Category Archives: History

Nope

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No, no it didn’t.

⋞Something Happened Here: Roswell prepares for Pentagon’s UFO report⋟

On the eve of the release of the Pentagon’s highly anticipated report on unidentified aerial phenomena, life here in one of the world’s UFO hotspots was exceedingly normal.

Downtown’s alien souvenir shops and the International UFO Museum welcomed a steady stream of visitors escaping their pandemic malaise on Thursday as coronavirus restrictions continued to loosen in New Mexico.

The US government will release a declassified report on Friday detailing its analysis of various unidentified flying phenomena. City leaders hope that outsiders’ enthusiasm about the report will pique their interest in visiting.

Pretty much lays it all out there. There are some fascinated folks, a fantacist or two, and some locals who never think a thing about it, except it separates the first two from their money.

Born and raised there in the early 60s, I never heard of it in detail until the 90s. My grandparents (with my mother and siblings in tow) moved to Roswell in June 1947, a few weeks before an Air Force/NYU screw-up experiment crashed 70 miles north. My grandfather may have mentioned it in passing in the 70s or so and people remembered it, but not as anything real. When the 50th came around, so did the tourists and their cash, and <ka-ching> Roswell, where Billy the Kid nosed around, had something going for it besides the fireworks factory (which blew up), the mozzarella cheese factory (no, really), the bus-manufacturing center (belly-up), and the airliner graveyard going for it. Ever since, it’s aliens everywhere.

The Plains Theater is where I saw my first movie in a theater (Blackbeard’s Ghost) with its unfortunate press-ganging of Peter Ustinov and Elsa Lanchester—poor souls, it was like putting Leonardo da Vinci and Georgia O’Keefe into a Quentin Tarantino movie—into typical-for-the-period Disney fare with its ubiquitous Dean Jones, a movie that scared the bejeezus out of me and I started crying and my sister had to take me to the lobby—Disney movies still scare the bejeezus out of me. Ugh.). Anyway. The Plains is now the … ahem … “International UFO Research and Science Museum” or something like that, and there are lots of mannequins and green paint and some books, I’m given to understand, where I stood and cried at being forced to see Dean Jones try to keep up while Elsa and Peter wiped the floor with him.

Ugh.

Roswell is a farm town. The fields around the city on the Pecos, where my grandfather farmed from 1947 to 1971, grow alfalfa and dairy cows. My field trip in first grade at Parkview Elementary School was to a dairy. There’s some oil bidness that fluctuates and a lotta windmills.

And that’s it. No cosmic crash landings or autopsies, no gummint conspiracy, just miles of sagebrush and yucca plants and cows and antelope and pecans and a stupid attempt to fool the Soviets when both they and we were up to very much Double Plus-Ungood.

It’s my hometown. I’m proud of being a New Mexican. Being a Roswellite is more of a conversation piece, but heck I’m proud of that, too. Prouder of the mountains to the west and the state and the skies and wind and storms and sunsets. But if you want aliens? Drive up to Santa Fe and gawk at the Californians or to Ruidoso and gawk at the Texans.

[Update 2-Oct-24: This Wired article contains the final, definitive word on the “Roswell Incident,” which is inaccurately named, since the site is closer to the ghost town of Arabella 60 miles from Roswell along the 80-mile-long stretch of NM 255 (aka the old Pine Lodge Road). We snooped on the Russians, didn’t want them to know we were snooping; and we dropped crash test dummies to increase safety for high-altitude ejections of air force pilots. Period.]

The Wake Island Story, Part I

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Memory Of WWII Still Vivid for Vets

(Part I of the Wake Island Story)

“Considering the power accumulated for the invastion of Wake Island and the meager forces of the defenders, it was one of the most humiliating defeats the Japanese Navy ever suffered.” —Masatake Okumiya, commander, Japanese Imperial Navy

By Steve Pollock
The Duncan (OK) Banner)
Sunday, August 13, 1989

MARLOW — It all came back to them this weekend — the stark terror of facing death while kneeling naked on a sandy beach the stinking hold of the prison ship; the brutality of the Japanese; the obliteration of youthful innocence.

They fought and bled for a two-and-a-half-square-mile horseshoe of an atoll in the mid-Pacific called Wake Island. They were United States Marines and they did their duty.

