The long haul: The Erie Canal's place in the growth of a nation

Photo by mcgmatt, via Flickr, used under Creative Commons License

Presented to the Club by Albert Easton for on Monday evening, January 16, 2012

“As a bond between the Atlantic and Western states, it may prevent the dismemberment of the American Empire.  The most fertile and extensive regions of America will avail themselves of its facilities for a market.  All their surplus productions will concentrate in the city of New York, for transportation abroad or consumption at home.  And before the revolution of a century, the whole island of Manhattan, covered with inhabitants and replenished with a dense population, will constitute one vast city.”  In 1816, when New York governor Dewitt Clinton wrote those words, James Madison was president of the new and struggling country, the United States.  His predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, had scoffed at the idea of a canal across New York State, but Madison was more neutral, and actually was persuaded to sponsor a bill in congress providing some funding.  The United States was financially exhausted, however, from the costs of the War of 1812, and the bill went nowhere.

However, Clinton was successful in persuading the New York legislature to support the canal building effort, and it became known later as “Clinton’s Ditch”.  The advocate who had sold the idea to Clinton was named Jesse Hawley.  Hawley had gone bankrupt from trying to get the huge quantities of grain he had been growing on his western New York real estate shipped to market.  It was from debtor’s prison in Canandaigua that he began his agitation for a canal along the 90 mile long Mohawk River valley, and with the help of friends (including land speculator Joseph Ellicott, who later became the first canal commissioner) sold the idea to Clinton.

The project presented enormous challenges, of course.  The total rise from the Hudson at Albany to Lake Erie is 600 feet, and the tallest locks available in 1800 could handle only 12 feet – thus a minimum of 50 locks over that 360 mile distance.  The costs would be enormous, and almost beyond the early nineteenth century imagination.  Nevertheless, the New York legislature eventually committed the then huge sum of seven million dollars to the project, and work began on the 4^th of July 1817.

Like any large financial commitment, the canal required elaborate funding.  The bill passed by the legislature established the Canal Fund, to be administered by elected officials, and funded by a loan from the state to be repaid from toll revenues.  The Canal fund also received revenue from the sale of state land near the proposed canal route, and the inevitable state lotteries.  Taxes designated for the Canal fund were on those who would benefit most from it: salt (it was plentiful in the canal region, and expensive to ship without it), steamboat travel (expected to increase greatly on the Hudson) and land within 25 miles of the proposed canal route.

The site for the start of work was well chosen.  The area from Rome, New York to Utica is fairly level, and a stretch of about 15 miles could be completed without locks, thus enabling a part of the canal to be put in to service the year after it was built.  This, of course, helped to sell the rest of the building effort.  The original canal was cut 40 feet wide, and 4 feet deep, with the removed soil piled on the downhill side to form a tow path.  Canal boats, then, could be up to 3.5 feet in draft, and pulled by horses or mules on the towpath.

There was only one towpath, generally on the north side of the canal.  When canal boats met, the boat with the right-of-way steered to the towpath side, and the other boat steered to the opposite side.  The driver of the mules on the right-of-way boat brought his mules to the canal side of the towpath while the other driver took the other side of the path and stopped his team.  The rope would go slack as the boat continued on by momentum.  The right-of-way team would step over the slack rope; the right of way boat would pass over it, and both would continue on.

As you might expect in any massive project, there were a lot of problems that had to be dealt with in building the canal.  The digging wasn’t all through marsh or farmland – some cuts had to be made through hard limestone, all with little more than the power of the muscles of men and animals.  Fairly often, the route of the canal cut a farm in half, and the state had to provide bridges over the canal.  In an effort to keep expenses down (and minimize the problem of getting livestock over the bridge), the bridges were not very high.  Not only did this put limits on the size of boats that could travel the canal, but it also resulted in the famous cry of: “Low Bridge, Everybody Down”.  Anyone caught on the high part of the deck as it passed under a bridge would have suffered unpleasant consequences.

There were some other difficulties in building the canal.  Dependable water sources had to be found to keep the canal and the locks full in all those seasons when the canal was open (it froze in winter, of course), and in several cases, aqueducts had to be built to provide them.  Aqueducts also had to be built to carry the canal itself over rivers and streams that were not active sources of water.  Not only did these aqueducts have to carry water, they had to provide for a towpath, so they were combination aqueducts and bridges.  The aqueduct over the Mohawk River from Rexford to Schenectady was one of the longest – 610 feet, but there were many others. 

The United States had no one who called himself a civil engineer before the building of the canal.  All the several geniuses who designed and managed the work were amateurs – lawyers, storekeepers, but later deservedly considered engineers.  None had seen firsthand the canals of Europe, but had to rely on written accounts of their design and operation.

The expertise of the engineers in this massive building effort would have meant nothing without the efforts of huge numbers of laborers.  While most of the canal laborers were native born, or immigrants from various other countries, canal folklore revolves around those who were Irish immigrants.  The Irish immigrants were more often single men without families, and tended to form their own social group.  Pay for the laborers was quite generous, and sometimes included room, board, and liquor.   The work was steady, but necessarily seasonal, and many found the winters hard to endure without any income.

All work for laborers was hard in the early 19^th century, and canal work was no exception.   Massive charges of gunpowder were used to help channel through some of the rocks, and attendant injuries were not infrequent.  In the course of building a channel through the swamp around the finger lakes, over a thousand were stricken with what appears to have been a mosquito-borne disease, and many died.

But all in a good cause.  On October 26, 1825, the canal was finally completed.  A fleet set out from Buffalo on October 6 headed by the boat Seneca Chief.  The Seneca Chief carried a large party of dignitaries, headed of course, by Governor Clinton, and was met along the way with celebratory cannon fire at its many stops.  It did not end its journey at Albany, but continued down the Hudson to New York, a trip totaling 500 miles.  There, in New York harbor, Governor Clinton emptied two barrels of water from Lake Erie into the ocean, in a ceremony that came to be called “The Wedding of the Waters.”

Many sections of the canal had been open for some time when the full length opened in October 1825, and commercial traffic was already well established.  Canal boats were capable of carrying 30 tons of freight, and this was a vast improvement over any form of overland transportation.  Eastbound cargos frequently consisted of lumber from the still nearly virgin forests of the Midwest, and grain from the Midwestern farms.  Westbound the traffic was usually manufactured goods from the quickly growing factories of the Northeast.

Passenger traffic began to increase too.  The trip by canal boat across the state was not only quicker, but far more comfortable than a trip by horse or stagecoach.  The boats were about 15 feet wide and forty feet long.  A special attraction for travelers was the food on board.  Here is a description from a boat captain:   "Breakfast: The meal may consist of a pike or bass, fresh caught on my overnight trawl line, a steak, bacon, sausage and ham;  a platter of scrambled eggs, boiled cabbage and squash, bread (both corn and white), pancakes (both wheat and buckwheat) with sorghum, maple, or honey to choice, and to wash all down, coffee, tea, milk, and cider.  Dinner will be heartier."

The journey across the state took several days, and passengers slept on board.  Here is a description from David Wilkie whose Sketches of a Summer Trip to New York and the Canadas describes his journey in the early summer of 1834:

There was a good company on board, considering the size of our vessel – about thirty gentlemen, and half as many ladies.  Four steps broad and 21 feet long was the size of our sleeping and dining cabin, and here, a score and a half of us had to be stowed away.  When we descended from deck between 8 and 9 o’clock, before the retiring hour, we found all the sleeping apparatus displayed in full form. On each side of the long narrow space were hung three tiers of canvas-bottomed frames, hardly broad enough to allow the occupant to stretch himself on his back, and three lengthwise, in all, affording accommodation for eighteen, and our surplus number had to betake themselves to the more humble couch afforded by the floor.



Our berths were allotted to us by precedence as our names were placed on the way-bill. When each cognomen was sung out by the captain, the individual doffed boots, coat and vest, and hoisted himself into place.  I contrived with little difficulty to crawl into my lair, and although enjoying less room, I believe, than if I had been a mummy in one of the pyramids, I passed a very unconscious and refreshing night.  

Wilkie was fortunate to have traveled in decent weather.  Many travelers complained of the excessive heat and stuffiness of the canal boat sleeping quarters.

Once the canal was opened, the problems of maintenance and repair began.  There were two kinds of problems – too much water and too little.  Actually, the results of both were the same.  Too much water caused breaks in the canal wall that ultimately left boats high and dry.  Walkers were assigned to pass along the tow path looking for weak spots that might cause problems at the next time of high water.  Inability for boats to move through the canal was a serious problem, of course.  An upstate newspaper from the 1830’s describes one such occurrence: “The break in the canal early last Saturday gave a few hundred canal men a rest they didn’t want, and cost them a lot of money they couldn’t afford to lose.  The lay-up came in the way of a bonanza of restfulness to horses and crews, but it was as welcome as sulfuric torments to the owners who saw drivers and steersmen with hearty appetites for corned beef and cabbage and horses eating their heads off in solemn ease with their noses buried in hay or oats.”

