Rounding the bend past the guard gate, I catch my breath when I spy the Greenbrier resort’s main building. The Georgian-style structure, wedding-cake white and six stories high, looms above flower-speckled grounds that cover 7,000 acres and include cottages, five golf courses, tennis courts, and hiking and bridle trails. This posh estate was established in 1778 in White Sulphur Springs, Virginia (now West Virginia), around a natural hot spring (though the main building wasn’t built until 1858 and since has been expanded). Five presidents stayed here before the Civil War and famous guests since then have included President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, and a whole roster of industrial barons—including Vanderbilts, Fords, and du Ponts—who regularly spent their summers here.

But one chapter of this majestic hotel’s history is lesser known—during World War II, diplomats from enemy Axis countries were interned here. And after they left, the hotel became an active wartime military hospital. There aren’t tons of artifacts left behind from those years, but you can discover traces of this fascinating history and hear some interesting stories. I’m here to learn about it from Dr. Robert S. Conte, who served as the Greenbrier’s historian for nearly 40 years. 

“Remember, Pearl Harbor was a big surprise,” Conte says as we sit at a big wooden desk in the Victorian Writing Room off the dramatic main lobby. I study the room’s gleaming wood trim, ornate mantel, and red carpeting, wondering what’s original and what’s not (only the wood trim, I later learn). “So, on December 7, there were pretty much fully functioning embassies in Washington,” which included those of Japan, Germany, and Italy. President Franklin D. Roosevelt demanded that these now-hostile diplomats and their families leave Washington within 48 hours for security reasons. The Greenbrier soon became a leading candidate to house the new adversaries. 

“The Greenbrier had several things going for it,” Conte explains. “It was on the railroad line—so get on a train in [D.C.’s] Union Station and you’re there within a few hours. It was isolated, and so could easily be guarded. And it was first-class,” which was imperative to ensure the reciprocal treatment of American diplomats being held overseas.

The State Department approached the Greenbrier’s management—it was owned by the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad—on December 17, 1941, to propose a leasing plan. Within two days the resort closed to the public and the first group of 159 German and Hungarian diplomats and their families arrived on a secretly scheduled Pullman train from Washington. “They pulled up in the same train station that still exists across the street,” Conte says. Eventually 1,697 people from five different countries were interned here.

The plan was to keep the diplomats at the Greenbrier for up to eight weeks while prisoner negotiations between Washington and the enemy countries ensued. From the start, all internees were treated as regular guests (other than the presence of 50 U.S. Border Control guards keeping an eye on them), with the staff  of several hundred and quality of the resort’s service remaining unchanged. General Manager Loren Johnston ensured this, even though some employees may have wrestled with the idea of serving the enemy. “You may rest assured,” Johnston wrote his staff, “that our Government has a very good reason for everything they request us to do.… It is our duty to serve these people for the duration of their stay in the best possible manner.”

While the golf course and riding trails were off-limits for security reasons, the internees could roam the building and grounds, use the indoor swimming pool, play ping-pong in the main lobby, and shop in the lower-level stores. The Germans bought so much they needed two extra railcars when they left.

For the most part, the imprisoned guests were well-mannered, though one night the Germans celebrated Hitler’s birthday in the main dining room. “It got a little boisterous,” Conte says. “One of the staff said, ‘It’s a hell of a hail of heils.’” 

The Germans and Italians notoriously didn’t get along. “Of course, the Germans thought everyone was inferior,” Conte says. “There was tension.” So around April 1942, the Italians were moved to the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, and Japanese diplomats, who had been interned at the nearby Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, were transferred to the Greenbrier.

But the Germans and Japanese got along even worse, leading to conflicts that tested the staff’s patience. In another note, GM Johnston appealed to his employees once again: “It must be remembered that this country is in a grievous war…and in order that we may properly perform our service we must…do our full duty.”

At long last, behind-the-scenes negotiations in Washington paid off with a prisoner exchange involving neutral countries, including Mozambique, Portugal, and Sweden. The last diplomat left the Greenbrier on July 9, 1942, and the resort reopened to the public.

Even before the last internee left, however, management was in negotiations for the Greenbrier’s next wartime duty. The U.S. Army wanted to use the main building as a hospital, and soon purchased the property for $3.3 million, well below the market value at the time. And so, on August 31, 1942, after a short, six-week summer season, the resort closed its heavy glass doors once again and began the challenging task of transforming itself from a resort–cum–internment–camp into a military hospital, to the tune of $2.2 million in renovation costs.

“This hospital is a major story,” Conte says. Originally, army officials planned to knock down all the interior walls, but former Greenbrier managers hired by the army reminded them that someday it would be a hotel again. “They figured out a plan where they could use the existing 500 guest rooms, converting them to hold 2,000 beds,” Conte says, though some walls needed to be razed to make room for a surgical area. The elegant lobby level remained more or less the same, except for an elevator shaft added off the ballroom for wheelchairs and gurneys.

Conte leads me through the richly decorated lobby-level rooms (courtesy of New York designer Dorothy Draper after the war), pointing out pieces of centuries-old furniture and vintage lithographs. The North Parlor was converted into a chapel, he says; the enormous crystal chandelier is original—and, according to one story, one of the Japanese internees left behind the gigantic Chinese screens that grace one wall. We walk onto the balcony just outside, overlooking the back of the hotel. A guard tower once rose above the fields in the distance.

The hospital’s first soldiers arrived on November 14, 1942, and over the next three years, more casualties came from Europe, North Africa, the Aleutian Islands, the Philippines, and elsewhere in the Pacific Theater. “For a lot of G.I.s, it was like, ‘Holy mackerel,’” Conte says of the soldiers’ response to their first view of the refined setting. “Clearly, when you see the building, you know it’s no army hospital. When you walked in, there was carpeting and wallpaper and, at the beginning, white tablecloths on the dining tables.” 

The hospital wasn’t formally dedicated until October 16, 1943, when it was given the official name Ashford General Hospital—after U.S. Army doctor Colonel Bailey K. Ashford, known for his early 20th-century malaria research. The press, however, dubbed it the “Shangri-La for Wounded Soldiers,” given the fact that G.I.s could use the resort’s championship golf course and other facilities. 

Between 1942 and 1946, 24,148 soldiers were admitted, and 11,346 operations performed. “They did vascular and neurosurgery here,” Conte says, “as well as rehabilitation.” General Dwight D. Eisenhower stayed twice at Ashford mid-war for some R&R, and was admitted as a patient once in late 1945 (for pneumonia, Conte believes). 

One big issue the military confronted was how to run such an enormous operation during a national labor shortage. Their solution? Build a prisoner-of-war camp at a nearby former Civilian Conservation Corps camp. Seventy-two Quonset huts housed 1,000 POWs, first Italians and then Germans, who had been captured overseas. They cooked meals, took care of the grounds, did laundry, and ran errands, among other tasks.

