The Wisdom of G.K. Chesterton

Reconsidering the Confederate Soldiers Monument

I love visiting the beautiful grounds that surround the Texas State Capital. Of course, the capital building itself, a National Historic Landmark, dazzles the eye inside and out. And it is readily accessible to anyone wishing to admire it along with the historical treasures it houses. The same is certainly true of the Capital Grounds, 22 acres of sweeping lawns, graceful gardens, and towering trees. Paved walks invite one to ramble throughout this splendid space and to stop and visit the magnificent monuments and myriad works of art that pay tribute to Texans, their cherished ideals, and great moments in their proud history. Statues, sculptures, and pillars, all testify to the intricate and diverse heritage that forged our unique Texas culture.

The tree-lined "Great Walk" leading to the Capital steps is as stately an avenue as any that one might see in our nation's capital. Flanking this grand promenade are some of the oldest monuments on the grounds and include the Heroes of the Alamo Monument (1891), Volunteer Firemen Monument (1896), Confederate Soldiers Monument (1903), and Terry's Texas Rangers Monument (1907).

Construction of the imposing (and recently vandalized) Confederate Soldiers Monument began in 1903 by elderly veterans who wished to honor their fallen comrades and to mark the reason for which they fought in this bitter and bloody conflict. Five bronze figures stand on a gray granite base to represent the Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and Navy, with president Jefferson Davis in the center. The base includes a list of battles and the names of the thirteen states that withdrew from the Union, eleven of which formed the Confederate States of America.

The war took the lives of more than a half-million Americans, North and South. In every state today, a vast number of Americans can trace their lineage, if they wished, to men who participated in in this great struggle. Memorials like the Confederate Soldiers Monument are important markers of the human cost of war, and it is worth resisting the modern urge to remove or deface these emblems of our past that still have the power to inform us today.

One doesn't have to agree with the original sentiment behind these statues to learn what they still have to teach us. Certainly, we moderns can be generous enough to allow our forefathers freedom to express their opinions, even if we think we know better now.

The opinions those old Texas veterans etched into the base of their monument was a common sentiment in their day:

We may disagree with them now, but this was the understanding and conviction of millions of Americans then, that in order to preserve their rights and freedom, states might withdraw from the Union. Eleven of those states exercised their perceived right and formed a new nation. In the minds of these people in 1860, they were no more traitors to the USA than were the Americans of Thirteen Colonies traitors to England in 1776. Each was defending a nation.

Of course, among the rights the South fought to preserve was the institution of race-based slavery. It was always a concept which needed to be torn out by the roots, but which was not forbidden in the US Constitution. Lost in the shouting today about slavery are the other "states rights" for which these Southern men bled and died, that is, those political powers that the Constitution left to the individual states rather than administered by the Federal government. One need look no further today than to the excessive use of Federal power over the liberties of individuals to see those other rights that were lost with the South's destruction. The scourge of slavery needed to end. The tragedy was that it had to be abolished at the cost of other rights as well.

The "Great Walk" and all the monuments on the Texas Capitol Grounds reminds us not only what a wonderful place Texas is, but also moves some of us to gratitude for the privilege of living in the America our ancestors preserved for us. The messages these statues convey may be mixed or even stray from actual fact, but the First Amendment still guarantees freedom of expression. It defended the voice of our forefathers then even as it should today.

Remembering Josh on his birthday

Thinking of our youngest son, Josh, who would have been 30 years old today.

In Memory of My Dear Grandchild Elizabeth Bradstreet
—Anne Bradstreet, 1665

Farewell dear babe, my heart's too much content,
Farewell sweet babe, the pleasure of mine eye,
Farewell fair flower that for a space was lent,
Then ta'en away unto eternity.
Blest babe why should I once bewail thy fate,
Or sigh the days so soon were terminate;
Sith thou art settled in an everlasting state. 

By nature trees do rot when they are grown.
And plums and apples thoroughly ripe do fall,
And corn and grass are in their season mown,
And time brings down what is both strong and tall.
But plants new set to be eradicate,
And buds new blown, to have so short a date,
Is by His hand alone that guides nature and fate.

