#306 – Dick Bernard: Frank Peter Bernard, U.S. Navy 1935 – 1941, USS Arizona

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It was on a Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, that my Uncle, Frank Peter Bernard, was killed on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor HI.
Each December 7 I remember that day, and indeed, am reminded of that day, as the iconic film clip of the Arizona being hit by the bomb is shown.
Dec. 7, 2010, was no different, until an e-mail arrived late in the afternoon from Dave Calvert, someone unknown to me. The e-mail included two photographs of his Dad, Max Calvert, and my Uncle, taken in 1938 at Long Beach CA. The photographs (below) seemed familiar, and I looked in my collection and found two photos taken at exactly the same place on the same day, one of them identical to the one of Max and Frank; the second with my Uncle and his Dad, my Grandpa Henry Bernard.
The miracle of the internet!

Max Calvert and Frank Bernard, Long Beach CA 1938



Max’s son and I met each other through the ‘twin’ photos. His Dad, he said, was an Iowa farm kid actual first name Howard, who had joined the Navy and at the time of the photo was secretary for the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, on the USS San Francisco. Uncle Frank, two or three years older, was a small town kid from North Dakota. How Max and Frank became friends is unknown; as is why they happened to show up at the same place as my grandparents were then visiting. But it was a fascinating story.
The handwritten caption on the back of Max’s photo said it was taken in November of 1938. The mechanical stamp on the back of my photos identified the date the film was processed as August 15, 1938. Such small discrepancies are common in history work. Most likely, because of the photo processing date stamp, the photos were taken in August in Long Beach. The Arizona was in port at San Pedro August 12-15.
The surprise event caused me to write an e-mail to the National Park Service at Pearl Harbor, telling them I had some photos to share of Uncle Frank. In late December, I received a reply, and sent jpeg’s of all of them for the National Park Service Library at Pearl Harbor.
Last night I decided to post the collection on Facebook. You can view them all here. Double click on any photo to get a larger version. Hold the cursor on the photo to see the caption.
Not at Facebook, but also provided to the Park Service, are three text items relating to my Uncle Frank who, in his short 26 years of life, became, unintentionally, an actor in World War II: Arizona014; Memory017; Fam History015
Frank is at peace; May we all be at Peace as well.

Model of USS Arizona hand-crafted by Bob Tonra ca 1996; goblet, one of six made by Frank Bernard on USS Arizona (size 6 inches high); leaves are Hawaiian, gift from a friend in 1998.


A newspaper column I wrote in 2005 about the end of WWII is at this link:Atomic Bomb 1945001

#294 – Dick Bernard: Naming a mystery man in a photograph, 72 years later.

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Pearl Harbor Day I posted a piece about my Uncle Frank and his service and death on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
The day went on and late in the afternoon came an e-mail from a name I’d never heard before. The e-mail included two photos of my Uncle Frank in Long Beach CA on November 10, 1938. The writer of the e-mail identified himself as the son of the man, Max Calvert, who was posing with Uncle Frank in the photo. His Dad, Dave said, was then the secretary for Admiral Kimmel on-board the USS San Francisco. Kimmel was at that time commander of the Pacific fleet and professionally suffered in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
I have my pictures fairly well organized, so I took out the package labeled “Frank Bernard” to see if there were any matches. You can see the results for yourself, below.
The first photo of each pair is from Dave Calvert; the second is from my family file.

Max Calvert and Frank Bernard Nov. 10, 1938 Long Beach CA


Same setting, date, place from the Bernard files

Max and Frank from the Calvert album Long Beach Nov. 10, 1938


Same setting, Frank with his Dad Henry Bernard, from the Bernard album


Again, the first photo is from the Calvert album, the second from the Bernard album, third, Calvert, fourth, Bernard.
Before December 7, 2010, Dave Calvert, a Californian, and I had never heard of each other.
How did Dave find me? He had the pictures, and he knew that Frank was a casualty on the Arizona, and on this particular Pearl Harbor Day he decided to see if he could find any evidence of family of this long ago sailor who was friends with his sailor Dad in 1938. He did a simple google search and several pages in found reference to my family history website. From there he managed to get ahold of my e-mail address and the rest is history.
The miracle of the internet.
Some days later, he says, he still has ‘goosebumps’ over this essentially chance meeting and our sharing of essentially identical photographs from 72 years ago. I share his sentiments exactly.
I couldn’t label that photograph with the unknown man though I knew that the picture had been taken in 1938 from a developers mark.
Now, thanks to someone who took the extra step another piece of the family tapestry has been identified.

