Letter To The Editor
Learning
through Service
I
recently heard the late U.S. Representative Shirley Chisholm quoted
as saying that “service is the rent we pay for the privilege of
living on this earth.” This idea has a special resonance for me,
maybe because I attended a high school that awarded “service to the
school” awards, in addition to those that were handed out for
academic and athletic achievement. So, while living in Northwood,
it has been my privilege to serve in various ways.
Most
recently, I have been elected to serve on the Town Budget Committee
and appointed to serve on the Conservation Commission. And while
this provides an opportunity to “give back,” as they say, it has
also afforded me an opportunity to learn a lot about the town and
its functioning.
These
learning opportunities began back in the 1988 when my daughter
attended the Northwood Center (pre-) School presided over for so
long and so well by Karen Anderson. Johanna and I split a chair on
the Board of Directors, and I learned more about the value of early
education.
In
1998, I joined the Northwood Chamber of Commerce Board, serving with
Russ Eldridge, Carol Lavigne, Colleen Pingree and Rose Stevens,
among others. And while it ultimately went out of existence, while
it lasted, it did some good things: a monthly newsletter and a
cataloguing of the many, many enterprises – in addition to antique
stores – in Northwood.
In
2002, I helped Mary Faucher and the Northwood School Building
Committee present their plans for the school addition. In 2004, I
worked on the clean-up crew during the construction of the Northwood
Congregational Church. And in 2005, I was appointed by the
Selectmen to serve on the Community Resources Committee.
I will
take what I’ve learned from all this to serve Northwood as your
Representative.
Tom
Chase
Candidate for
Rockingham District 1
Letter To The Editor
To the
good citizens of Northwood,
Just
got back from the stonewall project for the Northwood Beach on
Northwood Lake.
In
early June I received a letter from the selectmen telling me how
much they appreciate the wall we have been building since Fall 2011.
They
asked if they came up with some volunteers, maybe we could finish
the project up. My brother Mark and I set up a schedule for every
other weekend. Mark and I started a day early to reset the strings
and get things started.
The
first Saturday and Sunday, Tim, Ron, and Billy the Kid showed up,
and with the help of my brother, started in on continuing what we
had done in the past two-and-a-half years.
On our
second weekend of work Tim had us restocked with fieldstone from
Mead Field, Jimmy and Charlie loaded and moved the rock. Tim, Mark
and I did some serious building on our third weekend today. Tim had
us restocked with ledge rock from Jamie Johnson’s field again. Jimmy
and Charlie moved it to the beach.
This
weekend there was Tim, Mark, Ron, Joe, Mailman Mike, and his kid.
Billy the Kid rode by on his bicycle. We said, “Hey.” He said he’d
be back, but we didn’t see him again. We built some serious wall
this weekend. I got (sic) a great crew.
On a
scale of one to ten, ten being difficult, this is turning into an
eight. But we are at the beach. The neighbors are cool. Everyone is
having fun.
Dan
Schroth Piermarocchi
Northwood Recreation Update
The
Northwood Recreation Department is sponsoring Soccer Camp. The camp
will be run by the Seacoast United Soccer Club providing players the
opportunity to receive high-level soccer coaching from a team of
coaching experts. Each day includes individual foot skills,
technical drills, tactical practices, small-sided games, and coached
scrimmages.
This
week long camp, August 11th – August 15th, is available to kids
playing ages 4 through high school. The 4-6 year old campers will
attend from 9:00 am – 10:30 am. The 6 – high school age would attend
from 9:00 am –12:00 pm. The cost for 4-6 year olds is $90.00, 6
years old – high school is $120.00.
Registrations can by placed online at
www.seacoastunited.com/townpartners/. Visit
northwoodnh.org for additional registration information and
information about these programs. Details can be found in our
Brochure on the website or contact the Recreation Department at
[email protected] or
942-5586 x209 with questions.
August 6, 1945: A Day Of Infamy, Indeed
By
Michael Faiella
A
recent edition of The Suncook Sun featured a “Veterans Corner”
article by Richard Doucet defending—both militarily and morally--
the US bombing of Hiroshima, whose anniversary is now approaching.
The
article presents a view held by numerous Americans today but not by
US World War II military leaders. They apparently believed that
dropping atomic bombs on Japan’s cities was not necessary, not wise,
and not right. The book “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” by
Gary Alperovitz, provides a wealth of quotations from prominent
military figures of the time.
For
example, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief of the
Pacific Fleet, stated in a 1945 speech, “The Japanese had, in fact,
already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the
world with the destruction of Hiroshima.” Consequently, “the atomic
bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in
the defeat of Japan.”
Likewise, in 1946 Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander of the
U.S. Third Fleet, said publicly that the “first atomic bomb was an
unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it.”
Rear
Admiral L. Lewis Strauss, who was special assistant to the Secretary
of the Navy from 1944 to 1945, and who later became chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission, said on more than one occasion that the
atomic bomb “was not necessary to bring the war to a successful
conclusion” because “the Japanese were ready to capitulate.”
Ernest
J King, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval
Operations, opposed the bombing because, “had we been willing to
wait, the effective naval blockade would, in the course of time,
have starved the Japanese into submission through lack of oil, rice,
medicines, and other essential materials.”
Henry
H. “Hap” Arnold, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces,
said in a military history interview, “When the question comes up of
whether we use the atomic bomb or not, my view is that the Air Force
will not oppose the use of the bomb, and they will deliver it
effectively if the Commander-in-Chief decides to use it. But it is
not necessary to use it in order to conquer the Japanese without the
necessity of a land invasion.”
In
September of 1945, the General Curtis Le May, who headed the
Twenty-First Bomber Command, said in an interview, “The war would
have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and
without the atomic bomb….The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the
end of the war at all.”
The
U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey in its 1946 report concluded that
“Japan would have surrendered, even if the atomic bomb had not been
dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, even if no invasion
had been planned or contemplated.”
Army
Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall advised Assistant
Secretary of War John J. McCloy to tell President Truman that the
decision to drop the bomb was a political, “not a military
decision,” that it was “not a military necessity. It is not a
military problem.”
When
General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, was
informed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson that the bomb was to be
used, he wrote that he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on
the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that
dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I
thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the
use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory
as a measure to save American lives.”
Even
General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers in
Asia, thought the use of the atomic bomb was a bad idea, according
to his aide Norman Cousins: “When I asked General MacArthur about
the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not
even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He
replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of
the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the
United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention
of the institution of the emperor.”
General
MacArthur’s pilot described him as “appalled and distressed “ by the
bombing. President Nixon said MacArthur once told him “it was a
tragedy the bomb was ever exploded...[because] the military
objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants.”
President Hoover reported that MacArthur told him that if we had
taken up Japan’s numerous peace offers, “our major objectives would
be accomplished...and that we would have avoided all of the losses,
the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria.”
Brigadier General Carter W. Clarke, Mac Arthur’s military secretary
in Tokyo declared that “the atomic bomb neither induced the
Emperor’s decision to surrender nor had any effect on the outcome of
the war....We didn’t need to do it; we used them as an experiment
for two atomic bombs.”
Finally, Admiral William D. Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of
Staff, and the top official who presided over meetings of both the
Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff,
said
“[T]he
use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no
material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were
already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .[I]n being the first
to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the
barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that
fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
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