Finally Finished Hirohito Book

I finally finished a book I started last fall, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, by Herbert Bix. Here's the Booknotes interview and transcript for that book. Lengthy (as it had to be) but very well-researched and thorough. I wanted to read this after I saw the film Japan's Longest Day, about the intrigues amongst members of the Japanese military and cabinet in the final days of WWII. Prof. Bix takes the Emperor to task for his leadership in military aggression towards China, Korea, Southeast Asia, The United States, Britain, and The Netherlands, and documents how it was in both Japan's and America's best interests after the war to portray him as a peace-loving figurehead so as to keep Japan as a buffer against Soviet and Chinese communism during the Cold War. Well worth reading, but make sure you either set aside a good chunk of time, or else be prepared to pick it up and put it down quite a bit before finishing.

Enjoying Listening to Halsey's Typhoon

I'm almost done with an audiobook I started several months ago, Halsey's Typhoon by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. It's a very engaging narrative about Typhoon Cobra, which hit Admiral Halsey's fleet in December, 1944. Lots of attention is given to the three ships that sunk, and also to the Destroyer Escort U.S.S. Tabberer, and its captain, a guy named Henry Plage, who defied orders (and instincts of self-preservation) and picked up dozens and dozens of survivors floating around in the middle of nowhere, usually one at a time amidst turbulent waves that still threatened his ship, potential enemy subs, and other American ships with bigger guns than his that mistook him for a Japanese vessel.

I have a feeling that there's a movie deal floating around here somewhere (no pun intended). They've had some good movies about the Army and Marines during WWII in recent years, but nothing recently that I can think of about the surface Navy, and this story has it all -- nature's fury, ship's captain as hero, ship's captain as villain, administrative screw-ups, survival against all odds, etc. etc. I wouldn't be surprised if a) Tom Hanks has already put some money behind this, and b) he's got one of the pretty boys that can act (Damon, Wahlberg, or Di Caprio) slated to play Plage.

• Here's the (un?)official homepage of the Tabberer.
• Here's the Tabberer page from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
• I'm starting a Wikipedia page for that ship. It'll be a stub, but it's a start.
• Speaking of "Plage," I hope there wasn't any "iarism" to go with that in picking the title -- Sounds an awful lot like Halsey's Typhoons, written in 1968 by Adamson and Kosco. (Although, even if it was a little bit borrowed, I think it would still be a plus for the authors and/or owners of the 1968 content... Their book seems to have been out of print for the better part of three decades, and if there is a resurgence of interest in this topic, it might be the chance to bring that book back into print. Thus (even if someone determines that the current title was borrowed a bit too heavily from the original) the original still stands to profit from the similarity.

Very Interesting Documentary on Adolf Eichmann Trial

We're partway through (hope to finish tomorrow) a fascinating documentary on the 1961-62 trial and sentencing of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann from several years ago, called The Specialist: Portrait of a Modern Criminal. It's all footage from Eichmann's trial, without any commentary or explanations except those of the judge, prosectors, witnesses, and Eichmann himself. The footage was shot by a filmmaker named Leo Hurwitz (here's part of an interview with his son, Tom, who has done stuff for PBS) and this film was put together by another filmmaker (who wasn't even born at the time) named Eyal Sivan. It's well-worth viewing.

I wonder if the media handlers in Saddam's trial were going for the same effect as this trial, kind of like when they had Colin Powell Adlaicize the U.N. prior to the invasion of Iraq.

The doc says it is insipired by Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, a well-known work by philosopher Hannah Arendt, of which I have an unread (by me, anyway) copy right here. I might dig into that after I get myself to finish the unjustly procrastinated Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan.

Here's a contemporary newsreel, here's a summary of how the Israeli Secret Service caught him, and here is practically every piece of documenation you could want on the 4 1/2-month-long trial.

Books Almost Organized; Teaching Chinese in Chicago; SA WWII Book; Beatles + Luda; Say It With a Slap

OK, I know it's been a while, but I think I finally have all my books all the way squared away. Here's the breakdown: 900s (history and geography) in the living room and hallway; Early 400s (general language/linguistics and English language) and 800s (literature) in my office, fiction and the balance of the non-fiction in The G's office. I still have to figure out what to do with a bunch of magazines I have that I want to go through/file/pitch.

• Via Language Hat, here, here, and here are some other comments on home-library organization.
• The cover story of yesterday's Chicago Tribune Magazine was quite interesting -- It was all about the Chicago School System's Chinese-language instruction program. Main story by Monica Eng, side pieces by Evan Osnos and Desiree Chen. Teaching Chinese (and Urdu, and Arabic, and Korean) to public school students, elementary and up, is only a good idea if we want America to be competitive in the 21st Century. Otherwise, we should just skip it. Excerpt: In a kindergarten class at McCormick, Mexican-American children cheerfully recited a poem about ducks and geese flying over a river. For many adults, the pronunciation of the word for geese (sort of like "ewwuhhhrr") would have been both daunting and somewhat embarrassing. But the 5-year olds kids nailed it, unfazed by how much it sounded like a mix between gargling and honking. The rapid growth of Chicago's Chinese language program has attracted a flood of media attention that has placed Davis into a discomfiting spotlight. He faces constant questions about whether Chinese is too difficult. He is keenly aware that Spanish is a far more useful language at the moment. His avid support from Mayor Daley--the mayor accompanied him to China last summer for the second time and has made the Chinese program a pet project--attracts a mixed bag of admiration and resentment from other educators, who requested anonymity for this article. Davis' appointment as director of the new Confucius Institute, which got $70,000 in partial funding from China, is a concern to those who eye Beijing's motives with suspicion. (In cities it partners with in a teaching program, the Chinese government establishes a Confucius Institute to promote the study of Chinese language and culture.)
• My Tank Is Fight! looks like a fun book from Something Awful about not-so-good ideas for weapons in WWII.
• As commentary on Heather's recent alimonization of Sir Paul, here's a "Love Me Do"/"Paperback Writer" mashup with "Move Bitch" by Ludacris.
• We watched a great French crime film this weekend: Touchez Pas au Grisbi. It was great! They kept slapping everybody! Roger Ebert excerpt: The world of French crime films is a particular place, informed by the French love for Hollywood film noir, a genre they identified and named. But the great French noirs of the 1950s are not copies of Hollywood; instead, they have a particularly French flavor; in "Touchez Pas au Grisbi," the critic Terence Rafferty writes, "real men eat pate," and this is "among the very few French movies about the criminal class in which neither the characters nor the filmmakers are afflicted by the delusion that they are Americans." A few years later, in Godard's "Breathless" (1960), Belmondo would be deliberately channeling Bogart, but here Gabin is channeling only himself. He is the original, so there is no need to look for inspiration.

Props to Bombippy for the slapshots.