#292 – Remember the Maine; USS Arizona; Never Forget; LPD 21 USS New York

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December 7, 1941, my Uncle Frank Bernard was minding his own business on the USS Arizona, berthed at Pearl Harbor, HI. Without doubt he was awake at the time a Japanese bomb destroyed his ship and snuffed out his life. 1176 shipmates also died that day. Frank was definitely at the wrong place at the wrong time. Every year on this date, no doubt today as well, I will see a photo or a film clip of the Arizona blowing up.
I am the only one of my siblings old enough to have ever actually met Uncle Frank; the last time at the end of June, 1941, in Long Beach, California.

Bernard Family Reunion at Long Beach CA late June, 1941. Frank is in the center, Dick, 1 1/2, is next to him.

Frank had served on the Arizona since 1936. Though he seems to have been engaged to someone in Bremerton WA, he likely intended to be a career man in the Navy.

Frank Bernard, Honolulu, some time before Dec. 7, 1941

Wars are never fought without reasons, or consequences. They are collections of stories, often mythology masquerading as fact. One war succeeds the last war. That’s just how wars are.
Frank’s Dad, my Grandpa Henry Bernard, 43 years earlier had enlisted to serve the United States in what he always called the Spanish-American War in the Philippines. He was very proud of this service, which lasted from the spring of 1898, to the summer of 1899. The pretext for this war was the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor. Whatever actually caused the explosion was blamed on the Spaniards, and led to an outpouring of patriotic fervor in the U.S. “Remember the Maine” was the battle cry.
Grandpa’s unit, one of the first to the Philippines, never actually fought any Spaniards – he and his comrades were hardly off the boat near Manila when the Spanish surrendered. His battles were with the Filipino “insurgents” who were glad to be rid of the Spaniards, and just wanted the Americans to go back where they came from. That war is now called the Philippine-American War – a term Grandpa wouldn’t know.
In Henry’ company was his future wife’s cousin, Alfred Collette. Some years after the war, Alfred returned to the Philippines, becoming successful, later marrying and living the rest of his life in the Philippines.
After Pearl Harbor, the first major conquest of American territory by the Japanese was the Philippines…. Alfred was imprisoned at the notorious Santo Tomas. During the final battle for the liberation of Manila in 1945 his second child, named for my grandmother Josephine, was killed by shrapnel from either the liberators or the Japanese. She was only four years old, in her mother’s arms. Her two siblings witnessed her death.
Seven of Uncle Frank’s cousins in Canada, all from the same family, went to WWII, three in the Canadian Army, four in the U.S. Army. One of the seven died in combat. Others from my families served as well, as did neighbors. Most survived; some didn’t.

Alfred Collette, 1898, Presidio San Franciso CA

Henry Bernard, middle soldier, in Yokahoma Japan, enroute home1899

Which brings to mind the USS New York LPD 21.
On Thanksgiving day came one of those power point forwards celebrating the launch of the Amphibious Transport Ship the USS New York, a ship partially manufactured out of the wreckage of the World Trade Centers September 11, 2001. The internet is awash with items about this ship, commissioned in November of 2009.
A key caption of the powerpoint said that the New York’s contingent was “360 sailors, 700 combat ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft”, apparently roaming the world at the ready to do battle with the bad guys wherever they were. The transport has “twin towers” smokestacks,
I could see the attempt at symbolism in the power point: “don’t mess with the U.S.”. The boat plays to the American fantasy that we are an exceptional society, more deserving than others.
But, somehow, I failed to see the positive significance of this lonely boat, roaming the world, looking for opportunities to do battle against our enemies.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of geographic knowledge to know how immense this world is, and how tiny and truly insignificant is a single ship with about 1000 U.S. servicemen, no matter how highly trained and well-equipped they might be.
It seems we have better ways to use our money.
Uncle Frank was technically a peace-time casualty – War wasn’t declared against Japan until after he was dead. He and his comrades at Pearl Harbor who also died were only the first of hundreds of thousands of Americans, who joined, ultimately, millions of others who became casualties of WWII. A few of Grandpa Henry’s comrades were killed on Luzon, and till the end of his life in 1957 in Grafton ND there was an annual remembrance at the monument in front of the Walsh County Court House.
The triumph of war is what we seem to remember.
The horror of war is what we best “never forget”.
Peace takes work, lots of it. Let’s work for Peace.