There were 10 men of that Wake Island garrison at the Marlow home of John Smith this weekend. With Smith, they talked, drank, and smoked their way through the weekend, laughter masking deeper emotions of brotherhood, camaraderie, and painful memories.

In the Smith kitchen, their wives continued the latest of an ongoing series of therapy sessions, attempting to exorcise some of the demons of the last 44 years of their lives with the hometown heroes.

In 1941, with war inevitable, the U.S. government began construction of a series of defensive Pacific Ocean outposts, including Wake, designed to protect against Japanese aggression. They were a little late.

Little Wake Atoll, with some 1,616 Marines and civilians huddled on its three islands, was attacked at noon, Dec. 8, 1941, several hours after Pearl Harbor.

The Marines knew war was possible, but “didn’t think the … guys had the guts to hit us,” one of them said.

Jess Nowlin’s hearing aid battery is getting a little weak as the afternoon wears on, but his memory and sense of humor are still sharp.

He said the Marines were going about their business when they heard the drone of approaching aircraft.

“We thought they were B-17’s out of Pearl coming in to refuel. They weren’t. They broke out of a cloud bank at about 1,800 feet, bomb bay doors open. They tore us up,” Nowlin said.

The Japanese attacked from sea and air, but the Marines held out until Dec. 23; only 400 remained to defend 21 miles of shoreline from 25 warships and a fleet of aircraft. Surrender was inevitable.

Through a haze of cigarette smoke, Robert Mac Brown, a veteran not only of World War II, but of Korea and three tours of duty in Vietnam, remembers the post-surrender scene on the beach.

“We were stripped naked and they hog-tied us with our own telephone wire. A squall came through but lasted only about 10 to 15 minutes. One of my clearest memories of the whole operation is of watching the water run down the bare back of the guy in front of me,” Brown said.

Japanese soldiers lay on the sand in front of the prisoners, swinging machine guns back and forth. The click of rounds being loaded into chambers was ominous. Fingers tightened on triggers.

“There was an argument between the landing force commander and a guy with the fleet. They screamed at each other in Japanese, arguing about whether to kill us or not,” Brown said.

The Marines made their peace and prepared to die.

The argument to make prisoners of the Marines and civilians won the day. The prisoners were allowed to grab what clothing they could to cover themselves.

And then a living hell began which would only be ended by the birth of atomic stars over southern Japan nearly four years later.

Taken off the island on small ships, the prisoners were forced to climb up the side of the Nittamaru, a former cruise ship pitching about on rough seas.

As the men walked back through the ship and down to the hold, the crew beat them with bamboo sticks, in a gauntlet of brutality.

Packed in the stinking hold, several hundred Marines and civilians had only one five-gallon bucket per deck to hold human waste. For the 14 days of the Nittamaru’s passage from Wake to Shanghai, they could barely move.

The cold of Shanghai was felt through their thin tropical khaki. It was January 1942. Robert Brown was to have married his girl on January 12. She married someone else.

“I thought you were dead,” she later told him.

From Shanghai, through Nanking, Peking, Manchuria and Pusan, Korea, the group journeyed in packed cattle cars to their eventual destination, a coal mine on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, where they dug in the shafts alongside third-generation Korean slave labor.

They were slaves themselves until August 1945.

“Thank God for Harry S. Truman and the atomic bomb,” several survivors said, as the others echoed that prayer.

They went home to heroes’ welcomes, but the public “‘never fully appreciated or understood what we did,” Nowlin said.

They’re much older now — in their 60’s and 70’s — and it was a family reunion of sorts; they claim to be closer than brothers. They don’t miss their “get-togethers” for anything in the world; Robert Haidinger traveled from San Diego with a long chest incision after recently undergoing a major operation.

As they gazed through the Oklahoma sunshine, they didn’t see the cow bam beyond the lovegrass rippling in the August breeze; it was a Japanese destroyer was steaming close in to end their lives all over again.

“It was awful, terrible; I wouldn’t have missed it for anything; you couldn’t get me to do it again for a billion dollars,” Nowlin summed it up.