The reference to corned beef and cabbage, of course, is proof that many of the Irish laborers who had built the canal later became its steersmen, drivers and captains.  Canal men very often had no wives or families, they too seldom stayed in one place.  In Chapter 54 of Moby-Dick, Melville describes two canalers who have shipped on as part of the crew of a whale boat, the Town-Ho, and are the first to follow and last to abandon the rebellious Steelkilt in his attempt at mutiny.  Canal men were considered a tough lot.  One observer was quoted as saying “The boys who drive the horses [on the canal] are the most profane beings on the face of this whole earth, without exception.”

Then, also, the folklore of the canal is full of tales of the fearful storms that took place.  These are part of that staple of 19^th century humor, the tall tale.  Consider this example from Mark Twain in Roughing It:

On the Erie Canal it was, all on a summer’s day, I sailed forth with my parents, far away to Albany.

From out the clouds at noon that day there came a dreadful storm, that piled the billows high about and filled us with alarm.

Our captain cast one glance astern, then forward glanced he, and said my wife and little ones, I nevermore shall see.

The exaggeration we are supposed to swallow is that storms on the canal were as fearful as those at sea.  They were not pleasant of course, because breaks could occur in the canal wall, stranding boats.  But with a depth of only four feet, there weren’t likely to be a lot of drownings.

We need to understand the canal as more like a road than a waterway.  Its purpose was never to move or provide water, but to move people and goods from one place to another using the only motive power then available – draft animals.  At this it was quite effective, but looming on the horizon was the next great technological wonder of the 19^th century – steam power.  In 1807, many years before the canal was started, Robert Fulton’s steamboat had begun commercial service on the Hudson from New York to Albany.  In fact, Fulton was a member of the first canal commission, and a strong supporter.  Fulton’s steamboat, the Clermont, made the trip from New York to Albany in 32 hours on a regular basis.  By the 1830’s, helped by the extra traffic generated by the canal, there were over a hundred steamboats making the run and the time was down to ten hours. 

It was inevitable that steam power should next be applied to overland travel – by use of railroads.  In fact the Erie Canal spawned the earliest American railroad, the Mohawk and Hudson line, between Albany and Schenectady.  There is a rise of 215 feet between the two cities, and in the 19^th century this required 27 locks.  The journey of 16 miles between the two cities took a full day.  This was fine and acceptable for commercial cargoes.  It was most convenient that they be loaded from river to canal transportation only once.  But for passengers this added an extra and unnecessary day.  Even by horse or couch the journey was much quicker overland.  But as soon as the canal opened, a company was formed by, among others, Stephen Van Rensselaer, the patron and owner of most of Albany County, to operate a railroad over the route.  The railroad, chartered as the Mohawk and Hudson, began service in 1831, using a steam engine and cutting the time of passage down to 40 minutes. 

Other railroads quickly followed.  By 1842, the Boston and Albany line was moving goods and people from New England to the canal, and about the same time a line from Albany to Buffalo paralleled the canal.  For moving goods, it could not compete well on cost, but it was much faster because it avoided all the lock time that canal transportation required.

So the railroads and the canal and the nation grew up together.  The canal was widened and deepened in 1862, and in 1903 the entire canal was replaced by the barge canal.  The barge canal made some material changes in the route.  For example, instead of paralleling the Mohawk River, canal traffic now travels on it from Schenectady to Little Falls. There is, of course, no longer a towpath.  Vessels using the canal must now supply their own motive power.  And the locks have become much higher than they could have been in the original canal.  There are now only 8 locks between Albany and Schenectady.  More pleasure boats than commercial boats use the canal these days, but it is still open all the way from Albany to Buffalo.

Some authors on the canal put more emphasis on the role of the canal in the development of the nation than it may deserve.   It is certainly true that the city of Chicago and the entire Midwest went through a period of tremendous growth in the 1830’s and 40’s, and much of this was made possible by the canal.  But given the resources of the prairies, that growth was inevitable, and would have occurred with the help of the railroads, although perhaps somewhat later.  In any case, the canal was a triumph of American industry and ingenuity, and is an important part of our history.

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The mark of a champion: Vince Lombardi and the Green Bay Packers

Presented to the Club by Erik Bruun on Monday evening, December 12, 2011









1. If you can walk, you can run



The best athlete I have ever known was a friend from college named Henry Fox. Henry had been the New England cross-country ski champion in high school. When I became a coxswain on the Trinity College freshman crew team, Henry was the strongest rower on the Trinity varsity lightweight team, the fastest lightweight boat in the country. He was the kind of person an underclassman like me aspired to be. He was funny, enthusiastic and drove himself incredibly hard. One of his favorite ways to push himself on a run was to pick a spot 100 feet away and hold his breath tightly until he reached the destination, his lungs exploding for oxygen upon arrival.



Henry loved to recite Vince Lombardi sayings and stories. "If you can walk, you can run," he crooned with delight. He told of a time Lombardi's Green Bay Packers played a particularly lackluster first half. As the players waited in the locker room, dreading the fury of their notoriously fiery coach, Lombardi instead opened the door, stuck his head in and with a surprised look declared: "Oh, I'm sorry. I was looking for the men's room." He closed the door and left, letting the players stew in their own shortcomings. The Packers stormed back on to the field and won the game.



Until last summer, Henry's stories about Lombardi were about as much knowledge I had about the legendary coach, other than the cartoon-like mythology of the NFL. To me, Lombardi was a string of clichés. When a theatrical group came to Great Barrington to work out the kinks on their pending Broadway production about Vince Lombardi, they offered to donate proceeds of their opening performance to Monument Mountain High School. A friend asked me to go and having nothing else to do that evening, I went. This was not a play about football, it was about the struggle to achieve perfection, knowing that it is not going to be reached, but embracing the full depths of that struggle. Vince Lombardi, I thought, is a perfect Monday Evening topic. The play was based on the book When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss. It is the primary source for this paper. The title of this paper comes from a saying of Lombardi’s: “The mark of a champion is not whether you fall, it is whether you get back up again.”



2. The Smallness of Reality



Vince Lombardi was born June 11, 1913, the eldest of five children to Matilda and Harry Lombardi in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, New York. His parents, immigrants from southern Italy, were devout Catholics from large, bustling families. Matty was known as a perfectionist, demanding high standards from all her children. Harry left his home every morning at 4:30 to a slaughterhouse on Manhattan's West Side. His job was to haul sides of meat. Tattooed across the knuckles of his two large hands were the words "Work" and "Play," two themes that marked his son's life.



Vince Lombardi's youth revolved around family, religion and sports. He was a strong, determined athlete, known more for his drive than his athletic talents. Lombardi was ambitious. When he spent a week working alongside his father in the Meat District, he quit, vowing not to end up doing manual labor. His parents wanted him to become a lawyer. Lombardi used football to get into Fordham University, then a powerhouse in the national college football scene. On the first day of practice, the head coach moved Lombardi from fullback to offensive guard, a position that called more for aggressiveness than size, which Lombardi really did not possess.



Lombardi took subways for an hour and a half each way to Fordham, a Jesuit school. One of his favorite classes was an enormously popular course on ethics. Lombardi seriously considered becoming a priest. The university imposed tight discipline. When Lombardi finally broke into the starting line as a junior, he was suspended for fighting when a fellow player jokingly called him a "dago" in the locker room. Lombardi erupted in fury, lunging at his teammate. Fortunately, he was reinstated on to the team the next year, becoming one of the legendary "Seven Blocks of Granite" that anchored Fordham's run as the national champion. Lombardi, however, was considered the slowest and least talented of the seven. When the season ended, his career as a football player also came to an end.



Lombardi wanted to get into the business world, but this was the Depression and he struggled to find work for two years before landing a job as a teacher and assistant coach at a small Catholic private school in Englewood, New Jersey, called St. Cecilia. He had recently married his wife Marie Planitz, but was frustrated by his slow start and the realization that his career might be centered around a game. His deep ambition transferred into an extraordinary drive to win. He was embarked on a similar struggle as the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, to reconcile "the intolerable disparity between the hugeness of their desire and the smallness of reality."



3. A Way to Live With Defeat



Lombardi learned how to be a teacher at St. Cecilia. In the classroom, he started with the basics — to teach to the slowest students and then build their knowledge up from there. He coached both basketball and football. Early in his 8-year tenure, the head football coach asked Lombardi to give the pep talk to the team before the game started. Lombardi went into a frenzy. "You haven't done anything for me this week," he roared at them. "Now go out there and show me what you've got!" The players stormed on to the field, ready to run through brick walls. Lombardi gave every pre-game speech after that. He soon became head coach, leading the best high school football team in New Jersey to 27 victories and 3 losses under his leadership. "I don't want any good losers around here," he told his players. "Good losing is just a way to live with yourself. It's a way to live with defeat."