#280 – Virgil Benoit: On French-Canadians, English and the American Revolutionary War

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During an animated conversation on Sunday, some new friends, long-time residents of Long Island NY, and for a number of years residents in Salt Lake City UT, asked a question about an aspect of French-Canadian history, which I then rephrased for Dr. Virgil Benoit of the University of North Dakota, an expert on things Franco-American. His Initiatives in French – Midwest is a fledgling but important organization to celebrate the French heritage in the Midwest.

Dr. Benoit re-enacting an important French-Canadian trader at old St. Joseph (Walhalla) ND 2008


I asked Dr. Benoit: “Is there a simple reason why the French did not support the Americans when, in the Revolutionary War period, the fledgling U.S. was interested in throwing the English out of power in Quebec?
I know nothing is simple, but perhaps there is a general answer.*”
Dr. Benoit responded almost immediately, and his succinct commentary is well worth sharing, and is shared with his permission.
Hi Dick,
“The Quebec Act of 1774 [Q Act] is often cited as the event which encouraged French-Canadians [F-Cs] to not revolt against the British in Canada in 1776. The Q Act gave F-Cs the freedom to practice their religion, customs and language.
The Q Act was a first in British governance towards its colonies. But the British were only a small minority in Quebec at the time. Maybe they felt they had to do it that way. They also knew they could lose the other thirteen colonies in North America and have no foothold in the New World. The F-C. also had no support from France by 1776. They also were afraid of being swallowed up by the neighboring anglo-saxon protestant culture, i.e. the new United States. As it were the Quebec Act gave them more protection as a defeated people than the unknown relationship with a nation-to-be.
With the defeat of 1760 [of France, by England at Quebec] the F-C society lost its upper class. Its leaders with political contacts went either back to France or had been lowered in status to common folk as far a political or social influence was concerned. The one class that rose quickly to exert influence in Quebec at this time was the clergy, which turned out to act very conciliatory toward the British. They [the clergy] interpreted the new situation stemming from the Quebec Act as one that guaranteed protection. They felt that as a conquered people the French-Canadians should be careful and appreciate that they had religious freedom as well as privileges to use French and customs as before the conquest in 1760. Over time, the clergy tied the privileges of religion and language together, saying that to keep French was also to be true to the Catholic faith.
These two “freedoms” became the clergy’s motto for keeping French-Canadians together, so to speak. The clergy fought migration to urban areas, such as Quebec City and Montreal which were very British and Protestant up until WWI. In short, the surrender of New France by France led to the seemingly paradoxical situation you are asking about. But the French of the former New France did not side with the Americans. It happened as you see because the common people of the former New France saw little hope, and their choice not to fight again was reinforced by the clergy. The common folk had fought the British invasion of 1760, but were in the end greatly outnumbered on the battle fields. They lost and along with the defeat, strategy (contacts with the homeland) and courage were also lost.
It would take the French Canadians until the 1970s to work their way back to a Quebec society that could be called contemporary to its counterparts in the world. Bravo. They did it. There was the Revolution of 1836 against British dominance in Quebec. It was stopped. There was the war’s act of Trudeau against Quebec in about 1968. It did not last. In all the rest of time and in all other arenas of civilized society the Quebec people have worked through parliament to regain equity with those who invaded and took their country away in 1760.
A final observation, invading armies can make war, but they can’t kill culture. It will surface and come back. In Quebec, not only has culture survived wars between gigantic superpowers and brutal scrimmages on the home front, but a rich government has been put into place and the country is dynamic today. Best to you.”
Virgil
* – At the time of the American Revolution, the French had already been established in what is now Quebec for 168 years. The founding of Quebec as a French Colony dates to 1608, with the major development beginning after 1630.