The last patients left in 1946, and so did the POWs. With the free labor gone, the military sold the Greenbrier back to the C&O. That, however, wasn’t the end of the Greenbrier’s military duties. Ten years later, the government was looking for a site for an emergency relocation center for the U.S. Congress in case of nuclear war.  “Another interesting story!” Dr. Conte says—but not one for today. 

Leanne Blinzler Noe was eight years old and living in the Philippines with her family when the Japanese attacked the islands on the day after Pearl Harbor. She and her sister, Ginny, hid out with German nuns at a convent in Manila for several years during the war. Then, in March 1944, the Japanese forced them to enter Santo Tomas Internment Camp, where they joined thousands of already imprisoned Allied civilians, including their dad, Lee Blinzler.

Noe, now 90, endured near starvation and her fear of the Japanese guards, even though adults in the camp tried to instill a state of normalcy with school (not her favorite thing) and entertainment evenings (very fun). On February 3, 1945, the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division liberated the camp. To this day, General Douglas MacArthur remains Noe’s hero. 

How did you end up in the Philippines in the 1930s?

My father was a gold engineer working at the Dewey Mine near Yreka, California. This was during the Great Depression and the mine closed. He heard from a friend there was a boom going on in the Philippines, so in the fall of 1936, he moved our young family—my mother, my younger sister, Ginny, and me—to Marinduque. I was three years old.

But then my mother died soon after we arrived; we believe it was TB. Our father moved my sister and me to Holy Ghost College in Manila, where a German order of nuns ran a school, while he stayed in Marinduque.

In November 1939, milling operations in Marinduque stopped, and my dad found work at Balatoc Mine outside the mountain retreat of Baguio, in northern Luzon. He lived at the mine, while Ginny and I resided at Holy Ghost Hill, the nuns’ summer home, where we were the only two boarders.

Do you remember when the Japanese first attacked the Philippines?

It was December 8, 1941. Ginny and I went to church that morning at the cathedral in Baguio. In the middle of the consecration, we heard loud thumping sounds. The priest put down the chalice and told everyone to go home. He advised that we hide in ditches if we heard planes again. We returned to the convent, where everything was quiet. Some Igorots [indigenous Filipinos] came to the door to sell strawberries and sugarcane. While I was washing the fruit in the kitchen, I heard the same loud pounding that we had heard while at church—the Japanese were attacking Baguio! The bombs terrified me, but Ginny and one of the nuns ran outside and watched the attacking planes.                     

How did you escape from Baguio?

After the Japanese attack, my dad arranged a ride for my sister and me in a company car to the safety of Manila, promising he would follow soon. Two men from the mine, armed with pistols, drove us down the mountain. As we approached the flatlands, the men surveyed the landscape, very alert, looking for enemy soldiers who had reportedly landed on nearby beachheads at Lingayen Gulf. Later we learned the car’s trunk contained the mine’s gold bullion, which was whisked away by submarine to Australia and then the U.S.

In Manila, we tried to return to Holy Ghost, but they couldn’t take us. So the men dropped us off at a European orphanage, until conditions permitted us to return to Holy Ghost at the end of January. It’s possible the U.S. Army was using part of Holy Ghost as a hospital.

How did you end up in the prison camp?

In January 1944, the Americans began to win the war in the Pacific. The Japanese Military Police took control of the camp, and life became more miserable for the prisoners. On March 10, the enemy, who knew about us by then, decided Ginny and I should be brought into Santo Tomas. We traveled there by calesa [a horse-drawn carriage], were inspected by the Japanese at the front gate, and moved our few belongings to Room 55A in the Main Building, which was packed with 26 women and children.        

Tell us a little bit about the camp.

Santo Tomas is Asia’s oldest university. It was founded in 1611. A high wall surrounds its cluster of buildings on all sides. That’s where we were interned.

Our days were organized into activities, beginning with roll call. Sometimes we stood for hours outside our room, while the Japanese soldiers inspected us.

We all had responsibilities. I washed our sheets in an outside tub once a week and left them to dry in the sun to chase away bedbugs. Among the day’s most important events was chow time when, about an hour before food was ladled out, I would stand with our dad’s and my meal tickets and our tin cans, waiting for the line to open. (Ginny ate in the children’s line.) Breakfast and dinner were often a watery rice stew called lugao.

In our free time, Ginny and I and our friends climbed on a bamboo jungle gym at the playground. As food became scarce, the playground was converted into a vegetable garden. We played Monopoly and, believe it or not, War. One day I found a tired rubber dolly in the trash. I took it, washed it, and hand-sewed clothes for it from scraps.

Dave Harvey, a Shanghai entertainer and professional comedian, established “theater under the stars,” with a screen and wooden stage. There were movies, acts, quizzes, singing, and Harvey’s comedy routines. We had lots of fun on those evenings.

Did you have to go to school?

Yes! Even in prison, we attended school, five days a week. One advantage of imprisoning Manila’s expats was the high caliber of professional teachers available to teach classes. I remember studying ancient history, Tagalog, and Japanese.

Why did MacArthur move so quickly to liberate Santo Tomas?

Supposedly, American intelligence received a message from a clandestine radio in Santo Tomas stating the Japanese were preparing to execute us. Upon landing at Lingayen Gulf in January 1945, MacArthur demanded that the 1st Cavalry move onto Manila as quickly as possible. After liberating the military POW camp of Cabanatuan, a “flying column” charged south.

What do you remember about your liberation?

On February 3, 1945, planes were flying low overhead—not typical bombers but tiny Piper Cubs with blue stars on silver backgrounds…Americans! The planes left, and we had a 6:00 p.m. roll call and early bedtime. I heard low rumblings, gunfire in the distance, and the black sky lit up like the northern lights with tracer bullets.

Then someone said an American tank was striking through the wall outside camp. Ginny and I rushed down to the front hall of the Main Building and watched from the crowded steps. Soon, a tank came into view. Oh my gosh, we were so excited. The vehicle came to a halt, and several tall and healthy-looking men emerged, looking like good-natured giants.

Was that the end of it?

No. The Battle of Manila raged all around us, so even though we were liberated, we had to stay at Santo Tomas.

A few days after liberation, Ginny and I snuck out to the front of the Main Building during nap time to meet two soldiers who had promised to give us Hershey bars. All of a sudden, shells rained on the building. Ginny and I were hit, and soldier James Smith carried us both inside. We later learned that the other soldier, Steve Bodo, was killed.

We were transported by army ambulance to a government building in Quezon City that was being used as an evacuation hospital. I didn’t know it then, but I had a piece of shrapnel lodged in my jaw. My mouth was so swollen, I could hardly eat. Ginny’s lower arm was so damaged by shrapnel that it later required 90 stitches. Her wound was packed with Vaseline gauze and the pain was so excruciating she had to be put out to change it.

One night the enemy shelled the evacuation hospital. Some of us sought shelter in the hallway and prayed the rosary, our voices rising up when the shells were closer and louder. An army nurse named Nancy joined us. I was surprised to see someone in the army so frightened. The next morning, we saw that one of the shells had lodged in the building, but without exploding.

How did you return to the United States?

