Deep within the Germanic heart of Texas is the National Museum of the Pacific War, an all encompassing campus for sharing the story of those who served in the Pacific during World War II. It’s the kind of museum you can rush and spend a mere eight hours at; or I guess 2.5 if you don’t have my particular set of mental health disorders and obsessions.

The museum is thorough both in depth and breadth of subject, which as vast as the war was, is still wave-top level though far broader than most. The narrative tone is neutral, not attempting to take sides but rather to share events how they happened and what led them to happening. I spent a full day (9 a.m.-5 p.m.) at the museum because among my myriad mental health disorders is a need to see everything, for those with healthier brains there are shorter tour options available at the National Museum of the Pacific War website: https://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/visit

The allure of such a place would seem to be enough to draw me out of my Japanese isolation of the past few years, but I actually came for another reason and it’s why I named this article “My favorite five artifacts (which I don’t own).” My artifact collection for Teenage Life on the Japanese Home Front is currently displayed in their free temporary gallery! Along with their amazing collection, please come learn a bit about the wartime lives of teenagers serving their country and a bit more about Japanese home front life overall. I cover the stories of Iseki Sui and Iwamoto Shizue, two Nagasaki Prefecture girls who served in naval munitions factories, and other aspects of home front life such as rationing, supporting the troops, civil defense and air raids, and even touch on the student nurse assistants of Okinawa. It’ll be on display until July 30, 2023.

The museum proper begins with a prologue of the complicated and oft contentious relationship between powers in the Far East; which is essential for a proper understanding of how and why a war in the Pacific came into being. This is especially true in light of the rise of militarism alongside modernization in Japan, culminating in a militant state capable of invading its neighbors without a need to answer to their civilian government.

Events are ordered chronologically and artifact groupings convey the human aspect of war as the majority of what is displayed are human scale such as clothing, personal items and weapons. This set up is punctuated at points with larger vehicles and weapons such as the Doolittle Raid diorama with a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber launching off an aircraft carrier. In the nook beside it are the personal effects of airmen who flew that mission on aircraft such as this.

Though an American museum, I appreciate the highlight on the Australian role in the war and the blood they spilled in New Guinea. One of the unexpected highlights was seeing a battle-damaged Stuart light tank, listening to audio of the tank commander talking about how this particular tank got knocked out of action, then turning around and seeing the actual gun that knocked it out still bearing down on the tank. I can’t think of the last time I saw a non-battlefield museum have such a pairing from both combatant forces.

Along with the war chronology there are also side rooms for home front stories such as the internment of Japanese-Americans, the Texas home front and the Japanese home front.  When visiting also look out for what look like crates with drawers of smaller artifacts, it’s in one of these I came upon one of my favorite items in the museum.

A visit to the NMPW isn’t complete without stepping inside the former Nimitz Hotel for their most important personal story, that of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. Nimitz’s life is shared end to end and different from the neutral tone of the main museum, this one uses its story to encourage visitors to learn from his best qualities. While no man is perfect or above reproach, Nimitz strived to lead by example and in his life he showed humility, understanding, and respect for others. It’s for this reason there is a National Museum of the Pacific War and not a National Museum of Nimitz, he refused to sign off on a self-glorifying museum in his home town but would accept one that honored the men who served him and won the war. His respect for the Japanese people and specifically Adm. Togo Heihachiro, a role model that he was able to meet, resulted in the Japanese peace garden and replica of Togo’s detached tea house which stand on the museum grounds. (It’s worth noting Togo was also a figure who did not wish to be worshipped as a ‘war god,’ but was deified after death anyway)

Down the street is their second facility, the Pacific Combat Zone. This one is only open Friday and weekends so please plan accordingly when visiting; I visited the main museum on Sunday then came back Monday to find this part closed. This is where they do reenactments and have some of the bigger artifacts like a PT boat and TBM Avenger dive bomber.

Get On With It!
-Monty Python, 1975

My Favorite Five Artifacts

My personal favorites are not necessarily going to appeal to everyone, but appeal to me because of where I’ve been, the people I’ve met and the stories I’ve learned. These items are solid proof and reminders that the past is real and stories I’ve read happened.

Ha-19 midget submarine
Pearl Harbor

Midget submarines were two-man submarines with a pair of one-shot torpedo tubes that could be mounted to a mother ship submarine and used to sneak in close where full-sized submarines could not, such as attacks on harbors like Pearl Harbor or Darwin, Australia.

As part of the Pearl Harbor attack, five midget submarines were sent to torpedo vessels in the harbor. One was found and destroyed by World War I veteran Wickes-class destroyer USS Ward (DD-139) an hour before the main attack and the rest did no damage during the battle nor were they able to return to their mother ship submarine.

