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Digital ID: 1260031. [African American cotton plantation workers, hired as day laborers, walking next to cotton field at Hopson Plantation, Clarksdale, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi, August 1940.. Wolcott, Marion Post -- Photographer. August 1940
Notes: Original negative #: 54977-E; Schomburg copy negative #: SC-CN-00-039; Caption on back: 'Day labor now is used almost exclusively on Hopson Plantation displacing the old tenants on the place. Cotton choppers are hired in nearby towns for 75 cents to $1.00 a day and trucked to the plantation. Clarksdale, Mississippi Delta, Mississippi. August 1940.'
Source: Farm Security Administration Collection. / Mississippi. / Marion Post Wolcott. (more info)
Repository: The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Photographs and Prints Division.
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Persistent URL: digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1260031
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Battle of Peleliu
Part of the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign of the Pacific Theater (World War II)
Date15 September – 27 November 1944
(2 months, 1 week and 5 days)
Location
Peleliu, Palau Islands
7°00′N 134°15′ECoordinates: 7°00′N 134°15′E
ResultAmerican victory
Belligerents
United States Japan
Commanders and leaders
United States William H. Rupertus
United States Paul J. Mueller
United States Roy S. Geiger
United States Herman H. Hanneken
United States Harold D. Harris
United States Lewis B. PullerEmpire of Japan Kunio Nakagawa †
Empire of Japan Sadae Inoue
Units involved
United States III Amphibious Corps
1st Marine Division
81st Infantry Division
Additional support units
Empire of Japan Peleliu garrison
14th Infantry Division
49th Mixed Brigade
45th Guard Force
46th Base Force
Additional support units
Strength
47,561[1]:3610,900[1]:37
17 tanks[2]
Casualties and losses
10,786
2,336 killed
8,450 wounded[3]10,897
10,695 killed
202 captured (183 foreign laborers, 19 Japanese soldiers)[1]:89[3]
17 tanks lost
Battle of Peleliu is located in Palau
Battle of Peleliu
Mariana and Palau Islands campaign
The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II by the United States military, was fought between the U.S. and Japan during the Mariana and Palau Campaign of World War II, from September to November 1944, on the island of Peleliu.
U.S. Marines of the 1st Marine Division, and later soldiers of the U.S. Army's 81st Infantry Division, fought to capture an airstrip on the small coral island of Peleliu. This battle was part of a larger offensive campaign known as Operation Forager, which ran from June to November 1944, in the Pacific Theater.
Major General William Rupertus, Commander of the 1st Marine Division, predicted the island would be secured within four days.[4] However, after repeated Imperial Army defeats in previous island campaigns, Japan had developed new island-defense tactics and well-crafted fortifications that allowed stiff resistance,[5] extending the battle through more than two months. The heavily outnumbered Japanese defenders put up such stiff resistance, often fighting to the death in the Emperor's name, that the island became known in Japanese as the "Emperor's Island."[6]
In the United States, this was a controversial battle because of the island's negligible strategic value and the high casualty rate, which exceeded that of all other amphibious operations during the Pacific War.[7] The National Museum of the Marine Corps called it "the bitterest battle of the war for the Marines".[8]
Background
By 1944, American victories in the Southwest and Central Pacific had brought the war closer to Japan, with American bombers able to strike at the Japanese main islands from air bases secured during the Mariana Islands campaign (June–August 1944). There was disagreement among the U.S. Joint Chiefs over two proposed strategies to defeat the Japanese Empire. The strategy proposed by General Douglas MacArthur called for the recapture of the Philippines, followed by the capture of Okinawa, then an attack on the Japanese mainland. Admiral Chester Nimitz favored a more direct strategy of bypassing the Philippines, but seizing Okinawa and Taiwan as staging areas to an attack on the Japanese mainland, followed by the future invasion of Japan's southernmost islands. Both strategies included the invasion of Peleliu, but for different reasons.[9]
The 1st Marine Division had already been chosen to make the assault. President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to Pearl Harbor to personally meet both commanders and hear their arguments. MacArthur's strategy was chosen. However, before MacArthur could retake the Philippines, the Palau Islands, specifically Peleliu and Angaur, were to be neutralized and an airfield built to protect MacArthur's right flank.
Preparations
Japanese
By 1944, Peleliu Island was occupied by about 11,000 Japanese of the 14th Infantry Division with Korean and Okinawan labourers. Colonel Kunio Nakagawa, commander of the division's 2nd Regiment, led the preparations for the island's defense.
After their losses in the Solomons, Gilberts, Marshalls, and Marianas, the Imperial Army assembled a research team to develop new island-defense tactics. They chose to abandon the old strategy of stopping the enemy at the beach, where they were exposed to naval gunfire. The new tactics would only disrupt the landings at the water's edge and depend on an in-depth defense farther inland. Colonel Nakagawa used the rough terrain to his advantage, by constructing a system of heavily fortified bunkers, caves, and underground positions all interlocked into a "honeycomb" system. The traditional "banzai charge" attack was also discontinued as being both wasteful of men and ineffective. These changes would force the Americans into a war of attrition, requiring increasingly more resources.
Japanese fortifications
Nakagawa's defenses were centred on Peleliu's highest point, Umurbrogol Mountain, a collection of hills and steep ridges located at the center of Peleliu overlooking a large portion of the island, including the crucial airfield. The Umurbrogol contained some 500 limestone caves, interconnected by tunnels. Many of these were former mine shafts that were turned into defensive positions. Engineers added sliding armored steel doors with multiple openings to serve both artillery and machine guns. Cave entrances were opened or altered to be slanted as a defense against grenade and flamethrower attacks. The caves and bunkers were connected to a vast tunnel and trench system throughout central Peleliu, which allowed the Japanese to evacuate or reoccupy positions as needed, and to take advantage of shrinking interior lines.
The Japanese were well armed with 81 mm (3.19 in) and 150 mm (5.9 in) mortars and 20 mm (0.79 in) anti-aircraft cannons, backed by a light tank unit and an anti-aircraft detachment.
The Japanese also used the beach terrain to their advantage. The northern end of the landing beaches faced a 30-foot (9.1 m) coral promontory that overlooked the beaches from a small peninsula, a spot later known to the Marines who assaulted it simply as "The Point". Holes were blasted into the ridge to accommodate a 47 mm (1.85 in) gun, and six 20 mm cannons. The positions were then sealed shut, leaving just a small slit to fire on the beaches. Similar positions were crafted along the 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of landing beaches.
The beaches were also filled with thousands of obstacles for the landing craft, principally mines and a large number of heavy artillery shells buried with the fuses exposed to explode when they were run over. A battalion was placed along the beach to defend against the landing, but they were meant to merely delay the inevitable American advance inland.
American
Unlike the Japanese, who drastically altered their tactics for the upcoming battle, the American invasion plan was unchanged from that of previous amphibious landings, even after suffering 3,000 casualties and two months of delaying tactics against the entrenched Japanese defenders at the Battle of Biak.[10] On Peleliu, American planners chose to land on the southwest beaches because of their proximity to the airfield on South Peleliu. The 1st Marine Regiment, commanded by Colonel Lewis B. (Chesty) Puller, was to land on the northern end of the beaches. The 5th Marine Regiment, under Colonel Harold D. Harris, would land in the center, and the 7th Marine Regiment, under Col. Herman H. Hanneken, would land at the southern end.
The division's artillery regiment, the 11th Marines under Col. William H. Harrison, would land after the infantry regiments. The plan was for the 1st and 7th Marines to push inland, guarding the 5th Marines left and right flank, and allowing them to capture the airfield located directly to the center of the landing beaches. The 5th Marines were to push to the eastern shore, cutting the island in half. The 1st Marines would push north into the Umurbrogol, while the 7th Marines would clear the southern end of the island. Only one battalion was left behind in reserve, with the U.S. Army's 81st Infantry Division available for support from Angaur, just south of Peleliu.
On September 4, the Marines shipped off from their station on Pavuvu, just north of Guadalcanal, a 2,100-mile (3,400 km) trip across the Pacific to Peleliu. A U.S. Navy's Underwater Demolition Team went in first to clear the beaches of obstacles, while Navy warships began their pre-invasion bombardment of Peleliu on September 12.
The battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland, Mississippi, Tennessee and Idaho, heavy cruisers Indianapolis, Louisville, Minneapolis and Portland, and light cruisers Cleveland, Denver and Honolulu,[1]:29 led by the command ship Mount McKinley, subjected the tiny island, only 6 sq mi (16 km2) in size, to a massive three-day bombardment, pausing only to permit air strikes from the three aircraft carriers, five light aircraft carriers, and eleven escort carriers with the attack force.[11] A total of 519 rounds of 16 in (410 mm) shells, 1,845 rounds of 14 in (360 mm) shells and 1,793 500 lb (230 kg) bombs were dropped on the islands during this period.
The Americans believed the bombardment to be successful, as Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf claimed that the Navy had run out of targets.[11] In reality, the majority of the Japanese positions were completely unharmed. Even the battalion left to defend the beaches was virtually unscathed. During the assault, the island's defenders exercised unusual firing discipline to avoid giving away their positions. The bombardment managed only to destroy Japan's aircraft on the island, as well as the buildings surrounding the airfield. The Japanese remained in their fortified positions, ready to attack the American landing troops.
Opposing forces
Naval command structure for Operation Stalemate II
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr.
Vice Adm. Theo. S. Wilkinson
Expeditionary Troops and III Amphibious Corps commanders
Maj. Gen. Julian C. Smith
Maj. Gen. Roy S. Geiger
Marine ground commanders on Peleliu
Maj. Gen. William H. Rupertus
Oliver P. Smith as a major general
Lewis B. Puller as a major general
American order of battle
United States Pacific Fleet[12]
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
US Third Fleet
Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr.
