SpringTrip07 - Report 4

Wednesday, May 2, was spent mostly learning about the Pacific part of WWII. We started at the National Museum of the Pacific War, a new museum adjacent to the Nimitz museum which has been a Fredericksburg attraction for quite a while -- WWII Naval leader Admiral Nimitz being a Fredericksburg boy and the hotel started by his grandfather being the site of the museum.




I've never studied the Pacific War in any detail. The painstaking and deadly island by island rollback of the Japanese was particularly interesting to learn about. Why certain islands -- there are hundreds (thousands?) of them in the western Pacific? But some were critical locations for airports or control of shipping lanes. Those are the ones we had to capture from the Japanese (but there are disagreements among historians and participants about some of them). Nimitz and MacArthur led the campaign. Their relationship seemed to work. One note: at the signing of the Japanese surrender, MacArthur signed for the Allies, Nimitz signed for the US.

Chester Nimitz was a Naval Academy graduate. At age 22 (1907) he was an ensign in charge of a destroyer that was run aground in a Phillipines harbor. He was actually court-martialed and reprimanded, but this was not the end of his career, as one might have expected. He continued to advance, spending much of his career in submarines, and after Admiral Kimmel was removed after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt named Nimitz to the command of the Pacific fleet.

Here's the Nimitz museum. At some point, upper floors were added to the hotel building to resemble the superstructure of a ship.

The Pacific War museum also features a George H. W. Bush Gallery. We saw the film of his rescue in the Pacific. Here's a portrait in the gallery.

At noontime we rendezvoused with Bart and Lynda Calcote, more friends from Abilene who have spent a lot of time in Fredericksburg and who had planted the idea of this part of our trip back in 05 when we lived in Abilene. Bart, Ken, and I returned to the Pacific War exhibits; the ladies sampled shops and desserts.

Wednesday evening was a weather rerun of Tuesday evening -- severe storm bearing down on F-burg. We battened down the hatches -- in naval terms -- and holed up in the RV park's clubhouse until the threat had passed. We just had a short period of wind and rain, nothing severe. Will tomorrow threaten again?

Cheers,

Susie and Rob