I think because of our injuries we were on the first trip out, around March 13. We were flown in a military plane to Leyte, where we slept in tents on the beach. We swam in the water; one day I saw a torso—gruesome—but for the most part we had a grand time.

They gave us immunizations and put us on the [transport ship] USS Admiral W.L. Capps. We slept on triple-deck bunks and enjoyed lots of food, including candy and oranges. The ship zigzagged in a convoy and, 18 days after leaving Leyte, we approached the Golden Gate Bridge. I thought our ship was so tall it might hit the bridge!

Where did you go then?

Our mother’s sister, Jerry Edwards, who lived in Berkeley, greeted us at the dock. She had agreed to take Ginny and me into her care as we forged ahead into our new American life. Two years later, we headed back to the Philippines to be with our dad, who had returned to the mine, but that’s another story!

this article first appeared in world war II magazine

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The rain has stopped, though steel-gray clouds hover above the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., where nine elderly men and one woman are escorted to their places of honor in front of a small crowd. On this 81st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 2022, a wreath-laying ceremony pays tribute to these World War II veterans who fought across Europe and the Pacific.

Admiral Chris Grady, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gives the keynote, saying: “This memorial tells the story of the greatest generation that stood tall in the face of oppression, and we are here to honor those that sacrificed so much. And, of course, the price of freedom is always high, and it’s always paid in blood.”

The setting couldn’t be more perfect. Dedicated in 2004, the World War II Memorial is a striking monument in a prominent place on the National Mall. Two impressive rows of 17-foot pillars and a pair of triumphal arches surround a fountain-bedecked plaza, creating an impression of power and might. Quotes from Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and many commanding officers of America’s wartime military adorn the memorial’s walls. 

But it’s more than just a heroic-looking monument. The World War II Memorial contains layers of meaning, and by understanding that symbolism, the presence of the honored veterans—indeed, the presence of this memorial on the National Mall—becomes even more poignant.

“It’s a triumphant memorial,” Ranger Nate Adams tells me as he guides me around the monument. “You’re honoring the dead here, for sure. But this memorial is talking about victory, unity, and sacrifice.” 

We walk along the memorial’s ceremonial entrance, where 24 bronze bas-reliefs sculpted by Ray Kaskey depict both home-front and battle scenes in chronological order—12 on the north side representing the Atlantic Theater, and 12 on the south portraying the Pacific Theater. The panels show the complete transformation of American society as it mobilized military, agricultural, industrial, and human resources to fight for democracy—and how less represented people were instrumental in achieving victory. In one panel you’ll find Rosie the Riveter, for example, the cultural icon typifying the women who worked in factories and shipyards. Others show African Americans, in the throes of segregation, who answered the call to fight and to help on the home front.

As Nate leads me along the northern row of pillars etched with the names of states and territories, my eye catches the Philippines, where my mother grew up and was imprisoned by the Japanese during World War II. “The elements of sacrifice on the pillars are important,” Nate says. “There are two wreaths on each pillar, one on front and one on back.” They are oak and wheat, representing industry and agriculture. “So not only did the states and territories give up their sons and daughters; they also gave up their hard work and resources.” A rectangular hole cut out of the center of each pillar represents those who didn’t come home, while twisted bronze roping at the pillars’ base connects each state and territory. “What can be more indicative of unity than a rope binding it all together?” Nate says. 

I have to ask: “Are the pillars arranged in the order the states came into the Union?” That, apparently, is the most popular question visitors ask rangers. Nate’s response intrigues me. “The monument honors the dead,” he says, pointing to a field of gold stars at the memorial’s western side, commemorating those who did not return, called the Freedom Wall. “That’s the head of the table, and they’re seated at the place of honor. Protocol says that you seat your most honored guests closest to the right, closest to the left, back and forth.” In this case, the most honored guests are in order of state ratification of the Constitution and admittance to the Union as a state or territory—Delaware is first, on the right, then Pennsylvania, on the left, and so on, all the way through the territories and District of Columbia.

As we make our way toward the Freedom Wall, we walk through the Atlantic victory pavilion, one of two small open-air vaults standing opposite one another across Memorial Plaza, representing the two theaters of war on opposite sides of the world.

Standing inside, my eyes are drawn to the sculptural canopy above our heads, officially called a baldacchino. Four bald eagles, with wing spans of 11 feet, carry garlands in their beaks, which in turn support a laurel victory wreath. “The artist, Ray Kaskey, said, ‘Let’s do something different,’” Nate says. “He had seen something in a church in Rome, a circle with angels. But he put eagles. What’s more American than the bald eagle?” Beneath our feet, an enlarged bronze medallion depicts the World War II Victory Medal, with the goddess Nike or a figure of Liberation (it’s debated which) looking into the dawn of a new day. The medal was awarded to all members of the military who served in the war.

Water is a prominent feature of the World War II Memorial—the architect, Friedrich St. Florian, placed fountains and ponds throughout. Rainbow Pool, in the center of the main plaza, existed before the memorial was built. Two fountains rise from the pool in spectacular watery flows, accentuating the victories in the Pacific and Europe. Some say they also represent the European fountains American soldiers joyfully played in at the war’s end. As we near the Freedom Wall, we stroll past more cascading waters splashing loudly over a berm supporting the memorial’s western side. “You hear the noise of the water,” Nate says, adding “then, as you approach the stars, it’s quieter. It makes this area seem more somber.”

The Freedom Wall, the memorial’s focal point, rises above a placid pond. Across its dark façade are 4,048 gold stars, each one representing approximately 100 American service members who lost their lives during the war. In front of the ensemble, words on a stone marker proclaim: “Here We Mark the Price of Freedom.” As Admiral Grady said in his speech, “It is proof that freedom is worth dying for, it is proof that no matter the cost, brave men and women will answer this nation’s call.” 

Nate mentions something else. “This is a place where hard stories are shared,” he says. “I remember when a veteran was here with his son. The son told me, ‘I found some medals in a case, and one was a silver star.’ I looked at him and said, ‘They don’t give you a silver star for sitting behind a desk.’ That man had been in a very dangerous situation and did something incredibly brave. The father had never shared that story.” Stories like that are revealed time and time again in this sacred space, he says.

Not everything about the memorial is sobering. Nate reminds me that so many soldiers were very young men, 18 and 19 years old. That’s why, tucked away in unassuming nooks, are two “Kilroy was here” etchings—Kilroy, of course, is the famous chalk-and-pencil sketch of a big-nosed man peering over a wall that popped up everywhere during the war as a morale booster. The National Park Service doesn’t tell people where they are. You have to find them yourself. (Hint: they’re outside the main memorial space.)

I then meet Dan Arant, a National Park volunteer who provides additional insights into the memorial’s symbolism. He leads me to the Announcement Stone, a block of granite at the monument’s ceremonial entrance on 17th Street. In the years before its dedication, the memorial was a controversial project. “So many people were against it,” Dan says. “There were public hearings and lawsuits, all against it.”  It took 17 years before Congress voted its approval.