#276 – Dick Bernard: 11 bells; 3 volleys. Nov. 11, 2010 remembered.

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“[My sister] Florence was born [Nov. 3, 1918] the year World War I ended. [Nov. 11, 1918] the hired girl and I were out in the snow chasing chickens into the coop so they wouldnt freeze when there was a great long train whistle from the Grand Rapids [ND] railroad track [5 miles away]. In the house there was a long, long telephone ringing to signify the end of World War I.”
Esther Busch Bernard memories, p. 122 of Pioneers, the Busch-Berning family history (2005).
November 11 I attended both the Armistice and Veterans Day events held one block apart, roughly halfway between the State Capitol and Cathedral of St. Paul.
That context is important.
I think I have participated in most if not all Armistice Day events since 2002.
This year I intentionally broadened my context, and distanced myself from all participants in both events. I wanted to catch more of the resonance or emotional distance between those who remember Armistice Day (reminding us of the end of WW I on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, continuing in many countries to this day); and Veteran’s Day (which permanently replaced Armistice Day in the U.S. in 1954.) I wandered between the groups, one city block apart, easily visible to each other.
On the way to the events, yesterday, I stopped at my barber, a Marine combat veteran in Vietnam whose brother, also a Marine, was killed in Vietnam. Tom and I are long-time good friends. He angled a little towards conversation about war and peace this day; I chose to angle away. We talked of other things.
On the wall was a flat screen television tuned to the sports network, ESPN. The coverage this day included live film from a U.S. military base in Germany. Part of the coverage included a field game, similar to what kids would play, only in this case it was Hand Grenade toss, to see which GI participant could come closest to nailing a humanoid figure in the eye of a bullseye with a hand grenade facsimile. Not much focus on peace, there.
Haircut over I went to the Veterans/Armistice day field of memories.
There seemed to be roughly equal numbers of outside visitors at each, though the Veterans group was much more formal and fancier, including people in uniform, lots of flags, and what appeared to be a high school band. Both groups were heavily laced with military veterans.
I noted, really for the first time in many years coming here, a large sculpture of a soldier with what I’d call pleading outstretched arms. He stood roughly half way between the groups, primarily facing the Veterans Day event at the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

He had been standing there since 1982, the plaque said.
11:00 was approaching and I returned to the Armistice Day gathering to witness the bell-ringing, 11 times, to signify 11-11-11. The speaker holding our bell said that the Cathedral of St. Paul down the street had agreed to ring their bells 11 times this year – a first. We waited. 11:00 came and went, no bells. The group rang its own bell.
I left, and went over to the Veterans gathering just in time to see their ceremony, three men brought forth a rifle, a pair of boots and a helmet to signify a fallen soldier. The MC ordered three rifle volleys from the armed color guard.
I found myself thinking back to that sculpture between the groups. The caption said “Why do you forget us?” as the sculpted soldier faced the Veterans gathering.
Behind him, I thought to myself, was an Armistice group that might change that quotation only slightly. “Why do you forget [“the war to end all wars”]?”
I left the parking lot. 11:15 and still no bells from the Cathedral, looming over us a few short blocks away. The silence was deafening.
There is a story waiting to be told….
Regarding “the resonance or emotional distance”? Remember the distinction between 11 bells and 3 volleys of rifle fire. That catches it, in my seeing and hearing. At one site, the symbol of honor was a rifle, serving as a body of a soldier, with boots and helmet. At the other, a simple bell of peace.

Veterans Day Commemoration


Armistice Day Commemoration


Related, here.

#275 – Dick Bernard: Armistice/Veterans Day. Remembering a Vet

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The November 10 mail brought a newspaper column I had been expecting, a tribute to my brother-in-law Michael Lund, who died exactly three years earlier in Fargo ND.
The column, by Bob Lind in the Fargo (ND) Forum, Mike Lund Fargo Forum001 tells most of the story, and speaks profoundly for itself.
I had the honor of spending quality time with Mike as his life ended Nov. 10, 2007, at age 60, cancer.
A few hours before he died I was able to tell him a little about his Dad, whose death certificate came up in an internet search. I was lucky, and he was grateful: he never knew his Dad or anything about him.
This is Veteran’s Day, and Michael was an Army veteran. He was inducted 8 February 1971 and was honorably discharged 30 January 1973, with Good Conduct Medal and rank of Specialist 5th class – an unusual accomplishment for an enlisted man. Much of his service time was in Germany. It was an easy trip from base to the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, and he went.

