The cemetery lies in the midst of a run-down working class neighborhood in the center of Yangon, Myanmar (formerly Rangoon, Burma). To its west, gray concrete apartment buildings, their sides streaked black by mold and rot, rise high above the tombs. Behind masses of electrical wires and hung clothing, the residents are visible slowly shuffling back and forth in dark rooms. To its south, on a hill overlooking the rows of dead, stands a Buddhist monastery. As the hot tropical sun sets in a blaze of orange off to the west of the city, the monks leave the shade of their rooms to sit quietly on a long veranda. They’re waiting for a cool evening breeze. North of the graveyard is a thatch and wood squatter’s hut. Barren earth, devoid of any vegetation, surrounds the simple house. Two rough-looking dogs and a scrappy rooster run across the dirt yard with no apparent direction at all.
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Tagged Aramaic, British Burma, Japan Invasion of China, Jewish Cemetery Rangoon, Jewish Cemetery Yangon, Jewish Diaspora, Jews Burma, Jews Myanmar, Jews Rangoon, Jews Yangon, Sephardic Jews
Up to the 1880s, the Indians of the northern plains utilized bullboats to traverse the region’s rivers and streams. Tribes, such as the Omaha, Ponca, Teton Lakota, and Arikara, built bullboats by first cutting down the thin willow saplings that grew in abundance along the banks of the Missouri and its tributaries. Employing axes and stout knives, craftsmen cut away all the branches and leaves from the trunk of each sapling. They then weaved the long, pliable willow poles together to form a bowl-shaped frame. Bison sinew, tied between the saplings, reinforced the crude frame. The top, open end of the boat, was then laid face down on the ground, with the curving bottom of the frame facing up. Wet bison robes, shorn of all hair, were placed over the bottom and sides of the frame and fastened to the saplings. The bullboat was then allowed to dry in the sun. In a day or two, the robes shrank and hardened around the frame of willows. In the final stage of construction, the Indians oiled the bison robes, making the small vessel waterproof. Continue Reading »
Tagged Arikara, Bison, Bullboat, Missouri River, Omaha, Phan Thiet, Ponca, Saigon, South China Sea, Teton Lakota, Thuyen Thung
In South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem’s political base consisted of Catholics, the Catholic Church hierarchy, the military’s officer corps (which was also heavily Catholic), landlords, the country’s business elite, and the urban middle class. In a sense, the American Catholic Church, as well as the presidential administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy represented another important segment of Diem’s base. Without the backing of those groups, he risked losing his hold on power. Because his political influence did not derive from the peasantry, and never had, Diem, during his nine years as the leader of South Vietnam, largely ignored the interests and aspirations of South Vietnam’s rural population. He did not believe he needed the rural populace in order to remain in office. Another factor that contributed to his neglect of the peasantry related to the perceived military threat by the Communist North. Up until at least 1959, neither Diem nor the Americans believed the Communists would conduct a large-scale, rural-based insurgency in the South. The American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Saigon concluded that the northern-based Communists, if they did seek to topple the Saigon regime, would launch a conventional cross-border invasion. MAAG advised Diem that he should train and equip the ARVN to confront North Vietnamese regulars rather than peasant guerrillas. If an insurgency should emerge in the South, MAAG believed conventional ARVN forces could handle it. Continue Reading »
Tagged Agroville, Corvee Labor, David Halberstam, Dean Rusk, Ho Chi Minh, John F. Kennedy, John Kenneth Galbraith, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Maxwell Taylor, Michael V. Forrestal, National Liberation Front, Neil Sheehan, Ngo Dinh Diem, North Vietnam, Operation Sunrise, Robert G. K. Thompson, Robert S. McNamara, South Vietnam, Stanley Karnow, Strategic Hamlet Program, Viet Minh, Vietcong, Vietnam War
In 1891, the Corps began building a six-foot deep navigation channel along the Missouri from the river’s mouth to Kansas City. In order to constrict the Missouri’s channel area and deepen the stream to six feet, Army engineers erected thousands of pile dikes and revetments along the river’s bank line. It took the Corps over four decades to complete that navigation channel. On June 27, 1932, in a ceremony at Kansas City’s waterfront, the bombastic Secretary of War, Patrick Hurley, declared the channel open to barge traffic. But barge operators stayed clear of the Missouri. The railroads and highways between St. Louis and Kansas City carried products cheaper and faster than the river route.