Part of the issue was the memorial’s central location on the National Mall; some people feared it would break up the sweeping vista between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. “This Announcement Stone explains why the memorial is where it is,” he says. The quotation engraved on it starts: “Here in the presence of Washington and Lincoln…” And this is perhaps the memorial’s most powerful symbolism—its presence looks to the nation’s forefathers who established democracy, and spotlights the importance of American generations later who sacrificed so much to preserve it.

In this setting, the veterans at the end of the Pearl Harbor ceremony are ushered to the Freedom Wall, where they lay wreaths on behalf of each military branch. Guests shake their hands and thank them for their service against the backdrop of gold stars shining brightly in their place of honor.

this article first appeared in world war II magazine

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Douglas MacArthur lived all over the world, but his family history brought him back to the Chesapeake.

I learned as a child that Douglas MacArthur was a hero. He had, after all, rescued my mother, Leanne Blinzler Noe (and her sister Ginny and father Lee and thousands of other Allied civilians), from Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila at the end of World War II. My mother wrote a letter of gratitude to the general in 1957, to which he responded briefly but sincerely on his official letterhead—and which she has gifted me.

 On a recent trip to the MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virginia, I tell the chief archivist, James Zobel, about that letter. “Wait a minute,” he says, clacking frantically on his computer. He dashes inside a mammoth vault of boxes containing millions of MacArthur-related documents and pulls one out. He lifts a pile of papers, and there, on top, my heartbeat quickening, I glimpse my mother’s schoolgirl-perfect penmanship.

“Dear General,” she had written on July 12, 1957, “Being such a modest man, you probably shy away from praise, but you certainly deserve the highest for your integrity, far-sightedness and keen sense of judgement.” She went on to say: “I was one of the prisoners in Santo Tomas, in Manila, who saw you when you and the First Cavalry arrived in February 1945. Looking back, it certainly was a close call, but we never lost faith in your promise ‘I Shall Return.’”

 It’s no secret that MacArthur is a polarizing figure: a brilliant tactician, revered for helping to win World War II and overseeing the successful Allied occupation of postwar Japan, but also a man who could be vain, arrogant, suspicious, and insubordinate, to the point of getting fired by President Harry S. Truman in the middle of the Korean War for publicly disagreeing with him. I was curious if the city where he is buried shares my family’s reverence, as I would expect—a reason for my visit today.

“Not necessarily,” Zobel says. We are sitting in the memorial’s library, open to the public, with MacArthur’s 5,000 books surrounding us. “We’re trying to get to the truth of everything. That’s what he wanted. He’s always been controversial, but we embrace that, because there’s always two sides to every story.”

It strikes me that MacArthur lived all over the world, but never in Norfolk. Why is he here for eternity? “It’s because of his mother that this place is here,” Zobel says.  

Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur grew up at Riveredge, a 20-room brick mansion in Norfolk’s Berkley neighborhood, across the Elizabeth River. There, on May 19, 1875, she married Arthur MacArthur, an army captain and Medal of Honor hero for the Union in the Civil War—two of her brothers refusing to attend because they had fought for Robert E. Lee’s Confederates. 

The MacArthurs had two children in Norfolk, Arthur III and Malcolm, the latter of whom died at age four and is buried at Norfolk’s Cedar Grove Cemetery. Douglas was supposed to be born in Norfolk as well, but his mother ended up giving birth, on January 26, 1880, at Little Rock Barracks in Arkansas, where her husband had been stationed. 

Riveredge is gone, but a small, rather obscure memorial park remains, with walls constructed from the original house’s bricks and lofty oaks that could easily date back to Mary’s time. When Douglas MacArthur visited Norfolk in 1951 to dedicate the park to his mother, he murmured that he felt Norfolk was his spiritual home. In 1960, town officials remembered that sentiment, lobby-ing MacArthur with the offer of an archive containing all of his belongings alongside his final resting place. 

They targeted the grandiose old City Hall, built in 1850, as the memorial’s possible location, and MacArthur said, “‘Yeah, that looks pretty good,’” Zobel says. The city worked with MacArthur to design the interior, including its circular sunken crypt and two marble sarcophagi (for him and his wife, Jean), but he never got to see the finished project. He died on April 5, 1964—nearly 13 years after Truman fired him and just short of the planned Memorial Day dedication. 

His funeral took place on April 11 at St. Paul’s, a historic brick church two blocks away. When I visit, I see time-worn tombstones scattered about the grounds, and my eyes grow wide as I read the dates, some reaching back to the 1700s. I catch sight of a small sign: “Cannonball,” and an arrow. A narrow, bush-edged path leads to a side wall of the church where, way up high, a cannonball remains embedded, shot from Loyalist Lord Dunmore’s fleet during the 1776 attack on the city. I imagine the stately, tree-shaded site swarming with MacArthur’s funeral attendees, including prime ministers, ambassadors, governors, and what army officials called the 20th century’s greatest assembly of military men. A procession lined the streets as the general took his final journey by caisson to the memorial.

Today, MacArthur lies beneath the memorial’s grand rotunda beside Jean, who died in 2000 (his mother is in Arlington National Cemetery, next to his father). Inscriptions and flags from the general’s military career decorate the walls, along with his long list of accomplishments—from 1903 West Point graduate to commander in chief, United Nations Command. The memorial’s museum portion awaits in the retrofitted hallways nearby, a chronological march through MacArthur’s life in nine galleries showcasing priceless military and personal artifacts in the broader context of 20th-century history. 

As we walk through the displays, Zobel points out choice bits here and there—a chest of silverware, the only thing that survived from MacArthur’s Manila Hotel residence; his pistol, dug up on Corregidor years after his Philippine escape; General Hideki Tojo’s sword, taken just as he tried to kill himself. Here, too, are the general’s trademark hat, corncob pipe, and Ray-Ban sunglasses.

As Zobel indicated when we first met, the displays don’t hold back on their presentation of a complex man. He shows me, for example, MacArthur’s final evaluation report of Dwight D. Eisenhower upon his departure in 1937 as MacArthur’s chief of staff. Zobel notes, “He puts on here, ‘the most brilliant officer.’ They don’t get along personally, but he doesn’t quash his career. That’s the dichotomy.”   

But there are more personal stories to uncover at the memorial. For example, his love letters—but not to his wife. “All his materials get destroyed in Manila,” Zobel says. “The only thing that keeps popping up are the letters he wrote all these girls throughout his life. One is a 28-page rhyming couplet poem to this girl about how ‘I’m going to die in this monster battle and you’re going to mourn me the rest of your life.’”

He points to another photo in the “World War II” gallery. “This one is very telling,” he says. “This is Emilio Aguinaldo, Manuel Quezon, and José Laurel, the first three presidents of the Philippines. These guys were his best friends. He was not a colonial who hung out with the White folks. Quezon was his son’s godfather. In the Spanish culture, that’s the bomb.”

MacArthur has been dead for 57 years, and the World War II and Korean War generations are aged or gone. I ask Zobel how relevant MacArthur is today.

