Culture

The Imperial Japanese Surrender in Tokyo Bay, Sept. 2, 1945…Plus 77 Years

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Since 2010 Chicagoboyz has been commemorating the anniversaries every August or September, the two atomic bombings, the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration by Imperial Japan and the official Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. This year’s commemoration focuses on September 2, 1945, when General Douglas MacArthur as “Supreme Commander Allied Powers” or “SCAP” officiated the Tokyo Bay surrender ceremony with Imperial Japan that ended World War 2.

There are several films of this event. There was the official one MacArthur’s Signal Corps camera crew recorded.   There is a film from war correspondent William Courtenay that became a newsreel and   there was a color film taken by Commander George F. Kosco of the US Navy.

The most complete version of the ceremony I’ve found was the Newsreel restored by Critical Past in black and white immediately below.   It is more historically relevant for me as it includes visuals of all the Allied national military & Imperial Japanese signers of the document of surrender. It runs almost nine minutes.

The National Archives has a less restored version of the same newsreel.

The Naval History & Heritage Command has the color film taken by Commander George F. Kosco of the US Navy of the surrender ceremony.

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A Tipping Point?

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So help me Bog, I think the tipping point that is, the end of toleration and indulgence for all things trans is fast approaching. For all that social media, and the social media outlets masquerading as national news and entertainment outlets can pretend otherwise ordinary people have been fed to the teeth with pro-trans propaganda and are beginning to rebel. A most unforeseen development is in the rebellion of parents and alums of a very upper-caste all-girls school against the decision by the school to admit biological males who claim that they are really girls. Well, after the experience of a public school system who were all chuffed no end at having their own special mini-tranny, who was then accused of raping a couple of genuine no-kidding XX girls … well, I’d venture to guess that the bloom is off the tranny rose whenever parents must consider the safety of their daughters. Especially well-heeled parents. Especially when a well-founded suspicion develops that male perverts are trading on claims of being trans to gain access to biological females-only spaces for jollies and their own predatory purposes, and second-rate male athletes are doing it for a chance to rate rather better in their chosen sport by competing against smaller and physically weaker competitors.

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Rebellious

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Americans both those born on this soil and those who weren’t but who got here as fast as they could are natural rebels, stiff-necked, stubborn, and not inclined to bow the knee and truckle to those who think they are our betters. Oh, it might not seem so in these dolorous times; too many of our fellows seem just too ready to be passive, landless serfs with an appetite for crumbs and approving notice from the wanna-be-nobility’s table, and too damned many outright want to be the nobles, or their willing henchmen/women/whatever. But a preponderance of us are not that ready to be pushed into servitude to the State witness the drubbing at the pools that the voters of Wyoming gave to the presumed princess-heir of the landed house of Cheney yesterday. Losing an election by a 40% margin is not just the voters saying ‘no, thanks’, it’s the voters escorting the candidate to the city limits, brandishing buckets of tar and bales of feathers while snarling, ‘…and don’t come back!’
Ah well I have long disapproved of political dynasties the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Murkowskis, the Gores and their similar and lesser-known political ilk. The only political dynasty that was ever any good for America as republic and in the long term was that of John Adams, and that was back in the day when we all were pretty adamant that there would be no patents of nobility issued, tither formally or otherwise in this blessed experiment in citizen governance. For myself, I hated the choice I had between two scions of political dynasties in the 2000 election. What a choice between two sons of political privilege? I think I held my nose and voted blindly, and can’t remember who for, not that it made much of a difference then or now. Although one of the two has retreated to a relatively quiet life in Texas, and the other has chosen to humiliate himself on the international stage as one of those campaigners for radical actions to oppose climate change, traveling hither and yon at great expense on energy-spewing jets.

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Tech

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It was a matter for discussion at the last ChicagoBoyz Zoom meet-up this last weekend; how the development and widespread use of ultrasound technology likely has reframed the debate about abortion, over the last two decades. Trent T. affirmed how some of his contemporaries had named their children early on in utero, already knowing the sex of the child, and were sometimes devastated with grief when the mother naturally miscarried; as devastated as they would have been if the baby died at birth, or as an infant. The baby their child was real to them. They had pictures in indistinct black and white; proof that their child was already a child, not just a clump of cells. The existence of the embryo, the child becomes even clearer, later in development.
The 3-D ultrasound of Wee Jamie in utero at seven or eight months was a stunningly accurate visualization of how he would look upon delivery some weeks later strongly-marked eyebrows, amazing-long eyelashes, curving lips that carried out the family resemblance to my daughter and myself, and affinity towards showing his feet to the observer. The only question remaining to us was what color his hair and eyes would be, once he was delivered. (The hair is light brown, the eyes at this point an indeterminant hazel. God only knows what it will say when it comes to the identifiers on his drivers’ license.) My daughter treasured those prints of the ultrasound sessions as she remarked now and again, if something happened to savage her pregnancy, they would be the only souvenir and proof she had that her son ever existed.

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It’s Called Acting, Dear Boy

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Or so Laurence Olivier is supposed to have said to Dustin Hoffman, during the filming of The Marathon Man, when Hoffman got a little too deeply immersed in his role.

It’s acting convincingly pretending to be a person you are not; experiencing events and emotions on the stage or screen that the actor might or might not have really experienced. It’s pretending, in the service of storytelling. In our current over-the-top state of extreme wokery, any kind of illogical insanity seems to rule; in this latest example, an American soprano singer, one Angela Blue, has made a great show out of quitting an opera performance, because of her objections to another opera performance and singer in the same venue. Angela Blue objected vociferously to Russian soprano Anna Netrebko singing in the title role of Aida, while made-up to appear as … gasp … Ethiopian. (A production design originated by the late Franco Zeffirelli, as an aside.) Angela Blue, who is African-American, terms it as ‘blackface’, although comparing serious grand opera to the buffoonery of vaudeville minstrel shows of a century ago is considerable of a stretch. What adds an interesting twist to this, is that the opera performance which Angela Blue walked away from was La Traviata, and her role as Violetta a French courtesan, and in the original concept, a woman not of any color save lily-white.

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