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We lost a good, good friend in our community this week.
I really don’t remember the first time I made the acquaintance of Kendall McKernon, but it doesn’t really matter. I know it was relatively late in life, and we got to know each other at the Sandy Hill Farmers Market in Juckett Park. Here’s this guy, poking around with his camera taking shots wide and long, but also up close and candid, engaging in conversation with the vendors and just reveling and eating up the back and forth. I was sitting there hawking my first book, and he would come by the table to chat me up, and take photos of me and book subject WWII veteran and fellow former HFHS history teacher Alvin Peachman, which somehow wound up in the local weekly The Chronicle. Alvin was our own embodiment of Hudson Falls and Kingsbury, but Kendall was becoming one as well.
Matthew Rozell and WWII veteran Alvin Peachman, Juckett Park, September 2015, by Kendall.
Later, he came to Juckett Park for the dedication of a tree in my name, and wrote up a succinct summary of the event, complete with his candid photos—he just had the knack, the artist’s eye, for framing his subjects, no matter what the subject—and conveying the emotion, the beauty to the viewer, as all in the community who witnessed his work can attest. I recognized the inherent uniqueness in his work, and helped him learn how to watermark the images that he was posting out to the world. In the article, he deflected attention from himself as a ‘chronicler of all things Hudson Falls’—but you were, Kendall. You just were.
I was happy for him when he opened his shop at the Sandy Hill Arts Center at the former Masonic Temple, a vision he helped Bill realize with his own love and faith of our community. Naturally, he wanted to carry my history books. My regret right now, as with many of us, is that maybe we didn’t just drop in and sit with him for a while in our busy worlds. As a former shopkeeper myself, sometimes it can get a bit lonely in slow times, though a few times when I slowed my truck driving past, to see an opening, he was definitely holding court with the ladies or some customers. It made me smile, because the times when I did stop, I got some good stories with a twinkle, and caught up on the local happenings, of course.
I’m sad for Kathleen, his daughter, my former student (sorry Kat, but you were Kathleen to me!) for his friends and former classmates who really knew him better, especially Joyce, Bill, and Tom—but he was ours for a moment; he certainly was a kindred soul.
The memory of Kendall is just a warm bath moment for me. Kendall McKernon was ‘Mr. Hudson Falls’ in my book, for our era, and his work will live on, like his memory and his legacy.
The Man, by one of his friends.
You have made your mark; go forward, sweet sir and gentle prince of Hudson Falls and Washington County, and be free with your beloved and all the ancestors greeting you right now. ~MR
I recently finished my 10th book in The Things Our Fathers Saw series. It covers a pretty much unknown aspect of American involvement in World War II, the China/Burma/India arena of the war.
In the writing of this series, I have been approached by people, generally children of combatants, and sometimes in slightly indignant fashion, wanting to know ‘why there is no CBI Theater’ focus in my books, as if I considered these men and women who served in that arena somehow less worthy of recognition and study. The ordinary unfortunate explanation was simply that comparatively few Americans served there, a complex and confusing pocket of activity that technically is not even classified a ‘theater’ of operations in the sense of, let’s say, the European or Pacific Theaters. It did not have a unified combat command per se; there weren’t any conventional U.S. infantry divisions slogging it out in China, Burma, or India—most of the ground fighting was done by British, Indian, and Chinese troops. Only about a percent and a half of Americans in uniform during World War II were engaged here, most in supporting roles; less than 3,000 U.S. ground troop volunteers made up legendary long-range fighting forces known as Merrill’s Marauders and others, who were pushed to the brink of extinction after just five months of combat.
Yet I found some amazing stories, from a nurse who was just one of two accompanying Claire Chennault’s famed mercenary ‘Flying Tigers’ taking out Japanese bombers over China and Burma, to the men who flew dangerous high altitude cargo missions from India to China over the Himalayas, to the Marauders on the ground and the fighter pilots who supported them from the sky. It clocked in at 362 pages of narrative oral history, and I hope it closes this gap in the knowledge of World War II; the last Marauder died just as I began writing it in January. You can get it at my direct store above in the SHOP MY BOOKS tab, or look it up at that behemoth, Amazon. The TOC is pasted below. Thanks for reading and your support.
