genealogy tidbits

I grew up knowing who my grandfathers were.  I met my mother’s father, Troy Matthews, probably several times, when I was young.  Troy’s older brother got the family farm (in Illinois) so Troy being clever did a lot of odd jobs, especially photography.  He was one of the earliest who knew how to develop film.  Being the only one interested in that sort of thing I inherited his equipment, all of which he made himself, but that disappeared when I went into the Marine Corps.  I asked my brother about it and he thinks it was thrown out during a move. Troy died of a disease that was still sweeping the country back in the 40s, tuberculosis; which he acquired in a hospital while being checked for something minor

On my grandmother’s side, my mother’s mother, came from a large family, and they kept in touch – lots of names I don’t know much about.

My grandmother on my father’s side, Bertha Bristol, actually raised me until I was ten.  She was a tough old lady who used to like to wrestle with my dad.  She was the one who got me interested in reading.  She would take me to the library with her and it was a big deal when I finally got my own library card.  She used to visit her family back in South Dakota from time to time – lots more names.

My father’s father, Harry Helm (born 1865, died 1925) , left his first wife, moved west and married young Bertha.  I knew one of Harry’s son’s from his first marriage, Bill Helm.  He got me work on the docks when I needed extra money.  He was a sailor in world War II.  When I was going to school at Long Beach State College he was in the nearby veterans hospital with a terminal illness, probably something to do with his heart.  I used to visit him regularly.  Everyone was having girls back then, and being a male and also having been in the Marine Corps was sort of a big deal for Bill.

My great-grandfather,  Harry’s father, was Schyler (sometimes spelled Schuyler) Helm.  He was a sergeant (and an engineer) in the division formulated in Illinois during the Civil War.  I sent for all his military records – not very informative.  I did learn that his unit was part of Sherman’s army, but before Sherman went south on his famous march, he broke his army in half.  The half Schyler was part of stayed behind to fight forces that threatened Washington from time to time. 

Schyler Helm died at about 48; so perhaps he had a war injury or disease that shortened his life. 

 I also get notified when DNA tests show I’m closely related to someone – I’ve never known what to do with that information.

The DNA test did overcome one of our family myths, that we were part Indian.  My DNA results came back with zero Indian.  I informed my sister and brother, but they were never interested in genealogy that much.  My brother, who now lives in Utah (but isn’t Mormon) showed a bit of interest when I talked to him about it recently.

I found a lot of names that fought in the civil war, most of whom fought on the side of the North.  Another fought in the War of 1812 & was captured by the British.  Other names with indication that they fought but no proof.

Ancestry.com "refines DNA information" from time to time.  At present I am defined as 75% England, Wales & Northwestern Europe, 15% Ireland & Scotland; 6% Germanic Europe; 4% Norway.

On the Marianas Turkey Shoot

Had it been up to Admiral Mitscher, commander of Task Force 58, there never would have been a Turkey Shoot.  He was itching to send his planes after the Japanese fleet which was just out of range in an unknown direction.   He asked permission of Admiral Spruance to go after the Japanese carriers (the Japanese had in the time since Midway added three carriers, bringing their total [I think] to four. 

Admiral Spruance refused Mitscher permission.  The American fleet’s primary task was to provide support for the landing forces on Saipan.  The Japanese were dug in such that bombing and shell-fire couldn’t dislodge them.  That the task was difficult could in part be seen by the Army force being unable to keep up.  The Marines on either side of the Army advanced much more quickly leaving the American forces in a deep U shape which put the Marines at risk.  General Howling Mad Smith complained to Spruance and got him to give the order that the Army General (also named Smith) be replaced.  Much interagency acrimony was to ensue, but the General Smith’s replacement got the job done.   Saipan was bloody and difficult.  Spruance promised not to leave the landing forces unsupported as the Navy had done earlier at Guadalcanal. 

Mitscher hated not being able to go after the Japanese forces, but he followed orders and waited for the Japanese to land the first blow.  The nature of the Japanese was to exaggerate their successes and lie about their failures; so the Japanese Admiralty believed its pilots were more successful than they were and that far fewer of them had been shot down.  They believed they were sending a large competent fleet of planes toward the Americans at Saipan.  The Japanese planes with their inferior pilots that were supposed to be sent in irresistible waves to bomb the American carriers failed except in three cases to hit a carrier with a bomb.  They were either shot down by American pilots (one shot down 6 Japanese aircraft and another 7) or were hit by flak once they got near the American carriers.  Of the three Japanese pilots who managed to hit a carrier, the damage was minor and didn’t inhibit the carrier’s operation.  No carrier or any other ship of Task Force 58 was sunk.  Had the Japanese admiralty known the condition of their fleet, the true nature and quantity of their aircraft, and such matters as not having nearby land-based aircraft ready to assist in the attacks on the American carriers, they wouldn’t have ordered the attack.

It wasn’t Mitscher’s first choice to wait for the Japanese to strike the first blow, and Spruance probably thought Mitscher’s Task Force 58 would suffer more than it did; so the “turkey shoot” surprised everyone on both sides.