Joint Expeditionary Force (Task Force 31)
Vice Admiral Theodore S. Wilkinson
Expeditionary Troops (Task Force 36)
III Amphibious Corps[a]
Major General Julian C. Smith,[b] USMC
Western Landing Force (TG 36.1)
Major General Roy S. Geiger, USMC
1st Marine Division
Division Commander: Maj. Gen. William H. Rupertus,[c] USMC
Asst. Division Commander: Brig. Gen. Oliver P. Smith,[d] USMC
Chief of Staff: Col. John T. Selden, USMC
Beach assignments
Left (White 1 & 2)
1st Marine Regiment (Col. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller,[e] USMC)
Co. A of the following: 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Pioneer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion
Center (Orange 1 & 2)
5th Marine Regiment (Col. Harold D. "Bucky" Harris, USMC)
Co. B of the following: 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Pioneer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion (reduced)
Right (Orange 3)
7th Marine Regiment (Col. Herman H. "Hard-Headed" Hanneken, USMC)
Co. C of the following: 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Pioneer Battalion, 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Tank Battalion (reduced)
Other units
11th Marine Regiment, Artillery (Col. William H. Harrison, USMC)
12th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion
1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion
3rd Armored Amphibian Tractor Battalion
4th, 5th, 6th Marine War Dog Platoons
UDT 6 and UDT 7
Japanese order of battle
Lt. Col. Kunio Nakagawa
Marine with captured Japanese 141mm mortar
Palau District Group[15]
Lieutenant General Inoue Sadao[f] (HQ on Koror Island)
Vice Admiral Yoshioka Ito
Maj. Gen. Kenjiro Murai[g]
14th Division (Lt. Gen. Sadao)
Peleliu Sector Unit (Lt. Col. Kunio Nakagawa[h])
2nd Infantry Regiment, Reinforced
2nd Bttn. / 2nd Infantry Regiment
3rd Bttn. / 2nd Infantry Regiment
3rd Bttn. / 15th Infantry Regiment
346th Bttn. / 53rd Independent Mixed Brigade
Battle
Landing
Routes of Allied landings on Peleliu, 15 September 1944
U.S. Marines landed on Peleliu at 08:32, on September 15, the 1st Marines to the north on White Beach 1 and 2 and the 5th and 7th Marines to the center and south on Orange Beach 1, 2, and 3.[1]:42–45 As the other landing craft approached the beaches, the Marines were caught in a crossfire when the Japanese opened the steel doors guarding their positions and fired artillery. The positions on the coral promontories guarding each flank fired on the Marines with 47 mm guns and 20 mm cannons. By 09:30, the Japanese had destroyed 60 LVTs and DUKWs.
5th Marines on Orange Beach
The 1st Marines were quickly bogged down by heavy fire from the extreme left flank and a 30-foot-high coral ridge, "The Point".[1]:49 Colonel Chesty Puller narrowly escaped death when a dud high velocity artillery round struck his LVT. His communications section was destroyed on its way to the beach by a hit from a 47 mm round. The 7th Marines faced a cluttered Orange Beach 3, with natural and man-made obstacles, forcing the Amtracs to approach in column.[1]:52
The 5th Marines made the most progress on the first day, aided by cover provided by coconut groves.[1]:51 They pushed toward the airfield, but were met with Nakagawa's first counterattack. His armored tank company raced across the airfield to push the Marines back, but was soon engaged by tanks, howitzers, naval guns, and dive bombers. Nakagawa's tanks and escorting infantrymen were quickly destroyed.[1]:57
At the end of the first day, the Americans held their 2-mile (3.2 km) stretch of landing beaches, but little else. Their biggest push in the south moved 1 mile (1.6 km) inland, but the 1st Marines to the north made very little progress because of the extremely thick resistance.[1]:42 The Marines had suffered 200 dead and 900 wounded. Rupertus, still unaware of his enemy's change of tactics, believed the Japanese would quickly crumble since their perimeter had been broken.[18]
Airfield/South Peleliu
On the second day, the 5th Marines moved to capture the airfield and push toward the eastern shore.[1]:61 They ran across the airfield, enduring heavy artillery fire from the highlands to the north, suffering heavy casualties in the process. After capturing the airfield, they rapidly advanced to the eastern end of Peleliu, leaving the island's southern defenders to be destroyed by the 7th Marines.[1]:58
This area was hotly contested by the Japanese, who still occupied numerous pillboxes. Heat indices[19] were around[20] 115 °F (46 °C), and the Marines soon suffered high casualties from heat exhaustion. Further complicating the situation, the Marines' water was distributed in empty oil drums, contaminating the water with the oil residue.[21] Still, by the eighth day the 5th and 7th Marines had accomplished their objectives, holding the airfield and the southern portion of the island, although the airfield remained under threat of sustained Japanese fire from the heights of Umurbrogol Mountain until the end of the battle.[11]
American forces put the airfield to use on the third day. L-2 Grasshoppers from VMO-3 began aerial spotting missions for Marine artillery and naval gunfire support. On September 26 (D+11), Marine F4U Corsairs from VMF-114 landed on the airstrip. The Corsairs began dive-bombing missions across Peleliu, firing rockets into open cave entrances for the infantrymen, and dropping napalm; it was only the second time the latter weapon had been used in the Pacific.[citation needed] Napalm proved useful, burning away the vegetation hiding spider holes and usually killing their occupants.
The time from liftoff to the target area for the Corsairs based on Peleliu Airfield was very short, sometimes only 10 to 15 seconds. Consequently, there was almost no time for pilots to raise their aircraft undercarriage; most pilots did not bother and left them down during the air strike. After the air strike was completed and the payload dropped, the Corsair simply turned back into the landing pattern again.
The Point
The fortress at the end of the southern landing beaches (a.k.a. “The Point”) continued to cause heavy Marine casualties due to enfilading fire from Japanese heavy machine guns and anti-tank artillery across the landing beaches. Puller ordered Captain George P. Hunt, commander of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, to capture the position. Hunt's company approached The Point short on supplies, having lost most of its machine guns while approaching the beaches. Hunt's second platoon was pinned down for nearly a day in an anti-tank trench between fortifications. The rest of his company was endangered when the Japanese cut a hole in their line, surrounding his company and leaving his right flank cut off.[1]:49
However, a rifle platoon began knocking out the Japanese gun positions one by one. Using smoke grenades for concealment, the platoon swept through each hole, destroying the positions with rifle grenades and close-quarters combat. After knocking out the six machine gun positions, the Marines faced the 47 mm gun cave. A lieutenant blinded the 47 mm gunner's visibility with a smoke grenade, allowing Corporal Henry W. Hahn to launch a grenade through the cave's aperture. The grenade detonated the 47 mm's shells, forcing the cave's occupants out with their bodies alight and their ammunition belts exploding around their waists. A Marine fire team was positioned on the flank of the cave where the emerging occupants were shot down.
K Company had captured The Point, but Nakagawa counterattacked. The next 30 hours saw four major counterattacks against a sole company, critically low on supplies, out of water, and surrounded. The Marines soon had to resort to hand-to-hand combat to fend off the Japanese attackers. By the time reinforcements arrived, the company had successfully repulsed all of the Japanese attacks, but had been reduced to 18 men, suffering 157 casualties during the battle for The Point.[1]:50–51 Hunt and Hahn were both awarded the Navy Cross for their actions.
Ngesebus Island
The 5th Marines—after having secured the airfield—were sent to capture Ngesebus Island, just north of Peleliu. Ngesebus was occupied by many Japanese artillery positions, and was the site of an airfield still under construction. The tiny island was connected to Peleliu by a small causeway, but 5th Marines commander Harris opted instead to make a shore-to-shore amphibious landing, predicting the causeway to be an obvious target for the island's defenders.[1]:77
Harris coordinated a pre-landing bombardment of the island on September 28, carried out by Army 155 mm (6.1 in) guns, naval guns, howitzers from the 11th Marines, strafing runs from VMF-114's Corsairs, and 75 mm (2.95 in) fire from the approaching LVTs.[1]:77 Unlike the Navy's bombardment of Peleliu, Harris' assault on Ngesebus successfully killed most of the Japanese defenders. The Marines still faced opposition in the ridges and caves, but the island fell quickly, with relatively light casualties for the 5th Marines. They had suffered 15 killed and 33 wounded, and inflicted 470 casualties on the Japanese.
Bloody Nose Ridge
After capturing The Point, the 1st Marines moved north into the Umurbrogol pocket,[1]:81 named "Bloody Nose Ridge" by the Marines. Puller led his men in numerous assaults, but each resulted in severe casualties from Japanese fire. The 1st Marines were trapped in the narrow paths between the ridges, with each ridge fortification supporting the other with deadly crossfire.
The Marines took increasingly high casualties as they slowly advanced through the ridges. The Japanese again showed unusual fire discipline, striking only when they could inflict maximum casualties. As casualties mounted, Japanese snipers began to take aim at stretcher bearers, knowing that if stretcher bearers were injured or killed, more would have to return to replace them, and the snipers could steadily pick off more and more Marines. The Japanese also infiltrated the American lines at night to attack the Marines in their fighting holes. The Marines built two-man fighting holes, so one Marine could sleep while the other kept watch for infiltrators.