Lombardi's success brought him into the college ranks, returning to Fordham as an assistant coach for two years and then to West Point where he was an assistant to Colonel Red Blaik for five years. General Douglas MacArthur took a strong personal interest in West Point's football team. While leading American forces in Korea northward to the Chinese border, MacArthur wrote long letters to Blaik offering advice on pending games. Lombardi often went to the New York City Waldorf Astoria Hotel to brief the general on the team's status, MacArthur in turn delivered talks to Lombardi on the paramount importance of victory at all costs. Blaik taught Lombardi how to run a professional organization, exacting high standards and imposing tight discipline. He introduced Lombardi on how to use films to study opposing teams.



In 1951, however, West Point went through one of its worst scandals when it was discovered that almost the entire football team had been cheating. Players informed each other on test questions, a blatant violation of the college's honor code. The scandal was national news and virtually every player was expelled from the school. There is no evidence that Lombardi knew anything about the violations until after the fact, but his sympathies clearly went to the players. As an immigrant son, he associated himself with the struggling up-and-comers that distinguished West Point's football players. He worked the phones with other college coaches to help players get into other universities. Lombardi also joined Blaik in not resigning. They knew that they would now have a terrible team, perhaps for years to come. Lombardi pushed the new players for perfection, and after two years West Point once again had a winning record.



The owner of the New York Giants, Wellington Mara, had been a classmate and acquaintance of Lombardi's at Fordham. Mara fired his coaching staff in 1954, and he hired Lombardi to be the offensive coordinator under head coach Jim Lee Howell. Lombardi was in his early 40s and ached to become a head coach. Mara implied that he would succeed Howell one day. Howell hired a promising young coach named Tom Landry as defensive coordinator. Landry and Lombardi respected each other, but they were not friends and they were very different. Lombardi had a brilliant, embracing smile; Landry a dour, distant grim. "You could hear Vince laughing from five blocks away," Mara said. "You couldn't hear Landry from the next chair." Both were extremely talented coaches and super competitive.



In his first year, the Giants scored 264 points, the most in the NFL. Lombardi gained a reputation as a sporting intellectual. The New York Daily News ran a photo spread with a large photo of Lombardi and a one-word headline "THINK!" Lombardi was no simple jock. Trained as a priest, and failing to enter law or business, Lombardi applied professionalism to his task and he demanded his players do the same. His signature play was the power sweep in which the ball is handed off to the running back who “sweeps” to the left or right. Every player takes on specific assignments to clear a path for him to run through. The play calls for aggressiveness, precise teamwork, and individual flexibility. These were Lombardi's trademarks. He once delivered an 8-hour talk about the power sweep and the various ways the play could unfold.



In 1958, the Giants lost the championship game in sudden death to the Baltimore Colts 23 to 17. Some people still call it the best game in football history. It was also Lombardi's last game with the Giants. The Green Bay Packers in way-off Wisconsin had offered Lombardi the job of head coach. The team, which is still the only NFL team owned by its community, had just gone through a season of one victory and ten losses. They wanted a change. Mara — who adored Lombardi--recommended he take the job. The news merited a single-paragraph notice in The New York Times.



4. A God-forsaken Place



Lombardi made an immediate impact on the Packers. The team’s committee-like ownership and governance structure had led to easy-going standards and an unfocused approach. Lombardi demanded and received total control of the team. He embraced that authority with a deep fullness, bringing a completely new attitude to the team. “You defeat defeatism with confidence,” Lombardi said, “and confidence comes from the man who leads. You just have it. It is not something you get. You have to have it right here in your belly.” Lombardi was driven to win, but he embraced losing as a learning opportunity. He was consistently harder on his teams if they won playing sloppy football, then if they lost but made a strong effort.

In his first year as head coach, the Packers were 7 and 5. Lombardi won Coach of the Year. The Associated Press declared of the national poll “Vinnie, Vidi, Vici — NFL’s Top Coach.” Lombardi coached the Packers for nine years. They won the national championship five times (1961, ‘62, ‘65, ‘66 and ‘67), including his final three seasons as head coach, which also corresponded with the first two Super Bowls. His string of championships still reigns as the greatest championship streak in professional football. When he died in 1970 from colon cancer, having retired after the 1967 season, the NFL named the Super Bowl championship trophy after Lombardi.



Lombardi started each season from scratch, as if he were teaching a class again at St. Cecilia. Winning a championship season meant knocking his team back to the ground the next season. “Gentlemen,” he declared from the front of the room at the team’s first pre-season meeting, “this is a football.” To which veteran championship player Max McGee once responded: “Uh, coach could you slow down a little. You’re going too fast for us.”



The story of the Green Bay Packers and Lombardi coincided with the emergence of football as a national sport, broadcast into living rooms across the country with the growing popularity of television. Football was an almost ideal sport for television’s format with commercial breaks, zoom-in lenses and the struggles the game evoked. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle was a former marketing man and he understood football’s appeal and also Lombardi’s. Lombardi personified a deeply American story. The son of immigrants rising from obscurity through hard work and self-discipline, Lombardi went into the American heartland to lift a struggling team to victory through those very same traits. When Lombardi first went to Green Bay as a Giants coach, he told his wife that it was “a God-forsaken” place. But for him, it proved to be a place of opportunity, offering the right ingredients to bring his own life story to success. Lombardi set the tone for national football’s rise to prominence, and also represented the American ideal around hard work, determination and fair play.



5. “The Man Believes in Me”



One of Lombardi’s long-time players described Lombardi as “the biggest asshole in the world.” Experiencing him at work was often like watching tyranny in action. Having gone through the honeymoon period with the national press, articles later emerged portraying Lombardi as an arrogant bully. Lombardi pushed his players to the limits of their own endurance. These were tough, tough men. Linebacker Ray Nitschke grew up homeless and claimed to have beaten someone up every day of his teenage years. The sons of Pennsylvania miners, New England mill workers and prison convicts, football players threw themselves on the field with incredible violence. Lombardi said that football was not a contact sport, it was a collision sport. He used his own role as the authority figure to drive players’ aggression, converting it into an opportunity to become a stronger person. Almost every Green Bay Packer player said that they went through episodes of hating Lombardi.



When players appealed to Lombardi’s wife for help, Marie let them in on a secret. Her husband only yelled at players if he liked them. They should be worrying if he wasn’t yelling in their face, she told them. Many Packers came to love Lombardi. Bart Starr and Paul Horning adored him as a father figure. Lombardi’s secretary with the Packers described him as a “real softie.” One player, Em Tunnel, told a reporter “I’d get out of this town if it wasn’t for Vince. He’s the kind of guy you have to cuss out once a week when you are alone, but nobody else can cuss him out to me. In my heart, I know what he is.”



When friends and colleagues pointed out unfair things Lombardi had done, he often went to great lengths to make amends. He may have believed in tearing his players down, but he was brilliant in building them back up. Vincent Lombardi loved his players. “On this team, there is great love,” he said. “Anybody can love something that is beautiful or smart or agile. You will never know love until you can love something that isn’t beautiful, isn’t bright, isn’t glamorous. It takes a special person to love something unattractive, someone unknown. That is the test of love. Everybody can love someone’s strengths and somebody’s good looks. But can you accept someone for his inabilities?”



In 1965 the Detroit Lions clobbered the Packers in the first half 21 to 3. Detroit lineman Alex Karres yelled at Lombardi as they were returning to their locker rooms at half time: “Whadaya think of that, ya big fat wop!” Surprisingly, the players were more upset than Lombardi. Rather than yell in frustration, Lombardi stepped on a foot locker and delivered a speech on loyalty. “Win, lose or draw, you are my football team,” he concluded. “You are the Green Bay Packers and you have your pride!” These hardened, beaten up men misted up, went back on the field and stomped on the Lions for a 31 to 21 victory.



When the Packers lost a game to the Baltimore Colts, rookie Willie Wood was burned for nine catches and more than 100 yards trying to keep up with Raymond Berry. His teammates teased Wood mercilessly, predicting his career would come to an end that week. But Lombardi took the rookie to the side and told him “Don’t you believe anything those fellows say. You’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here with me. Every one of those guys making fun of you has had the same thing happen to them. You’re going to be here as long as I’m here.” Wood, who later entered the NFL Hall of Fame, told Lombardi’s biographer “Lombardi gave me confidence when he did that. I said, ‘What I’m doing has got to be right because the man believes in me.’”