“The entire situation in the Pacific is the same as it was when Truman fired him,” Zobel says as we study a map of the South China Sea in the gallery covering the Cold War’s beginnings. “MacArthur said: ‘You don’t deal with this now, you’re going to have everything two generations from now.’ And that’s the thing about MacArthur. Everything he has predicted [about the importance of Asia to America’s future] has come true,” among them China’s aggressive quest to expand power, the strong U.S.-Japanese alliance, and a divisive Korean Peninsula.

Zobel shares that members of the Joint Forces Staff College, National Defense University, and Joint Advanced War-fighting School have all come to the memorial’s research center to study MacArthur’s actions and Cold War history in relation to current-day events in the Asia-Pacific region. “MacArthur’s not this person who’s dead and gone,” Zobel says. “He remains relevant.” And Norfolk—and the MacArthur Memorial, with its archives and research center—remains at the center of it.

As I head out of Norfolk, past towering military ships reflecting off the harbor’s placid waters, I am excited that I will return with my mother in May 2022 for a POW reunion of those held in the Philippines during World War II. I can’t wait to show her the letter she wrote to her hero all those years ago—an expression of gratefulness that has become part of MacArthur’s legacy in Norfolk. ✯

When You Go

The MacArthur Memorial is located at Norfolk’s Mac-Arthur Square. Check the website for opening hours. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church is just two blocks away at 201 St. Paul’s Boulevard. The Mary Pinkney Hardy MacArthur Memorial is on South Main Street in Berkley. 

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

Glass Light Hotel and Gallery, two blocks from the memorial, occupies a reimagined historic building (1912) featuring exceptional works of glass art. Another Marriott option, Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel, has views across the Elizabeth River to Berkley.

Stripers Waterside and Saltine are the go-tos for Chesapeake seafood. Freemason Abbey Restaurant, in a church from 1873, has amazing she-crab soup. 

WHAT ELSE TO SEE AND DO

The Waterside District in the heart of Norfolk’s central business district has a lovely waterfront for strolling and dining. Just offshore you can see the Battleship USS Wisconsin, which served in the Pacific during World War II; it’s open for tours. 

Explore Naval Station Norfolk with a two-hour narrated harbor cruise, taking in the sights and sounds of one of the world’s busiest seaports, home to America’s Atlantic Fleet. ✯

This article was published in the August 2021 issue of World War II.

 In 1944, the Nazis attempted to vanquish Resistance leader Georges Guingouin’s rural guerrilla force in the Battle of Mont-Gargan.

Mont-Gargan in the heart of France is a peaceful place, its 2,400-foot peak topped by the ruins of the neo-Gothic Notre-Dame de Bon Secours chapel. From here, a pathway moseys to a prairie-covered point overlooking the surrounding Limousin countryside, a pastoral realm of chestnut woods, thousand-year-old villages, and sparkling streams. The sun falls beneath undulating maroon hills along the Massif Central’s western edge, casting a magical glow in a landscape that appears straight out of a 19th-century Romantic painting.  

“Guingouin used to picnic here, after the war,” Claudine Legouffe from the Châteauneuf-la-Forêt tourist office tells me. “He loved the view.”

I try to wrap my head around that—the legendary Resistance leader, Georges Guingouin, who headed a famed 1944 assault against the Nazis at this very spot, enjoying a picnic with a view? But that was decades after he had gone underground, in 1941, to organize a Resistance network in the Limousin region—one of the largest Maquis groups of rural guerrilla fighters. 

I come face to face with Guingouin—or at least a black-and-white photograph of him—at the Musée de la Résistance in Limoges, Limousin’s regional capital, which details local Resistance activities during World War II. With soft, friendly eyes peering from behind round glasses, he appears every bit the teacher he started out as in the nearby town of Saint-Gilles-les-Forêts. As he defended his communist ideals in the 1930s in this very left-wing region, publishing and distributing leaflets and making false identity cards, his charisma and teaching experience made him a natural leader.

After the fall of France in 1940, when the Limousin region became a part of unoccupied Vichy France, Guingouin wrote a manifesto denouncing the collaborationist regime and Germany’s occupation of his country. Not surprisingly, he was fired from his teaching job for being a communist militant. Going undercover in February 1941, he organized small-scale Resistance activities in the countryside, growing a force of fellow Maquisards who stole ration cards from town halls and sabotaged balers to prevent farmers from supplying the Nazis with wheat, among other nefarious activities.

I head out with Claudine into the Limousin countryside, about 20 miles southeast of Limoges, to learn more about this man, the force he built to fight the Germans, and the battle of Mont-Gargan—one of the rare clashes in which Wehrmacht and Resistance fighters fought head-to-head—that earned him his lauded status.

Pulling into a picturesque farm in Saint-Méard, next to Châteauneuf-la-Forêt, I have the honor of meeting the last remaining Limousin Resistance fighter, René Arnaud. A spirited man of 95 years, he ushers me into his small country kitchen, his smiling wife hovering behind.

“I was 18 years old in 1943,” Arnaud says. “We weren’t free. We wanted to dance, and we were forbidden. We did it anyway. We can’t live in a world without liberté, fraternité.” And so he joined the Resistance.

Dressed in the dungarees and overcoat of a hardworking farmer, he speaks French using the local patois, his eyes bright with a far-off memory. “We blew up bridges, telephone lines, and the railroad,” he says. 

Arnaud didn’t know Guingouin, who was an “un-known,” someone who could never expose himself. Arnaud was a “plain-sight” Maquisard, working as a farmer during the day and as a fighter at night.

Taking these stories with me, I head out to explore. In the forest just outside Châteauneuf-la-Forêt, I walk down a grassy clearing bordered by trees. If Claudine hadn’t pointed it out, I might have missed it. But there, after all these years, is Guingouin’s hideaway. Dug into the soft earth, its roof is made of chestnut piquets—a layer of dried leaves and earth, in turn covered and camouflaged with leaves and forest litter. 

“Go inside!” Claudine urges. It is dark and damp, and my first instinct is “no”—but I descend anyway, ducking as I enter the cramped, fusty space. After Guingouin went underground, he hid from Vichy authorities in barns, friendly homes, and abandoned buildings. He and four comrades built this hideout in 1943, using only two shovels and two picks.  

Back in the car, we start climbing up Mont-Gargan’s flanks. As we drive, Claudine fills me in on some of the events that followed. 

 In 1943, many young Frenchmen avoiding forced labor in Germany—service required by the Vichy-approved Service du Travail Obligatoire—joined the Resistance fight. “As Guingouin’s ranks grew, so did the brazenness of his acts, including stealing 3,900 pounds of dynamite from a German-guarded coal mine at Saint-Léonard on the night of January 25, 1943—and using it to destroy the Bussy-Varache viaduct two months later,” she says.

Twice in 1944 the Nazis came to the Limousin region to eliminate Guingouin’s Maquis. The first time was in April, when they arrested three Resistance fighters, questioning and torturing them before deporting them to concentration camps. They came again between July 17 and 24, after word got out that on July 14 the Allies had airdropped supplies on Mont-Gargan, on a saddle between Sussac and the mountain at the Clos de Sussac. 