Reading about war in the Pacific Islands

In the past I was used to highlighting passages on the pages of hard copies in case I wanted to refer back to them.  Kindle offers something like that.  I can highlight Kindle passages, but I have never mastered successfully referring back to them.  Recently I have purchased hard copies as well.  Thus, I read the Kindle edition of Shattered Sword, but I had the hard copy available to make checking references easier.  I did not however highlight the hard copy; so in a recent discussion I had to rely upon my (faulty) memory instead of turning to hard-copy (or Kindle) highlighted passages. 

I am doing the same thing with Ian Toll’s The Conquering Tide, War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944.  I set it aside to work on Weinberg, but I got as far as the war on Saipan.  So I set Toll aside, sent for and read Saipan, The Battle that Doomed Japan in World II by James H. Hallas, 2019.  Hallas book was published later than Toll’s volume II (published 2015) but I was looking for the best history, not necessarily a history Toll referenced – except in the case of the Shattered Sword which Toll praised.  After a lot of trial and error I found the reference not at the beginning of Toll’s volume II but at the end of his Volume I, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942:  “Taken together, Operations AL and MI represented the commitment of almost the entirety of the Imperial Japanese Navy, write Jon Parshall and Tony Tully in Shattered Sword (2005), their groundbreaking study of the Japanese experience at Midway; ‘all of its carriers, all of its battleships, all but four of its heavy cruisers, and the bulk of its lesser combatants.  Twenty-eight admirals would lead those forces into battle, and they would log more miles and consume more fuel in this single operation than was normally used in an entire year.”

Toll goes on to write [whether or not based upon Parshall and Tully I don’t remember], “The Midway operation was not a product of sound military planning.  It was a farrago of compromises struck to quell internal dissent and to balance the demands of rivals in the Combined Fleet and the naval General Staff.  Not surprisingly, it was shot through with contradictions, flaws, and unnecessary risks.  It exposed a fatal hubris and an unwarranted contempt for the enemy.  The plan spread Japanese forces too thinly over a huge expanse of the North Pacific, and relied on dubious conjectures about how the Americans would react.  It asked too much of a few elite aviators who had been flying and fighting almost without respite since December 7.  Though the Japanese were loath to admit it, the most experienced of their carrier aircrews were bone-weary, while the newcomers lacked the training and seasoning to equal the skill of the veterans.  In his subsequent report on the battle, Admiral Nagumo would observe that there had been ‘considerable turnover in personnel. . . .   Inexperienced flyers barely got to the point where they could make daytime landings on carriers.  It was found that even some of the more seasoned flyers had lost some of their skill.’”

On Japan not being able to produce good pilots later in the war

Years ago I read Samurai by Saburo Sakai.  Also the matter is covered in Toll and some others.  Japanese pilot training methods were exhaustive and time consuming.  Only a relatively small percentage of those who tried out were able to complete the training.  The Japanese pilots we encountered at the beginning were the best in the world.  But as they were killed off or wounded and could no longer fly, the Japanese had to change their methods.  There wasn’t time to train new pilots as thoroughly as they trained them in the past.  I can’t recall whether it was Sakai or one of the other Japanese aces who survived the war that said all of the pilots who washed out during his training were better than the pilots being turned out with abbreviated training toward the end of the war. 

As to planes being destroyed on carriers versus being shot down in combat – this occurred on both sides.  Launching planes from a carrier was time consuming, and if the enemy’s planes showed up before you got yours into the air then you had to stop launching and concentrate on saving your boat.  Lots of planes were destroyed on decks or down below if enemy planes were successful.  But at some point, almost all Japanese pilots being produced were inferior to American pilots.  Also, American planes at some point were superior to the Japanese.  The Japanese hadn’t time to produce a new design.  They tinkered with the Zero, but couldn’t make it as good as the later American planes.

Keegan vs Parshall and Tully on Midway

In regard to Keegan's The Second World War, published by Viking, 1989 being compared to others on the subject of Midway:

I can’t recall whether I read that book but I can’t find it in my library – which unfortunately doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.  I don’t know how much space Keegan gives to Midway, but The Shattered Sword, is devoted just to the battle of Midway, is about as long as the one by Keegan uses to cover the entire Second World War.  Time passes.  Toll is taking three volumes to do what Keegan did in one.  I don’t know if Keegan had much access to Japanese records and writings.  In The Shattered Sword, published in 2005 it seems that Parshall and Tully are breaking new ground: providing significant Japanese records about Midway, in English, for the first time.

But I do like Keegan.  He argued that Vietnam was a righteous war – that it was right for us to fight it.  It was popular in his day to say the opposite, but the military strategy devised by Acheson comprising the Truman doctrine resolved that we would oppose Communism in whatever nation the USSR was advancing it, and since we had more resources than the USSR, it was believed, we would eventually run them out of theirs.  We would defeat the USSR by outspending them.

It was bold of Keegan to take that view (if that was his view as well).  My own view at the time was that we should have dealt directly with Ho Chi Minh when he was giving us an olive branch before that war.  We didn’t understand at the time that all communists and communist countries were not under the control of the USSR.  Ho Chi Minh did go to Russia at one time, but he also showed up at a number of international political events.  He was open to dealing with us at the time.  IMHO.

If I was a dumb 17-year-old at the time the Vietnam War started (as I was when the Korean war started) I probably would have still enlisted in the Marine Corps.  In my case the  Korean war was winding down before I got to Korea.  That wouldn’t have been the case in Vietnam.