One particularly bloody battle on Bloody Nose came when the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines—under the command of Major Raymond Davis—attacked Hill 100. Over six days of fighting, the battalion suffered 71% casualties. Captain Everett Pope and his company penetrated deep into the ridges, leading his remaining 90 men to seize what he thought was Hill 100. It took a day's fighting to reach what he thought was the crest of the hill, which was in fact another ridge occupied by more Japanese defenders.
Marine Pfc. Douglas Lightheart (right) cradles his .30 caliber (7.62×63mm) M1919 Browning machine gun in his lap, while he and Pfc. Gerald Thursby Sr. take a cigarette break, during mopping up operations on Peleliu on 15 September 1944.
Trapped at the base of the ridge, Captain Pope set up a small defense perimeter, which was attacked relentlessly by the Japanese throughout the night. The Marines soon ran out of ammunition, and had to fight the attackers with knives and fists, even resorting to throwing coral rock and empty ammunition boxes at the Japanese. Pope and his men managed to hold out until dawn came, which brought on more deadly fire. When they evacuated the position, only nine men remained. Pope later received the Medal of Honor for the action. (Picture of the Peleliu Memorial dedicated on the 50th anniversary of the landing on Peleliu with Captain Pope's name)
The Japanese eventually inflicted 70% casualties on Puller's 1st Marines, or 1,749 men.[1]:66 After six days of fighting in the ridges of Umurbrogol, General Roy Geiger, commander of the III Amphibious Corps, sent elements of U.S. Army's 81st Infantry Division to Peleliu to relieve the regiment.[1]:66 The 321st Regiment Combat Team landed on the western beaches of Peleliu—at the northern end of Umurbrogol mountain—on 23 September. The 321st and the 7th Marines encircled The Pocket by 24 Sept., D+9.[1]:75,81
By 15 October, the 7th Marines had suffered 46% casualties and General Geiger relieved them with the 5th Marines.[1]:83 Col. Harris adopted siege tactics, using bulldozers and flame-thrower tanks, pushing from the north.[1]:83–84 On October 30, the 81st Infantry Division took over command of Peleliu, taking another six weeks, with the same tactics, to reduce The Pocket.[1]:85
On 24 November, Nakagawa proclaimed "Our sword is broken and we have run out of spears". He then burnt his regimental colors and performed ritual suicide.[1]:86 He was posthumously promoted to lieutenant general for his valor displayed on Peleliu. On 27 November, the island was declared secure, ending the 73-day-long battle.[18]
A Japanese lieutenant with twenty-six 2nd Infantry soldiers and eight 45th Guard Force sailors held out in the caves in Peleliu until April 22, 1947, and surrendered after a Japanese admiral convinced them the war was over.[1]:81
Aftermath
The reduction of the Japanese pocket around Umurbrogol mountain has been called the most difficult fight that the U.S. military encountered in the entire war.[21] The 1st Marine Division was severely mauled and it remained out of action until the invasion of Okinawa began on April 1, 1945. In total, the 1st Marine Division suffered over 6,500 casualties during their month on Peleliu, over one third of their entire division. The 81st Infantry Division also suffered heavy losses with 3,300 casualties during their tenure on the island.
Postwar statisticians calculated that it took U.S. forces over 1500 rounds of ammunition to kill each Japanese defender and that, during the course of the battle, the Americans expended 13.32 million rounds of .30-calibre, 1.52 million rounds of .45-calibre, 693,657 rounds of .50-calibre bullets, 118,262 hand grenades, and approximately 150,000 mortar rounds.[11]
The battle was controversial in the United States due to the island's lack of strategic value and the high casualty rate. The defenders lacked the means to interfere with potential US operations in the Philippines[11] and the airfield captured on Peleliu did not play a key role in subsequent operations. Instead, the Ulithi Atoll in the Caroline Islands was used as a staging base for the invasion of Okinawa. The high casualty rate exceeded all other amphibious operations during the Pacific War.[7]
In addition, few news reports were published about the battle because Rupertus' prediction of a "three days" victory motivated only six reporters to report from shore. The battle was also overshadowed by MacArthur's return to the Philippines and the Allies' push towards Germany in Europe.
The battles for Angaur and Peleliu showed Americans the pattern of future Japanese island defense but they made few adjustments for the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa.[22] Naval bombardment prior to amphibious assault at Iwo Jima was only slightly more effective than at Peleliu, but at Okinawa the preliminary shelling was much improved.[23] Frogmen performing underwater demolition at Iwo Jima confused the enemy by sweeping both coasts, but later alerted Japanese defenders to the exact assault beaches at Okinawa.[23] American ground forces at Peleliu gained experience in assaulting heavily fortified positions such as they would find again at Okinawa.[24]
On the recommendation of Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., the planned occupation of Yap Island in the Caroline Islands was canceled. Halsey actually recommended that the landings on Peleliu and Angaur be canceled, too, and their Marines and soldiers be thrown into Leyte Island instead, but was overruled by Nimitz.[25]
In popular culture
In the March of Time's 1951 documentary TV series, Crusade in the Pacific, Episode 17 is "The Fight for Bloody Nose Ridge."
In NBC-TV's 1952-53 documentary TV series Victory at Sea, Episode 18, "Two if by Sea" covers the assaults at Peleliu and Angaur.
The Battle of Peleliu is featured in many World War II themed video games, including Call of Duty: World at War. The player takes the role of a US Marine tasked with taking Peleliu Airfield, repelling counter-attacks, destroying machine-gun and mortar positions and eventually securing Japanese artillery emplacements at the point. In flight-simulation game War Thunder, two teams of players clash to hold the southern and northern airfields. In multi-player shooter Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm, a team of American troops attack the defensive Japanese team's control points.
The battle including footage and stills are featured in the fifth episode of Ken Burns' The War.
The battle features in episodes 5, 6 and 7 of the TV mini-series The Pacific.
In his book, With the Old Breed, Eugene Bondurant Sledge described his experiences in the battle for Peleliu.
In 2015, the Japanese magazine Young Animal commenced serialization of Peleliu: Rakuen no Guernica by Masao Hiratsuka and artist Kazuyoshi Takeda, telling the story of the battle in manga form.
One of the final scenes in Parer's War, a 2014 Australian television film, shows the Battle of Peleliu recorded by Damien Parer with his camera at the time of his death.
The Peleliu Campaign features as one of the campaigns in the 2019 solitaire tactical wargame “Fields of Fire” Volume 2, designed by Ben Hull, published by GMT Games LLC.
Individual honors
Japan
Posthumous promotions
For heroism:
Colonel Kunio Nakagawa – lieutenant general
Kenjiro Murai – lieutenant general
United States
Pfc. Richard Kraus, USMC (age 18), killed in action
Medal of Honor recipients
Captain Everett P. Pope – 1st Battalion, 1st Marines
First Lieutenant Carlton R. Rouh – 1st Battalion, 5th Marines
Private First Class Arthur J. Jackson – 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines
Corporal Lewis K. Bausell –1st Battalion, 5th Marines (Posthumous)
Private First Class Richard E. Kraus – 8th Amphibian Tractor Battalion, 1st Marine Division (Reinforced) (Posthumous)
Private First Class John D. New – 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines (Posthumous)
Private First Class Wesley Phelps – 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines (Posthumous)
Private First Class Charles H. Roan – 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines (Posthumous)
Unit citations
D-day Peleliu, African Americans of one of the two segregated units that supported the 7th Marines - the 16th Marine Field Depot or the 17th Naval Construction Battalion Special take a break in the 115 degree heat, 09-15-1944 - NARA - 532535
Presidential Unit Citation:
1st Marine Division, September 15 to 29, 1944[26]
1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion, FMF[27]
U. S. Navy Flame Thrower Unit Attached[27]
6th Amphibian Tractor Battalion (Provisional), FMF[27]
3d Armored Amphibian Battalion (Provisional), FMF[27]
Detachment Eighth Amphibian Tractor Battalion, FMF[27]
454th Amphibian Truck Company, U. S. Army[27]
456th Amphibian Truck Company, U. S. Army[27]
4th Joint Assault Signal Company, FMF[27]
5th Separate Wire Platoon, FMF[27]
6th Separate Wire Platoon, FMF[27]
Detachment 33rd Naval Construction Battalion (202 Personnel)[27]
Detachment 73rd Naval Construction Battalion's Shore Party (241 Personnel)[27]
USMC Commendatory Letter:[i]
11th Marine Depot Company (segregated)
7th Marine Ammunition Company (segregated)
17th Special Naval Construction Battalion (segregated)
Hand-scroll painting (ink, color and gold on paper), Carting Cannons by Yamazaki Tomoo (1798 AD - 1861 AD). Shows laborer with carpet tattoos on back, buttocks and shoulders. Edo, Japan, 1851 AD, Special Exhibit: Tattoos: Ritual. Identity. Obsession. Art. From the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, France. Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Copyright 2016, James A. Glazier I found the show disappointing, with insufficient coverage of native American tattooing traditions and a lack of thematic and historical scope. Saw a much better exhibit in Mexico in January at UNAM.
Laborers in our past....
In Cincinnati Museum Center, once an extremely busy train station, there are numerous glass mosaic murals honoring the laborers who built our city. The artworks were done in the 1930's
This particular one is more of an early timeline, but many of the murals depict actual people and businesses in our city. The timeline, partially shown above goes around most of the rotunda.
Today on Labor Day....honor and remember all those who work hard everyday of their lives!
Bain News Service,, publisher.
Chinese laborer, Java
[between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920]
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.
Notes:
Title from unverified data provided by the Bain News Service on the negatives or caption cards.
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).
Format: Glass negatives.