Mike Lund, early 1973


As Mr. Lind relates, Michael’s early life was anything but easy. One wonders how he survived at all. His sister was my wife; his mother was my mother-in-law, a fine but very poor and disabled woman who did what she could.
A draftee, Mike once told me that he grew to like the Army. It brought stability to his life and he had thoughts of making it a career.
But as often happens, circumstances interfered. In Michael’s situation, the problems began sometime in the late winter of 1972 when someone unknown filed a complaint against him, very obviously concentrating on his short career as a school teacher in small town North Dakota. The 22-page military interrogatory transcript, of which he kept five copies for some reason, laid out the allegations against him. The primary complaint appeared to center on his allowing his high school students freedom of speech to protest against the then-raging War in Vietnam. Somebody didn’t like that. He was fired from his teaching job in mid-year, and then he was drafted.
He did well in the service, likely had a secret security clearance, and someone, probably a civilian back home, didn’t like that a person who allowed protests of the War was in an intelligence position. In the transcript, questions are asked about an apparently radical teacher at the college he attended. Was he in this teacher’s classes? Yes. He was dirt poor, and he was apparently behind on some small payments to stores and such, and that was on the tally sheet as well.
His Honorable Discharge is the only official record of his military service and there is not a single word on it that even suggests less than totally honorable service.
Still that 22-page interrogatory was his most important paper. For me it has become, in a sense, his biography.
Michael came home in the winter of 1973, his dream of an Army career apparently destroyed; his opportunities to get another teaching job probably destroyed as well. The rest of his life, which I witnessed from a distance, usually, did not reveal the tenacity of a kid who rose above all odds to not only graduate from high school but earn a B average in college. I am guessing there are things that went on in his post-Army life that I would rather not know. Nonetheless, when I make my list of heroes, he is near the top. He survived against all odds.
As life wound down for him – this began to accelerate with his mother’s death in 1999 – Michael lost his house. Winning the Minnesota Lottery or other sweepstakes had become his passion…. He mused about good places to be homeless. Becoming paralyzed from the waist down as a result of major surgery ended that idea.
It finally fell to me and a cousin of his to clear out the flotsam and jetsam of his life.
In a small chest in his room, by his bed, in a drawer by itself, was his crumpled up Army uniform, with a small box of medals. It was a mess, that uniform, but it was very important to him. Also there were his dog tags, and on their chain a little medallion he had purchased somewhere, sometime.
Then he died. One of the few people at his funeral was one of his high school teachers, Ann Haugaard. She spoke very positively of him.
This past summer I delivered that uniform and all of his important papers to the North Dakota State Historical Society in Bismarck. They accepted the gift.
Mike, I salute you.
Dick
U.S. Army, 1962-63

Mike Lund, May, 2007, Fargo ND




Related post here.

