Showing posts with label Detroit Michigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detroit Michigan. Show all posts

Friday, June 30, 2023

Wednesday, June 30, 1943. Forgotten battles in the Pacific.


A U.S. Army Air Corps P40 provides air cover at Rendova.

The commencement of Operation Cartwheel, which would see a series of amphibious landings, began in the South Pacific with landings on New George and Rendova by the U.S. Army and U.S Marine, Woodlark Island by the U.S. Army, and Kiriwina by the U.S. Army.  It wouldn't stop there.

An  Alligator (LVT) on Rendova Island.  New US technology was coming to bear on the war in the Pacific.

Rendova was occupied by about 120 Japanese troops. 6,000 Americans would land, of which four wuld lose their lives.

U.S. troops landing on Rendova.

Woodlark and Kiriwina Islands were significant enough to bear their own operational name, Operation Chronicle, although it was part of Operation Cartwheel.

Troops disembarking in Operation Chronicle.

It was an unopposed landing.

The Battle of Wickham Anchorage commenced between the US and the Japanese on Vangunu.

As was so often the case during World War Two, the attention of the news and public eye had been on the ETO, when all of a sudden, something significant happened in the Pacific.  Most of these battles, of this campaign, are now forgotten.

Florence Ballard of The Supremes was born in Detroit.  She'd die due to blood clots at age 32 in 1976.

Thursday, June 22, 2023

Tuesday, June 22, 1943. Race Riots in Detroit, Cruxhaven bombed,


Today in World War II History—June 22, 1943: In Detroit race riot, 24 Blacks & 9 whites are killed, 800 wounded (75% of the wounded are Black), 1800 arrested (80% Black); governor requests federal troops.

From Sarah Sundin's blog. 

It's worth recalling that the Detroit riots came hard on the heels of the Zoot Suit Riots.  The US was obviously not doing well with race relations in the heat of the war, or perhaps more properly the heated economy, mass movement of people, and the induction of huge numbers of men into the service were bringing the nation's race problems to a head.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Cuxhaven, the second heaviest raid of the war to date by the US, losing 16 aircraft. This compared favorably to the June 11, raid, in which it had lost 85.

A large exhibit of captured German equipment was held in Gorky Park.

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Sunday, June 20, 1943. Race riots in Detroit, Action in the Pacific.

A three-day race riot that would result in the deaths of 34 people broke out in Detroit, starting at the Belle Island park as a fistfight.

Race riots were a feature of Detroit life for many years. The city had been a major destination during the Great Migration, given its industrial employment opportunities.

The Allies commenced the New Georgia Campaign against the Japanese.  The first action was a Marine Corps landing on the Kula Gulf on New Georgia.


The Battle of Lababia Ridge began on New Guinea, with Australians advancing on Japanese positions.  The battle would last for three days and result in an Australian victory.

Sarah Sundin noted that Oscar Holmes became the first black pilot in the U.S. Navy on this day, but only because the Navy was not aware that the light skinned Holmes was in fact black.


The Navy did discover his ethnicity later on, but by that point judged that it would have been too embarrassing to note it in any fashion.

A U.S. meteorological flight over northern Quebec discovered the The Pingualuit Crater (Cratère des Pingualuit:), formerly called the "Chubb Crater" and later the "New Quebec Crater" (Cratère du Nouveau-Québec).


Friday, September 16, 2022

Saturday, September 16, 1922. Strife.


British troops landed with heavy artillery in Turkey in order to prevent the Turks from taking control of the Dardanelles following the Greek defeat.  Meanwhile, Anastasios Charalambis became Prime Minister of Greece in the midst of a military revolt, replacing Nikolaos Tirantafyllakos, who had stepped down.  His service would last but a single day before King Constantine called upon him to abdicate and Sotirios Krokidas was appointed by the military as the new premier.

Things were not going well in Greece.

The League of Nations approved the Trans Jordan Memorandum setting the boundaries of the Kingdom of Jordan and Palestine.  Those boundaries formed the later frame for the boundaries of the state of Israel.

