My Midway

I have read two books on the bloody battle of Midway in WWII. The Japanese wanted it, the US needed it for a refueling stop for submarines on their way to sink Japanese shipping. That battle turned the tide of the naval war with the Japanese losing 4 aircraft carriers there. 

I flew into there once in 1966. I was in the back of the plane so I could not see the island until after we were on the ground. 25 years after the war the place was rebuilt, but still nothing to write home about. I could stand on the runway and see nothing but flat land and ocean all around. There were still more than a thousand sailors there, trapped with nothing to do for entertainment. I walked over to the enlisted men's club to while away the evening. The place was like a den of prisoners, beer cans flying, people fussing and fighting and lots of heads hanging in despair. I think those guys were stuck there for a year. The gooney birds were everywhere and in the way and crapping all over the sidewalks. The birds had no fear of humans and would not even move out of the way. I went to bed that night thinking I was sure happy I was not stationed there. We left the next morning and I was happy to do so.

Last night I was watching a History channel show about Midway and that battle. There was one modern scene there as a plane took a video shot. That was the first time I had seen it from the air. It is smaller than I thought when I was there. As I watched I thought how sad it is that thousands of soldiers, marines and sailors from both sides were killed for such a tiny piece of real estate. What was really strange to me was that the Japanese could not have kept Midway for very long. The U.S. would not have allowed them to have a base just 1000 miles from Pearl Harbor, no matter what the cost was to take it back.

The U.S. had broken the Japanese naval codes and knew about the Midway attack in advance. Those codes were broken before the start of the war, and yet the Japanese managed a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. I will never know the answer to how that happened.