Wood was one of four black players on the Packers at that time. This was in the very early days of integration in national sports and in Green Bay blacks represented .01 percent of the county’s total population. Lombardi later said that he did not have black players or white players, with the Packers he only had green players. This was more than a trite truism. Restaurants and bars in Green Bay were warned that if any of them refused to serve black football players, no players would be allowed to frequent their establishments. During his first year as the Packer head coach, he delivered a speech on racism to his team. “If I ever hear nigger or dago or kike or anything like that around here, regardless of who you are, you’re through with me. You can’t play for me if you have any kind of prejudice.” Lombardi avoided games played in the South where Jim Crow laws would split the players into different accommodations. When this was impossible, he used his old army connections to arrange for housing on military bases so the team would stay together.



Tolerance ran deep in the Lombardi family. When his younger bachelor brother Harold Lombardi who was in his 40s living in San Francisco wrote their father a letter that he was gay, Harold dreaded the return letter. This was in the early 1960s when society viewed homosexuality as a disease. But when Harold opened the envelope, his father simply wrote: “I don’t care. You are my son.” Vincent Lombardi knew his brother was gay and never gave any indication to anyone that this was an issue.



“Vincent Lombardi,” Willie Wood said “was the fairest man I’ve ever known.”



6. The Greatest Mistake of Your Life



Lombardi was driven to win. He no sooner savored a victory with a party at his house, then his mood turned sour as he thought about the next week’s game. He left the party and went into the basement to watch films on the next opposing team until the early morning. It was such a predictable event that his family called it the Cinderella hour. Lombardi’s obsession with winning did not justify doing anything to win, however. He did not allow cheap shots. Winning was the outcome of his drive to achieve perfection. Winning also meant making sacrifices, something Lombardi often said, rarely noting what his own sacrifices were. But his obsession led to unfortunate imbalances in other parts of his life.



Marie told a visiting writer in the 1960s “I wasn’t married to him a week when I said to myself, Marie Planitz, you have made the greatest mistake of your life,” he told the surprised interviewer. “I found out what to do. When it gets so bad I that I can’t stand it, I stand right up to him and he backs off.”



The Lombardi household was an unhappy household. Marie was usually alone at home and when her husband was home, football was often the only thing on his mind. Drinking problems plagued her throughout her life. The couple had two children, Vincent Henry and Susan. Visitors often noted a tension inside the family. A friend of Susan’s later said it was a home of sadness. “It was a sad house as soon as you walked in, empty. You could feel the family void.” Although Vince Lombardi’s parents attended all of their son’s games when he was a player in high school and at Fordham and even afterwards when he became a coach, Vince Lombardi never went to his son’s games. The son longed for his father’s approval, but when he declared that he wanted to follow his father’s footsteps and become a coach, Vince Lombardi was furious. “You can do that, but I will not spend one dollar to support you,” he said. Lombardi wanted his son to become a lawyer, just as his parents had wished for him. Nonetheless, the son played football and received tongue lashings for his play, even when he did well. When he was injured, the legendary coach ripped into his son for falling short, bringing tears to the boy’s eyes.



Susan Lombardi felt herself to be almost a non-person to her father. He insisted on bringing her on the road for away games, but never interacted with her. She was left alone in hotel rooms and sent to the stands to watch the football games, thousands of miles away from her friends and an even greater distance in her own eyes from her father.



But the coach was not a complete goon at home. He loved to practice magic tricks and was notoriously bad at them. He relaxed by watching McHale’s Navy and cleaning closets. A friend of Susan’s recalled a time when Lombardi took his daughter and a bunch of her friends, all around 20 years old, out on the town to a bunch of restaurants and bars in Green Bay. “I danced with Mr. Lombardi,” Mary Jo Antil recalled. “I can still see him doing the locomotion and the watusi. He was totally out of his realm, and he enjoyed it immensely.”



In the off-season, golf was almost as much of an obsession to Lombardi as football was during the season. The difference was that he was a bad player in golf and no matter how hard he tried, he could not get better. In football, Lombardi could use the skills and talents of his players to extend beyond his own limitations. It allowed him to become greater than himself in a way that he could not do alone on the field of sports, or at home with his family.



7. The Shadow Self and the Real Self



Vincent Lombardi got up early every morning to go to mass. He prayed every time that he would gain control of his temper and be a better husband. But every day he went to work and lost his temper. He then went home and struggled to be a man connected to his family. Prayer was the essence of his religious practice. He exercised it with the same discipline he invoked in sports. Lombardi did not call upon God to win football games, but he did bring the same fundamental principles the Jesuits taught him to the task of winning. Repetition, discipline, clarity, faith, subsuming individual ego to a larger good were extensions of his religious faith.



Lombardi kept old black wooden rosary beads dating back to high school in his coat pocket and he carried a bible wherever he went. It was the Holy Name Edition of the Catholic Bible, which had been given to him as a gift. Inside were two black-and-white photographs of his children Vincent and Susan. Neither child knew the photographs existed or were constantly in his clutches. Years later Vincent said of his father: “He went to mass to repent for his anger. He thought, I’ve got this temper. I fly off the handle and offend people. I apologize. But it’s this temper that keeps me on edge and allows me to get things done and people do things. Life was a struggle for him. He knew he wasn’t perfect. He had a lot of habits that were far from perfect. His strengths were his weaknesses, and vice versa. He fought it by taking the paradox to church. It went back to the Jesuits and the struggle between the shadow self and the real self — your humanity and your divinity. He saw that struggle in clear and concrete terms.”



8. The Mark of a Champion



The Green Bay Packers played the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day in 1961. The Packers were undefeated going into the game, but Detroit had a brutal defense, anchored by a pair of 300-pound interior linemen named Roger Brown and the previously mentioned Alex Karras. The Lions leapt to a very fast 26 to 0 lead and the defense was absolutely pulverizing the Packer offense. Quarterback Bart Starr was getting sacked on almost every drive. Offensive lineman Fuzzy Thurston said this was the game in which he perfected the so-called “lookout block,” a maneuver in which he would look over his shoulder and yell “Look out, Bart!” By the time the fourth quarter arrived the Packers still had not scored and it was clear they were going to lose. Starr turned to his bruised and bloodied wide receivers and asked if any of them could get open. The ball-hungry players normally pestered Starr to throw to them, but not this time. Max McGee answered “Bart, why don’t you just throw an incomplete pass and nobody’ll get hurt.” The joke lightened the mood and the Packers scored two more touchdowns, not nearly enough to win, but to make the rest of the game bearable.



This would become a championship season for the Packers and Lombardi did not give up on his team. In fact, Lombardi saw the defeat as an opportunity. He gathered his team around him and told them: “Let it be an example to all of us. The Green Bay Packers are no better than anyone else when they aren’t ready, when they play as individuals and not as one…. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

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What would Thomas Paine do?

Presented to the Club on Monday evening, Nov. 14, 2011 by Charles F. Sawyer

In 1989, I delivered my first paper to the Monday Evening Club. The subject of the paper concerned the implications of a book written by Bill McKibben, entitled “The End of Nature." Published that year, after having been serialized in the New Yorker, it is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has been printed in more than twenty languages. A recent updated version was published in 2006. The message of the book was that true nature, which was independent of human influence, has been replaced by an artificial nature that had been created by the actions and interactions of human beings. He pointed out that human activity had changed the chemistry of the atmosphere, with enormous implications for the quality of life in the future. He pointed out that our influence on climate, with changing temperatures and sea levels would likely lead to less predictable and more violent weather events. McKibben’s discussion of the issues presented by these changes was both broad and detailed and illustrated in both scientific and human terms. He listed possible consequences of environmental degradation including floods and famine, worsening asthma and hay fever. He points out that we way in which we live, with our cars, our houses, plastics and pesticides, are as much a part of our world as the trees, waters and hills that are the natural landscape. He takes the position that we will have decide between our material world and the natural world. He envisions a “humbler world” where we would make do with less and thus take a less dominant position with relation to nature and where nature might once again establish itself as independent and constant. In the end, he does not think that likely. He sees a managed world, in which human beings control the climate, genetics and ecology as the most likely scenario, short of ecological catastrophe.

This being my first paper delivered to the Club, I recall wondering how it would be received. My memory is that the book, and thus the paper, was considered by several members to be a polemic and, as such, somewhat out of the mainstream o f papers. I would be interested to see how the Club would receive it today. I may get the chance, because my paper deals in large part with the questions and concerns treated in a recently published book entitled “Fool Me Twice – Fighting the Assault on Science." Let me tell you about the journey that took me to that book.

Last summer I was sitting on the porch at Wahconah Country Club [Dalton, MA], having just finished a round of golf. I had played with one of my regular partners and a local high school science teacher, whom he had invited. It had been a pleasant day and we were having drinks and talking about nothing in particular. Somehow, and I don’t recall how, the conversation turned to a discussion of the teacher’s science classes and the teaching of evolution. As the conversation went on I realized that he was telling us that he managed to include some version of intelligent design into the curriculum. I couldn’t just sit there and listen as he went on, so I jumped right in. As I did so, I thought “whoa.” I’m not sure that I’m equipped to defend and discuss the theory of evolution, something that I didn’t think needed defending. Me, the history major, who had jumped the science ship as soon as I was permitted to.

