Some fun and tribute for Memorial day weekend

I'll go first with a big name .
I was all about the TV show , read his book and it only took my own screwed up vet son to figure out why Gregory Boyington was drunk or on the stick . So here we go .
Attachment 196297
You might be cool ...
But you'll never be Lt Col USMC , air combat veteran ace , torpedo fuel drinking ,still building , PTSD surviver , POW camp suviver , atomic bomb surviver , shake hands and drink a beer with the combat pilot that sent you to the POW camp , write book consult a TV show , Gregory Boyington cool .

That TV show and the desert Rat show were pretty good. I'm sure there was a lot of hollywood' in them but still good. Guess he had the P40 in China and then switched to the corsair?

The story of how the Black Sheep came together is a story in its own . As well as how the Corps got stuck with the F4U .

Rat patrol

This is Mike Kawato . He is credited with having been the Japanese Ace that shot Pappy Boyington down when he was captured and taken to the Japanese POW camp .
You can his book under 2 titles . Flight in to Conquest and under the new slip cover title of Bye Bye Black Sheep . The second was added after he and Pappy met in the bar at Harrahs Reno during the Reno Air Races where they were both selling their books and autographs .

Attachment 196303
Mike joined the Navy air corps at 18 and was a veteran combat pilot by 20 . His stories of the war were as adventurous as many of his stories after the war . " Whats a dead man to do when he returns home a man with no country ? I sat down to ponder this as I eat the fruits of the dead , after all I was a dead man and they were my fruits who better to enjoy them ." Or something very much along those lines on his reflection that the empire declared him dead after his capture by the Allied forces .

William McKinley 25th President.
Brevet Major 23rd Ohio infantry .
Annexed the Pacific after settling up the Spanish American war .

Attachment 196305
Family , his mother and first cousin , my great grandmother x3, shared a name .

https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/...1-e17d87b8b6a0

Circa 1935: Two sailors from the U.S. Coast Guard cutter, "Cunningham" with a lamp they have made out of shells and rifle and revolver bullets. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)

Hazel Ying Lee, the first Chinese-American WASP pilot. She made hundreds of delivery flights during the war, once having to make a forced landing in a Kansas farmer's field. He chased her around with a pitchfork, certain that Japan was invading the US until she finally convinced him otherwise. Lee was killed in a landing accident in November, 1944. Her brother also was killed in service overseas and at first when the family tried to bury them the cemetery told them "we don't put asians in the white section."

Attachment 196311

Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day, is a day of remembrance for those who have died in service of the United States of America. Over two dozen cities and towns claim to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. While Waterloo N.Y. was officially declared the birthplace of Memorial Day by President Lyndon Johnson in May 1966, it’s difficult to prove conclusively the origins of the day.

Regardless of the exact date or location of its origins, one thing is clear – Memorial Day was borne out of the Civil War and a desire to honor our dead. It was officially proclaimed on 5 May 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, in his General Order No. 11. “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land,” he proclaimed. The date of Decoration Day, as he called it, was chosen because it wasn’t the anniversary of any particular battle.

On the first Decoration Day, General James Garfield made a speech at Arlington National Cemetery, and 5,000 participants decorated the graves of the 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers buried there.

The first state to officially recognize the holiday was New York in 1873. By 1890 it was recognized by all of the northern states. The South refused to acknowledge the day, honoring their dead on separate days until after World War I (when the holiday changed from honoring just those who died fighting in the Civil War to honoring Americans who died fighting in any war).

It is now observed in almost every state on the last Monday in May with Congressional passage of the National Holiday Act of 1971 (P.L. 90 – 363). This helped ensure a three day weekend for Federal holidays, though several southern states have an additional separate day for honoring the Confederate war dead: January 19th in Texas; April 26th in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi; May 10th in South Carolina; and June 3rd (Jefferson Davis’ birthday) in Louisiana and Tennessee.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by popper

That TV show and the desert Rat show were pretty good. I'm sure there was a lot of hollywood' in them but still good. Guess he had the P40 in China and then switched to the corsair?

---

Loved those shows along with McHale's Navy. Pappy lived out his life in my home town (Fresno, CA). I worked for a pest control company for a short time in '79-'80 when construction when in the toilet (remember gas lines and double digit mortgage rates) and though I didn't meet the man I did spray his house/yard for unwanted critters.