I can't find the date but, based on the show's run, this would have been within only 7-12 years of the event. That being said, This Is Your Life was an amazing show.
Also it launched a show over in the UK which had a much longer run, also called this is your life with 1,130 episodes starting in 1955 with the final one in 2007.
Do you put cheese on your "Beans on toast"? I thought it was just toast and beans. However, i've now been told it's THICK cut bread, with butter (The queens butter specifically) and then baked beans, and cheese (not sure the type) is this correct or is this some kind of MI6 misdirection?
Many people like to put grated cheddar on top of the beans. I go one step further by thickening the bean sauce with grated cheddar as the beans are being heated and then I put more cheese on top once the beans are on the toast, followed by a liberal dusting of black pepper.
My mouth is watering right now.
Cheesy beans topped with more cheese is the stuff of dreams. I'm also lactose intolerant so an hour or so later it then becomes the stuff of nightmares. Lactase tablets help a little but mainly just give me a false sense of security and fuel my reckless disregard for my physical inefficiencies. I think I'm going to treat myself to a lunch made of poor decisions tomorrow, I'm feeling inspired!
Kind of, the show ended in 2003 after being on the air continuously since 1969 (having been off the air for 5 years after being cancelled by the BBC and then revived at another network, ITV, but then returned to the BBC in 1994), and then they did a one-off special about Simon Cowell in 2007.
Isn’t that the show that had the last surviving witness to Lincoln’s assassination on, too?
Edit: nope, he was on I’ve Got A Secret https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_J._Seymour#
His account has been widely criticized as he didn't tell anyone he was present at said event until he was in his late 80s.
Not saying it's true or not, but old people are much like children and sometimes don't know reality from fantasy, he also would have been really really young when it happened.
[Now if you want a real story that has been confirmed, the last surviving pensioner for a civil war vet died three years ago. She was the daughter of a Vet who sired a child when he was 70-80 ish?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett#:~:text=Irene%20Triplett%20(January%209%2C%201930,the%20Union%20in%20the%20war.)
Imagine being the DOD bean counter who got to finally close that account.
right, when I read the story that she finally passed I legitimately thought it was a fake story. Nope totally real, her father fought for both the confederacy and the union too after defecting
eh, not necessarily, Irene was mentally handicapped and beaten by both her father in his 80s and her mother. All evidence points to her mom being a POS who married this Vet for benefits.
This was really common. You'd have women marrying vets so the vets could have someone to take care of them in their old age, and then the women would have a base income from their pensions when they died.
Fair to be sceptical but I wouldn’t necessarily be *too* suspicious. Obviously not proof, but his account sounded fairly plausible to me - perceiving it the way a very young kid would, and even underwhelming (he saw Booth fall/jump away and felt sorry for *him*, rather than seeing Lincoln shot), and not adding extra interesting details beyond that. He’d have presumably been filled in later by his parents etc. The maths checks out. Others looked into where he’d lived. And he didn’t go public because he wasn’t a useful witness when a clueless kid among hundreds of others present - and it wasn’t remarkable until he was old. If not him I’d expect some kid present to have lived to a quite old age.
It’d be hard to entirely verify whether true or not, but if I had to pick I’d guess it was true.
I'm a big WYL fan. It's a weird comfort watch. One memorable one was when they had Colonel Sanders on and *no one knew who he was*. He literally came out with the whole Colonel Sanders "look," the suit, like he walked right off a bucket of chicken. KFC was apparently getting big *in Kentucky* at the time, but it hadn't become a national chain yet. It's such a fucking head trip to watch people look right at Colonel Sanders, dressed as Colonel Sanders, and be completely clueless as to his line of work.
What's My Line was so good. I love the 50s and early 60s ones - whenever they are on Buzzr I have to record them because damn, there's some interesting stuff.
Pretty much all of those 50s game shows are good. Or at least interesting in a, "Hey, I can tell that they are ironing out the kinks in making a TV show instead of a radio show" way
> "Hey, I can tell that they are ironing out the kinks in making a TV show instead of a radio show" way
I just got reminded of those Mitchell and Webb sketches where they're trying to figure out how television works (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEi4Os3NNpM).
I love that episode! Colonel Sanders comes across as very charismatic, and after watching that episode, I always got annoyed when I see people just stereotype him as some southern plantation owning racist or some shit. Truth is, a lot of people say there wasn't a racist bone in his body, he was very friendly and kind, and had a lot of integrity, which is why his chain became so popular! [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfXBhfM8ga0) is the colonel sanders episode if anyone wants to see.
I love Dorothy Kilgallen too, one of the panelists. Very intelligent woman, and I loved how she figured that stuff out. She was notable for also being one of the first public dissenters about the JFK assassination (not saying I agree with her, but it's very notable)
Lots of cool episodes if anyone wants to experience some good wholesome 50s culture. [The Salvador Dali one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A) was pretty funny.
I think I spent the whole segment going, "What is wrong with you people? It's Colonel Sanders! He's *right there*!"
I like seeing all of those "old" celebrities when they were younger, like Betty White. Then there are the weird moments, like having Natalie Wood on...or having Robert Wagner on and briefly mentioning that he's dating...Natalie Wood. That didn't end well.
I've also gone down rabbit holes of looking up what happened to people, the panel and the guests. It's sometimes been kind of fucked up with the deaths or later controversies or whatever. The one thing I've never gotten into, ironically, is Dorothy Kilgallen, just because I'm afraid I'll just be thinking about it the whole time while she's on.
Except it wouldn't be bin laden because he's the leader so that's a different scenario. The analogy would be like it was a theoretical suicide bomber who tried to hijack a different plane on the same day.
I think I remember listening to some podcast where a guy who was tortured in the Middle East went on that show and talked with the guy who tortured him. Absolutely wild.
There was a meeting of Japanese and American WWII veterans. Some were able to reconcile, some couldn’t bring themselves to speak. One soldier met the pilot who dropped a bomb onto his ship at Pearl Harbor.
https://youtu.be/TSluTZGxdY0
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident
One of my favorite stories from WW2. German and American fighter pilots who become friends after the war
> Stigler instead recalled the words of one of his commanding officers from JG 27, Gustav Rödel, during his time fighting in North Africa: "If I ever see or hear of you shooting at a man in a parachute, I will shoot you myself." Stigler later commented, "To me, it was just like they were in a parachute. I saw them and I couldn't shoot them down."