I actually think I did OK, talking about natural selection, carbon testing, archeological findings and what science means by the idea of a “theory.” Later, however, as I thought about all of this, I was not only

troubled by the idea that the latest iteration of creationism was being snuck into high school science class, but by my own ignorance and inability to intelligently discuss something so fundamentally important. If I, a college and law school graduate, a person interested in politics and current events, a daily reader and watcher of the news, was so limited in my understanding of evolution, considered to be the foundation for an understanding of modern biology, what was the state of general understanding? I was determined to be more informed, in no small part I must admit, so that I would be better armed for the next creationist. That led me to buy a book by Richard Dawkins entitled “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.” In the book, Dawkins takes on creationists, including followers of “intelligent design” and all those who question the fact of evolution through natural selection. He uses living examples of natural selection in birds and insects, radioactive data that calibrate a timescale for evolution, the fossil record and the traces of our earliest ancestors and confirmation from molecular biology and genetics. I now felt somewhat more learned, and prepared.

My journey was moved forward by several current events. I think we all have become increasingly aware of the issue of global warming and climate change. And much has been learned and explored since Bill McKibben’s book, 22 years ago. The events of this year have, I think, been particularly significant in raising our attention level. I refer to tornadoes that have raced across the country, not only in what we consider the tornado belt, but here in western Massachusetts with the June 1 tornado that hit Springfield. The National Weather Service has concluded that this has been the deadliest year of tornadoes since 1936. I also refer to the drought that has persisted in Texas and would appear to become the worst on record. And we can’t forget about hurricane Irene and the 100 year flood events that accompanied her.

Now I think we are all mindful of the fact that weather and climate are two different things and that there have always been extreme weather events that do not represent an accurate picture of the actual climate. However, we are being presented with more and more scientific information that supports the fact of global warming, if not climate change. I read recently about a prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming who spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right. Temperatures really had risen. The study of the world’s temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action in part because of “Climategate,” a scandal involving hacked emails of British scientists. He found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950’s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. His ultimate finding of a warming world was presented at a conference in Santa Fe, NM in late October. One quarter of the $600,000 to do the research came from the Charles Koch Foundation, whose founder is a major funder of skeptic groups and the Tea Party. The Koch bothers, Charles and David, run a large privately held company involved in oil and other industries, producing sizeable greenhouse gas emissions.

Muller’s research team carefully examined two chief criticisms by skeptics, One is that weather stations are unreliable. The other is that cities, which create heat islands, were skewing the temperature analysis. These factors were considered and accounted for in the final analysis. Muller asserted that the temperature rise that had been previously reported had been done without bias. I saw that Muller had recently written a piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, a place friendly to skeptics. There he pointed out that in his research he did not address the cause of global warming, although he did say that it makes sense to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide created by fossil fuels. He did not think that the threat was as proven as the Nobel Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is.

What caught my attention in reading one article about Muller’s work was a reference to Shawn Lawrence Otto, author of the book “Fool Me Twice” that criticizes science skeptics. He noted that Muller should expect to be harshly treated by global warming deniers. “Now he’s considered a traitor,” Otto said. “For the skeptic community, this isn’t about data or fact. It’s about team sports. He’s been traded to the Indians. He’s playing for the wrong team now.” I went out and bought Otto’s book.

In a 2006 Alaska gubernatorial debate, Sarah Palin came out in favor of teaching both evolution and creationism in science class, saying, “Teach both. You know, don’t be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it’s so valuable in our schools.”

The central question that Otto raises is one that is as old as the republic. Are we Americans well informed enough to be trusted with our own governance? More specifically, are we going to use true science, and the scientific method, to understand and engage with such important issues as climate change, population growth and food supply. Despite the crises we are and will be confronting, political discourse in the United States in the last decade has seen a reactionary pullback from science and reason, as manifested in the decline of science journalism and the boastful indifference to scientific facts by many elected officials. Otto describes the ghettoization of science in American journalism, whereby the policy implications of scientific issues are not reported in the way that the effects of business and economy are. Science has earned a sort of untouchable status in American discourse, allowing for rhetorical treatment of matters that are the proper subject of scientific study. Often, religion fills this vacuum and, as a result, a false dichotomy has been created between science and religion. As one observer has said, this may be best evidenced by Rick Perry’s August 18, 2011 response to a New Hampshire child who asked him if he believed in evolution. Perry said “It’s a theory that’s out there. It’s got some gaps in it. In Texas we teach both creationism and evolution.” How stunning it is to have one of the leading contenders for the Presidency publicly express doubts as to the veracity of the scientific theory which is the foundation of modern medicine and biology. The press seems to accept the notion that it should report every such statement as simply one side of the story, and that there are always two sides to every story, each of which are equally valid, with the truth lying somewhere in between. And thus Governor Perry goes unchallenged.

Early in his book Otto points out that science has been responsible for roughly half of all US economic growth since World War II. He notes that by 2006, anti science views focused on three main areas, the denial of: (1) the science of reproductive medicine; (2) the science of climate change; and (3) the science of evolution. He puts significant emphasis on the importance of enlightenment ideals as the foundation of our Republic. He tells of the struggle that Thomas Jefferson had in framing the beginning of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s initial effort began, “We hold these truths to be divinely inspired, that all men are created equal.” Unhappy with this, he sought advice from Benjamin Franklin, and out of that collaboration came the statement so familiar to us, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.” To be self evident was to recognize natural law, using reason alone to understand the true nature of things. The Enlightenment was important to America because it provided the philosophical basis of the American Revolution, which was more than just a protest against British authority .As it turned out, the Revolution provided the blueprint for a democratic society, for an enlightened concept of government whose most profound documents may have been the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Thomas Paine, who authored Common Sense, a reasoned argument for American independence, later wrote: “You will do me the justice to remember, that I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be from mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave to himself of his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. ... The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other and I trust I never shall.” To feel the full impact of the Enlightenment on America one needs only to look at the first Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson, who along with Benjamin Franklin, is considered to be the American most touched by the ideas of the Enlightenment. Jefferson wrote: “if there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.”

Early in the book Otto talks about the scientific method and the difference between matters of faith and scientific theory. He explains that the scientific method is a process of observation, Hypothesis, experiments and conclusion, From observing something in the natural world a hypothesis is made, which is advanced by experiments that support the hypothesis. A conclusion is reached , which is then presented to the scientific community. Other scientists the test that hypothesis with their own experiments. The more that time and tests confirm the conclusion, the more that “theory” approaches fact. Those that say evolution is only a theory do not understand what is meant by that appellation or choose to ignore it because it challenges their belief system. After 150 years of having been subjected to hundreds of thousands of tests, it is the one explanation that has been confirmed by all the known and validated experiments performed to date. Another point Otto makes is that if there is no way to prove a hypothesis is false, then it cannot be science. For example, saying that God, or some intelligent equivalent, created something, be it the earth, humans or the universe is not a scientific statement because it’s not limited to the natural world and because it can’t be disproved.

At this point in my reading, I paused to consider the question: Why are the theories of gravity, global warming and evolution met with very different degrees of acceptance by skeptics and deniers. I’m sure it’s not an original thought with me, but it seems that the notion of gravity is accepted by almost everyone because it is not threatening to accept that idea. Whether gravity is or is not does not challenge anyone’s economic, political or religious interests. It is also an idea that we all see in operation every time an apple falls from a tree, the earth circles the sun or our skin sags further each year. Global warming is accepted by many, but still has many skeptics. Compared to the idea of gravity, it is a very recent concept. We simply have not been wrestling with it for very long. It’s not easy to understand how more snow this winter can be a result of global warming, rather than the contrary. And although it probably doesn’t challenge any religious interests, it most certainly challenges the economic and political interests of many groups. Big oil and coal, major polluters, Kyoto opponents and politicians who are beholden to any of those are to be found in the front ranks of the naysayers. The theory of evolution is quite another matter. It has a shelf life that just goes on and on. Why is this? It doesn’t represent a challenge to anyone’s economic interests, nor to any political groups. However, it does challenge the fundamental religious beliefs of a substantial number of Americans. And therein lies the reason why it may be the most challenged scientific theory of all time.

Fool Me Twice is divided into five sections ‘America’s Science Problem’ discusses how science has been devalued at a time when technology has become more important than ever to sustaining America’s wealth and competitiveness in the global economy. The religious authoritarianism and fascism that have gained strength following the attacks of 9/11 have put science to the side in order to protect the corporate status quo, thereby leaving many pressing issues unresolved and presenting America with an uncertain future.