#272 – Dick Bernard: War, and Peace

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A few days ago we finished the biennial reenactment of the Civil War – the 2010 elections. While this is a supposedly bloodless sport, the biennial result is “a house divided” where one side “wins” and the other “loses”. The aim, especially strong today, is to kill the opposing point of view, relevant though it may be.
The instant this political Civil War ended, the next one began. It’s a wonder our country survives. One wonders what our community, national and global landscape would look like if we didn’t insist on dissipating our energy and resources to fight constantly against each other, and, rather, try to work towards agreement on things.
Oh, it’s a dream.
In the election just past, one candidate for a Minnesota Congressional seat defeated the 35-year incumbent U.S. Representative who had a great record of representing the interests of the district. The challenger had no previous experience in government outside of military service. He was described as applying “a military theme to his campaign. His battered motor home was called the “war wagon”. Campaign staffers and volunteers were given military titles – commanders, captains lieutenants.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune, page A12, November 4, 2010). The district loses a representative with great seniority who effectively represented its interests. It gets a new representative with no seniority or experience who campaigned against the very things which led to his opponents many re-elections. The elder statesman was a casualty of a ‘throw ’em out’ mentality.
Destructive as it is to us, we love war, especially as a spectator sport.
(In 1860 the U.S. population was about 31 million, one-tenth of today’s. There were over 365,000 Civil War deaths in 1861-65, and 282,000 more wounded. In today’s political combat, there are no rotting corpses on assorted political battlefields, but there is residual and permanent damage to our effectiveness as a nation. The political goal is to render impotent the opposition. Back and forth we go….)
It was very good for me and many others to be able to shift gear at the end of election week, to move away from combat for awhile.
Friday night I attended a collaborative event of the Hawkinson Foundation and the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, “Building Generations Together: Creating a Culture of Peace“.
This was a tremendously inspiring event.
During the Awards section of the program, several younger people from many cultures received awards for their grassroots work on building community through working together. (Their bios and accomplishments are outlined at the aforementioned Hawkinson Foundation website).
At the end of the evening, the award winners joined in a dialogue with five elders (their profiles also at the website) in the Twin Cities Peace and Justice Community, to give their views on a number of different questions. The elders were Carol and Ken Masters, Rev Verlyn Smith, Rev. James Siefkes and Mary Lou Nelson. It was greatly refreshing to see the elders and youngers dialoguing together, while those of us in the audience, primarily elders, listened and learned.

Elder and Younger dialogue November 5, 2010


Everyone listened respectfully to the presentations and the dialogue.
I can only speak for myself: I left the evening tired but energized, with a couple of new insights, which for me made the time expended completely worthwhile.
In a few days we commemorate Armistice Day, November 11, the day “the war to end all wars”, WWI, ended in 1918.
Of course, the end of WWI didn’t end war; it just ensured a subsequent and even more awful war. That is the normal consequence of combat as a resolution to differences.
Peace may not be quite as fun as contemporary political combat, but it is certainly more productive.
Give Peace a chance.
Related post here.

#244 – Dick Bernard: Making a Disaster into a Catastrophe

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It’s Saturday evening, September 11, 2010.
A few hours ago, looking for something to watch on TV, I happened across the Weather Channel, which at the time was playing a program about the evacuation of Dunkirk, France, May 27 – June 3, 1940. It was an incredible rescue, thanks to a nine-day break in often treacherous weather on the English Channel. In all, 338,226 English and French soldiers were ferried to England by large boats and small; 40,000 French soldiers were captured by the invading Germans, presumably becoming casualties of WWII.
It was a heroic moment, facilitated by what some would later call a ‘miraculous’ set of weather circumstances. It was a very interesting program.
Dunkirk was almost two years before Pearl Harbor and the entry of the U.S. into World War II.
In those years before sophisticated media, the public learned of events largely after the fact through newspapers, telephone, radio and black and white images later conveyed in film. Winston Churchill became a heroic figure through good decisions, a great deal of luck, and a gift of oratory.
It was a simple time.
I was three weeks old.
As I write, after 9 p.m. CDT, my spouse is watching the History Channel, which is replaying archival tape of 9-11-01.
It is dramatic, with sounds and images as recorded in an age where media had become ubiquitous and instant.
It is not necessary to recite what I hear, and what is being shown on a large screen HD color TV elsewhere in my home. Even up here, it is a riveting film (which I do not plan to go down to watch.) I’ve “been there, done that”.
There were almost 3000 people killed on 9-11, about 2600 in New York City, 263 in four planes (including the 19 hijackers), and 125 at the Pentagon. There were casualties who were citizens of 70 different countries. Of the hijackers, 15 were Saudi Arabian, none were Iraqi. The word ‘al Qaeda’ came into the vocabulary, a phrase which I understand simply means “the base”, and responsibility was fixed on Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, who was harbored by the Taliban government in Afghanistan at the time.
We are now nine years down the road from this disaster, which has in the intervening years become a catastrophe which has captured our country and is destroying us economically and morally (i.e sanctioned torture) as well.
Over 4400 American service people have been killed in Iraq, and several million Iraqis were killed or displaced by the resulting Iraq War. Conservatively, about 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in the conflict since 2003. In some sources, only the “Coalition of the Willing” casualties are noted.
Afghanistan, the initial target of our national need for revenge, was for all intents and purposes abandoned in favor of invading Iraq, and we are now mired in Afghanistan in a conflict which, to be honest, is militarily unwinnable, and politically impossible to leave.
We close 9-11-2010 with conflict raging over an Islamic Center near Ground Zero, and an apparently cancelled burning of Korans in Florida.
We do not seem to learn our lessons well.
We had an opportunity, after 9-11, to choose a different fork in the road of relating to the world.
We chose War, indeed to celebrate War following 9-11. It was a politically popular decision Afghanistan Oct 7 2001001. I have seen pieces of the World Trade Center at the International Peace Garden on the border of North Dakota and Manitoba, and seen in the Peace Chapel there front pages of World Wide newspapers featuring the collapsing World Trade Center in flames from September 12, 2001. Somehow they seem incongruous and out of place, there.
It is not too late to choose peace, but the door is closing fast.
The TV show has ended. I didn’t watch….
Sunday morning, September 12, 2010:
My e-mail inbox has this headline from the New York Times, 4:17 a.m.: “On Sept 11 anniversary, rifts among mourning“.
The “rifts” have absolutely nothing to do with “mourning”. Rather it is like picking at a scab for nine years, not allowing it to heal.
So long as 9-11 is kept as a potent political issue, its dead cannot rest in peace.
We should be ashamed.