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication. For more information, see George Grantham Bain Collection - Rights and Restrictions Information www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/274_bain.html
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Part Of: Bain News Service photograph collection (DLC) 2005682517
General information about the George Grantham Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.30931
Call Number: LC-B2- 5253-18
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The British brought in Chinese immigrants as indentured laborers (Coolie) to work in their colonies in the Caribbean, primarily Jamaica and other islands in general.
Very soon, the Chinese started to bring small Jujube plants from their homeland to their workplaces in the Caribbean. In no time, Jujube plants started to show up around the slums of the Chinese workers. Then it started to fruit.
The British, for the lack of a name, called the Jujubes 'Coolie Plum', plums grown by the Chinese Coolies.
When the British found Jujube trees in India, they called them Coolie Plum trees. The Bengali natives of India shortened the Coolie Plum to Coolie to Cool/Kul.
Kul, the Bengali name of the Jujube remains in circulation till this day.
======================================================
India (Bengali) = কুল / টোপা কুল (Kul or Topa Kul)
India (Hindi) = Ber
Australia = Chinee Apple
Barbados = Dunk / Mangustine
Bangladesh = বরই (Boroi)
Cambodia = Putrea
Dominican Republic = Perita Haitiana
Haiti = Petit Pomme
Indonesia = Widara
Jamaica = Coolie Plum
Malaysia = Bedara
Philippines = Manzanita
Puerto Rico = Yuyubi
Surinam = Widara
Thailand = Phutsa
Trinidad = Dunks
Vietnam = Tao / Tao Nhuc
======================================================
As the 1st crop starts to ripen, the tree starts putting out an equally prolific 2nd.
Ziziphus mauritiana
Family Rhamnaceae
The Ghosh Grove, Rockledge, Florida, USA.
======================================================
Cartes de visite by unidentified photographers A farm laborer in Maine when the Civil War began, Charles Thurston Hilton volunteered in the ranks of Company B of his home state’s 8th Infantry in the summer of 1861. Hilton and his comrades spent much of the next three years on duty along the Atlantic coast, participating in early and successful operations against Port Royal, S.C., and Fort Pulaski near Savannah, Ga.
Military life agreed with Hilton. By the spring of 1864, he had earned his corporal’s stripes and moved with the rest of the regiment to Virginia, where they joined the Army of the James for the campaign against Petersburg and Richmond.
Meanwhile, in Kentucky, a new regiment of Black soldiers formed and mustered into the U.S. Army as the 117th U.S. Colored Infantry. It joined the Army of the James in late 1864 and participated in the Virginia military operations.
At some point, Hilton became interested in advancing his army career with the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) and passed the rigid officer’s examination. He received a commission as a second lieutenant in early May 1865, just a few weeks after the surrender by Gen. Robert E. Lee of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox.
Hilton and his new comrades in the 117th left Virginia in June 1865 for Texas to beef up the nation’s military presence as French activities in Mexico threatened the southern border. The 117th spent the next two years on duty at Brownsville and along the Rio Grande River.
Hilton, pictured here in his second lieutenant’s uniform, stands with two unidentified civilians in the portrait on the right. Exactly where this photograph was taken is not known. The palms suggest Texas, and his rank supports this location. The picket fence may be part of an enclosure at a military post.
Hilton proved a capable officer, rising in rank to first lieutenant and regimental quartermaster. He also served stints as acting adjutant of the 117th and as post quartermaster and commissary of Ringgold Barracks.
Hilton stood for this portrait, left, in his role as quartermaster, wearing a short jacket with subdued rank, dark trousers, and a staff officer’s hat. Though the photographer is unidentified, he likely posed for it in Texas or somewhere on the way home soon after mustering out in the summer of 1867. He received a brevet rank of captain for meritorious and gallant service during the war.
Altogether, Hilton's career in uniform spanned six years. Later in life, he claimed to have had the longest service of any volunteer soldier during the war, dating from his July 1861 enrollment in the 8th Maine Infantry until receiving his discharge in August 1867. Hundreds, if not several thousand, White officers in the USCT could likely make similar claims.
Hilton returned to Maine and married Henrietta Johnson Glidden (1843-1928). They started a family that grew to include seven children. Along the way, the family moved west, making their home in Kansas and Missouri before settling in California.
Hilton remained active in his local National Guard and the Grand Army of the Republic. He died in July 1918, just a few months after the United States declared war on Germany and became directly involved in World War I.
I encourage you to use this image for educational purposes only. However, please ask for permission.
Blaine, Washington
Blaine (Whatcom County) is located in extreme Northwestern Washington; the northern edge of its city limit is the Canadian border. The area was originally inhabited by a band of Native Americans known as the Semiahmoo. Caucasian settlers first arrived in 1858 during the Fraser River Gold Rush, when not one, but two communities named Semiahmoo were briefly established. Permanent settlement came in 1870, and eventually the two Semiahmoos became one Blaine. In the early twentieth century, Blaine was known for its canneries, including one of the largest in the country, the Alaska Packers Association, located on Semiahmoo Spit.
Alaska Packers Association
Blaine had some fishing operations in the 1870s, but in those years fish was salted and barreled for storage, not canned. By 1880 canning was beginning to replace the barrel, and it was a big leap forward because canned fish could be stored for a much longer period of time. James Tarte and John Martin opened Whatcom County’s first cannery in August 1882 at Semiahmoo and operated under the name Tarte & Martin for several years. It was a small operation, but further advances in canning technology in the final two decades of the nineteenth century led to an eruption of canneries in Blaine. The Blaine Journal's April 1909 special “homeseeker’s edition” lists five: Ainsworth and Dunn, the Blaine Packing Company, J.W. & V. Cook Packing Company, West Coast Packing Company, and the granddaddy of them all, the Alaska Packers Association.
In 1891, Daniel Drysdale purchased the cannery at Semiahmoo, built several new buildings, and remodeled the docks. Drysdale named his new cannery the Point Roberts Canning Company and during the next three years his business rapidly grew. In 1894, a one-year-old company named the Alaska Packers Association bought Drysdale’s cannery and also assumed management operations at the Wadhams cannery, located at what is now Lily Point on the southeastern edge of Point Roberts.
The Alaska Packers Association turned the Semiahmoo location at the far end of the spit into one of its primary operations, enlarging the cannery and adding warehouses, a boat-repair yard, and bunkhouses. These had segregated quarters for men and women (who got dormitories) and Chinese and Indian laborers. Semiahmoo was also home to the Alaska Packers Association's star fleet of about 30 large ships, which transported men and supplies from San Francisco to Alaska until approximately 1930.
Reference: historylink.org
Image best viewed in large screen.
Thank-you for your visit, and any comments or faves are always very much appreciated! ~Sonja
Labourer working in a paddy field near Ludhiana, Punjab.
Most paddy transplantation in Punjab, and India for that matter, is still done manually by migrant labourers who come from relatively poorer states and move here seasonally to work on farms.
File name: 10_03_000104a
Binder label: Food
Title: Choice Bohsemeem, the best & purest spices [front]
Date issued: 1870 - 1900 (approximate)
Physical description: 1 print : chromolithograph ; 8 x 13 cm.
Genre: Advertising cards
Subject: Caravans; Horses; Camels; Agricultural laborers; Spices
Notes: Title from item.
Statement of responsibility: Weikel & Smith Spice Co.
Collection: 19th Century American Trade Cards
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: No known restrictions.
India Photographic Journey, Day 10 : Maharashtra
Women Laborers In Indian Brick-field, Bhosalewadi village, Maharashtra.
Rothstein, Arthur,, 1915-1985,, photographer.
Boys flying a kite in front of community center, FSA ... camp, Robstown, Tex.
1942 Jan.
1 slide : color.
Notes:
Title from FSA or OWI agency caption.
Transfer from U.S. Office of War Information, 1944.
Subjects:
Migrant laborers.
Children.
Kites.
United States--Texas--Robstown
Format: Slides--Color
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Part Of: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Collection 11671-21 (DLC) 93845501
General information about the FSA/OWI Color Photographs is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsac
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a34257
Call Number: LC-USF35-294
Rothstein, Arthur,, 1915-1985,, photographer.
Row shelters, FSA ... labor camp, Robstown, Tex.
1942 Jan.
1 slide : color.
Notes:
Title from FSA or OWI agency caption.
Transfer from U.S. Office of War Information, 1944.
Subjects:
Migrant laborers
Labor housing
United States--Texas--Robstown
Format: Slides--Color
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Part Of: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Collection 11671-21 (DLC) 93845501
General information about the FSA/OWI Color Photographs is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsac
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a34256
Call Number: LC-USF35-293
Laborers Road construction
View of laborers swinging sledgehammers at rocks. There is a small house and a mountain
in the background.
Digital Collection:
North Carolina Postcards
Publisher:
Hubert W. Pelton, Asheville, N.C.
Date:
1915; 1916; 1917; 1918; 1919; 1920; 1921; 1922; 1923; 1924; 1925; 1926; 1927; 1928;
1929; 1930
Location:
Black Mountain (N.C.); Buncombe County (N.C.);
Collection in Repository
Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards (P077); collection guide available
online at www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/pcoll/77barbour/77barbour.html
On our way from Mineral de Pozos to Mina de Santa Brigida, we came across two men on the side of the dirt road. They allowed us to photograph them while the one man continued working and the other watched from his burro. The building in the background had been abandoned.
Flickr EXPLORED 12/24/14!
What remains of the new Library Building which was almost completely Wrecked by the Earthquake.
