Japonica Nursery

29/07/2026

A Soldier's Trust

29/07/2026

Two Tonnes of Gold Are Still Sitting Three Miles Down in the Atlantic

Just before midnight on June 23, 1944, in the middle of the Atlantic, the Japanese cargo submarine I-52 surfaced to meet the German U-boat U-530. She was on a secret run to Lorient in occupied France, carrying rubber, tin, tungsten, o***m, and two tonnes of gold bullion, payment for the German optical and radar technology Japan desperately needed. The rendezvous went as planned. A German navigator and two radar technicians came aboard along with new equipment to guide her safely into port. What the Japanese did not know was that Allied codebreakers had been reading the messages arranging the meeting for weeks, and the es**rt carrier USS Bogue had been sent from Norfolk with orders to be waiting. Out of the moonless dark came an Avenger torpedo bomber flown by Lieutenant Commander Jesse Taylor. I-52 went down with 95 crew and 14 civilian passengers. Searchers found oil, a sandal, and human remains on the surface.

Then came the hunt for her. In 1990, a Texan named Paul Tidwell, a Vietnam veteran and self-described commercial historian, began working through newly declassified documents at the National Archives. He found the Bogue's log, Taylor's own attack report, and remarkably, the war diary of U-530 itself. The German and American positions did not agree, but between them he had enough to narrow the search. In 1995 his expedition swept the seabed with side-scan sonar and found her at about 17,000 feet, more than a mile deeper than Titanic. Cameras confirmed her identity from the distinctive rudder guard rail. The gold has never been recovered. It is still down there in the dark, exactly where a decoded radio message put it in 1944.

28/07/2026

October 26, 1952. The Seoul racetrack, what was left of it. A Marine lieutenant named Eric Pedersen walked the stables looking for a pack animal and found a small chestnut mare with a blaze down her face. Her name was Ah-Chim-Hai. Flame of the Morning. Her owner was a stableboy named Kim Huk Moon, and he sold her for $250 because his sister had lost a leg and needed an artificial one.

The Marines renamed her Reckless, after the recoilless rifles she would supply, and put her through what they called hoof camp. She learned to step over communication wire and barbed wire, to lie flat during shelling, to run for a bunker at the cry of "incoming." Then came late March 1953 and the fight for Outpost Vegas. Over five days, 28 tons of bombs turned the crest of Vegas into smoking rubble. The gun teams on the hill were burning through ammunition faster than men could haul it.

Horses are prey animals. Every instinct they have says run from noise, from fire, from smoke. "Horses are flight animals, but Reckless ran toward the danger because she knew the guys needed her," her biographer Robin Hutton later said. Somewhere on that first climb, alone on a shell-torn trail with no handler holding her lead, the mare decided the guns were where she belonged.

In a single day she made 51 trips from the ammunition supply point to the firing sites, 95 percent of them by herself. She carried 386 recoilless rounds, more than 9,000 pounds, covering over 35 miles, up a 45-degree grade, with enemy fire coming in at 500 rounds per minute. Coming down, she carried wounded Marines. Shrapnel hit her twice, once above the left eye and once in the left flank. She was patched up and went back.

When the battle ended, the platoon did not treat her as equipment that had survived. They treated her as a Marine who had fought. She received two Purple Hearts and a battlefield promotion. The men fed her scrambled eggs and shared their beer, and a Saturday Evening Post story in 1954 made her famous across America. A shipping executive was so moved he transported her to San Francisco for free.

She rose through the ranks like any Marine. Sergeant in 1954. Then staff sergeant, pinned on by General Randolph Pate, the Commandant of the entire Marine Corps, at a full ceremony at Camp Pendleton. Her decorations, worn on her blanket, included two Purple Hearts, a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, a Presidential Unit Citation, the National Defense Service Medal, a Korean Service Medal, the United Nations Korea Medal, and a Navy Unit Commendation. She retired in 1960, lived out her years at Camp Pendleton, and died in May 1968. She was buried there with full military honors.

She is not done traveling. A final monument of Staff Sergeant Reckless is in its last stages of approval to go home to Korea in 2026, signed off by the Marine Corps and the Secretary of the Navy, to stand at Camp Humphreys, the largest U.S. military installation overseas, where everyone entering the base will see her. Bronze statues of her already stand at Camp Pendleton, the Kentucky Horse Park, and the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Seventy-three years after a boy sold his horse to save his sister, the mare is going home.

The Marines never called her brave. They just called her one of their own.