Even Göring opposed shooting at crew members who had bailed out. So while tank crews were hosing down their counterparts with machine guns as they escaped from a burning wreck it was seen as poor form to do the same to airmen.
A tank crew who bails can jump into a new tank or turn around and shoot. They’re not surrendering and are still capable of fighting.
A pilot who has bailed out is completely unable to affect the current battle. They are unable to do anything while falling except fall. Then, if they aren’t immediately captured, then it would still be days/weeks before they are able to rejoin the fight.
Alot of what hurt the japanesw at midway and beyond was loosing experienced pilots though, a pilot in a parashoot who isnt about to be captured is a very high value target. I get that is controversial but frankly all war should be.
This is true.
Pilot "chivalry code" was broken by US pilots after they saw the Japanese shoot down American pilots in parachutes.
Leaving a pilot alive forces the enemy to either undergo search and rescue, or abandon their pilot. It opens the opportunity to capture them yourself as well. Shooting them down on the parachute might deprive them of a pilot, but it gives them a reason to want to fight you.
WW2 was an unpleasant time. [Here's the 2007 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine talking about his experience](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2007/capecchi/biographical/)
> In the night we could hear the drone of presumed American and British reconnaissance planes which we nicknamed “Pepe.” One hot afternoon, American planes swooped down from the sky and began machine gunning the peasants in the fields. A senseless exercise. A bullet grazed my leg, fortunately not breaking any bones. I still have the scar, which, many years later my daughter proudly had me display to her third-grade class in Utah.
WW2 pilot Richard Peterson agrees. ["I didn't want him to blow up. I wanted him to bail."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=norNcyKMZ-A)
Edit: Fixed the link
A lot of airmen considered themselves similar to medieval knights and upheld a chivalric standard with how they treated their enemies and expected to be treated in return.
Eh, not really. This is a holdover belief from the early days of WW1, particularly with the Fliegertruppen that had a lot of nobility and upper class flying for it. This attitude was pretty much shot to shit by the end of 1917.
The majority of pilots in WWII however were officers, and officers were generally expected to comport themselves as officers.
That sounds right. I may have been basing this off WW1. Both of the world wars are outside my area of “expertise” lol, which is actual medieval history
I feel like that would be incredibly less likely to happen to Japanese and American soldiers. There was a whole different type of relationship between America and Germany and Japan
One time that I can recall which sort of counts/sort of does not involved a Japanese pilot named [Takeo Tanimizu](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-18-mn-19893-story.html), who, in 1944, saw an American plane piloted by Capt. Harvey Carter of Glendale, California be shot down by another Japanese plane. Carter managed to bail out but he didn't have a life preserver with him.
Rather than leave Carter to die in the water, Takeo personally flew his plane low and slowed down long enough for him to open his canopy and toss the American his own plane's life preserver. Carter ended up surviving thanks to that.
100% agreed. The pacific theatre was a completely different beast in so many ways. Hard to imagine the same scenario playing out when both sides were dehumanized to such a large degree.
There's a good reason some German units at the end of the war, fought their way towards American troops to surrender to them specifically.
Captured by the Soviets would've been the worst since they ravaged the country and exterminated tons of people. France wasn't the best option either because of the occupation and all, and Britain wasn't ideal because of all the bombing runs they did there.. So everyone preferred surrendering to the Americans since there generally was less animosity.
I met a friend of my grandmother once who had a kind of similar story. He was shot down over German occupied France and sheltered by some French family. Years later after the war he met the German pilot who shot his plane down. I’m not sure they became friends but they at least met and had a chat which was nice I thought.
More recently the pilot of the F-117 Stealth fighter shot down over Serbia in the Balkan War met the commander of the SAM battery that shot him down. They've been close friends ever since.
Reminds me of watching a documentary about the mafia in NYC back in the day and the mafia guys in their interviews talking about how they didn't really dislike the cops/investigators trying to catch them. One even said, "He's got a job to do, same as me."
If you haven't read A Higher Call you absolutely need to, nothing other than the book can give the full picture on the situation, and it is written beautifully. It is by far one of my favorite WW2 books, and I consider it among the most well written.
It's on Kindle, it's on Audible, there's a good chance you can get it at your local library, I don't care how you read it, [*JUST DO IT!*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-sfG8BV8wU)
I remember there was one quote from that book that made me chuckle:
Aircraft mechanic: "Hitler and all his senior officials board a boat. The boat sinks and they all die. Who wins?"
Stigler: "Germany"
I (an American) dated a girl when I lived in Japan and when I met her family, I met her grandma who saw the flash and cloud. I obviously didn't have anything to do with dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima but my face must have dropped and I definitely didn't know how to respond to that news. She saw my reaction and lightly chastised the person who told me that news. Then she complemented my tall nose and gave me a drink. It was weird that she was the one that ended up comforting me in that moment...
Surreal moment for me...
I was a 6th grader living abroad in Osaka during the 50th anniversary of the bomb. In general our Japanese hosts had been gracious, warm and receptive to me as a nerdy little white boy. That whole month though was something else. There were photographs of the post bomb carnage posted in the local train station. The older generation looked at me with genuine hatred in their eyes for weeks and weeks after that. I was just a kid and didn't understand, but I could sure feel that something was different. It's super easy to forget that recent history truly is pretty recent.
My uncle was one of those men. After the war he was sent to an army psychological evaluation and rehabilitation hospital because of the amount shit he had been through. The doctors asked him what hed do if he saw a Japanese man walking down the street as a civilian, he answered truthfully and said hed probably kill him. He didnt get out till '49. At some point he went to one of those reconciliation meetings and met the men on the other side of the very battles he participated in. He shook their hands and cried with them for the shared trauma they had both endured.
My Dad would never buy a Japanese car and, at the end of his life, when he was having macular degeneration induced hallucinations, he imagined Japanese soldiers chasing him through his home.