Harper's Weekly May 19, 1906
The Human Drama at San Francisco
The Long Day
The Eighteenth of April in San Francisco
by Cecil Chard
“It is extraordinary how cheerfully we are all accepting the inevitable. Millionaires, shop girls, day laborers, Chinamen — we stand and receive rations. For the time being, we are at city of beggars, but food is plentiful, and now we are able to procure drinking water.” —from the author’s letter
Morning
We had been to the opera the night before to hear Caruso and Fremstad in “Carmen”. The audience was a brilliant one, the Grand Opera House crowded to the roof. We saw familiar faces everywhere and smiled in greeting, with a careless assurance of seeing them all again, on the morrow perhaps. After the opera, we went to the Palm Garden of the Palace Hotel, and lingered over our ices, comparing Fremstad to Calve, with a deep earnestness which we waste upon immaterial things. Then we strolled homeward through the silent streets, commenting on the quiet, star lit beauty of the night, and finally we dropped to sleep with the haunting measures of Bizet’s music in our ears.
There was no beginning to the tragedy. Peaceful slumber was exchanged, by a process too swift for thought, for chaos. One instance of rigid suspense, the struggle of a dreamer in the grip of a horrible nightmare, and then a leap to consciousness, the fierce realization of danger. A thunderous roar is in the ears, so deafening that it is hard to distinguish the crash of furniture, the fall of pictures from the wall; there is a sickening duration of motion, walls, floor, ceiling rock and sway. Everything that a moment before had been inert and motionless is suddenly possessed with hideous life. Books are flying forward from the shelves, plaster fills the air, the chandeliers twist and drop, a piano moves across a wide space with a jingle of notes. In every familiar objects is the threat of death. Fear is the only sensation left in the universe that wheels and shakes like a storm tossed vessel. And escape to the street seems for a moment beyond the wildest hope! Over fallen furniture we go, bare feet cut by splintered glass, hammering at doors that resist, to the rooms from which the best beloved must be dragged, half fainting or paralyzed with fright – and down, down, out of the house.
To gain the street is only to encounter new perils. Here, too, instantaneous terror springs to life. A dreadful grimace controls the familiar faces of the little world we know. Safety is nowhere. It is raining bricks and chimneys, the towers of St. Dominic’s are swaying against the high blue of the sky. The next Instant the air is thick with the dust of flying fragments. We see is each other and run, blindly, madly, but the ground under our feet rises up, the great paving blocks sink – a little low building to which we would go for shelter slides back a foot. Three blocks away, up the steep hills, is a public park, and here at last we pause and take a refuge, a crowd of panic stricken, breathless, speechless people. We wait for a few minutes and unspeakable dread for what may come next. Renewed shock sends us higher up, and at last we relax and stand trembling in the chill morning air.
As in all instances even have terrible tragedy, the moment is not without its humor, grotesque and grim. People have sprung from their beds, they have seized anything in their wild flight; they stand in excited groups as unconscious as children of their remarkable appearance. One woman has had the sleeve of her night dress torn from her shoulder, her feet are bare, she describes her experiences to a group of men. She is quite evidently a woman of refinement, her gestures are quiet, her voice is sweet, she is quite self-possessed. We stand close together, a group of absolute strangers, and smile at each other in attempted courage, with stiff lips. The world stands still again, all that is left of that familiar world, but all sense of security is gone.
From the high hill on which we stand we can see the splendid city stretching to the foothills, and we try to reassure ourselves but sick despair grips us. The sky is dun-colored, and through a pile of smoke and dust the sun burns red.
The city looks like a besieged town, shattered by shot and shell. Is that the dome of City Hall we see, hanging like a birdcage over the fallen walls. What has happened to that row of houses one street below us? Their brick foundations are cracked in every direction, the empty window frames sling crookedly against beams that have snapped off short. Here are a roof has fallen in, there the side of a house hangs into the street; a flight of granite steps stands far out into the sidewalk, the door to which they once led has sunk 5 feet below. The spaces between the houses is a tangle of twisted wires of tipsy telegraph poles.
And what a strange light is everywhere – sunlight through a yellow haze, a heavy mist. – And below us – is it mist or steam that rises thick and curiously dark as from a huge cauldron. Now the sun is obscured, the distance is blotted out, and the black mist moves, rises – something leaps up, shines like a sword blade. From someone in our little crowd comes one word in an awed whisper: “Fire!”
Noon
The morning has gone, somehow the interminable hours have dragged away. The air is stifling, the heat intense, but, mercifully, there is no wind. At the merest breath of air we shudder and turn our eyes to the curtain of smoke that hangs across the sky and hides from us the extent of our misfortune. Nevertheless, realization of the magnitude of the disaster deepens from hour to hour. We know that the fire rages in twenty places, that men are fighting it desperately without the water for which we already thirst.
With every moment some new peril is revealed. The live wires of the trolley lines have dropped into the street, there is a penetrating odor of escaping gas. A man clatters by on horseback, shouting: “martial law has been declared – the regulars are out; light no fires in the houses – by order of General Funston.”
From the first hour there has been no water. There is a run on bakers and groceries for provisions — bread — candles, tinned meet, soda water. The men serve their customers on floors swimming with oil, tomato catsup, wine, and broken glass. They do not ask exorbitant prices. In many cases they give without demanding payment. Instances of extortion are rare except for conveyances with which to remove invalids and household effects from the region of greatest danger.
It is incredible with what swiftness rumors become facts, and still time creeps along on leaden feet, though occurrences multiply and the experiences of a lifetime are crowded into an hour. We have eaten nothing since the night before, but we know no sensation of hunger. The fate of those who are nearest and dearest is still shrouded in darkness. There is no way to discover it – we are cut off from the world!
When from time to time a smoke-blackened figure approaches it is only to report further calamity. This or that public building is gone, one street after another destroyed; now the fire has engulfed a whole section. Soldiers and firemen, millionaires and thieves are fighting desperately. Every now and then there is a terrific explosion. They are blowing up whole blocks with dynamite in the vain hope of saving the city.
The most extraordinary factor in this unprecedented experience is a general calmness, the self-control exhibited. Perhaps the earthquake has exhausted her powers of sensation. Faces show the strain, but there is no complaint. The lesson has been too soul-searching in it’s effect. All have learned the value of mere possessions. They strive to save them instinctively, but failing, they hear with entire composure, that fortune, home, factory, offices, have been swept away. The streets grow more and more crowded as the fire drives the refugees to the hills. A never ending stream of vehicles passes, motors flash by, carriages, express wagons, undertakers’ wagons, and ice carts laden with people and their hastily snatched belongings rumble on. It is pitiable to see solitary old women tottering along under loads that would not tax the strength of a child. Women in opera cloaks drag trunks along the earthquake torn pavements. Bands of Chinese, dazed and helpless, drift along aimlessly. It is incredible what foolish things people have seized and still cling too. It is related that in the fall of the Emporium, a huge structure on Market Street, a man was only held back by force from the blazing ruins. He struggled in the arms of his captors, protesting that he had lost his hat, that he must find his hat. One woman has a large birdcage from which the birds have flown. Whole families pass, in one instance a pet donkey is being led along, free from burden, while even the child in arms clutches a handkerchief of treasures.
The unfortunate have lost their wits. The ring of the ambulance bells and the toot of the automobiles that have been impressed into the service of the Red Cross hardly scatter the crowds, that move on, talking, gesticulating, in wildest excitement. There is little to be done, but that little is accomplished with immense risk and difficulty. Every nerve, every sense is strained for the latest word from those who return, like exhausted soldiers from the front. When will this refuge be declared unsafe, when will we be compelled to move on. The stories that are whispered in low tones, so that the general multitude may not be made more anxious, are harrowing. Stories of women wandering into the ruins, clasping dead children in their arms, of men gone mad, a fireman crushed, of sick and wounded crushed under falling walls, stories of soldiers who have exceeded their orders, of unfortunate civilians who, upon a refusal to leave their treasures, have been shot. They tell, too, of the swift retribution that overtakes those who, under the cover of the prevailing excitement, attempt to rob, to loot, or even to touch the possessions of others. In one place the bodies of a thieves lie where the bullets have dropped them.
And as the sun sank slowly in the west the huge clouds of smoke that all day had obscured the scene, changed to rose color, and, in the reversal of all things, the day that had been darkened by the smoke was exchanged gradually for the wild illumination of the night.
Night
The terraced hillside park had the look of a bivouac. Nondescript shelters, made of blankets, of tablecloths, spread on broom sticks, of women’s opera wraps, of valuable Indian rugs protected those who were fortunate enough to have them. Many had covers and pillows, those who had nothing lay on the ground, or on the broad stone steps along the park walkways. There was not a murmur to be heard, only a child wailed loudly for a forgotten doll. Speculation, even, had given way to a stoical indifference. People spoke little, in low tones. The stillness was acute. Overawed by the terrible magnificence of the spectacle being enacted in the east and along the whole plain to the southern horizon, it was, strangely enough, possible for one to think, to form plans, even to hope– while the work of wholesale annihilation went on.
Nature now and then indulges in pure melodrama. A sea of liquid fire lay beneath us, the sky above it seemed to burn at white heat, deepening into gold, into orange, spreading into a fierce glare. The smoke and gathered into one gigantic cloud that hung motionless, sharply outlined against a vast field of exquisite starry blue. The streets were caverns of darkness, but here in there, from the impenetrable gloom, three or four houses seem to start out, like an illuminated card every cornice, every window shining with reflected blaze.
