(Sadamu Komachi. IJN picture in USN archives) Sadamu Komachi was on the flight as well, and like Lt. Sakai, had been badly wounded but returned to service at the bitter end. He bagged 14 Americans in the course of his career, and he “could not bear to see American bombers flying serenely over a devastated […]

(314th Squadron (VH) against Mt. Fuji, 1945. USAAF picture) Bill McCullough remembers when Curtis Lemay’s order to transition to low-level tactics against Japan, changing from high-altitude daylight missions to mass low-level night-time attacks against industrial and population centers on the Home Islands.   The crews and support personnel welcomed the change. The struggle to get […]

(Enos “Country” Slaughter signs a ball for a fan on Tinian) I made a note to tell you the story of that epic series tomorrow, when I have not been driving all over Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun Counties before breakfast. Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra www.vicsocotra.com Subscribe to the RSS feed!

Big League Baseball at Isley Field, Saipan, 1945 Bill McCullough was part of the world of Friday Night Lights, the religion that is Texas high school football for 34 years after he got back from Saipan. He coached ball and track, and he recalled some of the best baseball he had seen was right there […]

(Joltin’ Josie Nose Art. USAF Picture) Bill Mccullough was having a pretty good Father’s Day yesterday, and the memories came back with precision. It was a long time ago now, the day he got his draft notice and was called up for service from Gober, Texas, located ten miles southeast of Bonham in southeastern Fannin […]

(The first runway completed at Isley Field, Saipan, September 1944)   Q: How are men and the weather alike? A: Nothing can be done to change either of them.   It is Father’s Day, and cause for me to think about what the men of his generation were expected to do without complaint. The weather […]

(View of two 39th Bomb Group B-29s out of North Field-Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, on a mission to Hiratsuka, Japan, 16 July 1945. Army Air Force Picture) There are a lot of people finding things offensive these days.   There is a fight brewing over conduct on the pool deck. Speedo-man noticed me collecting […]

There are maybe a couple dozen thousand families in this great land who are going through the same sorts of things that we are.   I happen to know three that are in some sort of loopy parallel with ours, and I was looking blankly at the big screen as the National Basketball Association resolved […]

(Gazpacho a la Matt)   You want something poignant and profound about the human condition?   I didn’t think so. Enough. I humped my sorry guilt-laden butt out of the chill gray Northland. Dad announced that he wanted soup for breakfast; Mom produced a can of bean soup with savory ham chunks that I had […]

(Great Books, in stack by the bed.) Time to get out of the Northland. There will be an airplane waiting down in Traverse City, seventy miles away, maybe.   No way to tell, and the contractor who serves the Delta system is a bit cavalier about schedules and the like. Things are more organized out […]