Isn't this a neat title for a book! This is the book that I am reading now. It is the life story of Eugene R. Harwood, written by him and his daughter Barbara Harwood Hartwig. It's available at Barnes and Noble.
Barbara had to finish the book by herself because her dad passed away in 2005. I wanted this book because Eugene was born in Colorado Springs and there is a lot of neat stuff in there about the Springs during the 1920's and 1930's. His parents owned a home in the Broadmoor area that I went by many times.
Eugene also was a navigator on a B29 during WWII and ended up a POW. There were a lot of things I didn't know about WWII that he shares about. Did you know that the Japanese bombed Santa Barbara or that we dropped leaflets to the Japanese people telling them to get out of towns because we were going to bomb them or that our ally, the Russians, shot down our planes and turned our men over to Japanese POW camps? If you did, then you know more then I concerning WWII.
This book talks about that and more. Eugene was a navigator on one of the leaflet planes (this plane also was a plane we used to drop supplies to our POW men), that same plane was shot down by the Russians and he was put in a POW camp. The very same camp he delivered supplies to.
This is a great story and the title fits it to a tee.
6 comments:
The Japanese bombed Santa Barbara? I certainly never heard that. To be honest, I think he blew his credibility with that one.
Darlene, Yeah, a japanese sub rose in the water and shelled the petroleum works at Santa Barbara. He was working at an aircraft factory in California at this time.
What's funny is, the movie "1941" has a japanese sub on the coast of Calif. They made it into a comedy but it did happen. Back then everyone was jittery, there were a lot of false rumors and true ones. Of course, this is when they started putting the american japanese into camps also. War always brings out the ugly in people.
I apologize. A Russian sub off the coast near Santa Barbara did lob some shells, but they did no damage. I guess that's why it didn't make big news at the time.
Darlene, you are such a sweetie! You didn't need to apologize. In fact I should thank you because your comment sent me on an adventure to discover what really happened in Santa Barbara.
I enjoyed the adventure and it never would have happened if you hadn't shared your thoughts with me.
So, with all my heart, thank you. You are a wonderful person and I enjoy every word you share :)
Thank you for your kind words, but they are really not needed since I made a glaring boo-boo and called the sub a Russian one. I guess I was thinking of the other front.
Darlene, what a hoot! I never even noticed that you called it a Russian sub. I had to go look at the comment again. I had to chuckle to myself about myself, that I had read the word and thought Japanese sub instead of Russian sub.
Actually, what I have discovered about what Russia did to us during WWII, its no wonder you thought Russian sub :)
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