‘Yesterday’s Science Politics’ asserts that America was not founded as an explicitly Christian nation but one that was inspired by the Enlightenment ideal of reason as God’s natural law. Otto recounts how the sciences once flourished in a free America that routinely attracted scientists who were driven out of repressive places like Nazi Germany, and when figures such as Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble were cherished national figures. He laments how WWII and the Manhattan Project instilled widespread public fear and the subsequent Cold War funding of big science projects drove most scientists away from the public forum. He contends that anxieties about the bomb and the effect of polluting technologies on the environment provided an impetus to the rise of an anti-scientific political culture. He also notes that the end of the FCC Fairness Doctrine in 1987 gave the corporate media free reign to use rhetoric to influence public dialogue, a power that has largely been used for the benefit of private interests at the expense of reason, science and the public’s right to know.

‘Today’s Science Politics’ explains how issues such as global warming have been captured by an identity politics that is driven by emotion, not science. For example, Otto details how the fossil fuel industry has funded disinformation that is churned by a mainstream media which tends to exploit controversy for ratings while ignoring sound science. Assessing the merits of several scientifically credible solutions to the crisis, he proposes that an investment of $30 billion a year would be a reasonable solution toward curbing global warming while revitalizing scientific innovation and the economy.

‘Tomorrow’s Science Politics begins by reminding us that anti-intellectualism is a strategy often embraced by authoritarian powers. Otto argues that corporate pollution represents a tragedy of the commons that has been imposed by the few upon the many’s right to a clean, nontoxic environment. However, as the insurance industry has been stressed by increasing payments associated with more frequent and violent storm events, he makes a strong case for protecting wild nature to ensure benefits for future generations.

"The Solution" attempts to bridge the culture wars by moving towards common ground through science. Otto is strongly spoken when he write that religious leaders are immoral when they lie about issues that will undoubtedly have detrimental consequences for our children, but admits that science must do its part to have its voice heard by appealing to human aspirations, not fears. He hopes that scientists will reach out to moderates in the religious and political communities, who in turn must include scientific truths in the discussion.

In an Appendix at the end of the book Otto proposes that our elected officials take The American Science Pledge. He asserts that many in this generation have failed to solve the accumulating science challenges , preferring to punt them into the future or, increasingly deny they even exist. He sees the need for candidates in both major parties who will lead on tough science questions and who will emphasize the primacy of knowledge and science as the best basis for informed, effective and fair public policies in a diverse nation. He contends that The Contract from America, the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and the No Climate Tax Pledge all seek to restrict reasoned debate. Candidates are asked to sign the Pledge to show their commitment to its five core principles and to agree to debate fourteen top science questions in public forums.

The five core principles are:

1. Public decisions must be based on knowledge. “I will support public policy decisions based on the knowledge produced by science, which may be informed by economic interests and my values but never superseded by personal opinions or political objectives.”


2. Knowledge is supreme and must not be suppressed. “I will protect and defend the precious basis of America’s freedom, which is the scientific consensus of knowledge, against political forces that seek to deny it, suppress it, or substitute for it rhetoric or opinion.”


3. Scientific integrity and transparency must be protected. “I will oppose all efforts to reduce freedom by holding back or altering scientific reports because they conflict with personal opinions, economic interests or political objectives.”


4. Freedom of inquiry must be encouraged. “I will oppose acts that reduce freedom by attacking, intimidating, interrogating, prosecuting, disparaging or silencing scientists and


5. Academics whose research or scientific reports conflict with personal opnions, economic interests or political objectives.”


6. The major science policy issues must be openly debated. “To demonstrate my commitment to these principles and to moving America forward in solving these challenges, I will participate in one or more substantive, nonpartisan, public, televised, independently moderated debates on the top science challenges facing America.”

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What are you reading? John Irving’s fictional landscape

Presented to the Club on June 13, 2011 by David T. Noyes



"What are you reading?" Such was the signature greeting of my mentor, Dr. Guy W. Leadbetter, Chief of Urology at the University of Vermont Medical School. Of course, despite the rigorous health sciences program of Medical School, and a residency training program consuming 80 or more hours a week caring for patients, he was not referring to academics. He wanted to know what I was reading for fun. What imaginary story of intrigue was capturing my interest? Or, perhaps, whose biography was garnering my attention. He didn’t care that the book might not be great or famous or even popular — only that he felt it was critically important to be stimulating one’s mind with something other than medicine. He himself was a great fan of Louis L’Amour — the American author who described his novels as “Frontier Stories.” I believe Dr. Leadbetter claimed to have read all 105 of L’Amour’s books.



This was the same man who, following any conference presentation, challenged each individual in the audience with the requirement to have a question at the ready. His caveat: “If you don’t have a question, then you weren’t paying attention.” (Kind of reminds you a bit of the Monday Evening Club, doesn’t it?)



When I entered medical school, I was certain I wanted to be a pediatrician. At that time, the third year curriculum required two months of OB/GYN, two months of psychiatry, two months of pediatrics, three months of medicine and three months of surgery. After serving on the Pediatric hospital ward for the first of the two required months, I was even surer that this was the career path I would take. However, the second month in a local pediatrician’s office, proved to be my undoing — one screaming child after another. Talk about cluster headaches at the end of the day! I simply couldn’t manage it.



It was during my surgery rotation, that I first encountered Dr. Leadbetter. At that time, he was in his early 50s. He had written five lead articles for the New England Journal of Medicine. He had conceived, and invented two different pediatric urologic operations — one for severe incontinence, the other for ureteral reflux. Tireless in his pursuit of achieving the best possible outcomes for his patients, he expected 110 percent effort from his staff, but only because he lead by example. A giant in the field, he would go on to become the president of the American Urologic Association.



Yet there was a certain air of the absent minded professor about him. In those days smoking was allowed in the hospital (although not in the patient rooms). He would usually be smoking his pipe when he arrived for compulsory Saturday morning teaching rounds. The residents would gather outside each patient’s room and discuss why the patient was in the hospital, providing up to the minute details of his or her current condition. The entire entourage would then go into the room to visit with the patient and learn small, but important nuances from the master. One day Dr Leadbetter simply stuffed his pipe in his back pocket just before entering one the rooms. He must have thought it was out, but ten minutes or so later, it was obvious that his pants were smoking! He was on fire!



Also, in contrast to the usual image of a surgical department chief, he always was sincere and gentle in his conversation.



I chose to spend a one week elective with Dr. Leadbetter, and I became hooked. I wanted to become a urologist and complete a training program under his watchful guidance. Perhaps, we all have had such figures appear in our lives at crucial turning points. One of my most treasured possessions is a photograph from the final year of my training, of Dr. Leadbetter and me at an operating room table working together on a patient. I keep it on my office bookshelf.



We have all heard it said that a given critic “couldn’t put a book down.” I’m not that person. In fact, it’s fair to say that I have never read a book I couldn’t put down. If I’m reading in the evening after a long day, I’m quite likely to fall asleep even during a very exciting plot twist. On vacation, relaxed, reading mid afternoon in a comfortable chair, I’m very likely to find myself napping mid chapter. Furthermore, I find I don’t have the patience to read, even the most intriguing novel, for more than an hour or two at a time. I have to walk, stretch or do something physical before I can sit back down again with the book. And I gave myself permission many years ago to put a book down permanently if it wasn’t entertaining. I don’t feel the compulsion to slog through a book just because someone else has proclaimed it to be good. Most recently I found this to be true with both Thomas Pynchon’s recent works: the 773-page Mason and Dixon, and the 1083-page Against the Day. Both highly acclaimed, both with a scattered multitude of characters and little to no common thread tying scenes together. Umberto Eco’s 1983 novel The Name of the Rose was the last book I forced myself to finish.



Perhaps at some point in your life, a specific novel has held you spellbound. You feel a special affinity for the author’s point of view. Or you develop an intimate appreciation for the characters. John Irving’s 1989 novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, was such a book for me. As a product of the anti-war, antiestablishment 60’s, and as a man with a Congregationalist faith, I found special resonance with Irving’s observations. In the Forward to the novel, Irving credits Frederick Buechner, his former teacher at Exeter, for his help with the manuscript and the Preface includes the following Buechner quote: “Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”



Prominently noted throughout the novel is the incompetence of the national leaders of the day--especially Johnson’s expansion of the Vietnam War, to the ultimate sacrifice of 58,000 young men. JFK’s trysts with Marilyn Monroe (and Jackie’s apparent willingness to be deceived), receive the reader’s attention. Irving satirizes such American phenomena as teenagers with their rock music and marijuana; and mocks the onset of sycophantic television evangelists selling Jesus like junk food. (I’m reminded of one of my favorite bumper stickers of the era — TELEVANGELISTS DO MORE THAN LAY PEOPLE).



