The National Museum of the Pacific War

 

What a great long weekend we had down here!

Early Saturday morning we packed up the car with four days’ worth of luggage, food and drink supplies, and some books for car reading, and set off to visit my sister-in-law. She and her family live in the suburbs of Austin, Texas hill country, in a huge spread that holds an old house, a guest house, an in-ground pool, a separate three-room office, a barn, and six acres of land. This would be our first visit, though they’ve visited us twice since our relocation from New Jersey.

Anyway, they were wonderful and gracious hosts. They have seven-year-old twin boys, which my girls played with in the pool and on the trampoline and zip line. Saturday we swam all afternoon, then went out for some pizza listening to live music. Sunday we all journeyed to Fredericksburg, about an hour away, and spent the day shopping and eating. My brother-in-law and I and the boys spent two hours at the National Museum of the Pacific War – but more on that in a minute.

Monday, the Fourth of July, was spent tubing down the Comal River. This was the first time I’ve tubed in about forty years (and I’ll probably tube again in another forty …). It was okay. Initially the girls liked it, but it was extremely crowded and the river flowed at such a lazy pace it took us nearly three hours to float five miles. I baked in the sun for those three hours, but thanks to massive and frequent applications of sun block I only got burnt around my neck and on my inner elbows.

My old carcass was too exhausted to hop in the SUVs with everyone else to see fireworks that night so I stayed back at the guest house. After a long luxurious shower and an hour’s reading in the paradise of central air, I watched some fireworks bursting over the distant southern horizon, probably the same ones my family was watching in downtown Austin. It was a memorable night for me, as I was also thinking much Deep Thoughts.

Tuesday we celebrated my sister-in-law’s birthday and then headed out around lunchtime (they were going to Six Flags Great Adventure – her birthday present). We got home to a joyous Charlie the Jack Russell mix and relaxed in preparation for the short work week ahead.

My highlight of the visit was the trip to the National Museum of the Pacific War. It was on my bucket list of things to see / do / visit in Texas, one I compiled nearly a year and a half ago. It was also a pleasant surprise when I realized, down there, that it was only an hour’s drive a way. Texas is, after all, a huge state. Even better was that my brother-in-law, a highly intelligent man sixteen years younger than me, is a history buff and had always wanted to check the museum out. With a pair of seven-year-old boy twins, what was the downside?

So we went in at 1 pm while the ladies walked up and down Fredericksburg, a small tourist town, shopping and suffering in the hundred degree heat which we had the fortune to escape in the museum. Why Fredericksburg? Well, the town’s the boyhood home of Admiral Chester Nimitz, one of the driving forces for our victory against the Japanese in World War II. Apparently, a few decades ago, the Nimitz family donated a hotel they owned to the government to start a museum for the Admiral. This soon grew to a few other buildings over a couple of acres, and by national fiat the Museum of the Pacific War was created.

We visited the main museum. One city-block-sized floor of winding corridors filled with life-sized exhibits, memorabilia behind glass, video presentations, maps, newspapers, and other interactive features. It took us two whole hours to traverse it all, but in honesty, I did not feel the time fly by. I did feel transported back in time eighty years.

The first room held some seats like cargo boxes and a five minute “prelude to war” film played over and over, setting the tone. Then you would walk leisurely through interconnected rooms progressing chronologically through the phases of the war – the build-up, Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Midway, Guadalcanal, the island hopping strategy of Nimitz, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the death of FDR, the development and dropping of the atomic bombs, and the war’s aftermath.

My favorite exhibits were the life-size ones. The museum actually holds a Japanese midget sub (not so midget-y at a 75-foot length), a B-25 bomber, an F4 Wildcat, a Stuart tank, several guns of varying caliber, both American and Japanese, and a replica of the Fat Man atomic bomb. I took pictures of these and I will post them tomorrow.

At the gift shop at the end I spent an indecisive 15 minutes trying to find a book to purchase. I hovered over several volumes of Samuel Eliot Morrison’s official naval history of the war, but I think these need to be bought as a set somehow somewhere sometime. Instead I opted for a book on submarine warfare of World War II. The museum had a mock-up sub interior complete with periscopes (which the boys loved) where I confessed to my brother-in-law that due to claustrophobia and intense fear of drowning, I could never serve in the submarine forces had I been alive back then. So this book is to help me gain a dose of, I dunno, vicarious courage maybe.

Afterwards we went to – go figure – a German beerhouse down the street for a late lunch. Apparently Fredericksburg has a huge German contingent, dating back to before World War II. Young Chester Nimitz would find himself fighting against his … neighbors, at least indirectly. Oh well. Such is this crazy world we live in, crazy since at least eighty years ago (and probably going back a lot, lot longer than that).

Pics tomorrow …