In VOLUME 10 of The Things Our Fathers Saw® series,‘Over The Hump/China, Burma, India’, we will visit with the veterans of most overlooked theater of World War II as they prepare to fly over and march through the most inhospitable terrain on the planet, from the Himalaya Mountains to the jungles and mountains of Burma, battling elite Japanese forces, sickness and tropical disease. Ride with the cargo pilots as they are buffeted by 200 MPH+ winds over some of the highest mountains in the world; join fighter pilots taking to the skies to attack Japanese bombers and other aircraft as the enemy tries to disrupt the flow of supplies from India to China. Accompany the long range American penetration forces as they go deep into the heart of enemy held territory to stem the Japanese onslaught. Gain a better understanding of why these forgotten men need to be remembered and celebrated today.
AUTHOR’S NOTE INTRODUCTION COMMUNISTS AND NATIONALISTS WORLD WAR II BEGINS IN ASIA ‘VINEGAR JOE’ STILWELL ‘WE GOT A HELL OF A BEATING’ THE AVG STATIONMASTER ‘WE WRECKED A LOT OF PLANES’ NO REPLACEMENTS CHENNAULT’S EARLY WARNING SYSTEM THE BURMA SALWEEN GORGE MISSION CONDITIONS OTHER MISSIONS ‘I WENT AROUND THE WORLD’ THE MARINES BOOZE FOR SPARE PARTS THE SLIT TRENCH ENCOUNTER HOME THE FLYING TIGERS NURSE ‘I FELT LIKE ALICE IN WONDERLAND’ A ‘FOREIGN DEVIL’ GETTING BACK TO CHINA ‘THESE KIDS, THEY’RE GOING TO FIGHT?’ SPENDING TIME WITH CHENNAULT WAR THE WARNING SYSTEM MARRIED WITH A BLACK EYE ‘WHEN THEY CAME BACK, THEY WERE MEN’ ‘THAT’S WHEN I LOST HIM’ HOME ‘WOMEN DIDN’T TALK ABOUT THOSE THINGS’ THE CARGO PILOT THE LIFELINE OF CHINA HAZARDOUS DUTY MEDALS THE COMMUNIST CHINESE THE GRAND PIANO THE CHINESE PEOPLE GOING HOME THE HOSPITAL SHIP THE RESERVES KEEPING IN TOUCH CIVILIAN LIFE THE B-24 RADIOMAN SHIPPING OUT TO INDIA MISSIONS WEIGHTLESS ANOXIA DETACHED SERVICE COMING HOME THE B-29 RADARMAN THE B-29S RADAR MISSIONS SINGAPORE BOMBING JAPAN ‘WE LOST OUR PILOT’ A SECRET WEAPON AFTER THE WAR THE ACE PILOT TRAINING INDIA FIRST KILL ‘I BELIEVE I’M GOING TO GET KILLED TOMORROW’ PURPLE HEART ‘PETE, DON’T SHOOT!’ 87 MISSIONS THE CHINESE WAR’S END JAPAN OCCUPATION DUTY THE THUNDERBOLT PILOT THE TEST CALLED UP PILOT TRAINING THE THUNDERBOLT TO THE CBI BURMA MARAUDERS’ SUPPORT THE NATIVE PEOPLE WAR’S END HOME ‘THEY WERE SOLDIERS’ THE VIRGINIA FARMBOY ‘I LIED LIKE A RUG’ FORCED MARCHES AT HIGH SPEED STILWELL’S GOALS WINNING SUPPORT OF THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES INSPIRED TO LEARN THE HEAVY WEAPONS COMMANDER ‘I’M NOT ASKING YOU’ ‘A MINIMUM OF 90% CASUALTIES’ LIVING CONDITIONS THE IMPERIAL MARINES FIGHT AT WALAWBUM WOUNDED HOME ‘GENERAL STILWELL JUST LAUGHED’ GOING BACK ‘YOU VOLUNTEERED FOR THIS MISSION’ ‘I’LL TAKE CARE OF IT’ REUNIONS THE ENGINEER DEPRESSION DAYS ‘YOU’LL GO WHERE I TELL YOU TO GO’ INDIA COMBAT TEAMS THE RIVER CROSSING ‘WE WERE THROUGH’ THE END OF THE WAR ‘HE BELONGS TO ME’ SOUVENIRS STILL ALIVE THE 4-F VOLUNTEER UNIT ‘GALAHAD’ ‘EVERYBODY WAS A MARAUDER’ THE NATIVES GENERAL MERRILL ‘WE HAD NO DANCING GIRLS’ GOING HOME OBSERVATIONS THE RADIO WIZARD ‘I WANTED TO DO MY PART’ THE ‘SONG OF INDIA’ MULES SHOOTING ‘THEY WOULD GO WILD’ MARCHING PAST THE HOSPITAL FOOD AND SICKNESS ON THE MOVE HOME LAST WORDS THE IMMIGRANT ‘YOU BECOME A FATALIST’ POINT MAN ‘WE DIDN’T GET DECORATED’ ‘KILLED IN ACTION’ THE CHIEF THE LEDO ROAD ‘A VERY TOUGH THING’ HOME THE COMBAT CAMERAMAN I DEPRESSION DAYS BECOMING A CAMERAMAN ‘WE NEED THE FIVE DOLLARS’ ‘THE WAR WAS ON TOP OF US’ ‘I WON WORLD WAR II’ GOING OVERSEAS THE VOLUNTEER ‘YOU HAVE TO STAY HOME AND FARM’ ‘YOU’RE THE SON OF A GUN THAT WENT AWOL’ IN THE BRIG ‘MY GOD, A TORPEDO!” PICKING UP THE DEAD ‘ONE DAY THE SALVATION CAME’ ‘MY SQUAD LEADER WAS A CONVICTED FELON’ ‘POOREST GODDAM EXCUSE FOR A MULE SKINNER’ THE LETTER ‘WE CAN DISAPPEAR IN THE JUNGLE’ COMBAT WOUNDED ‘I CAN SAVE THAT LEG’ THE NISEI INTERPRETER ‘THE MEN WHO ALTERED MY LIFE’ RECONNECTING WITH TRUCK ‘I DON’T KNOW WHAT A HERO IS’ THE COMBAT CAMERAMAN II GETTING TO INDIA GETTING TO STILWELL’S HEADQUARTERS THE CHINESE NEWSREEL WONG GOING AWOL TRAVERSING THE MOUNTAINS ‘I’M NO DAMNED VOLUNTEER’ ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THIS OUTFIT’ HIT BY A C-47 AIR DROP ‘I HAD NEVER CRIED IN MY LIFE’ “YOU’RE THE GUY I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR’ THE LAST WORD
Just finished my 10th book in the Things Our Fathers Saw series, on the CBI theater of the war. I wrote this at the end, thinking about my time with the veterans of World War II.
“It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world founded upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice.”
—Remarks By General Douglas MacArthur, Surrender Ceremony Ending The War With Japan And World War II, September 2, 1945
“Can’t we just let go of this war? My father spent four years in, [and] my uncles four years; they NEVER talked about it! Long dead soldiers, long ago war!”
-American commenter on one of the author’s social media posts, highlighting the series, The Things Our Fathers Saw, September 2024
Was it really that long ago?
Seventy-nine years ago last month, Admiral ‘Bull’ Halsey’s flagship USS Missouri was in Tokyo Bay awaiting the arrival of the Japanese delegation with General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz aboard, positioned near the spot where Commodore Matthew C. Perry had anchored his ‘Black Ships’ on his first visit to Japan in 1853. On display aboard the battleship that morning was the flag that flew on December 7, 1941, over Hickam Field at Pearl Harbor, and the 31-starred Old Glory standard of Perry’s flagship from nearly a century before, now accompanied by hundreds of American warships. The Japanese delegation was escorted promptly aboard at 9:00 a.m., and at MacArthur’s invitation, signed the terms of surrender. As if on cue, four hundred gleaming B-29 bombers roared slowly by in the skies overhead, escorted by fifteen hundred fighters.[i]
Surrender ceremonies, 2,000 plane flyover, USS MISSOURI left foreground. National Archives. Public domain.