Irving gives us Owen Meany, a young man from a modest and unpretentious background. Owen always does and says the right thing. He is aided by prophetic powers and a single-mindedness that makes him capable of achievements far beyond expectation. He can’t explain his actions, except to note that he is confident that his experiences will be needed some day. Throughout Owen’s life, he is continually practicing for what turns out to be the courageous event that ultimately culminates in his heroic death.

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes once said that “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” And so, exactly 20 years after the publication of this Irving novel, we have the saga of Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landing his US Airways plane in the Hudson River in January of 2009, saving all 155 passengers. Like Owen Meany, his whole life seems to have been in training for this event — he graduated for the US Air Force Academy, where he was one of only a handful of cadets to participate in the glider program and by the time he was a senior he was instructing the younger cadets in the technique. At graduation, he received the Outstanding Cadet Airmanship Award as the top flier at the Academy. Sullenberger served as a fighter pilot for the Air Force, piloting the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II from 1975 to 1980. He advanced to become a flight leader and a training officer. While in the Air Force, he was a member of the official aircraft accident investigation board. Since 2007 he had run his own safety consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., which provided "emergency management, safety strategies and performance monitoring to the aviation industry.” He had also been involved in a number of accident investigations conducted by the USAF and the National Transportation and Safety Board. He served the Air Line Pilots Safety Association as safety chairman, accident investigator, and national technical committee member. Instrumental in developing and implementing the Crew Resource Management manual that is used by US Airways, he has taught the course to hundreds of other airline members. And so, indeed, Mr. Sullenberger’s heroic actions and his lifelong preparation for just such a calamity, provide a prime example of Life imitating Art.



When interviewed in 1989, at the time of publication of this novel, Irving reflected: “Like most teenagers, for 19 years I sat in church and hated every minute of it. But the accumulated time takes a toll or leaves you with images that cast a doubt on one’s former atheism.” It was the element of precognition in the Gospels that appealed to his artistic imagination. “One event that always got me was that Jesus told his disciples that they were going to betray him.” Owen Meany issues a series of prophecies — including one of his own death — that become reality. “What degree of religious belief I can manage owes as much to personal experience as it does to all those years of training within the church. When I am moved to see beyond my usual doubt, when I am moved to something that approaches real faith, it seems to me, I am basing those instincts for belief on personal experience as much as I am on any formal religious training.”



Irving’s eleventh novel, Until I Found You, gives us a protagonist, Jack Burns, whose mother is a famous tattoo artist. She drags him as a child around through various tattoo capitals in Europe while searching for his father, a church organist, who is addicted to being tattooed. And so Irving writes: “In this way, in increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us — not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.” Eventually, Jack goes on to become a famous movie star playing mostly female roles. But his psychiatrist bluntly asks: “Is it because of your mother’s lies to you, or your missing father, that you are an unanchored ship — in danger of drifting wherever the wind or the currents, or the next sexual encounter take you?”



Many have surmised that this novel is Irving’s attempt to resolve the themes of his life and work. His biological father, John Wallace Blunt, divorced Irving’s mother, Frances, before he was born. Blunt disappeared from his son’s life and went on to become a hero during WWII. Frances remarried, this time to Colin Irving, a Slavic languages and literature major at Harvard and a Russian history instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy. John Wallace Blunt, Jr. thus became John Irving. “I have never lost a single night’s sleep wondering or imagining who my biological father is,” Irving says: “I passed up several opportunities I could have had to confront him. I wasn’t interested.” He said of searching for one’s biological roots: “It’s not going to do any good. Unless you’re looking for something to attach your victimhood to, which is a common ailment of the contemporary time.”



In a passage from The World According to Garp, Irving writes: “If Garp could have been granted one vast naïve wish, it would have been that he could make the world safe. For children and for grownups. The world struck Garp as unnecessarily perilous for both.” But, Irving claims, he simply uses the theme of an absent parent for the same reason that Charles Dickens did; because orphans make for good stories.



The family lived with Irving’s grandmother in Exeter, N.H. until John was almost seven years old. From this experience, his grandmother, who had three daughters and no sons, often told him how proud she was of “her boy.” She had graduated from Wellesley with an English Literature major, but apparently she did not enjoy Irving’s work. She read his first novel and stopped after that (which Irving has said is probably a good thing). She told him that she disapproved of the language and the subject matter. Furthermore, from reviews that she had read about the other books, it looked to her as though things did not improve with maturity. She made no effort to read the subsequent four novels that followed the first and died in l982 almost reaching her 100th birthday.



Irving says he would not have qualified for admission to Exeter via the normal admissions process. He was a weak student due to dyslexia, although no one knew that at the time. He gained entrance as a faculty child. Because he failed both Latin and math his senior year, he was required to remain at the Academy for an unprecedented fifth year, graduating in 1961. When he was asked to recall his Exeter experience, he said: “I’m eternally grateful to the Academy for its rigorousness. I’m a hard worker, and I had to be at Exeter — needing five years to complete the four-year program. What Exeter can’t necessarily prepare a student for, are the kinds of experiences the characters in my novels generally face: sorrow, loss, grief, or dysfunction. No school does.”



Exeter was where Irving came to love wrestling. He was team captain in his senior year and actively competed until he was 34. “My life in wrestling was one-eighth talent and seven-eighths discipline. I believe that my life as a writer consists of one-eighth talent and seven-eighths discipline too.” In the movie, The World According to Garp, Irving plays the referee because: “it was a non speaking part,” and the original actor proved to be inept because he had no wrestling experience. Irving was voted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992.



From Exeter, he went on to the University of Pittsburgh, predominantly so he could pursue his wrestling ambitions and compete with the top athletes. However, when it became apparent to him that he would be, at best, a backup for an All American at any of his possible weight classes, he opted to transfer to the University of New Hampshire. Here he received a graduation prize in recognition of a “high degree of creativity in an academic program.” He married his first wife and became a father while he was still an undergraduate. Following graduation from UNH he entered the University of Iowa’s writing workshop, where he was mentored by Kurt Vonnegut from 1965 until 1967. (you may recall that we heard Bob Anderson quote Vonnegut in his paper earlier this year) He could only find time to write two hours a day, waking at 5 a.m. for the two prized hours of peace and quiet before his son, Colin, awoke. Irving supported his family with jobs in the university library restacking books, teaching one undergraduate writing course, selling cowhorns, bells, stadium cushions and pennants at the home football games, and waiting tables in “a nauseating restaurant out on the Coralville strip.” He never imagined that he would be able to make a living from his writing, but Vonnegut had told him: “You may be surprised. I think capitalism is going to treat you okay.”



After Iowa, he moved back east and taught at Windham College in Putney, Vermont (no longer in existence), and then at Mt. Holyoke College. Subsequently he went back to Iowa as a teacher from 1972 to 1975 where his students included: T. Coraghessan Boyle, Ron Hansen, Douglas Unger, Kent Haruf (rhymes with sheriff) and Susan Taylor Chehak.



Until Irving’s fourth novel — The World According to Garp — vaulted him into celebrity in 1978,  he usually had a full time job teaching creative writing or coaching wrestling. His meager income was supplemented with awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship during the preceding 11 years.



Irving divorced his first wife after 18 years of marriage in 1982. Five years later he married his literary agent — a Toronto native, 12 years his younger. Irving says of the experience: “There are only two ways you can feel, I suppose, when you have a second marriage and start a second family. You either feel you are lucky to have had that chance or you feel you’re a damn fool to have made the same mistake again.” Irving’s habits are a bit different now, as he writes from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., then works out in a gym that is part of his house where he has a wrestling floor mat. Afterward he usually prepares dinner, as he is the family’s sole chef.



Although he won an Academy Award in 2000 for the best adapted screenplay taken from his 1985 book The Cider House Rules, Irving says that he thinks “books are better.”



In 1984 came A son of the Circus, set in India and Toronto, and Mr. Irving’s only attempt at a mystery novel. Readers are treated to his usual vast array of characters. These include a well dressed, dignified Indian orthopedic surgeon researching the gene responsible for achondroplastic dwarfism, identical twins separated at birth (one an Indian film star, the other an American Jesuit), a child prostitute who may be HIV positive, a beggar boy whose foot has been crushed by an elephant, transvestites and transsexuals., and a drug filled dildo carried by an American hippie. It is here that I came across one of the simplest but most frightening lines of Irving’s fiction. The protagonist is alone in the bedroom of a prostitute. He hears the killer coming down the hall and he furtively seeks a place to hide, choosing a closet with only a curtain for a door. As the killer enters the room, Irving writes: “the only sound you can hear is the sound of someone trying not to make a sound.” Who amongst us, in childhood games of Kick the Can or Flashlight Tag, has not been in the same plight — trying desperately not to make a sound!