In the mid-1930s, the Roosevelt administration authorized and funded the extension of the six-foot navigation channel northward to Sioux City. Federal officials believed a longer navigation channel, which extended further inland and opened a larger market area to river traffic, would surely attract barge operators to the stream. In 1940, the Corps completed the navigation channel to Sioux City. But the hoped-for barge traffic still did not materialize because the railroads continued to provide a cost-effective alternative. Continue Reading »
Tagged Army Corps of Engineers, Boyer Chute, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Gavin's Point Dam, John LaRandeau, Lisbon Bottom, Missouri River, Missouri River Flood of 1943, Missouri River Flood of 2011, Missouri River Navigation Channel, Missouri River Navigation Project, Patrick Hurley
The United States and Soviet Union emerged from World War II as the world’s two most powerful nation states. Yet, the United States far surpassed the Soviet Union in economic and military might. For instance, four years after the conclusion of the war, it was estimated that the United States possessed a Gross National Product (GNP) of 250 billion dollars compared to the U.S.S.R.’s 65 billion [May, Interpreting NSC-68, 36]. The larger, diversified U.S. economy translated into an impressive standard of living for its citizens. The American people experienced an unprecedented material abundance. No other society in world history had ever been so wealthy. Nor had any other country developed such high levels of efficiencies in manufacturing and agricultural production. U.S. economic strength underpinned the U.S.’s military might. Continue Reading »
Tagged Containment Policy, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, Dwight D. Eisenhower, European Recovery Program, George F. Kennan, Harry S Truman, Hiroshima, Ho Chi Minh, John F. Kennedy, Joseph McCarthy, Kim Il Sung, Korean War, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Mao Zedong, Marshall Plan, Military Assistance Advisory Group, Nagasaki, NATO, Ngo Dinh Diem, NSC 68, Paul Nitze, Richard M. Nixon, SEATO, South Vietnam, Viet Cong, Vietnam War, Wars of National Liberation, World War II, Yalu River
For four days in mid-November 1965, the skytroopers of the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) grappled with the soldiers of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) in the elephant grass and jungle growing below the heights of the Chu Pong Massif in western Pleiku Province. The Battle of the Ia Drang Valley [Ia is pronounced “Yah” and means “river” in one of the Montagnard languages of the Central Highlands] marked a milestone in the Vietnam War. For the first time in the conflict, main-force units of the PAVN fought against battalion-sized formations of the U.S. Army. Continue Reading »
Tagged 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), Body Count, Chu Pong Massif, General Andrew J. Goodpaster, Ia Drang, Lt. Col. Hal Moore, Lt. Col. Hu An, LZ Albany, LZ X-Ray, Morley Safer, People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), Richard T. Knowles, Robert S. McNamara, South Vietnam, UH-1D Huey, William C. Westmoreland
“…you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the falling domino principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences…So, the possible consequences of the loss [of Indochina] are just incalculable to the free world.” President Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 7, 1954, in a statement to the press
In its most basic articulation, the Domino Theory postulated that the fall of one pro-Western nation to communism would lead to the rapid communist subjugation of adjoining Western-bloc nations. Every president from Truman to Nixon, either believed in the Domino Theory or recognized its usefulness as a tool in garnering domestic support for U.S. involvement abroad. The theory’s proponents did not believe it applicable to every region of the world. However, it was considered most pertinent to the East-West confrontation in Indochina. Continue Reading »
Tagged Cambodia, Charles S. Reed, Cochin China, David Brinkley, Domino Theory, Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Indochina War, Indochina, John Foster Dulles, Laos, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Malayan Peninsula, Mekong Delta, Mekong River, Phnom Penh, Robert S. McNamara, South China Sea, Viet Minh, Vietnam
In the first week of May, 2012, I traveled to a remote location in western Nebraska to hunt the elusive turkey. I chose to hunt in one of Nebraska’s Wildlife Management Areas (WMA). Not all WMAs provide wildlife with good habitat. The ecological viability of the WMAs varies greatly. Many of the WMAs in western Nebraska are waste lands, abandoned or sold by their original owners because the land no longer possesses any economic value whatsoever. For instance, there is a WMA near Big Springs, Nebraska, that is nothing more than an old gravel pit that has filled in with water. The pit is surrounded by a thin belt of planted trees and invasive European grasses. I visited this “Wildlife” Management Area to see whether it contained any turkeys. It did not. I did not see a single living creature inside its borders. It took a real stretch of the imagination to consider this place as wildlife habitat. Certainly the loud, incessant traffic on Interstate 80, which darted past the site less than 50 yards to the south, did not induce birds and animals to inhabit the place. Continue Reading »
Vietnam’s Coastal Plain stretches 638 miles in a narrow arch from Vinh (in the former Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV)) to Phan Thiet (in the former Republic of Vietnam (RVN)). It is bordered on the east by the blue waters of the South China Sea and on the west by the dark green mountains of the Central Highlands. In one of its widest segments at Hoi An, the plain extends 28 miles from the coast to the mountains. In its narrowest reaches in northern Binh Dinh Province, it is less than a mile from the coastline to the highlands. Continue Reading »
Tagged Ben Hai River, Binh Dinh Province, Cam Ranh Bay, Central Highlands of Vietnam, Chu Lai, Coastal Plain of Vietnam, Cua Viet, Danang, First Indochina War, Hue, Mui Ne, South Vietnam, Street Without Joy, Vietnam War
Laos’s Plaine des Jarres (Plain of Jars) is a plateau within the Annamese Cordillera. High mountains surround it on all sides. Its flat lands are covered by grasses and a spattering of short, thin trees. Motorized traffic can move more rapidly over the open country of the plateau than through the high-walled, winding mountain passes situated around its edges. The region received its name from the thousands of stone jars lying atop the plain. The jars are of varying sizes. Some are tall and fat, others are short and narrow. Each jar possesses a hollowed out center. The largest can hold an adult man. Continue Reading »