Lev Kamenev was named to a position which was the functional titular equivalent of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.  Kamenev assumed the position as Lenin was becoming increasingly ill.

He was, of course, executed during Stalin's regime, during which the swimming pool of blood rose higher.

Henry Ford enacted a lock out of his plants, idling 100,100 workers, rather than pay what he regarded as profiteers in the coal and steel industries.

Work was progressing on the James Scott Water Fountain in Detroit.








And the USGS was out on the Colorado River again.








Thursday, August 20, 2020

August 20, 1920. Football, News Radio, Ships and Transjordan

On This Date in Sports August 20, 1920, the American Professional Football Association, precursor to the NFL, formed.

The Akron Pros, one of the teams in 1920.

I don't care anything about football, but a lot of people do, and this marks a notable event.  Note that one of the players on the champion 1920 team depicted above, was black, meaning that in that very early season, football was integrated.  The drafting of the first black athlete into the NFL is generally regarded as having occurred in 1949, but in fact very early on blacks were part of the professional sport.

Advertisement for 8MK from August 31, 1920.

The first commercial radio station in the United States, 8MK (at the time) began broadcasting on this date in 1920.  The radio station, now WWJ, first broadcast on an amatuer license out of Detroit, where William E. Scripps, the newspaper publisher, started the station as a new radio station.

It's still in business and its still news radio for the Detroit area.

In the Great Lakes area, on the same day, the SS Superior City collided with the Willis L. King in Whitefish Bay, resulting in the loss of 29 lives.

Far outside the United States, the British representative in Palestine announced a proclamation extending his governance into Jordan. The British rapidly repudiated the effort and denounced it.


[August 20, 1920]  The high commissioner's first visit to Transjordan. Reading of "The Durbar", a proclamation annexing Transjordan, in Es-Salt

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Thedore Roosevelt in Detroit, May 19, 1916



 Theodore Roosevelt in 1911.

I come here to Michigan because in the primary for the selection of delegates to the republican national convention, Mr. Ford was victorious, and following on his victory here, he showed a marked popular strength in Nebraska and Pennsylvania.
The effect of this showing has been immediately visible upon many of the politicians within and without congress. One of the leading anti-preparedness, or peace-at-any-price papers in New York recently commented with great satisfaction upon the defeat in the lower house of congress of the proposal to increase our regular army to 250,000 men.

This situation makes it advisable to speak with courtesy but with entire frankness of what the success of Mr. Ford means, and is taken to mean. It is in Michigan, Mr. Ford's own state, where the Ford movement began that I wish to say what I have to say on the subject.

For Mr. Ford personally, I feel not merely friendliness, but in many respects a very genuine admiration. There is much in the methods and very much in the purposes, with which he has conducted his business, notably in his relations to his working people that commands my hearty sympathy and respect.

Moreover, there is always something attractive to an American in the career of a man who has raised himself from the industrial ranks until he is one of the captains of industry.

But all that I have thus said, can with truth be said of many, perhaps of most of the tories of the revolutionary war and of many or most of the pacifists of the civil war, the extremists among whom were popularly known as copperheads.

Many of these tories and civil war pacifists were men of fine character and upright purpose, who sincerely believed in the cause they advocated.

These pacifists who formed so large a proportion of the old-time tories and copperheads abhorred and denounced in the militarism of Washington in 1776 and of Lincoln in 1861. They were against all war and all preparedness for war.

In the revolutionary contest they insisted that Washington was the embodiment of anarchic militarism.

Their purpose was to get the 'boys' of Bunker Hill and Valley Forge 'out of the trenches' and bring them back to their homes and make them quit fighting.

In 1864 they denounced Lincoln as a military dictator. They praised peace as the greatest of all earthly blessings. They demanded that the war should cease, and they wished to get the 'boys' of the Army of the Potomac 'out of the trenches' before Christmas and bring them back to the farm, the shop, and the counting house.