The men: Tony Obre, Fallbrook, Calif; Robert Haidinger, San Diego, Calif.; Robert Murphy, Thermopolis, Wyo.; Dale Milburn, Santa Rosa, Calif.; George McDaniels, Dallas, Texas; Jess Nowlin, Bonham, Texas; Jack Cook, Golden, Colo.; Robert Mac Brown, Phoenix, Ariz.; Jack Williamson, Lawton; Paul Cooper, Marlow, and John Smith, Marlow.

The cost of the defense of Wake Island, from Dec. 8 to 23, 1941: Americans: 46 Marines, 47 civilians, three sailors and 11 airplanes; Japanese: 5,700 men, 11 ships and 29 airplanes.

The Wake Island Story Part II

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Photo by Matias Luge on Unsplash

Wives Cope With Husband’s Memories

(Part 2 of the Wake Island Story)

By Steve Pollock
The Duncan (OK) Banner)
Sunday, August 13, 1989

MARLOW — It all came back to them this weekend — fists lashing out during nightmares, the traumatic memories, the attempts to catch up on lost time.

The wives of 10 Wake Island survivors met in Marlow with their husbands this weekend for reasons of their own.

“We go through therapy every time we get together. We help each other with problems,” they said.

The wives: Florence Haidinger, Maxine Murphy, Opal Milburn, Irene McDaniels, Sarah Nowlin, Betty Cook, Millie Brown, Jo Williamson, Juanita Cooper and Marie Smith.

They did their own bit during World War II: The Red Cross, an airplane factory in Detroit, North American Aviation in El Segundo, Calif, Douglas in Los Angeles, the Kress dime store.

They married their men after the long national nightmare was finished, and their lives became entwined by one event: the Japanese attack on Wake Island Dec. 8-23,1941.

Since the first reunion of Wake survivors and their spouses in 1953, these women have been like sisters.

“We love each other, we’re closer than family,” Jo Williamson said.

In Marie Smith’s kitchen, therapy was doled out in a catharsis of talk little different from that of the men gathered on the patio. Talk is said to be good for the soul; these women heal great tears in theirs every time they see each other.

According to the wives, the men came home from the war, married, had children and tried to pick up where they left off.

They wanted to take care of their families and try to catch up. They were robbed of the fun times of their late teens and early 20’s, the women unanimously agree.

“They have also lived every day as if it were their last,” Sarah Nowlin said.

The men needed some help after their harrowing battle and brutal three -and-a-half-year captivity.

According to the women, doctors never realized therapy was in order: “They never got anything.”

One man lashed out with his fists during nightmares; after a few pops, his wife learned to leave the room. Another would slide out of bed and assume a rigid posture on the floor, arms and legs folded. Yet they have all been gentlemen.

“I’ve never seen my husband harm or even verbally abuse anyone,” a wife said Reunions such as this help the men and women deal with life as they age. The youths of 16-22 are now grandfathers and grandmothers in their 60’s and 70’s.

Life today is a bit baffling to them.

Extremely proud of their men, the women have no patience with draft dodgers, flag burners, Japanese cars or foreign ownership of America.

They didn’t agree with the Vietnam war policy, but duty to country should have come first, they said.

“I didn’t want my son to go to Vietnam, but I would have been ashamed of him if he hadn’t,” one said.

The issue of flag burning stirs violent protest and emotion in the group: “Made in America”‘ labels are on everything they buy.

And the younger generation does not enjoy the women’s confidence: “I don’t think they could do what we were all called on to do,” they agreed.

And as Marlow afternoon shadows grew longer, the women of Wake continued to cleanse their souls.

The wives of 10 Wake Island survivors met in Marlow with their husbands this weekend for reasons of their own.

“We go through therapy every time we get together. We help each other with problems,” they said.

Sticky Seats to Sherman

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I used the road and some parallel ones once in 1975 to get from our house in Oklahoma to my aunt’s house in Sherman, TX. My cousins had been staying with us. Our grandparents, in their Ford Torino, took us to Sherman. We spent the night and came back to Duncan.

It was hot. Damn hot. There was no air conditioning. Our granddad would trade cars at the drop of a hat. But a/c was often not part of the deal. Whether in hot and humid Oklahoma or in hot and dry Roswell, there often was no a/c in any of the many cars he traded for.