We stop at that airdrop site, a long, grassy expanse along the side of the mountain overlooking the glorious countryside. A placard explains what unfurled that day—“Opération Cadillac”—and I imagine the scene: 36 Flying Fortress heavy bombers—part of Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle’s U.S. Eighth Army Air Force, each loaded with 400 pounds of arms and supplies for the Resistance and escorted by 200 Spitfire fighters of the Royal Air Force—buzzed past at the low altitude of 350 feet, discharging their tricolor-parachuted packages at marked drop zones with targeted accuracy.

“The red, white, and blue of the parachutes was a symbol of hope on July 14, the French national day,” Claudine says.

We continue southward, to the outskirts of the village of Salon-la-Tour, where a cross and a stone monument stand at a crossroads. Claudine tells me, “Churchill and de Gaulle recruited special agents—women!” Among them was Violette Szabo, an Anglo-French undercover agent who parachuted into Nazi-occupied France to aid the Resistance movement. “She was very beautiful,” Claudine says. “All the boys wanted to see the ‘American’—because she spoke English.” 

Alas, on June 10, 1944, while carrying the message to local Resistance leaders that any German troop movements heading north toward Normandy should be hindered, Szabo’s car was ambushed by SS soldiers. She and her two male companions fled across the fields; the men escaped, but Szabo was captured, then tortured and eventually shot in the neck at Ravensbrück extermination camp in Germany in 1945. She was only 23 years old. The memorial marks the intersection where she was captured.

Off the D39A, we pull into a small “Garden of Memory,” where we come close to the illustrious man himself, buried next to his wife after he died in 2005 at age 92, surrounded by the wilderness he loved. Guingouin’s tiny school still stands in the nearby town of Saint-Gilles-les-Forêts as a silent witness to where it all started. 

The drive to the summit of Mont-Gargan opens up commanding views of the Limousin countryside. At the top, we stroll along a lane of towering beeches, passing Guingouin’s picnic spot and then the ruins of Notre-Dame de Bon Secours chapel, built between 1868 and 1871. We walk through prairie brush to an overlook, and I imagine what transpired around me during that seven-day battle. Aware that the Nazis had learned about the July 14 drop, Guingouin and his Maquis fighters sped to hide the weapons and ammunition they had received on the mountain and lay in wait for the Germans.

Sure enough, the Wehrmacht soldiers—committed to finishing off the Maquis—started arriving on July 16. Skirmishes erupted on Mont-Gargan and throughout the region. René Arnaud was part of this battle. “We didn’t eat or drink for three days, because we had to fight,” he says.

In the end, 38 Maquisards died, with 54 injured and five missing; losses on the German side were three times higher. Even so, the Germans took the mount—but by then, the Resistance had managed to slow the enemy troops’ advance and had secured their precious arms to continue the fight. Mission accomplished.  

Just a little over a month later, it all ended, at least locally. Guingouin and his fellow Maquis surrounded the city of Limoges, and the occupying Nazis, realizing they were trapped, lay down their arms and fled. 

As we return to Limoges that night, driving through its quiet streets, I imagine the evening of August 21, 1944, when the Resistance fighters entered the city to the cheers of welcoming crowds. Arnaud says he was part of the exuberant festivities, and I picture him as a young man celebrating victory with his comrades—before returning to his farm to get back to work. ✯

WHEN YOU GO 

Limoges is located about 250 miles south of Paris and is easily accessible by train. The Musée de la Résistance is located at 7 rue Neuve Saint-Étienne. You’ll need a car to tour the Limousin countryside—pick up maps and info at the Office de Tourisme Briance Combade in Châteauneuf-la-Forêt. Your best bet is to hire a guide; the tourist office can provide a list, which includes children of Resistance fighters.

Where to Stay and Eat

Limoges is a pretty city with plenty of hotels and restaurants. Hôtel les Beaux Arts occupies a 19th-century building in the town center. For traditional fare—including pig’s trotter crépinette and pot-au-feu—try Chez Alphonse in the city’s historic Quartier du Château.

What Else to See and Do

Limoges is famous for its hard-paste porcelain, produced in the region beginning in the late 18th century. Les Routes de la Porcelaine has a downloadable brochure to help plan visits to factories, shops, and museums. 

On June 10, 1944, Nazis massacred 642 residents of the Limousin village of Oradour-sur-Glane. Charles de Gaulle ordered the village be kept exactly as it was on that day as a memorial, complete with roofless buildings, rusting cars, and bikes leaning against charred walls. ✯

This article was published in the April 2021 issue of World War II.

The Bay Area port city recalls an era of can-do American spirit.

I stroll alongside the SS Red Oak Victory, a World War II ammunition vessel being restored in California’s Richmond harbor, trying to wrap my head around its history, what it represents. Its great hull towers above me, with giant welded plates measuring 455 feet in length. It is the last surviving Victory ship built in Richmond’s shipyard during the war, one of 747 ships of all types manufactured here between 1940 and 1945 at top speed—in its case, 88 days from start to finish. Indeed, Richmond sent more ships to the world’s wartime theaters than any other shipyard in America.

That’s why, it’s said, Hitler was aware of Richmond, California. As was Hideki Tojo, along with Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, and, of course, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Anyone familiar with today’s quiet, unassuming community on San Francisco Bay’s northern end might find that hard to believe. But back in its day, Richmond was a hub of frenetic wartime activity, as brand-new ships slipped into the bay amid blaring loudspeakers, exuberant brass bands, shattering champagne bottles, and celebratory cheers from many of the shipyard’s 90,000 employees. The gritty city was home to 56 different war industries, including bomb production and homebuilding for the upsurge of shipyard workers.

But the Red Oak represents much more, as I learn during my recent visit to the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, where the ship is being preserved as a museum. Established in 2000 at Richmond’s historic Kaiser Shipyards, the park encompasses several scattered sites that showcase home-front contributions during World War II.

I begin my visit at the park’s hub, a visitor education center housed in the former oil house, where vats of oil that fueled the adjacent Ford Assembly Plant’s tank production were kept. Today, the brick building holds interactive exhibits—including a rivet station, welding gear, and oral histories—that provide an excellent overview of the region’s World War II home-front story. I read about Henry J. Kaiser, the maverick industrialist responsible for building Richmond’s four shipyards in the first place, who introduced groundbreaking mass-production methods that maximized prefabricated and electric-arc welding techniques. The founder of more than 100 companies (including one that built Nevada’s Hoover Dam), Kaiser had never before built a ship, but he didn’t let that stop him: “A ship is just a building that floats,” he reportedly said. I also get a glimpse into wartime Richmond, how this little city exploded in population during those years, and businesses supporting the shipbuilding worked around the clock. I learn about how, in an era still very segregated, Kaiser hired African American workers from the South—though only in low-level positions.

And I delve into the stories of the women who flooded to Richmond’s shipping industry, working in wartime jobs previously reserved for men. Dubbed across the nation as “Rosie the Riveters”—popularized in a 1942 song praising female assembly-line workers and later made iconic by the famous “We Can Do It!” poster—Richmond’s women workers weren’t in fact riveters, since Kaiser’s new method of ship construction used welding over riveting. They were really “Wendy the Welders,” along with machinists, drivers, shipfitters, electricians, carpenters, and all kinds of other workers.