Ha-19 (No. 19) was commanded by Ens. Sakamaki Kazuo, who grounded it on a reef when the gyrocompass malfunctioned (short version). The other sailor aboard drowned and Sakamaki became Prisoner of War No. 1. Sakamaki visited the National Museum of the Pacific War in 1991 where he was reunited with his submarine after 50 years. Initially desiring to die, according to the Mainichi Shimbun, he made peace with his lot as a POW and learned English, a skill which would later serve him in good stead when he became the president of Toyota’s Brazil subsidiary.

Not to be missed is a gun sight from USS Ward (DD-139) across from Ha-19. Ward was later converted into a high-speed transport and scuttled after being crippled by a kamikaze off the Philippines in 1944, so I’m impressed there’s anything left from it.

Fu-go Fire Balloon fragment
Texas Home Front

As one of their many responses to the 1942 Doolittle Raid, Japan struck back against the Americans with an ingenious yet impractical long-range bomb. Designed at the Imperial Japanese Army Noborito laboratory (which we’ve visited), they created a 10-meter laminated washi paper balloons laden with a basket of incendiaries and ballast. These would ride the jetstream thousands of miles to the United States and indiscriminately set fire to America’s forests, destroy crops and burn cities causing panic and terror… in theory. The weapon was named fusen bakudan (“fire balloon”) or Fu-Go. To help with production, the washi paper balloons were largely made using teenage girls as workers and their high schools as the factories. Later the students would be transferred to proper munitions arsenals to live and work under very difficult circumstances.

Courtesy of the National Museum of the Pacific War

Courtesy of the National Museum of the Pacific War

More than 9,000 Fu-Go balloons were built and launched in late 1944 and 1945 but the project was a complete failure. No major fires broke out or damage was done, it’s only known casualties were a group of picnicking children and a minister’s wife. A few hundred bombs harmlessly made it to the U.S. and Canada and were being found in the wilderness as late as 1955.

The shred on display was discovered by cowboy Ivan Miller near Woodson, Texas, while checking cattle in March 1945. Despite the thousands built, this is one of only a few fu-go bits I’ve seen in a museum and I’ve told the story of the girls who made the balloon skins so many times I was glad to see their handiwork on display.

Ship Artifacts from USS Pintado, USS Foote, and USS Hugh W. Hadley

While there are several World War II destroyers and submarines that still exist to both exemplify their kind and tell their own stories, there are hundreds more who’s stories will die with them. They are remembered only in dry reports, naval lists, and the memories of the dwindling few who sailed them into harm’s way. They may not have had an amazing feat or go down in glory, but their stories are the blood, sweat and tears, that made victory possible. So I’m happy to see all of the ship and submarine artifacts here, last preserved pieces of a warship long gone. The most noticeable three are from Balao-class submarine USS Pintado (SS-387), Fletcher-class destroyer USS Foote (DD-511), and Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer USS Hugh W. Hadley (DD-774).

Pintado executed six war patrols, destroying 15 enemy vessels and rescuing a B-29 crew. Her sail is preserved before the museum entrance; fitting as Adm. Nimitz was a submariner.

USS Pintado’s sail

USS Pintado (Navsource.org)

Foote served in the Pacific from escorting Guadalcanal convoys to fighting kamikazes off Okinawa. Her mast and a mk. 15 quintuplet torpedo launcher are displayed outside the museum.

USS Foote (Navy History & Heritage Command)

Hugh W. Hadley was named for a Silver Star recipient, commander of Transport Division 12, who was killed making night runs to support Marines on Guadalcanal when his fast transport, former Wickes-class destroyer USS Little (APD-4), was sunk Sept. 5, 1942.

For 100 minutes on May 10, 1945, Hugh W. Hadley fought off 150 kamikazes, destroyed a record 23, took damage and kept fighting. Too damaged to be worth repairing, Hadley was decommissioned in 1945. The museum recreates her Combat Information Center as visitors listen to radio chatter from the kamikaze attack. What remains of her today is her score card showing the 25 total kills, her flag and commissioning pennant.

While these are three examples, there are many more spread throughout the museum so please look for them!

Oil from USS Houston
Disasters at Sea

Though I’ve studied World War II my whole life, it wasn’t until my 2010 visit to Bataan and Corregidor that I first found my niche studying that aspect of the early Pacific War. The 1941-42 Philippine Campaign was complimented by the story of a strange Allied war at sea, ABDACOM.