And as the night advanced it grew cold, and men and women walked up and down between the lines of sleepers, stretching their stiff limbs. Even at midnight, the attempt to sleep was abandoned. Eyes, bloodshot, with weariness and the pain from the constant rain of cinders, tried to turn away from the fire, but it held them with dreadful fascination. How it slipped in and out, flowing like a river, engulfing here a church, there a block of houses! A steeple, flaring high like a torch, toppled and fell in a shower of sparks. The strong square of an office building, black one instant against that ever moving stream of fire, flush the next, shot through and through with flame.
The fire burned on and destroyed and blackened, but it kindled a flame that illuminated the Western world —the spark of a generous kindness that lives in the hearts of the multitude. This is been fanned into a fire at which the victims of this great disaster may find warmth and renewed courage. Hope remains and an undaunted spirit. The eyes that have watched ceaselessly through the night look out over a field of desolation, and, without flinching, face the dawn of another day.
The Illinois Central Railroad was founded in 1851. It expanded service from Illinois to much of the Midwest. In 1999 it merged with the Canadian National Railway Company.
-- Encyclopaedia Britannica
The British brought in Chinese immigrants as indentured laborers (Coolie) to work in their colonies in the Caribbean, primarily Jamaica and other islands in general.
Very soon, the Chinese started to bring small Jujube plants from their homeland to their workplaces in the Caribbean. In no time, Jujube plants started to show up around the slums of the Chinese workers. Then it started to fruit.
The British, for the lack of a name, called the Jujubes 'Coolie Plum', plums grown by the Chinese Coolies.
When the British found Jujube trees in India, they called them Coolie Plum trees. The Bengali natives of India shortened the Coolie Plum to Coolie to Cool/Kul.
Kul, the Bengali name of the Jujube remains in circulation till this day.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
India (Bengali) = কুল / টোপা কুল / নারকলি কূল (Kul or Topa Kul or Narkoli Kul)
India (Hindi) = Ber
Australia = Chinee Apple
Barbados = Dunk / Mangustine
Bangladesh = বরই (Boroi)
Cambodia = Putrea
Dominican Republic = Perita Haitiana
Haiti = Petit Pomme
Indonesia = Widara
Jamaica = Coolie Plum
Malaysia = Bedara
Philippines = Manzanita
Puerto Rico = Yuyubi
Surinam = Widara
Tamil (India) = Ilanthai Pazham
Thailand = Phutsa
Trinidad = Dunks
Vietnam = Tao / Tao Nhuc
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Supposedly a hybrid between cultivars from Thailand and Myanmar, large, sweet and crunchy Giant Thai Jujubes flourish well in Florida, seen here hanging from a 4-year old tree.
As an added bonus, the tree has hardly, if any, annoying and dangerous spines.
One still green, the other is ripe.
Ziziphus mauritiana
Family Rhamnaceae
Private Garden, Rockledge, Florida, USA.
==============================================================================
View of several people standing in front of a vineyard. A young boy sits on a barrel,
and a couple of others sit in a horse-drawn cart.
Digital Collection:
North Carolina Postcards
Publisher:
Gorhams' Book and Music Co., Fayetteville, N.C.;
Date:
1911
Location:
Fayetteville (N.C.); Cumberland County (N.C.);
Collection in Repository
Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards (P077); collection guide available
online at www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/pcoll/77barbour/77barbour.html
On the pedestal under the statue of former Minnesota Governor John Albert Johnson, two laborers are depicted for two of Minnesota's first industries, iron mining and agriculture.
國立台灣文學館 - 勞農文學特展 / 貼近土地去看 - 想法也會改變
National Museum of Taiwanese Literature - Laborers and farmers in Taiwan literature / Land close look at - The idea will change
Museo Nacional de la literatura taiwanesa - Obreros y campesinos en Taiwán literatura / Terreno cerca vistazo a - La idea cambiará
国立の台湾の文学館 - 農業の文学特に展に働きます / 土地を近づけて見るのに行きます - 考えも変化ができます
Nationalmuseum der taiwanesischen Literatur - Arbeiter und Bauern in Taiwan Literatur / Land Lupe - Die Idee wird sich ändern
Musée national de la littérature taiwanaise - es ouvriers et les agriculteurs de Taiwan littérature / Terrain examiner de près - L'idée va changer
Tainan Taiwan / Tainan Taiwán / 台灣台南
管樂小集 2015/03/13 Chihkan Tower performances
{ Can't take my eyes off you 君の瞳に恋してる 目不轉睛愛上你 }
{View large size on fluidr / 觀看大圖}
{My Blog / 管樂小集精彩演出-觸動你的心}
{My Blog / Great Music The splendid performance touches your heart}
{My Blog / 管楽小集すばらしい公演-はあなたの心を心を打ちます}
{Mi blog / La gran música el funcionamiento espléndido toca su corazón}
{Mein Blog / Große Musik die herrliche Leistung berührt Ihr Herz}
{Mon blog / La grande musique l'exécution splendide touche votre coeur}
家住安南鹽溪邊
The family lives in nearby the Annan salt river
隔壁就是聽雨軒
The next door listens to the rain porch
一旦落日照大員
The sunset Shineing to the Taiwan at once
左岸青龍飛九天
The left bank white dragon flying in the sky
Ithaca - Hans Dendauw & Betsy Sandberg
Odysseus journey started and concluded on Ithaca. Ten years before the Odyssey sets place, he started from here into the Trojan War in the Iliad.
After the previous adventures, the wrong ways he had to go and the loss of all his men, he landed on the isle of the Phaeacians. Having listened with attention to his story, the Phaeacians, skilled mariners, agreed to help Odysseus get home.
They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus. To be able to see how things stands in his own Household, Athena disguises Odysseus as a wandering beggar. After dinner, he tells the farm laborers a fictitious tale of himself: He was born in Crete, had led a party of Cretans to fight alongside other Greeks in the Trojan War, and had then spent seven years at the court of the king of Egypt; finally, he had been shipwrecked in Thesprotia and crossed from there to Ithaca.
When the housekeeper Eurycleia washes Odysseus’ feet, she discovers his true identity by recognizing an old scar. Eurycleia tries to tell Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, about the beggar's identity, but Athena makes sure that Penelope cannot hear her. Odysseus then swears Eurycleia to keep the secret.
The next day and at Athena's intervention, Penelope maneuvers the Suitors into competing for her hand with an archery competition, using Odysseus' bow. The man who can string the bow and shoot it through a dozen axe heads would win. Odysseus takes part in the competition himself and he alone is strong enough, making him the winner. He then turns his arrows on the Suitors and with the help of Athena, his son Telemachus, Eumaeus and Philoteus the cowherd, he kills all the Suitors. Odysseus and Telemachus hang twelve of their household maids, who had betrayed Penelope or had sex with the Suitors, or both; they mutilate and kill the goatherd Melanthius, who had mocked and abused Odysseus. Finally, Odysseus identifies himself to Penelope. She is at first hesitant, but accepts him when he mentions that their bed was made from an olive tree still rooted to the ground. Many modern and ancient scholars take this to be the original ending of the Odyssey, and the rest to be an interpolation.
The next day Odysseus and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laertes. He likewise accepts his identity only when Odysseus correctly describes the orchard that Laertes had once given him. The citizens of Ithaca have followed Odysseus on the road, seeking revenge for the killing of their sons, the Suitors. Their leader points out that Odysseus has now caused the deaths of two generations of the men of Ithaca: his sailors, not one of whom survived; and the Suitors, whom he has now executed. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to give up the vendetta. After this, Ithaca is at peace once more, concluding the Odyssey.
____________________________________________________
You can find me as well on Instagram under my username kevin.j.walter or my pictures via #skywalter
Digital ID: 1260216. [African American day laborers standing near and on the back of farm trucks parked on the side of a road near the Hallan Bridge while drivers bid and offer them between 50 cents and one dollar to work as cotton pickers on Mississippi and Arkansas plantations, Memphis, Tennessee, October 1939.. Wolcott, Marion Post -- Photographer. October 1939
Notes: Original negative #: 30631-M5; Caption on back: 'Day laborers being hired for cotton picking on Mississippi and Arkansas plantations. Between about 4 to 6:30 A.M., every morning during the season near the Hallan Bridge in Memphis, Tennessee crowds of negroes in the streets gather and are loaded into trucks by drivers who bid and offer them from 50 cents per day to $1.00. October 1939.'
Source: Farm Security Administration Collection. / Tennessee. / Marion Post Wolcott. (more info)
Repository: The New York Public Library. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Photographs and Prints Division.
See more information about this image and others at NYPL Digital Gallery.
Persistent URL: digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1260216
Rights Info: No known copyright restrictions; may be subject to third party rights (for more information, click here)
Persistent URL: digital.lib.muohio.edu/u?/tradecards,2396
Subject (TGM): Agriculture; Agricultural industries; Agricultural laborers; Agricultural productivity; Farm produce; Vegetables; Onions; Farms; Croplands; Farming; Seed trade; Seeds; Mail-order businesses; Catalogs;
I'm walking home!, on a fine June day, admiring the blooming clovers and young cottonwoods along my route. Who keeps these border strips mowed I wonder.
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In Buffalo, New York, on June 11th, 2021, on a parcel at the southwest corner of Ship Canal Parkway and Laborers Way, in the Buffalo Lakeside Commerce Park, a redevelopment of the former site of the Hanna Furnace pig iron plant.