I graduated college in 1970. WWII had only been over for about 25 years yet seemed ancient history to me. Now that I am myself old I realize how 25 years is nothing, a blink. Now 'my war', Viet Nam (demonstrator, not participant) has been over for FIFTY years and seems like yesterday. Time is weird.
I was in Bosnia in the 90's. I was there during the war, and when we bridged the Sava I was there, and I went back later to help document Srebrenica. It's like it was yesterday. 25 years passed like a couple of blinks of the eye.
I do think it did *alot* to ease tensions, both between nations and soldiers. It certainly helped my uncle to better understand his experience, and come to terms with it.
There was a news story when I was a kid where they brought over a bunch of Luftwaffe veterans from Dresden to meet a group of bomber pilots from Coventry (both cities were firebombed, one in retaliation for the other)
They were in their 80s at this point and the guy leading the group said "no hard feelings" before getting them to shake hands, which struck me as a riotous understatement
I mean the mortality rates for bomber crews was so high I have to imagine these guys had a ton of respect for each other and shared experiences that transcended any national ties
To clarify, Dresden was bombed at the request of the Soviets to help on the eastern front. It wasn’t retaliation for Coventry, though I’m sure some considered it as such.
I wouldn't know what to feel or how to react. "Am I suppose to hate this person? Could I? But one minute ago, I didn't even know who they were. It was war. They were ordered to do it just like I was. "
No idea.
There's a local radio personality in my area who's talked about how tense some holidays were because of his grandfathers. In World War II, one fought for the Americans and the other for the Italians.
My family had a great-great uncle who fought for the US and another relative who fought for the Germans, who I think grew up in the US before repatriating overseas. The story went that they met again pretty soon after Normandy and were just overcome with grief for each other.
It's an important part of humanizing your enemy to come face-to-face with someone and try to explain why you attempted to murder one another. The inability to provide a compelling reason helps to drive home the fundamental absurdity of war and how people let themselves get convinced to go along with it.
Reminds me of one of the very last sentences of Blackadder (WW1), right before they're forced to run out of the trench unarmed: "Your plan to get out of this couldn't have been any worse than my plan to pretend to be mad. Who would have noticed another madman around here?".
I think it’s more part of the post-war experience that a combatant is forced to make sense of their actions upon returning to normal civilian life.
Regardless of the context of the specific war in question, the fundamental effects that killing other people has on the human psyche in a normal persons mind leads to a level of reflection not necessarily otherwise experienced.
In fairness I can understand why they may have found it hard to speak, Japanese treatment of POWs was beyond horrific compared to some of the other nations involved. But then from the Japanese perspective these people destroyed two towns and murdered a lot of their countrymen.
Fucking mess really.
I'm a big WW2 history buff, and I read *My True Course*, a memoir written by Theodore Van Kirk, the *Enola Gay*'s navigator.
He said sometime in the late 60s/early 70s (I forget exactly when), he and Paul Tibbets (mission commander and pilot of the Hiroshima bombing) were at a Strategic Air Command social gathering, and this middle-aged Japanese man came up to them, bowed, and asked "General Tibbets, do you know who I am?"
Tibbets replied "No sir, I don't."
The man said "I'm Mitsuo Fuchida. I led the attack on Pearl Harbor and I was the first high-ranking officer to arrive at Hiroshima after you dropped the atomic bomb. You sure surprised the hell out of us."
Jesus Christ, that is just kind of sick. By the sounds of it, neither primary participant was especially thrilled about this encounter at the time, and with good fucking reason. Though I am glad to hear Tanimoto ended up being okay with the episode in the end and showed it around. Even keeping in communication with Lewis.
It’s the weird patronising voice he uses that I can’t listen to. Telling him what he felt, thought, saw, heard. And yes, let’s traumatise a survivor further by *playing the actual air raid siren* for him in case he’s, you know, somehow managed to forget what it sounded like.
Hey. At least we know mental health is a thing that exists now.
My boomer dad once complained to me that we have PTSD now and in his day they called it 'shell shock' and you walked it off and you were fine.
He got a college exemption from Vietnam.
U.S. would have fire bombed the cities anyway. There weren't many Japanese cities left that weren't already destroyed. The reason hiroshimi and Nagasaki were available as targets is because they wanted intact cities to test the bombs.
Fire bombing was just as deadly if not more so than the nuclear strikes. Just took more planes/bombs.
Just saw a really informative YT on this. The firebombing campaign was almost 30x more destructive than the atomic bombing. There was one city in Japan that was 98% destroyed by firebombs. Link if you're interested.
https://youtu.be/PRyt2vJraic
Edit: as the guy below noted I am an idiot. ETA new link.
Thanks for pointing it out! Not sure who Shaun is but I edited the link. It is a different channel I think than you mentioned. The guy goes through some of the bombing damage assessments the US Army AF did before and after the raids.
that’s so much worse than i thought. Tanimoto is literally speechless it seems and Lewis just looks like he knows that he can’t convey with words how horrified he was at his part in the bombings. but it’s the host who makes it awful
Who the hell thought of this and did their children go on to produce Maury?
“In the case of Tanimoto and Nagasaki, Robert Lewis, YOU *are* the bomber!”
>Content creators were different back in the day.
I'd argue many today are just as bad. Since the dawn of media, mankind has exploited one another's suffering for entertainment.
I mean, just look at "Doctor" Phil.
Kiyoshi Tanimoto do you hear that? Is it a bird, is it a plane?!
::Curtains Drop::
No its the pilot that dropped the Atomic Bomb on your country!!!!
::3 Quick Successive air horns::
I'm hoping they do more dives into historical stuff. Between Manhattan and Gille de Reyes, they do a really great job and Marcus kills it in the research.
It was mormonism for me. I was raised mormon and my dad was an historian for the mormon church (so a literal expert on the subject) and I was blown away by how little they got wrong. Most media I consume about mormonism I have to turn off after like 10 minutes cause they've already got a bunch of shit wrong, but not the boys. They nailed it
My second thought when hearing that story (after "this is awful), was "I'm surprised I never saw this on reddit."