#228 – Dick Bernard: Making the Change from "Swords into Plowshares"

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This post relates directly to #227 – The Last Truck Out.
My guess is that there are relatively few who truly believe that Perpetual War is the path to Perpetual Peace. Even those who recite the assorted ‘might is right’ mantras probably doubt the wisdom of this position. Tens of millions upon tens of millions of war dead, especially in the last hundred years, testify to the insanity of war as solution to problems. We know we need a different formula for living together on this planet or we’re all dead.
Still, ours is a nation built on the value of military might and conquest, and huge numbers of us, including myself, have very close familiarity with the military system. So, when in doubt, the path to peace is usually more war: it is a national mantra, difficult to change. Sometimes it seems impossible to change.
Wednesday night I was heartened when that last combat truck came through the gate from Iraq into Kuwait. I was heartened even though 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, which is still an unstable country, politically.
I was heartened because possibly, just possibly, the scales have tipped from a military solution to every problem, to more of an emphasis on diplomacy: the possibility that a Department of State can play a larger role against an immense Department of Defense. I will continue to believe that what happened yesterday was an immense step forward, rather than a petty and unimportant one.
“We, the people” are key to encouraging this transition. How?
As I write, I have in front of me a dog-eared copy of Martin Luther King, Jr’s 1964 book “Why We Can’t Wait“. It was a used book when I received it – a plus not a minus! – a most welcome gift from my friend Lydia Howell in December, 2006. It is a book I urge everyone to read reflectively. My edition, from 1968, is the reprinted and identical edition still available at bookstores and on-line.
MLK wrote the book when he was 34 years old, and it was published shortly after his 35th birthday; and a few months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who he knew personally. He recounts the sorry history of race relations in this country, with an emphasis on the more recent history of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, and particularly the watershed year of 1963, the year of his Letter from the Birmingham Jail (which is reprinted in full in the book.) (MLK was responding to a letter from prominent Alabama clergymen who were urging moderation. It is very difficult to find their letter on-line, even today, so I have attached it Alabama Clergy MLK 63001.)
King’s true genius was not only his rhetorical skills, in my opinion.
King knew grassroots organizing, and the politics of possibility as well as the realities of politics, formal and informal. He richly recounts the struggles in his book.
In the book he gives great credit to a minister most of us have likely never heard of: a man named Fred Shuttlesworth who built the Alabama base for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “The courageous minister’s audacious public defiance of Bull Connor had become a source of inspiration and encouragement to Negroes throughout the South“, King says (pp 51-52).
The hard-hearted Bull Connor also receives some of the credit for the successes of 1963.
At page 132, King goes further: “I am reminded of something President Kennedy said to me at the White House following the signing of the Birmingham agreement. “Our judgment of Bull Connor should not be too hard,” he commented. “After all, in his way, he has done a good deal for civil-rights legislation this year.” King continues: “It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people….”
King and the Civil Rights Movement worked with different issues at a different time in history than today’s Peace movement.
The Civil Rights Movement was fighting centuries of oppression; in the War and Peace environment of today, Peace leaders need to recognize that War has been successful, and re-fashion their arguments around the ultimate failure of War as a solution, especially in today’s and the future environment.
It is a difficult transition which we all have to make.
War kills.
Peace and justice are the only long term solutions.