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Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names terms:
• Buffalo (7013463)
• Erie (county) (1002356)
Art & Architecture Thesaurus terms:
• blast furnaces (300006438)
• brownfield sites (300260689)
• Fabaceae (family) (300343861)
• industrial landscapes (300253299)
• industrial parks (300000411)
• mowing (300379802)
• pig iron (300443991)
• Populus deltoides (species) (300375213)
• real estate development (300055444)
• sidewalks (300003893)
• summer (season) (300133099)
• vacant lots (300122264)
Wikidata items:
• 11 June 2021 (Q69306079)
• Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area (Q199196)
• deindustrialization (Q5909102)
• environmental remediation (Q2019586)
• June 11 (Q2617)
• June 2021 (Q61312778)
• redevelopment (Q1441983)
• Rust Belt (Q781973)
• South Buffalo (Q7566450)
• Trifolium (Q101538)
• Western New York (Q7988104)
Library of Congress Subject Headings:
• Clover (sh85027202)
• Cottonwood (sh85033375)
• Iron industry and trade (sh85068196)
• Vacant lot ecology (sh85141689)
Laborers gesture from the back of a pickup as my taxi made its way from the airport to the city, in Kolkata, West Bengal, India September 30, 2009. Photo by Tim Chong
"Peter Maynard" Life in Shadows Adelaide, Pike and Joyce, Adelaide Hills, Vinyard, Vineyard, landscape.
Carte de visite by Rufus Morgan of New Bern, N.C. On July 13, 1861, the 5th Massachusetts Infantry received orders to pack and store its personal baggage in preparation to break camp in Alexandria, Va. The officers and men understood the implication. They would soon march to meet the enemy.
About this time, according to one report, two senior officers rode into camp: Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell, overall commander of the Union army protecting the capital, and Col. William Buell Franklin, who led the brigade that included the 5th.
So the story goes, McDowell and Franklin arrived as the regiment had formed a hollow square in camp. The colonel of the 5th, Samuel C. Lawrence, received and introduced them to his men. In truth, the two officers needed no introduction, for the regiment had already gained a reputation throughout the army as the “Steady Fifth” for its proficiency and discipline on the drill field. Once the formalities concluded, the officers spoke to the volunteers, reminding them that their three-month enlistment would soon expire and they had to decide whether to go home or remain and win glory on the battlefield.
Everyone knew the answer: The Steady Fifth was in for the fight.
A regimental historian recorded with pride, “To the everlasting credit of Massachusetts soldiers be it said that, to a man, they chose the latter course and stayed in the ranks.”
One of those men is pictured here: Private George Warren Nason, Jr., a 27-year-old peacetime expressman from Franklin, Mass. Growing up, he had heard the stories about his maternal and paternal great-grandfathers—heroes who fought in the Continental Army, beat the British, and set the stage for drafting and ratifying of the Constitution.
When the bombardment of Fort Sumter by South Carolina state forces on April 12, 1861, threatened the stability of the nation and the very existence of the Constitution, Nason acted. Three days after cannon shots blasted Sumter’s brick walls, Nason enlisted in Company I and joined his new comrades at Faneuil Hall, the regiment’s temporary headquarters.
Less than two weeks later, the regiment encamped at the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C., where President Abraham Lincoln and loyal population of the city welcomed them.
The 5th welcomed a drillmaster in the form of a recent West Point graduate, 1st Lt. George Warren Dresser of the 4th U.S. Artillery. He worked with the regiment’s lieutenant colonel, James Durrell Greene, a Harvard graduate, to whip the men into shape. According to a news report, the “regiment is practicing the severest kind of drill daily,” adding that Greene and Dresser “are devoting themselves assiduously to the work of making this one of the best regiments in the service.” The daily routine included six hours of drill and another hour of target practice.
The ambitious drill program transformed the men into a crack regiment. In a mid-June review, Lincoln and members of his cabinet reportedly dubbed it the Steady Fifth in recognition of its conduct and bearing.
Weeks later, on July 16, Nason and the rest of the 5th left their Alexandria camp to whip the rebels. The battle, near Manassas and Bull Run, unfolded on July 21. The 5th found themselves in the thick of the fray. Conspicuous in dark blue uniforms reminiscent of U.S. Regulars, the men and officers showed the same cool courage as displayed by the professionals. However, the Bay Staters and the rest of Franklin’s Brigade ran into trouble in the vicinity of Henry House and eventually retreated in confusion to the Defenses of Washington with the rest of the army.
The regiment suffered 34 casualties, including Nason, after a gunshot hit him in his left leg and a saber cut through his cap. Captured by Confederates in the chaos and confusion of battle, he escaped that night under cover of darkness and rejoined the 5th.
After the regiment’s term of enlistment expired, Nason looked for another opportunity to serve. He soon found it. In mid-August, he joined the 23rd Massachusetts Infantry. His veteran status and peacetime job as an expressman responsible for delivering valuable and time-sensitive goods likely contributed to his assignment as the commissary sergeant of Company H.
His skills and experience made him a desirable asset after the regiment received surprise orders to depart Massachusetts for the South after the Union suffered a defeat at Ball’s Bluff, Va. The colonel ordered Nason to remain behind and gather up men who were away when the unexpected orders arrived. A few weeks later, on Thanksgiving Day 1861, Nason joined his regiment, now encamped in Maryland, with four train cars: three filled with soldiers and a fourth with delicacies from home for Thanksgiving dinner. Nason must have received a hero’s welcome.
Weeks later, the 23rd and other regiments, organized as the Coast Division, joined Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside’s expedition to invade the North Carolina coast. A flotilla of gunboats transported the troops. Commanders detailed Nason to be the storekeeper of the warship Huzzar, managing and safeguarding critical supplies. He served in this capacity in early February 1862 when Burnside launched an amphibious operation to capture Roanoke Island. During the successful attack, Nason joined the crew of the starboard cannon as its Number Two man, responsible for ramming the charge and projectile down the tube and sponging the barrel after firing. While engaged in this duty an enemy shot tore into a gun rail on the deck and sent splinters flying. One shard of wood struck him in the wrist, severely injuring him. A month later, while on the Huzzar along the blockade near New Bern, he suffered another wound—his third as a soldier.
War leads to unexpected outcomes. For Nason, his wounding brought him to Union-occupied New Bern, which became his home for the next decade.
Early on, he served on assignments as post commissary, organizer of a fire department, and clerk in the Provost Marshal’s Office.
This last named assignment set the stage for Nason’s proudest moment in uniform.
He told the story loomed after the war ended. On May 4, 1864, with most of the army and navy forces away on an expedition, only Nason and about 30 men and officers and three generals remained in the city to guard $3 million of government supplies and munitions. Area Confederates, likely informed by sympathizers inside the city, gathered around the outskirts of New Bern and looked for an opportunity to strike.
Union commanders went on the defensive. They called on Nason to supply boxes and laborers to bury records in an effort to keep them out of enemy hands.
Nason had a different idea in mind—a bluff. He proposed to have some of the 1,000 Black laborers in town form several brass bands and have them board a train and leave the city without making a noise under cover of darkness. The train, with its lights doused and covered in blankets, would travel some miles down the tracks, at which point the train would steam back to New Bern—this time with blankets thrown off, lights on, and the laborers cheering and playing instruments as loudly as possible. Maybe, just maybe, the Confederates would believe that Union troops were returning from their expedition.
The generals were not sold on Nason’s bluff. However, Assistant Adjutant General Capt. John A. Judson liked the idea and ordered the heads of transportation and the shipping yard to help Nason execute his plan. A barrel of whisky was brought in to prime the men, who were about to lay their lives on the line to keep New Bern in Union control, and the supplies—and themselves—out of Confederate hands.
The ruse worked. Nason noted the generals received the credit.
After Nason’s enlistment expired in the autumn of 1864 he was employed as a civilian in the Provost Marshal’s Office, followed by a nine-year stint as postmaster. He’s pictured in this role with his hands full of cartes de visite.
Photographs played a role in Nason’s later life as President of the Association of the Minute Men of ’61, an organization honoring the first defenders of Massachusetts. In 1899, Nason gathered photographs of his comrades, and had them reproduced as half-tone prints in a commemorative booklet. The members loved it. Nason expanded on the idea in his 1910 book “Minute Men of ’61: History and Complete Roster of the Massachusetts Regiments.”
By this time, Nason had lived an adventurous postwar life up and down the Eastern Seaboard as a newspaper publisher, managing turpentine factories, surveying railroads, constructing canals, serving as a delegate to elect Ulysses S. Grant to a second term in the White House, partnering in a commercial real estate business back in Massachusetts, and much, much more.
Nason died in 1911, a year after publication of his history of the 1861 Minute Men. He was 77 years old. His wife, Hattie, and a son, Millard, predeceased him.
I encourage you to use this image for educational purposes only. However, please ask for permission.
Laborers starts working with sunrise and their whole life is making and baking the the bricks for our fancy houses.
Forced abortions on eastern workers
Women-specific discrimination in the system of Nazi forced labor
There are limits to understanding the extent of oppression in National Socialism in a differentiated way. The ordering look seduces to unification. In the discussions about compensatory payments for forced labor, such a shortcoming was revealed: the living conditions of men and women.
Thousands of forced laborers were deported for the armament industrial triangle Linz-St.Valentin-Steyr. Every third employed person in the catchment area of the employment office in Linz was a foreigner in 1943. Most came from the Soviet Union and were called "Eastern workers". After Jews, Roma, Sinti and concentration camp inmates, they stood as "Slavic subhumans" defamed at the lowest level of the racist Nazi hierarchy. In view of the wartime reduced male population, foreigners became a potential threat for the "purity" of the German woman. In the sexual-political confrontation of this problem, the "hometown of the Führer" was one step ahead of the German Reich: the
first brothel for foreign men was established in 1940 in Linz.
