of slavery to the Confederate consciousness and warns against working backward from Appomattox to yoke discussions of nationalism to those about why the Rebels failed. Her conclusions, however, stress the ultimate weakness of nationalistic sentiment in the southern republic….

The more recent “cutting-edge” literature on internal dissent … has appeared at a steady rate over the past dozen years. A full discussion lies beyond the scope of this essay, but some trends are evident. It has long been a commonplace that the hill country and mountains of the Confederacy functioned as centers of antiwar and anti-Davis administration activity. An array of recent scholarship has examined the war in Appalachia, confirming deep divisions in mountainous regions but also finding evidence of strong support for the Confederacy. Works on North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia create a composite picture affirming John C. Inscoe and Gordon B. McKinney’s observation that “within the southern highlands, the war played out in very different ways for western North Carolinians than it did for East Tennesseans or north Georgians or western Virginians or Eastern Kentuckians.” The authors might have added that within each of these five populations the variety of reactions to the war and its trials also defy easy characterization.

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by Joel | 21 August 2009 · 4:50 pm

Religious Warfare in Japan, 1400–1600

From Japan to 1600: A Social and Economic History, by William Wayne Farris (U. Hawai‘i Press, 2009), pp. 184-186:

For the clergy, the Warring States Era was a time of intense competition for believers and confrontation with the military authorities. In general, the older sects in Nara and Kyoto lost out; Rinzai Zen became weaker with the collapse of the Muromachi bakufu. On the other hand, believers in Sōtō Zen, the Pure Land, and the Lotus Sutra increased greatly. Jesuits brought Roman Catholicism to Japan and they succeeded in making many converts. The emerging thought system, Shinto, chose its sacred texts and drew pilgrims to shrines at Ise and Mount Yoshida in Kyoto.

The fate of Enryakuji, headquarters to the Tendai faith, symbolized the hard times faced by older sects. Already in the 1400s, Enryakuji had begun to lose its lands to warriors and to lose revenues to Kyoto moneylenders. The Muromachi bakufu generally ignored the frequent demonstrations so frightening to the court in the twelfth century. Finally, in 1571 after the warlord Nobunaga had taken control of Kyoto, he had his troops surround Mount Hiei where the temple complex was situated and, shockingly, ordered them to burn the mountain, ending Enryakuji’s pretensions to independent political and economic power. One of the most venerable institutions in Japanese history had been reduced to cinders.

By contrast, Sōtō Zen expanded rapidly into the countryside between 1450 and 1590, primarily because of warrior patronage. Along the Japan Sea littoral, local “men of the province” founded new temples, even as prelates promised them salvation and worldly benefits. The population in Sōtō Zen monasteries and temples grew exponentially in the 1500s, partly because Buddhist monks ignored their behavioral precepts and served potential warrior patrons rice wine in elaborate rituals.

True Pure Land Buddhism benefited from the enlightened rule of its eighth head, Rennyo (1415–1499), who had five wives and twenty-seven children. He proselytized far and wide, writing hymns and pastoral letters to guide his followers. He was especially successful around his home temple Honganji near Kyoto, in eastern Honshu, and along the Japan Sea littoral. The families that became his followers formed congregations as grassroots units, and soon they were known for their cohesion. For example, during a famine, farm families would reserve grain for like-minded artisans and merchants. These congregations numbered between twenty and a thousand and met monthly for religious discussion and worship. They also received rules checking wild behavior, such as slandering other sects or attacking political leaders. By the early 1500s, True Pure Land Buddhism had emerged as a powerful religious organization.

Eventually, this sect came to be known as the “Single-minded” (Ikkō) school because of its adherents’ devotion to Amida Buddha. The cohesion of believers made them difficult for daimyo to control, and in 1488 between 100,000 and 200,000 of the faithful drove a warlord from his domain in Kaga located along the central Japan Sea. The Kaga devotees established an “estate of the Buddha,” resisting local warrior rents and labor dues. Like-minded local samurai willing to accept the new regime soon joined, sharing power with the Ikkō sectarians. Warrior armies failed to suppress the wayward province until 1580, slaughtering thirty to forty thousand religious soldiers in fierce battles.

Meanwhile, the focus moved to the Ikkō sect’s headquarters in the Kinai. When Honganji was burned in Kyoto in 1532, the tenth patriarch had it rebuilt as a fortification in Osaka and recruited an army of twenty thousand. Soon the Single-minded sect became a rallying point for all those opposing warrior rule. During the 1570s, the warlord Oda Nobunaga launched an all-out war against Honganji, using armored ships brimming with cannon to blockade the fortress. In the face of such overwhelming military power, the sect sued for peace on Nobunaga’s terms in 1580. Warrior power had triumphed over the religious network of the Single-minded sect.

The Lotus Sect was no less militant, espousing an ideology of “succeeding in this world.” Kyoto merchants and moneylenders joined in droves, because they felt that the Lotus Leagues, as they were known, helped to protect their profits. These radicals were also popular because they rejected the rents and labor dues imposed by warriors and clamored for the abrogation of urban taxes. Thousands of adherents chanting “Hail to the Lotus Sutra” demonstrated in the streets in long, circular processions, frightening commoners and aristocrats alike. Eventually they came to occupy twenty-one temples protected by moats and earthen walls.

Finally, between 1532 and 1536, the Lotus Leagues in Kyoto revolted against a powerful warrior in the region. Taking over the administration of the city, they kidnapped aristocrats, decided lawsuits, apprehended arsonists, and blocked rent payments. A type of “popular justice” meted out by the Lotus sectarians reigned in the city. In 1536, however, the tide turned against them, as Enryakuji, supported by samurai and the older Buddhist sects, counterattacked. Enryakuji and its allies burned many Lotus temples over a period of thirty-six hours. Survivors fled to the imperial grounds but were nevertheless killed there. Like the Single-minded believers, devotees of this urban religious movement succumbed to the forces of order.