I’m captivated by the words of former Rosies (er, Wendys) sprinkled throughout the exhibits. Among one of the welders is Kay Morrison. “I could weld anything anywhere, flat, vertical, overhead, whatever was needed,” she says in one of the videos. She spent two-and-a-half years in Kaiser’s Yard Two, working the graveyard shift.

But it’s in the basement where Richmond’s eclectic wartime stories truly come alive, through films, lectures, and storytelling. I watch a documentary detailing the disturbing story of local Japanese American immigrants who had made good lives for themselves growing and selling cut flowers. “Here in Richmond, I felt, being the son of an immigrant, being in business, I felt that I was as good as the next man,” states Tom Oishi in the film.

All that came crashing down with FDR’s Executive Order 9066 of 1942, forcing Japanese Americans living on the West Coast to be moved to wartime “relocation centers” farther inland. Most of the families found their flower nurseries and homes destroyed upon their return after the war—though that didn’t stop them from starting over, bringing the flower business back to Richmond in the postwar years.

But most riveting is listening to Betty Reid Soskin, the spirited, 98-year-old park ranger (the oldest in the National Park Service system), who a couple times a week shares her personal story as a young African American in the Richmond shipyards during World War II.

“Rosie the Riveter was a white woman’s story,” she tells a room of 50 or so people. “There were no black Rosies. Segregation still prevailed in California in the 1940s, and blacks were forced to work menial jobs.”

As such, she worked as a file clerk in a segregated union hall. Although she technically was part of the shipbuilding process, she never once saw the fanfare that came with launching one of the great war ships. Betty recalls, “I stood at my window, [processing] the change of addresses of those who lined up. I really assumed that all the ship workers were black, because that’s all who I saw come to my window.”

Betty emphasizes that Richmond’s World War II history—and the home front in general—doesn’t embrace one single story. It’s the “African Americans who were sharecroppers who came out of the South to answer the call for workers,” she says, adding, “but also the Japanese Americans who were interned, and the Port of Chicago [California] workers who were killed [in the largest industrial accident on the home front, when an ammunition ship exploded on July 17, 1944, killing 320 mainly black sailors].”

And that’s the crux of it all. There’s not one Rosie. There are many different Rosies, and many different non-Rosies—all essential parts of the overall home-front narrative.

With this in mind, I visit the other sites under the park’s auspices, which are scattered about Richmond, some in disrepair. Next to the visitor center rises the Ford Assembly Plant, designed in the late 1920s by esteemed industrial architect Albert Kahn. The West Coast’s largest assembly plant, it churned out 49,000 jeeps and processed 91,000 other military vehicles during the course of the war. Today the beautifully restored building hosts community special events. Meanwhile, the dilapidated Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital on Cutting Boulevard recalls Kaiser’s revolutionary medical care system for shipyard workers, in which workers paid a nominal price on a prepaid basis (at a time when only nine percent of Americans had health insurance). Nearby, the Maritime Child Development Center on Florida Avenue provided childcare for the shipyard’s working women; there’s a small exhibit in the back (reservations required). There’s also the shipyard’s abandoned employee cafeteria and first-aid station on Canal Boulevard, as well as Atchison Village, a neighborhood in western Richmond of small, wood-frame houses, now privately owned, that once served as wartime worker housing. And a path along the bayfront leads from the visitor center to Rosie the Riveter Memorial Park, on the spot where Kaiser’s Yard Two once operated. A sculpture evokes a ship under construction and includes pictures and recollections from Rosies arranged along a walkway measuring the length of a ship’s keel.

And then there’s the Red Oak itself. Today the ship sits on the site of historic Yard Three, its prow pointing into the bay as if ready to leap into action again. It’s open as a museum, alongside a giant revolving crane that once moved prefabricated sections onto the ship hulls.

The fact crystallizes in my mind that this impressive ship represents an entire era of American spirit encompassing the burgeoning notions of equal rights, fair employment, affordable housing, around-the-clock childcare, food service, and healthcare—all kudos to the foresight of Henry Kaiser in his groundbreaking business model. But it’s not as simple as that. We talk about the war as a unifier, but a visit to the park showcases the fact that, while some equality was achieved, there were lots of bridges that had to be built. And then the war ended.

As the servicemen returned home, the women and African Americans were the first to lose their jobs and the benefits that had been inspired by wartime necessity. Despite this, I leave the park feeling positive, for I see how advances made in the workplace during the war had planted a seed for the civil rights progress yet to come. The park remains an important place to continue talking about these issues—and ensures that the “We can do it!” optimism will not die.

WHEN YOU GO

Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park  is located about 20 miles north of San Francisco. From San Francisco or Oakland airports, you will need to rent a car and head up I-80 to reach Richmond.

Entry to the visitor center, films, and lectures is free. Real-life Rosies are on-hand most Fridays. Some of the sites are open on abbreviated schedules, including the SS Red Oak Victory which charges fees for tours.

Check the website for upcoming events. Note that Betty Reid Soskin’s popular presentations are on hold while she recovers from a recent stroke. 

Where to Stay and Eat 

The best place to stay is in nearby Berkeley, which has plenty of hotels and restaurants. The Assemble restaurant next to the visitor education center serves up American classics in a historic setting. The Riggers Loft Wine Company, across the parking lot from SS Red Oak Victory, is in a former shipbuilding warehouse on the water and serves housemade wines and ciders.

What Else to See and Do 

The National Park Service’s “World War II in the San Francisco Bay Area” itinerary brings together various regional sites related to World War II history, including several local forts and the Presidio in San Francisco.

This article was published in the February 2020 issue of World War II. 

As the sky turns lavender-pink at the close of this gorgeous summer day, I spy two birds flitting across Lake Murray’s shimmery waters. Then two more, then eight, and fifteen. Soon the sky is filled with them: purple martins returning to their rookery on 12-acre Doolittle Island (officially named Lunch Island)—one of North America’s largest purple martin sanctuaries, seasonal home to as many as one million birds. More than seven decades ago, the island entertained another kind of bird—silvery sleek B-25s that bombed this terrain as part of a secret training mission during World War II. 

Jayne Baker, the public relations manager at Lake Murray Country Tourism Board, hints at a connection between the bombing practice and the fact that the birds are drawn to this island. “It may be that something about bomb dust in the soil attracts the birds,” she said.

I intended to find out, and the first thing I learned is that the story winds all the way back to Pearl Harbor.

The Japanese surprise attack on December 7, 1941, jolted Americans to the core, forcing the U.S. into the war virtually overnight. As Imperial Japan proceeded with its Asian domination strategy, Pacific territories—Guam, Wake, Singapore, the Philippines—fell one by one, and American morale plummeted. In a fireside chat on February 23, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the state of affairs to an estimated 62 million people: 

“Let me say once and for all to the people of the world: We Americans have been compelled to yield ground, but we will regain it. We are daily increasing our strength. Soon, we and not our enemies will have the offensive; we, not they, will win the final battles; and we, not they, will make the final peace.”