If these pacifists of the revolution and the civil war had had their way, they would have put an immediate stop to much suffering and much loss of life.

And unwittingly they would have utterly ruined this nation. They would have prevented its being a nation. They would have made the countrymen of Washington and the countrymen of Lincoln objects of scorn and derision, and they would have made of this great republic a hissing and a byword among the nations of the earth.

This is what these good well-meaning pacifists of those days would have done if they had achieved their purpose. This is what the pacifists of our day, the neo-tories, the neo-copperheads, will do if they achieve their purpose.

Either we must surrender our rights, and at the same time our self-respect, or we else we must be ready to defend our rights with a hand trained to exercise the weapons of free men, and with a heart steeled to that stern courage for the lack of which the possession of the softer virtures can never atone.

Such is the issue. It is as clear cut in this year 1916 as it was in 1861 or 1776. In the history of this country this is the third great crisis and it coincides with a tremendous world crisis.

This issue is: are we prepared with a sane and lofty idealism to fit ourselves to render great service to mankind by rendering ourselves fit for our own service, or are we content to avoid effort and labor in the present by preparing to tread the path that China has trodden?

We must choose one course or the other. We shall gain nothing by making believe that we can avoid choosing either course.

In any serious crisis there are always men who try to carry water on both shoulders. These man try to escape the hard necessity of choice between two necessary opposite alternatives, by trying to work up some compromise.

But there come great crises when compromise is either impossible or fatal. This is one of those crises.
There is no use in saying that we will fit ourselves to defend ourselves a little, but not much. Such a position is equivalent to announcing that, if necessary, we shall hit, but that we shall only hit soft.

The only right principle is to avoid hitting if that is possible to do so, but never under any circumstances to hit soft.

To go to war a little, but not much, is the one absolutely certain way to insure disaster.

To prepare a little but not much stands on a par with a city developing a fire department which, after a fire occurs, can put it out a little, but not much.

We, through our representatives at Washington, have absolutely refused in the smallest degree to prepare during these twenty-two months of world cataclysm.

We first hysterically announced we were afraid that preparedness might make us lose our vantage ground as a peace-loving people.

Then we became frightened and announced loudly that we ought to prepare; that the world was on fire, that our national structure was in danger of catching flame; and that we must immediately make ready.

Then we turned another somersault and abandoned all talk of preparedness; and we never did anything more than talk.

The net result is that there has been no preparation so far, because of what has happened in the great war. Congress is still in the conversational stage on the matter.

The ultra-pacifists, as represented by Mr. Ford, have made their great showing precisely because there has been no real and resolute opposition to them.

There are, at this time, two great lessons before us both inseparably bound together. They are the issue of Americanism and preparedness.

As a people we have to decide whether we are able and ready to take care of ourselves; or whether we doubt our national unity and fear to prepare, and intend instead to trust partly to elocutionary ability in high places.

Those in power at Washington have taken the latter positions.

Mr. Ford's supporters in the primaries seemingly come chiefly from three classes - the workingmen, who believe that he represents the desire to do justice to them; the pacificists who think that a policy of helplessness in the face of other nations will insure our national safety, and the German-Americans, some of them in an honest and sincere mood of protest, and others under the influence of that portion of the professional German-Americans, who have permitted their devotion to Germany finally to make them antagonistic to the welfare of the United States.

As for the wage workers who support Mr. Ford, I understand entirely their desire to support any man who, in their belief, stands for a more substantial measure of social and industrial justice.

But I wish, with all the emphasis in my power, to call their attention to the fact that in order for us to work within our own borders for social and industrial justice, it is necessary to secure to ourselves the power to determine these questions for ourselves.

It is of not the slightest consequence at this moment what the businessmen or the wage workers or the farmers of Belgium think should be done in the way of industrial and agricultural development and justice, because they have to do whatever the Germans tell them to do; and they work and live as they are told by their conquerors.

In the same way it is of no consequence what the native Koreans at the moment think should be done to raise themselves upward toward civilization, because the determining factor in their future is the Japanese attitude.