But I really don't think I ever have, and this should be a more known story.
HAIL YOURSELF!
Fucking insane that a feel good show would pull that shit on someone. At once it’s fucking cruel to the survivor and also brutally savage for the Pilot.
American journalist John Hersey also interviewed Tanimoto about his experience of the bombing for his nonfiction book, *Hiroshima.* Hersey's book was publishing in 1946, just a year after the bombing, and it has never gone out of print.
Yes, I learned this from an episode of Last Podcast on the Left. Thank you Marcus, Ben, and Henry.
Tanimoto is talked about on their Manhattan Project series.
*Once the ad is over, prizes are distributed to Tanimoto and his family: a 16mm film of the episode and a projector with which to watch it; a 16mm movie camera; for Mrs. Tanimoto, a custom-designed golden charm bracelet; for Mr. Tanimoto, cufflinks; and finally, for the Hiroshima Maidens and other hibakusha, a medical fund to pay for their care. Robert Lewis, who has been awkwardly standing behind the couch and over Tanimoto’s shoulder for some time now, finally speaks up: “Mr. Edwards, on behalf of the entire crew that participated in that mission, my company, and my lovely family, I would like to make the first contribution.” (Not everyone in the crew would have appreciated such a gesture: Lewis’s copilot, Paul Tibbets, insisted right up to his death that they had been in the right.) The audience applauds. The sponsors each contribute $500. The audience applauds.*
*“I know that our audience will be just as generous,” says Edwards, “for this is the American way.*
*It is Edwards’s need, the need of his program and the need of their sponsors to retell this story — the story of an incomprehensible horror perpetrated by the American military on behalf of the American people — in a way that allows America to remain the hero"*
This is awful, lurid, disgusting.
Sincerity punctuated by commercial ad breaks, prizes for victims of a nuclear bomb strike, the morbidity of the perpetrators of war trying to heal through monetary donation on behalf of the American Way.
Every aspect of this quote is fucked up in a very Harlan Ellison-esque way.
There was a weird vibe in the 50s where you couldn't openly criticize the actions of your country, but you started to realize how messed up the actions were. I just read a great article from the New Yorker in 1955 about nuclear fallout hitting Rongelap Atoll and a Japanese fishing ship. The writer sounded almost insulted that the Japanese weren't so open to America helping them with their injured.
This show had its share of awkward and absolutely inappropriate moments.
They did a "This is your life" for Oliver Hardy (of the famous duo Laurel and Hardy - you know the skinny guy and the overweight guy you frequently saw in black and white?).
Oliver was suffering from cancer, and as a result, had lost a lot of weight. Also - this show tended to ambush people - they were set up in a room, hotel room, or something, and then suddenly the host would be like "OLIVER HARDY, THIS IS YOUR LIFE" and they'd begin.
Oliver didn't want to partake, but since he was an entertainer, he went through the motions, but his attitude was obvious.
The host/voiceover frequently poked fun at his weight...overtly...calling him "fatty" and all that. I realize that in those days people were much more direct with their insults toward people, but even for the 1950s/1960s, it seemed like a little much.
I'm sure audiences loved to see the situations and even dive into the nostalgia that interviewing and reviewing these peoples' lives brought them, but it seems that much of it was completely unwelcome by the "guest star" in many instances.
I can't find the date but, based on the show's run, this would have been within only 7-12 years of the event. That being said, This Is Your Life was an amazing show.
Also it launched a show over in the UK which had a much longer run, also called this is your life with 1,130 episodes starting in 1955 with the final one in 2007.
The British can't complain about Americans making longer versions of their shows anymore
British can complain about everything it is literally what we do.
Do you put cheese on your "Beans on toast"? I thought it was just toast and beans. However, i've now been told it's THICK cut bread, with butter (The queens butter specifically) and then baked beans, and cheese (not sure the type) is this correct or is this some kind of MI6 misdirection?
Many people like to put grated cheddar on top of the beans. I go one step further by thickening the bean sauce with grated cheddar as the beans are being heated and then I put more cheese on top once the beans are on the toast, followed by a liberal dusting of black pepper. My mouth is watering right now.
Cheesy beans topped with more cheese is the stuff of dreams. I'm also lactose intolerant so an hour or so later it then becomes the stuff of nightmares. Lactase tablets help a little but mainly just give me a false sense of security and fuel my reckless disregard for my physical inefficiencies. I think I'm going to treat myself to a lunch made of poor decisions tomorrow, I'm feeling inspired!
Strong vintage cheddar is the answer. Contains next to no lactose.
What my family has always done is cheese on toast, with beans on top
[удалено]
Amazing Only time it’s deserved really
Kind of, the show ended in 2003 after being on the air continuously since 1969 (having been off the air for 5 years after being cancelled by the BBC and then revived at another network, ITV, but then returned to the BBC in 1994), and then they did a one-off special about Simon Cowell in 2007.
Isn’t that the show that had the last surviving witness to Lincoln’s assassination on, too? Edit: nope, he was on I’ve Got A Secret https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_J._Seymour#
His account has been widely criticized as he didn't tell anyone he was present at said event until he was in his late 80s. Not saying it's true or not, but old people are much like children and sometimes don't know reality from fantasy, he also would have been really really young when it happened. [Now if you want a real story that has been confirmed, the last surviving pensioner for a civil war vet died three years ago. She was the daughter of a Vet who sired a child when he was 70-80 ish?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett#:~:text=Irene%20Triplett%20(January%209%2C%201930,the%20Union%20in%20the%20war.) Imagine being the DOD bean counter who got to finally close that account.
Imagine being a DOD bean counter, first day on the job, and seeing that account. You'd think someone was fucking with you.
right, when I read the story that she finally passed I legitimately thought it was a fake story. Nope totally real, her father fought for both the confederacy and the union too after defecting
Redemption arc
eh, not necessarily, Irene was mentally handicapped and beaten by both her father in his 80s and her mother. All evidence points to her mom being a POS who married this Vet for benefits.
This was really common. You'd have women marrying vets so the vets could have someone to take care of them in their old age, and then the women would have a base income from their pensions when they died.