Even before Roosevelt’s rallying speech, the U.S. Army Air Forces had initiated plans to take the fight to the Japanese. Three weeks earlier, on February 3, 1942, the 17th Bombardment Group from Pendleton, Oregon, was called to Columbia, South Carolina, where they convened at Columbia Army Air Base (today’s Columbia Metropolitan Airport), the nation’s largest B-25 training facility.

“The conditions were miserable,” explains historian James M. Scott, author of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-finalist Target Tokyo.“They were sleeping in tents at the airfield, there was lots of mud. One of the airmen, who was from Columbia, stayed at his fraternity house.”

They were there for one reason. The legendary pilot Lieutenant Colonel James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle was seeking volunteers for an “extremely hazardous” top-secret mission. Without knowing any specifics, every single man—80 in total—raised his hand when asked. “There’s nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer,” Doolittle said. Little did these volunteers know, Doolittle’s audacious, virtually suicidal plan involved launching B-25 bombers—one of the military’s newest planes—off the deck of an aircraft carrier (something that had never been done before), 400 miles off Tokyo’s eastern coast, and proceeding to bomb the enemy capital. 

But first they had to practice. While Columbia was essentially a rallying point, some of the pilots used islands within 50,000-acre Lake Murray, about 10 miles northwest of the air base, for target practice. 

“Practice bombs were loaded with white sand, so those men could see from the air if they had hit their target on Lake Murray’s red clay or not,” said Lake Murray historian Randall Shealy, who grew up on the lake’s shores and has had the opportunity to meet almost half the Doolittle Raiders in person. “Today,” Shealy added, “the shore on Doolittle Island is covered in white sand.”

He remembers, when he was growing up in the area, seeing bomb fragments scattered over the island and sticking out of the nearby water. “That’s the only place I have seen any,” he said.

In the end, according to historian Scott, the Columbia region wasn’t private enough to practice a top-secret mission. Within just a couple of weeks, the training operation moved to Elgin Field in Florida. By April 1, 1942, the Doolittle Raiders were prepared and, with 16 B-25s secured onto the USS Hornet’s flight deck, they steamed toward Japan. On April 18, the men and their bombers successfully released their revenge-filled bombs at high noon on an unsuspecting Tokyo. In the grand scheme of things, the Doolittle Raid did little material damage to the enemy, but the raid hugely boosted American morale, and it was later learned the attack profoundly affected Japanese high command, forcing them to reconsider their Pacific strategy.

Lake Murray’s contribution is a blip in the war’s history, but one that served a role nonetheless. Even after the raid, B-25 pilots who stayed behind conducted thousands of training missions over the lake between 1942 and 1945. Six of them crashed into its depths, including one on April 4, 1943, that fell to a watery grave of 150 feet, too deep for the U.S. Army Air Forces to salvage. Fast-forward to 1992, when Columbia native Dr. Robert Seigler located its precise location with the help of the U.S. Naval Reserve Sonar Unit. A team of divers and historians finally brought the plane to the surface in 2005, and it now resides at the Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham, Alabama. Of 130 remaining B-25s, it’s the third oldest, one of only four intact C models surviving, and the only B-25 that still retains its bottom gun turret.

Another errant B-25, nicknamed “Skunkie,” went down in Lake Greenwood, about 25 miles west of Lake Murray, on June 6, 1944. Recovered in 1983, it served as the centerpiece of several anniversary reunions of the famous Raiders and is now housed in a hangar at Jim Hamilton—L. B. Owens Airport in downtown Columbia.

Today, you can learn about B-25 and Doolittle history at the Lake Murray Country Visitor Center on North Lake Drive, which has a small museum with interesting displays, including a shotgun shell-filled practice bomb. And a lone historical sign on Doolittle Island, marking the Raider’s target-practicing history, can be viewed when the birds aren’t there—visitors to the island are prohibited during the summer roosting months.

So, what about the birds?

Purple martins, North America’s largest swallows, first began arriving on Doolittle Island in the early 1980s. By 1994, the feathery visitors numbered in the hundreds of thousands and have returned every year except one (for unknown reasons, they failed to show in 2014). The morning departure is so dense, as they leave all at once, that the massive swarm gets picked up on the airport radar. Shealy noted, “During the day, they fly as far as North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia looking for something to eat.”

Purple martins feed on insects. When they spot their prey, they turn sideways or upwards, speed up, and flare their tails as they swoop and dive and skim the water surface in a great show of aerobatics. 

The birds spend July and August at Lake Murray, drawing crowds of spectators. You can only access the spectacle by boat, which makes for a lovely evening of bird-watching, sipping cocktails as the sun sets over the waters. (Or you could come in the morning for sunrise to watch the birds depart en masse.)

I asked Tara Dodge from the Purple Martin Conservation Association if there might be any connection between the purple martin phenomenon and Doolittle’s practice bombings. 

“Whether or not the bombing in the ’40s changed the topography enough to draw the martins to the site we cannot say for sure,” she said. “We have no record of them being there before, or if the vegetation changed.”

She went on to say that the birds are most likely attracted to the island itself—the fact that it’s safe from ground predators and, for the most part, free of people. “They roost in the cattails, they roost on the tall trees,” Dodge added, “It’s really a prime spot for martins.”

That said, the conservationist admitted there’s still much to learn about bird roosts and why martins choose rookeries in one particular area over another.  

No matter. Doolittle Island’s purple martins help remind Lake Murray’s many visitors that the road leading to America’s audacious first strike back in World War II came through this idyllic corner of South Carolina.✯

WHEN YOU GO 

Lake Murray, about 15 miles northwest of Columbia, South Carolina, is a major recreational destination. Fly into Columbia Metropolitan Airport, the same airport from which Doolittle conducted his operations. There are plenty of marinas and landings to place your boat into the lake. If you don’t have a boat, a number of outfitters would be happy to rent you one, including Better Boating Rental (lakemurrayboating.com). You could also take a cruise with Spirit of Lake Murray (lakemurraycruises.com/ purple-martins), which offers public cruises as well as private charters. Tickets sell out fast, so be sure to plan ahead.

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

There are no hotels on Lake Murray. Most visitors rent houses from property managers; try Lake Murray Vacation Rentals (lakemurray-vacation.com). Columbia, a half-hour drive away, offers a wide selection of accommodations—Aloft Columbia [Downtown] (marriott.com) and Hotel Trundle (hoteltrundle.com) are good choices near Columbia’s Main Street neighborhood. Lake Murray has a number of good waterfront restaurants, including Liberty Tap Room and Grill (libertytaproom.com), located near the launching point for cruises. Try the house specialty shrimp and grits.

WHAT ELSE TO SEE AND DO

Along with boating, water skiing, and swimming, Lake Murray hosts several fishing tournaments, including October’s Big Bass Classic (bigbasstour.com).

This story was originally published in the April 2019 issue of World War II magazine. Subscribe here.