On this day in 1945, kamikazes plow into American warships near Iwo Jima. One aircraft carrier, the USS Bismarck Sea, was fatally wounded. A handful of other American ships were also hit, but they managed to stay afloat.
One observer would later say that there were so many Japanese planes that “they looked like a swarm of flies on a boarding house table.”
When most Americans think of the Battle of Iwo Jima, they think of the difficult Marine landings during February 1945. But there were losses at sea, too. Some of those men were living through a hell of their own.
Trouble began late on February 21, just as night was falling. Little did anyone know it, but the American warships hovering near Iwo Jima were in danger. Dozens of kamikazes had left Tokyo earlier that day, and they were headed straight toward the Americans.
The kamikazes hit many ships, but Bismarck Sea took the worst of it. A Japanese pilot had come in, flying low and swerving around the stern of an American destroyer. What was Bismarck Sea to do? It couldn’t fire at the kamikaze without also firing at the destroyer.
The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-uss-bismarck-sea
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On this day in 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a law setting a federal minimum wage. The bill was the culmination of months of work: He’d asked Congress to send such a law to his desk roughly a year earlier.
Such a proposal might sound normal to modern ears, but it was far from normal back then. To the contrary, there was a pretty big dispute about the constitutionality of FDR’s plan—and many today still contend that these types of requirements are unconstitutional.
Why? Early Americans would have expected that the states may set such labor requirements. The federal government may not.
Regardless, the proposal was unsurprising, coming from FDR, who defaulted on big government measures during the Great Depression. Yet, even then, he would have failed in his efforts but for a startling Supreme Court decision during the spring of 1937.
The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-fdr-new-deal
On this day in 1952, a World War II hero is tragically killed in a car crash. It’s been said that Pedro Cano “seemingly was an unremarkable man who did remarkable things during World War II.”
For starters, Cano was not a big man. At just over 5 feet tall, he’s been described as “pint-sized” and “slightly-built.” Yet what he lacked in size, he made up for in determination. He’d used his small size to crawl under enemy fire, risking his life for his fellow soldiers.
Private Cano’s Medal action came over the course of two days in December 1944, as the young soldier served near Schevenhutte, Germany.
The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-pedro-cano-moh
On this day in 1942, a Japanese submarine launches an attack on a fort in Oregon.
Wait. What? A fort in Oregon, far away from so many World War II battlefields? Yes, you read that correctly. :) The attack on Fort Stevens was one of a handful of times that the Japanese attacked the American mainland.
The Japanese sub had secretly followed an American fishing fleet past minefields, enabling the sub to get close to shore. Late at night, when the submarine was about 10 miles from the coast, it began firing with a 5.5-inch deck gun.
A United States military installation on the mainland hadn’t been attacked since the War of 1812. After nearly 130 years of never being attacked, do you think the soldiers at Fort Stevens were a bit shocked when the shelling started just before midnight?
The story continues here: https://www.taraross.com/post/tdih-fort-stevens
