Today's History Lesson

I've mentioned before how much fascinating I find 'what if-ing' history. What if Lincoln had survived after being shot by John Wilkes Booth? What if Hitler didn't survive his assassination attempt? What if Al Gore had received a few hundred more votes in Florida?

In today's paper there was an article about a WW II U.S. submarine named Finback. The Finback was the sub that rescued then LT JG  George H. W. Bush after his plane was shot down by the Japanese. As the story notes, just imagine how different today's world might be if the Finback was in a different position or arrived at its  position too late.

Capt. Ruhe ordered the cast off of all lines, and the Sea Devil slipped away from the finger pier at Pearl Harbor. It was September 1952, and we were on our way to the Korean War.

On the way, we stopped at a little island named Chichi-jima. We were to evaluate the island for a possible submarine base.

After a swim party we found out from Tony Ciotti, a quartermaster, that Chichi-jima is the breeding place for tiger sharks in the Pacific. That ended our swim parties.

Lt. Jim Barrett, Russ Damey and I did a photo recon of some of the fortifications in the miles of tunnels. Before World War II, the Japanese had spent 25 years fortifying the island.

Returning from bombing raids on Japan, a few badly shot-up B-29s, unable to make it back to Okinawa, made forced landings there. The surviving crew members were captured.

A local missionary took a couple of us on a little tour and showed us where the Japanese beheaded the American prisoners, who were then served as meat rations in the officers' mess. Eight crewmen had been captured, but none survived to the end of the war.

In 1946, the Chichi-jima commanding officers were tried and hanged on Guam for cannibalism and other atrocities. The details of the cannibalism were not made public until all the immediate relatives of the victims were deceased.

In 1991, I read an article in the newspaper telling about President George H. W. Bush being shot down over Chichi-jima on Sept. 2, 1944. He managed to get his crippled plane over open sea before bailing out.

It also told about the submarine USS Finback being assigned to lifeguard duty in the Bonin Islands. It was on station close to where Bush landed in the water. Ensign Bill Edwards recorded his rescue in an 8-mm movie.

The other planes in Bush's flight strafed the Japanese gunboats coming out from the island after the downed pilot. The Finback spotted him through the periscope, surfaced and maneuvered to rescue him. It was nip and tuck. The planes were almost out of ammunition and low on fuel. Under fire from shore batteries and the gunboats, they quickly got Bush below deck and submerged the sub.

. . .

Looking back, I realized if the Finback had not been at that exact position, none of the six Bush children would have been born. And I'm sure history would have been quite different.

(More info about Bush's rescue here.)

Just imagine what the long term implications might have been if people had paid attention to obama's qualifications (or lack thereof) back in 2008...