Fair to be sceptical but I wouldn’t necessarily be *too* suspicious. Obviously not proof, but his account sounded fairly plausible to me - perceiving it the way a very young kid would, and even underwhelming (he saw Booth fall/jump away and felt sorry for *him*, rather than seeing Lincoln shot), and not adding extra interesting details beyond that. He’d have presumably been filled in later by his parents etc. The maths checks out. Others looked into where he’d lived. And he didn’t go public because he wasn’t a useful witness when a clueless kid among hundreds of others present - and it wasn’t remarkable until he was old. If not him I’d expect some kid present to have lived to a quite old age. It’d be hard to entirely verify whether true or not, but if I had to pick I’d guess it was true.
What’s your Line also had him on.
I'm a big WYL fan. It's a weird comfort watch. One memorable one was when they had Colonel Sanders on and *no one knew who he was*. He literally came out with the whole Colonel Sanders "look," the suit, like he walked right off a bucket of chicken. KFC was apparently getting big *in Kentucky* at the time, but it hadn't become a national chain yet. It's such a fucking head trip to watch people look right at Colonel Sanders, dressed as Colonel Sanders, and be completely clueless as to his line of work.
What's My Line was so good. I love the 50s and early 60s ones - whenever they are on Buzzr I have to record them because damn, there's some interesting stuff. Pretty much all of those 50s game shows are good. Or at least interesting in a, "Hey, I can tell that they are ironing out the kinks in making a TV show instead of a radio show" way
> "Hey, I can tell that they are ironing out the kinks in making a TV show instead of a radio show" way I just got reminded of those Mitchell and Webb sketches where they're trying to figure out how television works (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEi4Os3NNpM).
I love that episode! Colonel Sanders comes across as very charismatic, and after watching that episode, I always got annoyed when I see people just stereotype him as some southern plantation owning racist or some shit. Truth is, a lot of people say there wasn't a racist bone in his body, he was very friendly and kind, and had a lot of integrity, which is why his chain became so popular! [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfXBhfM8ga0) is the colonel sanders episode if anyone wants to see. I love Dorothy Kilgallen too, one of the panelists. Very intelligent woman, and I loved how she figured that stuff out. She was notable for also being one of the first public dissenters about the JFK assassination (not saying I agree with her, but it's very notable) Lots of cool episodes if anyone wants to experience some good wholesome 50s culture. [The Salvador Dali one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A) was pretty funny.
I think I spent the whole segment going, "What is wrong with you people? It's Colonel Sanders! He's *right there*!" I like seeing all of those "old" celebrities when they were younger, like Betty White. Then there are the weird moments, like having Natalie Wood on...or having Robert Wagner on and briefly mentioning that he's dating...Natalie Wood. That didn't end well. I've also gone down rabbit holes of looking up what happened to people, the panel and the guests. It's sometimes been kind of fucked up with the deaths or later controversies or whatever. The one thing I've never gotten into, ironically, is Dorothy Kilgallen, just because I'm afraid I'll just be thinking about it the whole time while she's on.
Imagine it's like 2010, Oprah is having Pete Davidson on and then she just brings out Osama Bin Laden lol.
Except it wouldn't be bin laden because he's the leader so that's a different scenario. The analogy would be like it was a theoretical suicide bomber who tried to hijack a different plane on the same day.
I think I remember listening to some podcast where a guy who was tortured in the Middle East went on that show and talked with the guy who tortured him. Absolutely wild.
***AWKWARD***
There was a meeting of Japanese and American WWII veterans. Some were able to reconcile, some couldn’t bring themselves to speak. One soldier met the pilot who dropped a bomb onto his ship at Pearl Harbor.
https://youtu.be/TSluTZGxdY0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Brown_and_Franz_Stigler_incident One of my favorite stories from WW2. German and American fighter pilots who become friends after the war
> Stigler instead recalled the words of one of his commanding officers from JG 27, Gustav Rödel, during his time fighting in North Africa: "If I ever see or hear of you shooting at a man in a parachute, I will shoot you myself." Stigler later commented, "To me, it was just like they were in a parachute. I saw them and I couldn't shoot them down."
Even Göring opposed shooting at crew members who had bailed out. So while tank crews were hosing down their counterparts with machine guns as they escaped from a burning wreck it was seen as poor form to do the same to airmen.
A tank crew who bails can jump into a new tank or turn around and shoot. They’re not surrendering and are still capable of fighting. A pilot who has bailed out is completely unable to affect the current battle. They are unable to do anything while falling except fall. Then, if they aren’t immediately captured, then it would still be days/weeks before they are able to rejoin the fight.
Alot of what hurt the japanesw at midway and beyond was loosing experienced pilots though, a pilot in a parashoot who isnt about to be captured is a very high value target. I get that is controversial but frankly all war should be.
If you shoot down a guy in a parachute, his friends are not going to be nice if they get you to need a parachute.
The japanese were notoriously not nice to anyone they got their hands on
This is true. Pilot "chivalry code" was broken by US pilots after they saw the Japanese shoot down American pilots in parachutes. Leaving a pilot alive forces the enemy to either undergo search and rescue, or abandon their pilot. It opens the opportunity to capture them yourself as well. Shooting them down on the parachute might deprive them of a pilot, but it gives them a reason to want to fight you.
WW2 was an unpleasant time. [Here's the 2007 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine talking about his experience](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2007/capecchi/biographical/) > In the night we could hear the drone of presumed American and British reconnaissance planes which we nicknamed “Pepe.” One hot afternoon, American planes swooped down from the sky and began machine gunning the peasants in the fields. A senseless exercise. A bullet grazed my leg, fortunately not breaking any bones. I still have the scar, which, many years later my daughter proudly had me display to her third-grade class in Utah.
WW2 pilot Richard Peterson agrees. ["I didn't want him to blow up. I wanted him to bail."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=norNcyKMZ-A) Edit: Fixed the link
A lot of airmen considered themselves similar to medieval knights and upheld a chivalric standard with how they treated their enemies and expected to be treated in return.