Memorial Day 2017

In honor of those who served and are now gone from us, this haunting verse written by Herman Melville in 1866, shortly after the Civil War. "Shiloh" is from his Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, a collection of poetry inspired by that harrowing conflict between the states.

Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862)

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
Over the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh—
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain
Through the pause of night
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh—
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there—
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Memorial Day 2016

After great pain, a formal feeling comes —

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs —

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

And Yesterday, or Centuries before? 

The Feet, mechanical, go round —

Of Ground, or Air, or Ought —

A Wooden way

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone — 

This is the Hour of Lead —

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow —

First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go — 

Emily Dickinson

Hector's belated return home | Epilogue

Following Japan’s surrender on September 2, 1945, my dad, Frank Dolan, a crewman on the repair ship USS Hector, continued his work in Tanapag Harbor, Saipan. The war now over, the myriad returning ships had to be repaired and readied to return to ports in U.S. and for service elsewhere in the Pacific. Dad remembered that many of these repairs were to ships damaged at Okinawa. Hector will have to wait until the new year for her return voyage.

On November 1, 1945, Dad received another promotion. His rating was changed from M1c to CMAA or Chief Metalsmith. It was an “acting appointment,” since, all Chief Petty Officers were acting appointments for 1 year until made permanent.

Finally, on this date in 1946, Hector steamed away from Saipan for the United States. The ship’s log for that date reads simply but poignantly, “Homebound.”

On February 3, Hector arrived in San Pedro, California. The ship went into drydock for a complete overhaul. She stayed on there to make repairs to ships. At some point while stationed at San Pedro during this period, Dad made a trip to his home near San Diego. This was the first time in nearly 2 years that he had seen his family.

On September 26, Dad was transferred from Hector for discharge at the rank of Chief Metalsmith. His formal discharge came on December 16, 1946, just twelve days short of his 24th birthday. His departure from the Navy came 5 years since he had been thrust into the war with Japan’s surprise attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.

The USS Hector continued in active service decades after the war ended and long after other triumphant ships of WWII, like Dad's previous ship, the USS Vestal, were retired or recycled. After serving as a repair ship on the West Coast, Hector sailed for her first WestPac cruise in May 1947. With the outbreak of war in Korea in 1950, Hector again saw service during conflict. After the Korean War, she operated out of Long Beach, California, in support America’s far-flung Pacific and Asian defenses that included Vietnam. Finally, she was decommissioned in 1987, and sold as scrap in 1994. 

There are a thousand new questions I would love to ask Dad about his Pacific War experiences, but that opportunity ceased when he passed from us to his eternal reward. The foregoing blog posts over the past few years will have to suffice as the best record I could muster of his Pacific War experience, 1941-1945.

Frank Dolan, at home, days after discharge, December 1946

Christmas Lamb

For our son, Josh... This little poem, a choral version he heard many times growing up in our home, especially at Christmas. Our little lamb was taken from us last night. May he rest in the eternal arms of the Lamb of God who made him.

The Lamb
William Blake

Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed
By the stream and o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee? 

Little lamb, I'll tell thee;
Little lamb, I'll tell thee:
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild,
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little lamb, God bless thee!
Little lamb, God bless thee!

Joshua Stephen Dolan

March 30, 1988 - December 24, 2015

V-J Day for USS Hector

As the formal surrender was taking place in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, Dad was 1,400 miles away in Tanapag Harbor, Saipan. He was entirely unaware of the ceremony. In fact, he told me that he didn’t actually remember hearing a formal announcement that the war was over. Neither did he see pictures of the surrender ceremony until months later.

While the world celebrated this important date in 1945, Dad was hard at work with crews from Hector making repairs to at least three ships simultaneously—the minesweeper Quail, the destroyer Downs, and the destroyer escort Engstrom. WWII may be over, but for Frank Dolan and the rest of Hector’s crewmen, the interminable responsibility for repairing the fleet that won the war in the Pacific continued day in and day out.

Dad & buddy Billy Barnett on Hector, 1946

V-J Day came and went, yet the work continued for Hector’s crew at Saipan. In fact, in the month of September, Service Division 103 at Saipan repaired 160 ships. On September 15, ServDiv 103 was reorganized again. The major part of the maintenance unit was shifted forward to Okinawa and elsewhere. Hector was one of the repair and maintenance vessels left in Saipan to prepare ships of the Fifth Fleet for their return voyages to the states.