27/07/2026

They Raised Her After 136 Years and Found the Crew Still at Their Stations

On the night of February 17, 1864, the hand-cranked Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley rammed a spar torpedo into the Union warship USS Housatonic off Charleston and became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy ship in combat. A lookout clinging to the sunken Housatonic's rigging later reported a blue light out on the dark water, the Hunley's prearranged signal that the mission had succeeded. Then she vanished with all eight men aboard. It took 131 years before Clive Cussler's NUMA team found her in 1995, buried under three feet of silt in just 30 feet of water, four miles off Sullivan's Island, lying on her side with her bow pointed toward home. On August 8, 2000, a crane lifted the fragile iron hull from the water intact while thousands watched from boats and shorelines.

What scientists found inside deepened the mystery. All eight crewmen were still at their stations along the crank handle. No pile of bodies at the hatches, no sign of any scramble to escape, the aft hatch still locked from within. Excavators also recovered a bent $20 gold coin from commander Lieutenant George Dixon, a gift from his sweetheart that had stopped a bullet at Shiloh, engraved with the words My life Preserver. In 2004 the eight men were buried in Charleston with full honors, 140 years after they died. In 2017, Duke researchers proposed the answer to why nobody moved: the shock wave from their own torpedo, detonating just 16 feet from the hull, likely killed every man instantly. The first submarine crew to sink a warship never knew they had succeeded, and never knew they were sinking.

26/07/2026

On October 2, 2012, 2nd Lt. Nicholas Dockery led his platoon into an ambush by nearly 150 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Charging across 100 yards of open ground under relentless enemy fire, he fought his way into an enemy-occupied compound, led the clearing of six rooms, shoved a teammate to safety from an incoming gr***de, and continued the fight despite being wounded himself.

When two soldiers were left exposed after a rocket-propelled gr***de exploded nearby, Dockery rushed to their aid, killed two enemy fighters closing in on their position, administered first aid, and used his own body to shield one of the wounded from further harm. He then repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to mark friendly positions for air support and provide covering fire until every wounded soldier had been evacuated, becoming the last American to leave the battlefield. For his extraordinary courage and selfless leadership, Nicholas Dockery was recently awarded the Medal of Honor.

26/07/2026

25/07/2026

Henry Fonda was already one of Hollywood's biggest stars when World War II interrupted his career. Unlike many actors who spent the war entertaining troops, Fonda insisted on serving in uniform. At age 37, at the height of his fame and with an Academy Award nomination already to his name, he enlisted as an apprentice seaman in the U.S. Navy in August 1942, saying, "I don't want to be in a fake war in a studio."

After completing basic training in San Diego, Fonda's excellent test scores earned him a place at Quartermaster School, where he graduated in the top 10 of a class of 200. He was assigned to the newly commissioned destroyer USS Satterlee (DD-626) as a Quartermaster Third Class, handling navigation and ship handling duties during the vessel's fitting-out and early service.

Less than a year into his enlistment, Fonda applied for officer training and was commissioned as a lieutenant junior grade. Rather than remaining aboard the Satterlee, he was reassigned to Air Combat Intelligence in the Pacific Theater, eventually serving on the seaplane tender USS Curtiss (AV-4) as Assistant Air Operations Officer. In this role, he helped plan and execute air operations supporting American campaigns in the Western Carolines, the Marianas, and Iwo Jima.

After nearly three years of active duty, Fonda was discharged in November 1945 with the rank of lieutenant. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his service as Assistant Operations Officer and Air Combat Intelligence Officer, and remained a Naval Reserve officer until 1948, when he was required to resign for being overage in rank.

Returning to Hollywood after the war, Fonda resumed a career that would span four more decades. He starred in acclaimed films including My Darling Clementine (1946), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), 12 Angry Men (1957), and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). He even played a naval officer in the films Mister Roberts and In Harm's Way, and in 1976, he played Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, in the movie Midway. In 1982, shortly before his death, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for On Golden Pond, opposite his daughter Jane Fonda and Katharine Hepburn.

Fonda rarely spoke publicly about his wartime experiences, preferring to let his service stand on its own. His decision to leave behind a successful Hollywood career for nearly three years of naval duty, culminating in intelligence work that helped shape the air campaign against Japan, remains one of the more notable examples of a major American film star choosing military service during World War II.

25/07/2026

On this day, 82 years ago, July 25, 1944, 24-year-old Captain Louis H. Wilson Jr. commanded Company F, 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division on the island of Guam.

Standing at an imposing six feet five inches tall, the man his troops called "Big Lou" was ordered to take a crucial section of the heavily fortified Fonte Hill.

Wilson initiated the assault in the mid-afternoon.
He pushed his men up 300 yards of rugged and completely open terrain.

They faced a terrific barrage of Japanese machine gun and rifle fire during the advance.
Wilson and his Marines successfully captured their objective despite the intense resistance.

As darkness fell, Wilson promptly assumed command of nearby disorganized units and motorized equipment to reinforce his own company.
He organized night defenses in the face of continuous hostile fire.

