Itchy knee, son. She go.
Started the morning in the MacArthur Auditorium (the blue bedroom, they call it) for a Terrorism/Insurgency lecture from an Undersecretary of Secretary of Defense for Policy. Not bad. But our seminars have to sit in chronological order from the front for all these lectures, and since we are #1, we have to sit in the first open row (actually the second row of chairs). They're cramped seats and rough to sit in for 90-120 minutes straight, so this morning I sat WAY the heck over in Leningrad on the left so I could stretch my long legs out to the side. Much better.
Had a Top Secret lecture on Measures and Signals Intelligence, which I hadn't seen since my days in Colorado Springs. Then I went to downtown Norfolk with Commander Shepard and Army MAJ Walmsley to the MacArthur (notice a trend) Memorial archives to work on our paper. We've decided to write about how the DoD dealt with civilian handover/interagency issues during the Korean War and see if there are any parallels with Iraq.
The story goes that the mayor of Norfolk went to Douglas MacArthur in the early 60s and told him that if his Library/Archives were sent to West Point or the Pentagon, they'd just get lost, but if he built it in Norfolk, it'd be the biggest thing in the area. The General's eyes got big, and he agreed.
The three of us poured through boxes of Archive materials, documents from the War Department, telegrams, letters, and other personal correspondence from the late 40s and early 50s. Once, it took a while to occur to me that what I was holding was a small letter signed by Dwight Eisenhower. The original! Touched by him. And today, me. Bizarre.
We had another group dinner out tonight, with about 15 of us going to an Italian restaurant near the base. Our Japanese student brought his wife, while she practiced her English and Brent Hashimoto practiced his Japanese. Meanwhile, the Marine told us about all the different...well, all the, period, really...countries in the Pacific he's been to, and the dozens of languages he sort of speaks. He did manage to teach a few of us how to count to five in Japanese (this blog entry's title, phonetically). So let's recap my military education: so far this year I've learned how to drive a bus and order a handful of melon balls should I find myself in Tokyo.
Boffo.
Had a Top Secret lecture on Measures and Signals Intelligence, which I hadn't seen since my days in Colorado Springs. Then I went to downtown Norfolk with Commander Shepard and Army MAJ Walmsley to the MacArthur (notice a trend) Memorial archives to work on our paper. We've decided to write about how the DoD dealt with civilian handover/interagency issues during the Korean War and see if there are any parallels with Iraq.
The story goes that the mayor of Norfolk went to Douglas MacArthur in the early 60s and told him that if his Library/Archives were sent to West Point or the Pentagon, they'd just get lost, but if he built it in Norfolk, it'd be the biggest thing in the area. The General's eyes got big, and he agreed.
The three of us poured through boxes of Archive materials, documents from the War Department, telegrams, letters, and other personal correspondence from the late 40s and early 50s. Once, it took a while to occur to me that what I was holding was a small letter signed by Dwight Eisenhower. The original! Touched by him. And today, me. Bizarre.
We had another group dinner out tonight, with about 15 of us going to an Italian restaurant near the base. Our Japanese student brought his wife, while she practiced her English and Brent Hashimoto practiced his Japanese. Meanwhile, the Marine told us about all the different...well, all the, period, really...countries in the Pacific he's been to, and the dozens of languages he sort of speaks. He did manage to teach a few of us how to count to five in Japanese (this blog entry's title, phonetically). So let's recap my military education: so far this year I've learned how to drive a bus and order a handful of melon balls should I find myself in Tokyo.
Boffo.
posted by Dan at 9:52 PM
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