It will be another six months before Hector is given her opportunity to sail for home.

Sources: Frank L. Dolan’s personal account; Commander Service Squadron Ten War Diary, September 1945

V-J Day

Although Japan effectively capitulated on August 15, following the annihilation of two of its industrial cities, the formal surrender didn’t take place until this date in 1945. The ceremony was observed on board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. A thousand carrier-based planes flew overhead in a magnificent martial display. From Washington, D.C., President Truman declared September 2 to be the official V-J Day.

As the senior Allied officer, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, presided over the affair. When the signing of the Instrument of Surrender was complete, the general delivered the first of two speeches, powerful for its poignant rhetoric and remarkable for its conciliatory tone:

We are gathered here, representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues involving divergent ideals and ideologies have been determined on the battlefields of the world, and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the peoples of the earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice, or hatred. But rather it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve, committing all of our peoples unreservedly to faithful compliance with the undertakings they are here formally to assume. 

It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice.

The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese Imperial Forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the Instrument of Surrender now before you.

After the ceremony was officially closed, MacArthur then delivered a stirring and discerning radio address to the American people and to the world:

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death—the seas bear only commerce men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way. I speak for the unnamed brave millions homeward bound to take up the challenge of that future which they did so much to salvage from the brink of disaster. 

As I look back on the long, tortuous trail from those grim days of Bataan and Corregidor, when an entire world lived in fear, when democracy was on the defensive everywhere, when modern civilization trembled in the balance, I thank a merciful God that He has given us the faith, the courage and the power from which to mold victory. We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war. 

A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace… Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural development of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh… 

And so, my fellow countrymen, today I report to you that your sons and daughters have served you well and faithfully with the calm, deliberated determined fighting spirit of the American soldier, based upon a tradition of historical truth as against the fanaticism of an enemy supported only by mythological fiction. Their spiritual strength and power has brought us through to victory. They are homeward bound—take care of them.

How right the general was in 1945, and his far-sighted wisdom rings just as true today. “The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character,” he observed. “It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.” I’m mindful of God’s message to Zerubbabel when he faced the impossible: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.” Ultimately, carrying out the work of God will not come through human power, but by the strength of the Almighty. True peace comes only by way of the Prince of Peace.

Gen. MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers to head the occupation forces in Japan. He was given remarkable governing powers with which he helped to rebuild Japan, wrote a new constitution, instituted a parliamentary system of government, brought about land reforms, and set the country upon a new path to become one of the world's leading industrial powers. MacArthur remained in Japan until the end of the formal Allied occupation in 1951.

Sources: American Rhetoric Online Speech Bank (www.americanrhetoric.com); The History Reader (www.thehistoryreader.com)

The bomb that ended the war

Today is the 70th anniversary of the second atomic bomb dropped on Japan. This time, the target was Nagasaki, a shipbuilding and repair center. The bomb, codenamed “Fat Man,” was delivered on a B-29 flown by Maj. Charles Sweeney and his crew.

The first atomic bomb on Hiroshima demonstrated America’s capability to deliver massive destruction. This second bomb proved the U.S. capable of repeating the destruction as often as it took to bring about Japan’s surrender.

In a radio address on this date, President Harry Truman spoke to the American people and also warned Japan:

[W]e knew that our enemies were on the search for [the bomb]. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster, which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first. 

That is why we felt compelled to undertake the long and uncertain and costly labor of discovery and production. 

We won the race of discovery against the Germans. Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. 

We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.

The response came quickly. Emperor Hirohito and Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki decided to seek an immediate peace with the Allies. On August 15, the emperor announced his country’s surrender in a radio broadcast. The formal surrender ceremony came on September 2.

My dad, stationed on board the USS Hector in Tanapag Harbor, Saipan, got news of the second bomb while at work on another ship. Like the report on August 6, he remembered a lot of celebration:

I was on another ship when I learned about the second A-bomb. After a lot of shouting the crew also quit for the day.

Sources: Frank L. Dolan’s personal account; Commander Service Squadron 10 War Diary, August 1945; “The American Experience” (pbs.org)