Wilson was wounded three times during this grueling five-hour period.
Shrapnel and bullets struck him in the leg, shoulder, and face.

He refused medical attention until he completely finished positioning his men and guns.
The Japanese quickly launched the first in a series of savage counterattacks that would last the entire night.

Wilson voluntarily rejoined his besieged units on the front line.
He repeatedly exposed himself to a merciless hail of shrapnel and bullets to direct his men.

At one point, he dashed 50 yards into the open to rescue a wounded Marine lying completely helpless.
He physically fought the enemy in fierce hand-to-hand combat.

Wilson led his men in this furiously waged battle for approximately ten hours.
He tenaciously held his defensive line and repelled fanatically renewed counterthrusts.

By the early morning of July 26, he succeeded in crushing the last efforts of the hard-pressed Japanese force.
Understanding the tactical necessity of holding a nearby strategic slope, he immediately organized a 17-man patrol.

He advanced upon the slope while boldly defying intense enemy mortar, machine gun, and rifle fire.
The ferocious incoming fire struck down 13 of his men.

Wilson drove relentlessly forward with the few remnants of his patrol.
He successfully seized the vital ground and secured his position.

His leadership and daring combat tactics resulted in the total annihilation of 350 Japanese troops.
The capture of Fonte Hill became a critical turning point in the liberation of Guam.

Wilson was evacuated to a naval hospital in San Diego to recover from his serious wounds.
He received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Fonte Hill.

He remained in the Marine Corps after World War II and served in both the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
He eventually rose to the rank of four-star general.

In 1975, he became the 26th Commandant of the Marine Corps.
He made history as the first Marine Commandant to serve as a full-time, voting member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Wilson retired from military service in 1979.
He passed away at his home in Alabama in 2005 at the age of 85.

25/07/2026

The Landlocked Submarine That Nearly Sailed Off in a Flood
USS Batfish (SS-310) has not taken a visitor aboard since 2019, when the Arkansas River rose far enough to lift a 2,000-ton submarine clean off her foundation at Muskogee War Memorial Park in Oklahoma. She floated for the first time in decades, and with a real chance she would drift away downriver, crews flooded her ballast tanks while the National Guard ran an extra line to hold her. When the water fell she settled beside her old berth, damaged and closed to the public, and she has stayed shut ever since. Now a flood mitigation project means she has to leave the site entirely. The plan is to move her a short distance downriver to Three Forks Harbor, either by lifting her onto a computer-controlled flatbed or by flooding her pit and floating her out between barges. Oklahoma lawmakers approved $4 million toward the move in May 2025, roughly a third of what is needed, and in July that year the museum's exhibits were packed up and shifted to a temporary home at the new site, though the submarine herself remains where the flood left her.
She is worth the trouble, because no other American submarine did what she did. A Balao-class boat commissioned in August 1943, Batfish made seven war patrols in the Philippine Sea, the Luzon Strait, and the South China Sea. Then, over 76 hours in February 1945, she hunted down and sank three Japanese submarines, a feat no other US submarine has ever matched, earning her a Presidential Unit Citation. Brought to landlocked Oklahoma as a memorial in February 1972, she drew around 50,000 visitors a year until the water came. Her curator, James Erb, has spent years insisting the rumours of scrapping are false. For now she waits in her pit, needing a move nobody has yet fully paid for

24/07/2026

The first American museum submarine ever sent to the breakers

The USS Clamagore was commissioned on 28 June 1945, weeks too late for the war she was built for, and instead gave the Navy 30 years of Cold War service. Rebuilt twice under the GUPPY program, including a 1962 conversion that spliced a 15-foot, 55-ton section into her hull, she became one of only nine GUPPY III boats ever created, and by the time she reached Patriots Point museum near Charleston in 1979, she was the last of them left in America, later crowned a National Historic Landmark. But four decades moored in salt water did what no enemy could. Her ballast tanks corroded through, a leak closed her to visitors in December 2021, and repairs were priced at up to 10 million dollars that nobody had.

Every rescue plan failed her. A Florida county approved money to sink her as a diving reef, retired submariners sued to stop it, a second reef plan died quietly, and in March 2022 Patriots Point made the decision no American museum had ever made, scrapping a preserved submarine. Crews spent that summer pulling 504 batteries and removing her sail, museum staff tagged her periscope, sonar gear, and torpedo hatches for future exhibits, and on 14 October 2022 she was towed out of Charleston Harbor toward Norfolk while a veteran of her crew threw a wreath into the water and saluted. As he put it through the grief, Patriots Point had at least kept her from becoming razor blades for 40 years. In 2024 her National Historic Landmark status was formally withdrawn, closing the book on the boat nobody could save.