My cousins, Jeff (my age, around 12) and Jamie (around 6) kept the windows open and sweated. My grandparents fussed at each other. She would ask a question, he would snap an answer, a short, sharp bark, almost like a command. His responses to her would often get like that. Either minor irritation or outright hostility, like in that baking car 100 miles along 70 East and down to Sherman. We arrived damp and 10 pounds lighter. The cousins were glad to get to their own rooms.

I slept in Jeff’s room. Jamie bugged us as usual. Jeff and I sometimes fought. Sometimes, as a little brother myself, I would side in solidarity with Jamie in his interminable war with big brother.

The seats were sticky. We wore shorts. T-shirts. Tennis shoes. I think we had comic books. My uncle was a manager of a Wacker’s five and dime (Texas/NM/CO/OK version of Woolworth). My aunt, my mother’s youngest sister, did many things. There was fun, but mainly heat and humidity.

Having just moved to the very humid land of the Cross Timbers from the very dry atmosphere of the High Mountain Desert lands of New Mexico, the mid-70s were a damp, dripping, mildewing, moldy, miserable, mess. We went to school in stiff new clothes to classrooms that didn’t have air conditioners. Just like my grandfather’s Ford Torino.

Once along the way, there might be a stop for a coke and a restroom break, but if there was, I don’t remember it. Maybe when we went south from 70 at Ardmore to Gainesville, TX, just across the Red River border, where we switched to US 82 to Sherman. Maybe.

I remember 70s chemical-smelling seats in the back, Jeff leaning out one window, me out the other, Jamie slumping over us in the middle.

140 miles. About two hours and 15 minutes. Roasting, baking, basting in our own juices. Granddad, you couldn’t find a car among the stock at Valley Chevrolet that was a used Ford with a/c? You love to haggle, why’d it have to be about white walls than climate control?

I tried my technique of kneeling in the floorboard and lying facedown on the seat. God knows the fumes I was breathing from that sticky plastic coating. We slept fitfully, started scraps of our own. I listened to the brothers and silently thanked an ostensibly higher power that I was a little brother by five and seven years to teen sisters with no little brother to fight with myself. Jeff and Jamie on Mom’s side of the family and Jeff and Mike on Dad’s warred constantly. Bruises were given to each other often.

Older and bigger, Jeff and I would bike away through the cemetery by their house leaving Jamie alone among the tombstones, panicking. I tried not to be too much of a snot, but then I was a bit of a snot as a little brother, so sometimes it was just fun.

One year, Granddad had surgery. Aunt Pat came to Duncan, picked up Mom and scooted back to 70 West to Roswell. For some reason lost in time, Jeff got to go. I had to stay with Jamie. He loved my dad, his Uncle Marion, just like every other kid. And Dad paid him plenty of attention, for reasons that would later become apparent. Then I found the sting of jealousy. I was a loner kid, happiest alone, but hey, I’m YOUR kid, Dad, he’s NOT. It reinforced my gratitude for not having a little brother. We fought some, made up. It was a long week. He had fun. Parts I enjoyed, parts were filled with injustice and indignation.

The surgery successfully passed, the sisters came home. Jeff got to go to the hospital and be the center of attention. Jamie left, I went back to lonerism. Reading a book. Being left alone. That was my shtick. There wasn’t room for cousins or constant play or parents. Me, a book, maybe a little hike in the backwoods pretending to be an army or marching band, waving a flag.

It might sound like I hated my cousins. Au contraire! I loved them and enjoyed getting together (and still would), but sometimes, when you’re a kid, you fight and love and hug and roll in the dirt and get in trouble and tease and troll the younger ones, get dismissed by the older ones. But all my cousins are well-beloved still.

But always, for whatever family reasons, there were sticky trips, with beloved cousins sweating as much or more than you, where the tarmac of US 70 West seemed to be taffy. Soft, gooey, surely sticking to the tires. The smell of asphalt in the summer of West Texas is an enduring memory. It’s used in Six Flags Over Texas and it bakes there too, creating a smell that is unforgettable.

Just as unforgettable as my grandparents’ plastic seats in their Ford Torino, running down the road, a torturous journey shared with my favorite cousins.