#227 – Dick Bernard: The last truck out….

/in , , , , , /by

Last night about 6:55 p.m. local time I turned on the TV to watch some evening news.
Rather than what I expected, I was watching the last combat units pulling out of Iraq into neighboring Kuwait. I sat transfixed by this until near 9 p.m. my time, and (if I recall rightly) 3:53 a.m. local time in Kuwait, August 19, 2010, when the last immense and other-worldly combat vehicle went through the border gate, which then closed behind it.
I felt I was witnessing history in the making.
At this moment, 5 a.m. local time on August 19, 2010, there is little on the internet news behind this screen I’m typing on. I’m sure this will rapidly change. NBC-MSNBC had the exclusive reporting rights on this one apparently because they possessed the technology to instantly cover the breaking story, which was secret until it actually happened.
Now the torrent of commentary and controversy will begin along all sorts of predicted trajectories. This was, after all, a withdrawal of the last specifically designated combat troops in Iraq, and 50,000 American troops remain in Iraq, and Afghanistan is the issue du jour. (Area map with Minnesota superimposed for scale is Iraq environs ca 2005001.)
But it is an historic event ranking, for me, with the time I stopped along highway 2 in northern Minnesota to listen to the account of “the Eagle has landed” on the moon (July 20, 1969); the early afternoon when I was in a science lab in Hallock MN when the PA announcement came that President Kennedy had been shot (November 22, 1963); the evening in 1991 when the car radio brought news that the U.S. had invaded Iraq in Desert Storm (January 16, 1991) (March, 1991, note from a GI there, to me, is Soldier letter 1991001); Afghanistan Oct 7 2001, and Baghdad (March 20, 2003); the iconic last helicopter out of Saigon (April 29, 1975)….
I will especially be watching to see how (not if, but how) the very odd “coalition” of the Far Right and Far Left will position on this particular historical development.
Neither Far Left or Far Right seem to have any time for President Obama these days, for precisely opposite reasons. They have joined forces in driving down his poll numbers – it is a perfect example (in my opinion) of the danger of drawing false conclusions from seemingly obvious data in polls. Lately “the fur has been flying” over a comment about the “professional Left” from the White House Press Secretary. Since I mostly “hang” with people over on the dark (left) side, and indeed watched last nights development on the news program of one of these “professional Lefties”, I’ve seen commentaries ad infinitum about that supposed slight a few days ago.
A friend, a couple of days ago, caught this unholy alliance idea pretty well, in a personal comment on another issue: “The truly interesting thing is how the left and the right see Obama…. One sees him as a “communist”, the other sees him in cahoots with Wall Street. Based on that alone he must be doing something right.”
Ironically (my opinion), President Obama is the voice of moderation, seeking some stability in this almost collapsed nation of ours, and this requires navigating extraordinarily rough seas.
So, I’ll watch and see how this all plays out.
Tonight, just by happenstance, I’m moderating an inaugural and small community conversation brought together by five of us to try to get into civil conversation about issues of the day. It will be an interesting experiment, hopefully the first of many such conversations of people of differing feelings and beliefs. (We gather at Peaceful United Methodist Church on Steepleview Rd in Woodbury if you want to join us – 7 p.m.)
What I witnessed on TV last night wasn’t on our agenda for tonight.
Tonight it likely will be.
Stay tuned.
(NOTE: I have other commentaries on the general issue. Most recent is a commentary on Afghanistan. Simply print the word in the Search Box. War is another category.)