USS Houston (CA-30) off San Diego, California, in October 1935 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt onboard. She is flying an admiral’s four-star flag at her foremast peak and the Presidential flag at her mainmast. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph. Catalog # 53582

After the Japanese bombed the US Asiatic Fleet at Cavite, Philippines in Dec. 1941, most of the fleet was sent to sea and combined with their British, Dutch, and Australian (ABDA) counterparts to form the naval component of ABDACOM. Led by American Adm. Thomas Hart and then Dutch Adm. Conrad Helfrich, it was plagued by poor coordination and communication and offered little to stop the Japanese juggernaut other than through their destruction. Houston, a ship that was  favored by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pre-war, met its end fighting alongside Australia’s HMAS Perth at the Sunda Strait Mar. 1, 1942. Her captain, Albert H. Rooks, died in the action and received the Medal of Honor; its 368 surviving crew were taken prisoner to work and die on the Burma Death Railway.

This paperweight preserves oil from Houston and I just have to wonder at how this odd little artifact came about. Where was the oil caught and then who decided that preserving it in a paperweight was the best way to go?

Sakai Saburo’s bullet-damaged flight cap and goggles
Guadalcanal

Sakai was born into a low-class rural former samurai family and became the highest scoring Japanese ace to survive World War II with 64 kills in the A6M Zero fighter. He also had the scars, and damaged flight cap and goggles, to show how this feat almost didn’t happen.

Sakai Saburo at Hankow Airfield (Wikipedia)

On Aug. 8, 1942 Sakai was part of an attack force from Rabaul scrambled to intercept the American invasion of some island he and his squadron mates had never heard of, Guadalcanal. It would be a grueling 1100 mile round trip that would test the Zero’s range, not to mention how they would have to get that 560 miles, engage the enemy in a dogfight to protect their attacking bombers, then still have the reserves to return home. To this point, it would be the longest range fighter mission ever under taken by the Japanese.

En route he accidentally handicapped himself, opening a soda at high altitude, causing it to erupt all over his flight goggles, canopy and flight controls, a sticky, sugary mess he couldn’t fully wipe off his goggles. Approaching the embattled island, he saw his first massive American invasion flotilla, then engaged with “chubby” airplanes he’d never seen before, the Grumman F4F Wildcat. Diving out of the sun, they engaged the 18 Zeroes a ferocious dogfight.  (Despite how it can be depicted, the Zero and Wildcat were on about the same level but came from two wildly different design and flying philosophies)

Fighting with his peers wasn’t what nearly did Sakai in though, it was attacking a formation of Avenger dive bombers, with their .50 rear guns that skipped a round off his skull from under 100 yards away. He got his shots in and escaped, but now bleeding and barely conscious in a damaged Zero. What saved him as he faded out was his mother, the stoic samurai wife, shaming her son for being a wimpy, weak coward, in his dreaming mind. Dying because he’d been shot in the head at close range by a round meant to punch holes in metal is for the weak.

He’d been upside down and plummeting, but righted himself and cried the blood from his eyes to see. He made a beeline for Rabaul, still hundreds of miles away, and even managed to avoid being shot down by flak sent up from American ships. Feeling around his numb head he found the tear in his helmet and felt something… hard. Not hair or skin, but hard and sticky wet in his ungloved right hand. His goggles were also broken as was his windshield, which also meant 200 miles an hour winds were blowing directly into his face and gaping, still bleeding, exposed skull wound. He tried to plug the wound with bandages, but each time the wind ripped it from his hand before finally he was about to stop the bleeding with his silk muffler worked up into the helmet.

During the hours long flight back he faded in and out of consciousness, blind in an eye and paralyzed in his left side. Flying back then was not as it is now; fly by wire electronics, but rather a man at several hundred miles an hour, physically manhandling a craft into doing his bidding as his every movement pulled on wires and pulleys that moved control surfaces. He made it back to Rabaul without further incident.

I was practically born with a love of aviation history and knew about Sakai’s amazing feat of survival, so seeing the actual damaged gear he wore is hard to express properly. It got me excited just seeing that it still exists as a reminder of that event, and placed properly within a museum for public display giving it context within the wider war, even if the museum doesn’t share the full story in the display’s limited space. This piece was what inspired this whole article and made me think about some of the special artifacts that stood out amongst the hundreds on display. Each has a past and was involved in world events, but even in a museum like this, they can only scratch the surface of what happened to each of them. Next time you see something in a museum, look it up and its full story may be surprising.

 ADDRESS

311 E Austin St
Fredericksburg, TX 78624
https://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/

Sakai Saburo’s tale of survival is adapted from his autobiography Samurai! I already had it, but the book is also for sale in the museum gift shop.

Note- the museum also has a really impressive collection of ship models both on display and in storage; I hope someday they can have a ship model convention to show off the ones not on display.