Hi! I'm back after a week of being completely absent...oops. I've been doing a lot of writing recently, but not my blog obviously. Through YWW's Crazy Writing Week, I've made huge progress on my current in-progress novel and even wrote a few short stories to boot. It was a total blast, even if my team lost the intense writing competition to Team Grape (barely). The fact that I personally wrote almost 13K words and the whole community wrote 12+ million words in 6 days lessened the sting of defeat for Team Banana, LOL :) If you know a young writer who's looking to grow their skills as part of a community of Christian young writers, definitely check out the Young Writer's Workshop. But anyway, enough about that...
Moving onto the actual blog topic... let me just say that a single day was not nearly long enough to fully appreciate this incredible museum, even though we arrived right away when they opened and left shortly before closing. If we didn't have campground reservations farther along the road, we likely would have gone back for a second day. (And remember, we aren't museum people, so that's saying something.)
Located in downtown New Orleans, this museum spans five pavilions on a six-acre campus. With it's own hotel and restaurant, this museum is an incredible place to visit and learn about the many aspects of WWII.
A couple of years ago, I worked at an in-home childcare for a short time with a very sweet lady. I first heard about this museum from her when she had nothing but positive words for it. Then, when I was in a college History of the Holocaust course last fall, the museum's site proved to be a wonderful source when researching for papers. So I was super excited to be able to actually explore the museum in person, and it lived up to my expectations.
A war vet volunteering at the museum saw me taking pictures of the big plane below and asked if I wanted to hear the story of where they found it and how they got it to the museum. Of course, I said yes and he first asked me where I thought they might have bought this plane, which flew in WWII, the Korean and the Vietnam War. (She was used for bombing runs and for transporting paratroopers to their drop sites.) I was going to guess Craigslist, but ended up just going with an auction. Turns out they found the plane on Ebay. Of course, they couldn't turn down such a good deal so they purchased it for $150,000 and spent another $150,000 fixing her up. She then flew to the museum under her own power with two F16 jet escorts. As soon as they launched, they ran into an issue... the jets couldn't go slow enough to fly alongside this bomber, and the bomber, of course, couldn't fly fast enough to keep up with the jets. So, the jets put on a show, circling her, doing spirals, and every other gyration they could to stay with the old bomber. Finally they landed, and the wings were taken off. The front of the museum is made to open up to allow planes into the showrooms. This baby cleared the walls with all of 1/2 an inch on either side. Her wings were fastened back on and she is now suspended in permanent flight, hovering above visitors' heads from some very strong (I hope) cables. The veteran ended his story by saying "The moral of the story is, you never know what you'll find on eBay... you might just end up with an ex-bomber plane!)
Some of the galleries were set up as lush green forests, snowy woods, crowded concentration camp barracks, and more.
Throughout the museum, there were recordings of various veterans sharing stories of their time in the service, especially with regard to D-Day. While we didn't sit and listen to these audio recordings, I always took a quick moment to scan the transcripts. While I have read about D-Day in other places, these first-hand accounts were shocking with their brutal honesty about the appalling sights of that seaborne invasion.
Company A, pictured below was part of the 116th Infantry Regiment that landed at Omaha Beach. Out of the 170 men in Company A, 91 were killed and 64 were wounded. That meant a mere 15 of the men pictured below escaped D-Day relatively unscathed.
Japanese Americans faced intense discrimination during WWII including being forced to move into relocation camps with cramped conditions. Despite this, many young Japanese men joined the U.S. Army as soon as the government allowed them to, giving their lives for a country that had treated them unfairly because they shared the same ethnicity as those who bombed Pearl Harbor. These young men were known as the Nisei and operated under the motto "Go for broke."
The Nisei veteran pictured below received his draft notice the night he led the University of Utah's team to victory in the National Invitation Tournament. After fighting in the war, Wataru "Wat" Misaka continued his basketball career, helping Utah earn their first NIT title and later becoming the first non-white player to play in the Basketball Association of America (precursor to the NBA) when he was selected in the first round of the draft.
One of the galleries was dedicated to the impact of the war on iconic art. I'm not much of an art person, but it was really interesting to see the extent that people went to protect art. In fact, Hitler used his widespread power to root through thousands of museums and collect (steal) whatever artwork he wanted. His dream was to open an art gallery called Führermuseum. It would portray thousands of pieces of art that supported the Nazi regime. Any other art was labeled degenerate. During the war, these masterpieces were kept hidden away in salt-mines and work is still underway to identify and restore them to their proper owners. For more on this fascinating and little-known aspect of the war, click here. Adolf Hitler's administration appropriated thousands of art pieces, and his collection was the largest art theft in history.
Folks, it's so easy to take freedom for granted...but somewhere at sometime, someone died to earn or protect your freedom. Whether we are talking about the American Revolution, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, or Israel, brave men and women are giving their lives to protect freedom; whether it be for our freedom as American citizens or for the freedom of other human beings in other countries. Remember that freedom isn't free.
There's so much more I could write about with regards to our time in the museum, but I'm already far behind on my blog, so it's time to move on to our short stop at the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library.
Until next time, God bless
Great post!!
I finished a book called The Auschwitz Escape today. It's an incredible WWII novel by Joel C. Rosenburg and I think----given your college courses!---that you would like it. I don't even really love historical fiction, but I loved that book.