Submarines

            On Sunday morning I continued placing the chords where they should go in “J’suis snob” by Boris Vian.

            I worked out all the chords for “Les capotes anglaises” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I took my stereo off the tall set of shelves at the northeast corner of my living room and put the equipment on a stool. I didn’t want to risk the amp coming crashing down when I pulled the set of shelves from the wall. I moved the stool out a bit and then the set of shelves as well until there was room for me to get behind it and clean. I vacuumed the floor, the walls and the baseboards and then I washed the walls and baseboards. While I had everything pulled out I decided to mix some oil soap and warm water and start cleaning the floor back there. There was a lot of white paint or plaster on the floor beside the baseboards and so it was time consuming scraping it off. I had planned on doing that whole section behind the shelves and getting it over with but it would have cut into lunchtime and besides that my right leg was starting to cramp and so I just did half. Since Monday would be a laundry day I would have to wait until Tuesday to finish that corner.

            I had crackers and cheese for lunch.

            I did some exercises and then took a bike ride. I extended my ride to Bloor and Ossington, then south on Ossington to Queen and home. It didn’t really bother my hip until I was a block from home.

            I talked out on the deck with my neighbour Benji and he told me that our roof neighbour Taro, who lives at the back of the next building had with his cigarette butts accidentally set fire to a plant he’d had in a pot he’d been using as an ashtray near where he sits outside his apartment. The pot apparently had woodchips or something flammable in the soil. Benji said he’d been scared because there were a lot of flames. The plant had only been about half an arms length high. I told Benji that one couldn’t call the fire department for burning outdoor plants because that’s a job for forest fire fighters and water bombers.

            For dinner I baked one of the bags of little frozen puff pastries that I’d gotten from the food bank a few weeks before. They were okay but I couldn’t really tell what they’d been stuffed with. I think it was cheese.

            I watched parts 20and 21 of Victory at Sea.

            Part 20 was about the US return to the Philippines after having been forced out by the Japanese at the beginning of the war. Really if you’ve seen one battle between the Allies and Japan in the air, in the jungle or on the sea you’ve seen them all. It’s just all a bunch of guns going off.

            In late 1941 after three centuries of Spanish rule and a generation of US “guardianship” of the Philippines, named after Philip the second of Spain, is about to declare independence when the Japanese take over. Large numbers of Filipinos are pressed into slave labour. The US retreat to Australia but in 1944 the Allies return. There is no mention that there was a large and strong resistance to the Japanese in the jungles of the Philippines by guerrilla fighters. It’s in the battle for the Philippines that the Japanese first begin to use kamikaze pilots to commit suicide by smashing their planes into Allied ships. More than 7000 Allied naval personnel were killed by kamikazes and 3,800 kamikaze pilots. It took until March 3 to clear Manila of all Japanese troops. Unlike the Japanese army the Japanese marines refused to surrender. The last Japanese holdout was in Fort Drum on an island in Manila Bay. The Allies firebombed the fort and killed everyone. The Japanese lost 336,000 in the fight for the Philippines.

            Part 21 was more interesting because it was entirely about Allied submarines and their crews. After Pearl Harbour US submarines were given licence by the Navy to destroy all Japanese ships whether combatants or not, but this was decided without the consent of the government. Their main targets were the ships of the Japanese merchant marine. More than 150,000 Japanese merchant sailors were killed by US submarines. This went against cruiser rules, which proclaimed that all unarmed ships must be given warning and allowed to abandon ship before being sunk. Also cruiser rules meant that the crew of a ship that a warship had forced to evacuate would not be left floating in lifeboats but would be taken aboard and given passage to the nearest port. All of those niceties were abandoned by submarines after Pearl Harbour.

Submariners had the most intense training. 50% of volunteers would fail to be submariners. New fleet submarines were built to patrol for up to 75 days and could cruise 22000 kilometres without refuelling. A single sub could kill an aircraft carrier. The best food in the service was served to submariners and their morale was very high. The US built four or five submarines a month.