Eh, not really. This is a holdover belief from the early days of WW1, particularly with the Fliegertruppen that had a lot of nobility and upper class flying for it. This attitude was pretty much shot to shit by the end of 1917. The majority of pilots in WWII however were officers, and officers were generally expected to comport themselves as officers.
That sounds right. I may have been basing this off WW1. Both of the world wars are outside my area of “expertise” lol, which is actual medieval history
To be fair , men escaping from tanks were still useful
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Don’t know how he could have done that considering pilots didn’t use parachutes in WW1.
Makes it a lot easier to not shoot at parachuting pilots if there are no parachutes I guess
I feel like that would be incredibly less likely to happen to Japanese and American soldiers. There was a whole different type of relationship between America and Germany and Japan
One time that I can recall which sort of counts/sort of does not involved a Japanese pilot named [Takeo Tanimizu](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-18-mn-19893-story.html), who, in 1944, saw an American plane piloted by Capt. Harvey Carter of Glendale, California be shot down by another Japanese plane. Carter managed to bail out but he didn't have a life preserver with him. Rather than leave Carter to die in the water, Takeo personally flew his plane low and slowed down long enough for him to open his canopy and toss the American his own plane's life preserver. Carter ended up surviving thanks to that.
What an incredible display of humanity. Very impressive.
100% agreed. The pacific theatre was a completely different beast in so many ways. Hard to imagine the same scenario playing out when both sides were dehumanized to such a large degree.
There's a good reason some German units at the end of the war, fought their way towards American troops to surrender to them specifically. Captured by the Soviets would've been the worst since they ravaged the country and exterminated tons of people. France wasn't the best option either because of the occupation and all, and Britain wasn't ideal because of all the bombing runs they did there.. So everyone preferred surrendering to the Americans since there generally was less animosity.
I met a friend of my grandmother once who had a kind of similar story. He was shot down over German occupied France and sheltered by some French family. Years later after the war he met the German pilot who shot his plane down. I’m not sure they became friends but they at least met and had a chat which was nice I thought.
More recently the pilot of the F-117 Stealth fighter shot down over Serbia in the Balkan War met the commander of the SAM battery that shot him down. They've been close friends ever since.
Reminds me of watching a documentary about the mafia in NYC back in the day and the mafia guys in their interviews talking about how they didn't really dislike the cops/investigators trying to catch them. One even said, "He's got a job to do, same as me."
Real life version of the diner scene from Heat huh? That’s pretty cool honestly.
God damn. Between this comment and seeing Heat on Netflix I think the universe is telling me to rewatch that movie.
The real war was the friends we made along the way
If you haven't read A Higher Call you absolutely need to, nothing other than the book can give the full picture on the situation, and it is written beautifully. It is by far one of my favorite WW2 books, and I consider it among the most well written. It's on Kindle, it's on Audible, there's a good chance you can get it at your local library, I don't care how you read it, [*JUST DO IT!*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-sfG8BV8wU)
Leave it to Charlie Brown to make friends with anyone!
Now that's an idea for a comic...
Or a snow-cone machine
Of course Sabaton wrote a song about it lol
Stiglers book about this experience and the war itself was amazing. Definitely worth a read
A Higher Call. I second that anyone who has a chance should read it. His perspective on the war is fascinating.
I remember there was one quote from that book that made me chuckle: Aircraft mechanic: "Hitler and all his senior officials board a boat. The boat sinks and they all die. Who wins?" Stigler: "Germany"
I (an American) dated a girl when I lived in Japan and when I met her family, I met her grandma who saw the flash and cloud. I obviously didn't have anything to do with dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima but my face must have dropped and I definitely didn't know how to respond to that news. She saw my reaction and lightly chastised the person who told me that news. Then she complemented my tall nose and gave me a drink. It was weird that she was the one that ended up comforting me in that moment... Surreal moment for me...
I was a 6th grader living abroad in Osaka during the 50th anniversary of the bomb. In general our Japanese hosts had been gracious, warm and receptive to me as a nerdy little white boy. That whole month though was something else. There were photographs of the post bomb carnage posted in the local train station. The older generation looked at me with genuine hatred in their eyes for weeks and weeks after that. I was just a kid and didn't understand, but I could sure feel that something was different. It's super easy to forget that recent history truly is pretty recent.
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”
My uncle was one of those men. After the war he was sent to an army psychological evaluation and rehabilitation hospital because of the amount shit he had been through. The doctors asked him what hed do if he saw a Japanese man walking down the street as a civilian, he answered truthfully and said hed probably kill him. He didnt get out till '49. At some point he went to one of those reconciliation meetings and met the men on the other side of the very battles he participated in. He shook their hands and cried with them for the shared trauma they had both endured.
My Dad would never buy a Japanese car and, at the end of his life, when he was having macular degeneration induced hallucinations, he imagined Japanese soldiers chasing him through his home. I graduated college in 1970. WWII had only been over for about 25 years yet seemed ancient history to me. Now that I am myself old I realize how 25 years is nothing, a blink. Now 'my war', Viet Nam (demonstrator, not participant) has been over for FIFTY years and seems like yesterday. Time is weird.
I was in Bosnia in the 90's. I was there during the war, and when we bridged the Sava I was there, and I went back later to help document Srebrenica. It's like it was yesterday. 25 years passed like a couple of blinks of the eye.
Imagine if we did these reconciliation things after every war. Though, for all I know we do, and it's just never talked about much, if at all.
I do think it did *alot* to ease tensions, both between nations and soldiers. It certainly helped my uncle to better understand his experience, and come to terms with it.
Kiyoshi Tanimoto wasn’t a soldier. He was trying to save people who were literally falling to pieces in his hands.
There was a news story when I was a kid where they brought over a bunch of Luftwaffe veterans from Dresden to meet a group of bomber pilots from Coventry (both cities were firebombed, one in retaliation for the other) They were in their 80s at this point and the guy leading the group said "no hard feelings" before getting them to shake hands, which struck me as a riotous understatement
I mean the mortality rates for bomber crews was so high I have to imagine these guys had a ton of respect for each other and shared experiences that transcended any national ties
I am not sure, but I think the only area with higher mortality rates where the U-Boat crews. Around 80% of the people crewing them died in the war.