... that they get pregnant
This problem did not arise with the forced female laborers - they were considered asexual beings. By the loss of family, language, culture isolated and by the label "East" degraded, these young women sought to banish the forlornness in a foreign country with security and love. In July 1942, August Eigruber, Gauleiter Oberdonau, alerted the Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German Police Heinrich Himmler: "I have thousands of foreigners in Gau Oberdonau and I make the conclusion that these foreign workers ... become pregnant". The Nazi apparatus met this situation unprepared. The only thing was clear: the workforce woman was not allowed to be diminished.
The pregnant eastern workers were admitted to the "gynecological clinic of the Reichsgau Oberdonau", as the state women's clinic was called at that time. An "Eastern Women's Barrack", specially equipped with 40 beds, was set up in the institution's garden. The Provincial Women's Hospital fulfilled one of the requirements for the establishment of such special departments: their midwife school was to use the "inferior" classified birthing mothers for training purposes. Since May 1943, the "eastern workers barrack" got another function: the pregnant forced laborers should not only give birth, but also abort.
Misogynistic double standard
The feminist double standard of the Nazi state is evident in the legislation. Since March 1943, the carrying out of a termination of pregnancy among German women was punishable by death. For pregnant women from the East and the Polish women, it also rested in the power of their employers, the employment office or the police, to apply for the abortion following the mandatory notification of the pregnancy. The "Abortion Order" was decided by two physicians from Linz, who acted as reviewers of the medical association. The complex compulsive situation relativizes every hint of 'freedom of choice'.
Tamara P., 20 years old, from Stalino, 5-month pregnancy: "On the order of the surveyors office abortion"; Paraska K., 18, from Kharkov, 6-7. Month pregnant: "admitted for the termination of pregnancy, etc. etc."
From May 1944 to February 1945, ie in ten months, 719 women were admitted to the State Women's Hospital for abortion. For three months - until the evacuation of the barracks to Bad Hall in February 1944 was completed - the abortions had taken place in the general hospital in Linz. Otherwise, there were occasional births and abortions among forced laborers.
While in Germany individual doctors are known who tried to prevent abortions of forced laborers - and were not punished -, for such efforts in the medical profession of both hospitals in Linz so far no traces have been found. The many abortions of "normal" pregnancies also in the 5th to the 7th month of these disenfranchised women makes the executors appear rather as willing executors of the inhuman Nazi population policy.
... threaten to be displaced
To simply subsume in the discussion of compensation payments women as "forced laborers" would mean not integrating them. In familiar apparent gender neutrality, a masculine image of "forced labor" dominates and women-specific discrimination - of which forced abortion is only one - threatens to be forgotten and repressed. Therefore, the symbolic reparation for forced laborers who have born or aborted, is of great effect: so that the 'general' history of forced labor is neither distorted nor inadequately received and discussed.
Gabriela Hauch, Univ-Prof. for Modern History and Contemporary History at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, member of the Historical Commission.
Zwangsabtreibungen an Ostarbeiterinnen
Frauenspezifische Diskriminierungen im System der NS-Zwangsarbeit
Man stößt an Grenzen, um das Ausmaß der Unterdrückung im Nationalsozialismus differenziert nachzuvollziehen. Der ordnende Blick verführt zu Vereinheitlichung. In den Diskussionen um die Entschädigungszahlungen für Zwangsarbeit offenbarte sich ein derartiges Manko: die Lebensbedingungen von Männern und Frauen.
Für das Rüstungsindustriedreieck Linz-St.Valentin-Steyr wurden zigtausende Zwangsarbeiter/innen verschleppt. Jede/r dritte Erwerbstätige im Einzugsbereich des Arbeitsamtes Linz war 1943 Ausländer/in. Die meisten kamen aus der Sowjetunion und wurden „Ostarbeiter/innen“ genannt. Nach Juden, Roma, Sinti und KZ-Häftlingen standen sie, als ,slawische Untermenschen‘ diffamiert, auf der untersten Stufe der rassistischen NS-Hierarchie. Angesichts der kriegsbedingt reduzierten männlichen Bevölkerung gerieten Ausländer zur potentiellen Gefahr für die ,Reinheit‘ der deutschen Frau. In der sexualpolitischen Begegnung dieses Problems zeigte sich die „Patenstadt des Führers“ dem Deutschen Reich einen Schritt voraus: das
erste Bordell für ausländische Männer wurde 1940 in Linz eingerichtet.
… dass sie schwanger werden
Diese Problematik stellte sich bei den Zwangsarbeiterinnen nicht – sie galten als asexuelle Wesen. Durch den Verlust von Familie, Sprache, Kultur vereinsamt und die Kennzeichnung „Ost“ degradiert, suchten diese jungen Frauen die Verlorenheit in der Fremde mit Geborgenheit und Liebe zu bannen. Im Juli 1942 alarmierte August Eigruber, Gauleiter Oberdonau, den Reichsführer SS und Chef der deutschen Polizei Heinrich Himmler: „Ich habe im Gau Oberdonau Tausende von Ausländerinnen und mache nun die Feststellung, dass diese ausländischen Arbeiterinnen … schwanger werden“.2 Den NS-Apparat traf diese Situation unvorbereitet. Klar war nur: die Arbeitskraft Frau durfte nicht vermindert werden.
Die schwangeren Ostarbeiterinnen wurden in die „Frauenklinik des Reichsgaues Oberdonau“, wie die Landesfrauenklinik damals hieß, eingeliefert. Eine eigens mit 40 Betten versehene „Ostarbeiterinnen-Baracke“ wurde im Anstaltsgarten errichtet.3 Die Landesfrauenklinik erfüllte eine der Soll-Bestimmungen zur Einrichtung solch spezieller Abteilungen: ihre Hebammen-Schule sollte die als ,minderwertig‘ klassifizierten Gebärenden zu Übungszwecken nutzen. Seit Mai 1943 bekam die „Ostarbeiterinnen-
Baracke“ eine weitere Funktion: die schwangeren Zwangsarbeiterinnen sollten nicht nur gebären, sondern auch abtreiben.
frauenverachtende Doppelmoral
Die frauenverachtende Doppelmoral des NS-Staates wird in der Gesetzgebung offensichtlich.4 Seit März 1943 fiel die Durchführung eines Schwangerschaftsabbruches an deutschen Frauen unter die Todesstrafe. Für schwangere Ostarbeiterinnen und Polinnen lag es – nach der verpflichtenden Meldung der Schwangerschaft – auch in der Macht ihrer Arbeitgeber/innen, dem Arbeitsamt oder der Polizei, den Abbruch zu beantragen. Die „Anordnung zum Schwangerschaftsabbruch“ entschieden zwei Linzer Ärzte, die als Gutachter der Ärztekammer fungierten. Die komplexe Zwangssituation relativiert jede Andeutung von ,Entscheidungsfreiheit‘.
Tamara P., 20 Jahre, aus Stalino, 5-monatige Schwangerschaft: „Über Anordnung der Gutachterstelle Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung“; Paraska K., 18 Jahre, aus Charkow, 6-7. Monat schwanger: „Zur
Schwangerschaftsunterbrechung eingewiesen“ usw. usw.
Von Mai 1944 bis Februar 1945, also in zehn Monaten, wurden 719 Frauen zur Abtreibung in die Landesfrauenklinik eingewiesen. Während drei Monaten – bis die Evakuierung der Baracke nach Bad Hall im Februar 1944 abgeschlossen war – hatten die Abtreibungen im Allgemeinen Krankenhaus in Linz stattgefunden. Ansonsten fanden dort vereinzelt Geburten und Schwangerschaftsabbrüche bei Zwangsarbeiterinnen statt.
Während in Deutschland einzelne Ärzte bekannt sind, die Abtreibungen an Zwangsarbeiterinnen zu verhindern suchten – und dafür nicht bestraft wurden 5 –, konnten derartige Bemühungen in der Ärzteschaft beider Linzer Krankenhäuser bislang keine Spuren gefunden werden. Die vielen Abbrüche von „normal verlaufenden“ Schwangerschaften auch im 5. bis in das 7. Monat bei diesen entrechteten Frauen, lässt die Durchführenden vielmehr als willige ExekutorInnen der menschenverachtenden NS-Bevölkerungspolitik erscheinen.
…drohen verdrängt zu werden
Frauen bei den Diskussionen rund um die Entschädigungszahlungen schlicht unter „Zwangsarbeiter“ zu subsumieren, hieße, sie nicht sie zu integrieren. In vertrauter Schein-Geschlechtsneutralität dominiert ein männliches Bild von „Zwangsarbeit“ und die frauenspezifischen Diskriminierungen – wovon die Zwangs/Abtreibung nur eine darstellt – drohen vergessen und verdrängt zu werden. Deswegen ist die symbolische Wiedergutmachung für Zwangsarbeiterinnen, die geboren oder abgetrieben haben, voller Wirkungsmacht: damit die ,allgemeine‘ Geschichte der Zwangsarbeit weder verzerrt noch lückenhaft rezipiert und diskutiert wird.
Gabriela Hauch, Univ-Prof. für Neuere Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte an der Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Mitglied der Historikerkommission.
A newly married woman laborer in a brick kiln in West Bengal, India. Nikon F3HP, with 105mm f/2.5 AIS, Fuji color negative film. (2004)
This young Pakistani boy works in a brick kiln on the outskirts of Lahore in Pakistan, making bricks. His parents owe the brick kiln owner 5,000 Pakistani rupees - less than US $100. Because of this debt, his family works as bonded laborers, which is illegal but all-to-common among brick kiln workers. He does not have the opportunity to attend school, and barring outside intervention, he will likely remain completely illiterate for the rest of his life, as are his parents.