In the United States and Europe, it was six years to the day that the bloodiest conflict in human history had begun; after those six years of savage fighting, the devastation was unprecedented and incalculable. Between sixty and eighty-five million people—the exact figure will never be known—would be dead. Overseas, the victors would be forced to deal with rubble-choked cities and tens of millions of people on the move, their every step dogged with desperation, famine, and moral confusion. American servicemen, battle-hardened but weary, would be forced to deal with the collapse of civilization and brutally confronted with the evidence of industrial-scale genocide. Old empires were torn asunder, new ones were on the ascent. The Chinese Communists were victorious in China before the end of the decade; the British and other colonial powers began shedding their colonies in South Asia and elsewhere. In 1952, American occupation ended, lasting nearly twice as long as the war with America itself.
Now, the ‘American Century’ was well underway. American power and leadership of the free world was unparalleled and unprecedented. The Marshall Plan literally saved Europe. Enemies became allies. Former allies became adversaries. The Atomic Age began. And the United States of America rebuilt, reconstructed, and remodeled Japan. Of course, this ‘American Century’ was not free from hubris, error, and tragic mistakes, but all of this is part of the legacy that shapes us to this day.
In regards to the end of World War II, I can recall, in the early 1980s as a young history teacher in training, observing a veteran teacher describing the end of the war with Japan by making an analogy to his eighth graders:
‘It’s like two brothers who had a fight. The winner picks up the loser, dusts him off, and they go on as brothers and friends.’
Overlooked, perhaps, were the eight million Chinese civilians and millions of others in Asia slaughtered by Japanese troops in their imperial lust for conquest, the Allied prisoners of war brutalized and worked to death or executed in slave labor camps, the Allied seamen shot while foundering in the water at the explicit orders of the Japanese Imperial Navy, to say nothing of the deceitfulness of Pearl Harbor. I’m sure my twenty minutes observing the teacher in action left out what he hopefully covered in class; he must have known World War II veterans, just as I did. And these are things I suppose you learn later in life, as I did—but only because I wanted to know as much as I could learn. I was born sixteen years after the killing stopped, but ripples of that war have never ended.
If you are a reader of this series, you know how I got our veterans involved once I found my footing in my own classroom. My fascination with World War II began with the comic books of my 1970s pre-teen days, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company bursting off the pages in the bedroom I shared with my younger brothers at 2 Main Street. As a newly minted college grad a decade later, I was drawn to the spectacle of our veterans returning to the beaches of Normandy on the black-and-white TV in my apartment for the fortieth anniversary of D-Day. I was reading the only oral history compilation I was aware of, Studs Terkel’s euphemistically titled 1984 release, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, over and over. I studied that book, planting the seed for my own debut in the classroom. And in retrospect, I think I reached out to my students asking them if they knew anyone in World War II, yes, as a way to engage them in the lessons at hand, but also to satisfy my own selfish curiosity: just what ‘resources’—really national treasures—did we have in our own backyard, surrounding our high school? I was going to find out. Man, was I going to find out!
Of course they ‘never talked’ about it! Why would they bring ‘The War’ up with their wives, their sons, their daughters? And frankly, most of the civilians they returned home to and surrounded themselves with at work, in the community, and even in their own families, weren’t really all that interested in hearing about it. It was time to get on with life.
But then those guys headed back to the Normandy beachheads, now approaching retirement age, most in their early sixties, if that (about my age right now) …
Somebody was now listening! Somebody gave a damn! And maybe the old soldier could talk about that kid who was shot and lingered on for a while in the far-off jungles of Burma, the country boy far from home who was proud to be a soldier, the eighteen-year-old who wondered now if he was going to die. The combat photographer David Quaid spoke to his interviewers until he was too exhausted to go on. But somebody was interested, and he had things to say—things to get off his chest—before he would no longer be able to say them; like David, a lot of the guys I knew opened up like a pressurized firehose after all those years of silence. It was frankly cathartic, and maybe now they could ‘let go of this war.’
Should we?
I didn’t respond to the commenter in the thread, but another person added,
“I understand, but if there is no conversation, nothing gets shared—nothing gets learned! May your family all rest in peace!”
I know in my heart that opening up to others, even complete strangers, but especially to the young, finally brought our veterans peace.
[i] Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York, W. W. Norton & Company. 1999. P. 43.
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