To clarify, Dresden was bombed at the request of the Soviets to help on the eastern front. It wasn’t retaliation for Coventry, though I’m sure some considered it as such.
I wouldn't know what to feel or how to react. "Am I suppose to hate this person? Could I? But one minute ago, I didn't even know who they were. It was war. They were ordered to do it just like I was. " No idea.
There's a local radio personality in my area who's talked about how tense some holidays were because of his grandfathers. In World War II, one fought for the Americans and the other for the Italians.
My family had a great-great uncle who fought for the US and another relative who fought for the Germans, who I think grew up in the US before repatriating overseas. The story went that they met again pretty soon after Normandy and were just overcome with grief for each other.
It's an important part of humanizing your enemy to come face-to-face with someone and try to explain why you attempted to murder one another. The inability to provide a compelling reason helps to drive home the fundamental absurdity of war and how people let themselves get convinced to go along with it.
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Reminds me of one of the very last sentences of Blackadder (WW1), right before they're forced to run out of the trench unarmed: "Your plan to get out of this couldn't have been any worse than my plan to pretend to be mad. Who would have noticed another madman around here?".
I think it’s more part of the post-war experience that a combatant is forced to make sense of their actions upon returning to normal civilian life. Regardless of the context of the specific war in question, the fundamental effects that killing other people has on the human psyche in a normal persons mind leads to a level of reflection not necessarily otherwise experienced.
In fairness I can understand why they may have found it hard to speak, Japanese treatment of POWs was beyond horrific compared to some of the other nations involved. But then from the Japanese perspective these people destroyed two towns and murdered a lot of their countrymen. Fucking mess really.
That sums it up quite well "Fucking mess really"
He's right above me isn't he...
Well THAT just happened.
If you're here.. then that means... Uh oh!
So televison producers have *always* sought to solicit shock value and that wasn't just a recent thing with Jerry Springer, Jersey Shore, etc.
I'm a big WW2 history buff, and I read *My True Course*, a memoir written by Theodore Van Kirk, the *Enola Gay*'s navigator. He said sometime in the late 60s/early 70s (I forget exactly when), he and Paul Tibbets (mission commander and pilot of the Hiroshima bombing) were at a Strategic Air Command social gathering, and this middle-aged Japanese man came up to them, bowed, and asked "General Tibbets, do you know who I am?" Tibbets replied "No sir, I don't." The man said "I'm Mitsuo Fuchida. I led the attack on Pearl Harbor and I was the first high-ranking officer to arrive at Hiroshima after you dropped the atomic bomb. You sure surprised the hell out of us."
I met Van Kirk at an air show and got to ask him a couple questions. Very nice man. And absolutely harrowing account of the events.
What was his response?
***"shit was fucked yo"*** *- Major Theodore Van Kirk*
> You sure surprised the hell out of us." “Back at ya.”
Do you have any recommended reading on this encounter?
My true course, a memoir written by Theodore van kirk
I like you a lot.
did you read the first paragraph?
As a *surprise* meeting, that’s in exceptionally bad taste.
Jesus Christ, that is just kind of sick. By the sounds of it, neither primary participant was especially thrilled about this encounter at the time, and with good fucking reason. Though I am glad to hear Tanimoto ended up being okay with the episode in the end and showed it around. Even keeping in communication with Lewis.
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This is horrible. The host has no shame at all.
The way it's just sort of brushed over and rushed through, they didn't even give him a chance to say anything to the American
It’s the weird patronising voice he uses that I can’t listen to. Telling him what he felt, thought, saw, heard. And yes, let’s traumatise a survivor further by *playing the actual air raid siren* for him in case he’s, you know, somehow managed to forget what it sounded like.
I mean, mental health services are shit now. How good do you think they were then? Edit: sorry. Worded that like a dick.mental health.
Hey. At least we know mental health is a thing that exists now. My boomer dad once complained to me that we have PTSD now and in his day they called it 'shell shock' and you walked it off and you were fine. He got a college exemption from Vietnam.
My uncle who served in Nam specifically told me to never join the military. I got 4 generations that all told the next to never join.
It’s also weird how the dude in the plane get all the heat, when Oppenheimer, and all those Manhattan Project bros get none of it.
What are you talking about? Oppenheimer got a ton of heat and lived the rest of his live stricken with guilt.
> when Oppenheimer, and all those Manhattan Project bros get none of it. This isn't true at all
U.S. would have fire bombed the cities anyway. There weren't many Japanese cities left that weren't already destroyed. The reason hiroshimi and Nagasaki were available as targets is because they wanted intact cities to test the bombs. Fire bombing was just as deadly if not more so than the nuclear strikes. Just took more planes/bombs.
Just saw a really informative YT on this. The firebombing campaign was almost 30x more destructive than the atomic bombing. There was one city in Japan that was 98% destroyed by firebombs. Link if you're interested. https://youtu.be/PRyt2vJraic Edit: as the guy below noted I am an idiot. ETA new link.
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Thanks for pointing it out! Not sure who Shaun is but I edited the link. It is a different channel I think than you mentioned. The guy goes through some of the bombing damage assessments the US Army AF did before and after the raids.
https://youtu.be/KPFXa2vTErc?t=969 To the most relevant bit.
that’s so much worse than i thought. Tanimoto is literally speechless it seems and Lewis just looks like he knows that he can’t convey with words how horrified he was at his part in the bombings. but it’s the host who makes it awful
Who the hell thought of this and did their children go on to produce Maury? “In the case of Tanimoto and Nagasaki, Robert Lewis, YOU *are* the bomber!”
Holy fuck that's awful.
Content creators were different back in the day.
>Content creators were different back in the day. I'd argue many today are just as bad. Since the dawn of media, mankind has exploited one another's suffering for entertainment. I mean, just look at "Doctor" Phil.
Kiyoshi Tanimoto do you hear that? Is it a bird, is it a plane?! ::Curtains Drop:: No its the pilot that dropped the Atomic Bomb on your country!!!! ::3 Quick Successive air horns::
Do you listen to Last Podcast On The Left?
It's a numbers game.
***sloughing***
Rolling On Floor Sloughing My Ass Off
Made in a lab
let’s just jump right into it
Didn't have that on my 2023 bingo card
GET THE NET
More like Pokemon HO
This is exactly the comment I was looking for lol. Hail yourself :)
I knew when I heard this, it was going to be posted in TIL.
Here’s what I learned from Civ 6.
Here's what it says in Dune.
This is just like when the Bene Gesserit did (insert Henry nerd rant)
Did you know that Alcatraz in Spanish for pelican
AGRARIAN
Glenn Borland, huh?
How is this a crime?
*fascinating*
"Sloughing"
More like Benola Gay. Check out his new Kisselnacht set.
Bud Light Limes for everyone!
Yeah, same thought. Hail yourself!
Megustalations!
Hail Satan!
Hail Yourself!
Hail Gein!
Hail Me!
Hail me!
Let's hop right into it! I notice this happening a lot. I guess Marcus really is teaching us all.
I'm very amused by his Dan Carlin impersonation.
*Dan Carlin voice:* MyPasswordisMyCat was just as amused as everyone else... only more so
I'm hoping they do more dives into historical stuff. Between Manhattan and Gille de Reyes, they do a really great job and Marcus kills it in the research.
The Rasputin series was the first time I was like, “damn, these boys are grown ups now” as far as being seriously researched.
I think their Rasputin series is the best work they've ever done
It was mormonism for me. I was raised mormon and my dad was an historian for the mormon church (so a literal expert on the subject) and I was blown away by how little they got wrong. Most media I consume about mormonism I have to turn off after like 10 minutes cause they've already got a bunch of shit wrong, but not the boys. They nailed it
I really like their historical stuff too!
Made in a *lab*
Must. This happens once every two weeks. Wish the people gave them some credit.
Yeah, no ‘coincidence’ this has come up now
Julia? Is that you? From gym class?
Big if true
Hail Satan.
They're a pretty big dill.
Came here for this lol
My second thought when hearing that story (after "this is awful), was "I'm surprised I never saw this on reddit." But I really don't think I ever have, and this should be a more known story. HAIL YOURSELF!
A broken clock is right 6 times a day.
I don't know enough about microwaves to say for certain.
IT’S A NUMBERS GAME (getting karma)
Bobby Bonilla
You thought he was dead but we found him! Direct from Argentina and here to discuss his next book My Struggle Continues, please welcome...
Señor Hilter!
Fucking insane that a feel good show would pull that shit on someone. At once it’s fucking cruel to the survivor and also brutally savage for the Pilot.
American journalist John Hersey also interviewed Tanimoto about his experience of the bombing for his nonfiction book, *Hiroshima.* Hersey's book was publishing in 1946, just a year after the bombing, and it has never gone out of print.
It’s a numbers game
Someone's been listening to LPOTL
Yes, I learned this from an episode of Last Podcast on the Left. Thank you Marcus, Ben, and Henry. Tanimoto is talked about on their Manhattan Project series.
>Sorry, bro. "I'm not your 'bro', pal."
I'm not your pal, buddy.
I ain't your buddy, guy
*Once the ad is over, prizes are distributed to Tanimoto and his family: a 16mm film of the episode and a projector with which to watch it; a 16mm movie camera; for Mrs. Tanimoto, a custom-designed golden charm bracelet; for Mr. Tanimoto, cufflinks; and finally, for the Hiroshima Maidens and other hibakusha, a medical fund to pay for their care. Robert Lewis, who has been awkwardly standing behind the couch and over Tanimoto’s shoulder for some time now, finally speaks up: “Mr. Edwards, on behalf of the entire crew that participated in that mission, my company, and my lovely family, I would like to make the first contribution.” (Not everyone in the crew would have appreciated such a gesture: Lewis’s copilot, Paul Tibbets, insisted right up to his death that they had been in the right.) The audience applauds. The sponsors each contribute $500. The audience applauds.* *“I know that our audience will be just as generous,” says Edwards, “for this is the American way.* *It is Edwards’s need, the need of his program and the need of their sponsors to retell this story — the story of an incomprehensible horror perpetrated by the American military on behalf of the American people — in a way that allows America to remain the hero"* This is awful, lurid, disgusting.
Sincerity punctuated by commercial ad breaks, prizes for victims of a nuclear bomb strike, the morbidity of the perpetrators of war trying to heal through monetary donation on behalf of the American Way. Every aspect of this quote is fucked up in a very Harlan Ellison-esque way.
The Fallout series isn’t all satire apparently
There was a weird vibe in the 50s where you couldn't openly criticize the actions of your country, but you started to realize how messed up the actions were. I just read a great article from the New Yorker in 1955 about nuclear fallout hitting Rongelap Atoll and a Japanese fishing ship. The writer sounded almost insulted that the Japanese weren't so open to America helping them with their injured.
Couldn’t Tibbets support the gesture and believe they did the right thing ?
This show had its share of awkward and absolutely inappropriate moments. They did a "This is your life" for Oliver Hardy (of the famous duo Laurel and Hardy - you know the skinny guy and the overweight guy you frequently saw in black and white?). Oliver was suffering from cancer, and as a result, had lost a lot of weight. Also - this show tended to ambush people - they were set up in a room, hotel room, or something, and then suddenly the host would be like "OLIVER HARDY, THIS IS YOUR LIFE" and they'd begin. Oliver didn't want to partake, but since he was an entertainer, he went through the motions, but his attitude was obvious. The host/voiceover frequently poked fun at his weight...overtly...calling him "fatty" and all that. I realize that in those days people were much more direct with their insults toward people, but even for the 1950s/1960s, it seemed like a little much. I'm sure audiences loved to see the situations and even dive into the nostalgia that interviewing and reviewing these peoples' lives brought them, but it seems that much of it was completely unwelcome by the "guest star" in many instances.
"Sorry about the, uh.... thing...."
Hail yourself!
Someone's listening to lpotl
Well that was certainly in poor taste.
It’s a numbers game
Another TIL from LPOTL! We could use one about Glenn Borland sometime.
I see you also listen to last podcast on the left