However, despite the bizarre and violent plot twists, Mr. Irving again explores some serious issues — especially the theme of perpetual exile. (The book is dedicated to Salman Rushdie.) The Indian orthopedist finds that he is not comfortable in his adopted home of Toronto where he is subject to racial abuse. Nor is he comfortable in his native India where he finds the country’s misery and chaos oppressive.



Irving also portrays the Indian circus as a social welfare institution where many performers are children who are sold by their parents as a way to see that they are cared for. His circus descriptions are reminiscent of the circus scenes of the highly acclaimed Canadian author, Robertson Davies, in his series of novels, The Deptford Trilogy. Irving has said that he does not believe in the mantra of many writing teachers — that an author must write about what he or she knows. This novel would seem to prove the point, as Mr. Irving has never been to India.



Irving says: “I’m not the guy to ask about American literature. I feel out of place in it, and have always been more at home in the British novel.” He admires 19th century authors such as: Dickens, Hardy, Trollope, Turgenev, Flaubert and Tolstoy. “I am a conscious imitator of those forms of the novel: narrative, large, full of plot and fate, and of characters who strive to be more than ordinary.” American influences make up a small portion of his list of favorites. He cites Melville, but especially Hawthorne and says: “I am not a Faulkner-Hemmingway-Fitzgerald person. Perhaps, in part, because I was forced to read that stuff in school when I was too young to appreciate it, and hated it. Vonnegut and Heller mean much more to me than Twain.”



Irving begins his memoir Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, with a disclaimer: that all memoirs are false. “A fiction writer’s memory is an especially imperfect provider of detail; we can always imagine a better detail than the one we can remember. The correct detail is rarely, exactly, what happened; the most truthful detail is what could have happened, or what should have. Being a writer is a strenuous marriage between careful observation and just as carefully imagining the truths you haven’t had the opportunity to see. The rest is the necessary, strict toiling with the language; for me this means writing and rewriting the sentences until they sound as spontaneous as good conversation.”



Irving says of his writing: “My instinct is to reach you emotionally, which includes wanting to make you laugh, but also wanting to move you, to make you cry, to hurt you. I’m not an intellectual, I’m a storyteller. And, as such, I’m a craftsman. I care very much about building characters to a point where you care deeply about them, and when you lose them, it’s like losing someone you knew.”



Irving, like Dickens, uses the backdrop of the societal ills of our time in which to display his novels. He creates distinctly unique and memorable characters. His themes have to do with how his characters handle loss or the effort to control some part of life that is, ultimately, random and uncontrollable. Perhaps his popularity arises because we see parts of ourselves mirrored in his fiction? We certainly are part of his landscape.



So Gentlemen, what are you reading?



Material for this essay was obtained from the New York Times Book Reviews, Phillips Exeter Academy Alumni Bulletins, Mr. Irving’s memoirs, and, of course, his wonderful novels.

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No longer a god: How Hirohito’s image was refurbished after World War II

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Presented to the Club by Martin C. Langeveld on May 16, 2011



From December 7, 1941, until August 1945, the personification of America’s enemy in the Pacific War was Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Public officials, military leaders and the press rarely missed an opportunity to tie Hirohito’s name to the struggle against Japan. For example, General Douglas MacArthur, speaking in March 1942 to the Australian parliament, promised the lawmakers “there can be no compromise . . . We shall die . . . in the fight to drive Emperor Hirohito’s invasion armies back out of the southwest Pacific.” War correspondents were fond of language like, “Hirohito’s invasion hordes were reported striking peak fury down the Malaya peninsula today.”



Often, Hirohito’s name was being uttered in the same breath as the other Axis leaders: “Mr. Hirohito, Mr. Hitler and Mr. Mussolini will be entirely eliminated from the picture—and that soon!” the mayor of Pittsburgh said in a speech. “Mr. Hitler and Mr. Hirohito, take notice!” the Christian Science Monitor started a story about military preparedness. “Hirohito’s invasion hordes were reported striking peak fury down the Malaya peninsula today,” the Associated Press reported.



“Blame Hitler, Hirohito and Benito! . . .Don’t blame your grocer!” was the headline on a 1942 newspaper advertisement from Heinz, explaining why tin rationing might squeeze supplies of some of the “57” varieties.



In 1944, this ad headline in the Spokane Spokesman Review offered an incentive to buying $18.75 worth of war bonds: “How’d you like to send your compliments to Hirohito on a bomb? Well, here’s your chance . . . There’s a parachute bomb that’s all yours, just waiting for your personal greetings to be added to start it on its way.”



But while that kind of rhetoric continued, by 1945 there were hints that Hirohito might not be in the same archfiend league as Hitler and Mussolini.



The government had begun to hint at a go-easy on Hirohito policy, and some columnists were beginning to warm up to it. Direct military attacks and even propaganda attacks on him were being avoided out of concern that doing so would elevate the conflict to a religious war and increase the fanaticism of the Japanese people, and because the word for unconditional surrender would ultimately have to come from the emperor’s lips.



“We confess we are not convinced what should be done with Hirohito,” editorialized the Rock Hill Herald of South Carolina in mid-1945. “We do not know how much responsibility for the war is on his shoulders. It is possible he may be the mere figurehead he is often described to us."



This doubt was by no means unanimous, however. The Japanese capitulation came on August 15, 1945, and American occupation began August 28. Just weeks later, on September 18, Georgia Senator Richard Russell called for immediate prosecution of the emperor for war crimes. Anti-Hirohito sentiment in the U.S. was intense. Polls taken in June 1945 showed three-quarters of Americans in favor of severe punishment for Hirohito as a war criminal, with nearly 50 percent favoring execution, while only 7 percent favored leaving him in office.



A barrage of editorials and columns calling for the arrest, imprisonment and ultimate execution of the emperor continued for several months after the Japanese surrender, even though President Truman and the occupation chief, General MacArthur, had by then made clear that he would stay.



The St. Louis Post-Dispatch thundered that retaining the emperor “would perpetuate…the fanatic delusion of imperial divinity and keep unbroken the thread of dynasty leading again inevitably to war.” Others focused on the fact that Hirohito had failed to use the actual word “surrender” in his broadcast to the Japanese nation. The New York Times noted that reliance on Hirohito “appears to be [strengthening] the Emperor’s autocracy.” And Roscoe Drummond, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, asked “By retaining the Emperor, are the Allies promoting anything more than a palace-approved façade of Japanese democracy, behind which the Japanese imperialists will be even freer to work than were the German militarists behind the weak Weimar Republic?”



But by early 1946, a remarkable change in sentiment had come about. In its issue of February 4, 1946, Life magazine published a photographic essay, “Sunday at Hirohito’s”, showing the emperor watering his plants and relaxing with his family. “He is a model family man,” Life wrote, “aged 44, neat and nervous, methodical, thrifty, decent, with a strong voice and handshake, and fond of his wife (a love choice), his children and his mother, who was opposed to the war. He admires Abraham Lincoln…he has read the works of Longfellow and Whittier.” In the final picture in the essay, Hirohito is shown reading The New York Times and Stars and Stripes, the newspaper for U.S. service personnel.



In May, the New York Times, in a story headlined “At Long Last, Hirohito Begins to Enjoy Life,” published a photo of the emperor and his son splashing in the surf. And U.S. opinion polls, which had shown practically no support for keeping Hirohito on the throne in mid-1945, showed in mid-1946 a 60 percent approval rating for MacArthur’s handling of the occupation, of which Hirohito’s retention was a central tenet. That support grew to 81 percent by 1949.



What changed? How did the emperor acquire these new clothes, and what transformed the attitude of US media and citizens? Indeed, why did the Allies decide to retain the emperor? And did Hirohito do anything that actually merited his lenient treatment?



To explore these questions, first it’s important to understand the Japanese perceptions at the time of the “emperor system”, or the Japanese national polity as it is often referred to.



Every country has a polity, as do many institutions such as churches. The word means a system of governance but typically it refers also to the basis of its legitimacy. In the U.S., our polity is based on the statement in the Constitution’s preamble that “We the People” are the source of all authority.



In the Japanese polity, as understood especially by Japan’s wartime military and civil leadership, all authority flowed from the emperor, and a Japanese government without an emperor was unthinkable. Contrast this with the European constitutional monarchies, where royal families are retained out of tradition and even genuine affection, but where few citizens would consider it unthinkable to switch to a non-monarchical form of statehood.



The Japanese word generally translated as “national polity” is Kokutai, but a great deal of meaning is packed into that word. The principles of Kokutai have origins deep in Japanese history, but in order to consolidate power around it, in 1937 the government ordered a committee of scholars to codify the Kokutai principles into a booklet (Kokutai no Hongi, or Fundamentals of our National Polity), millions of copies of which were distributed. Proceeding from essentially religious or metaphysical assumptions, rather than logic and reason, it became the basis for every aspect of domestic and foreign policy, as well as of Japanese civilization and culture. Kokutai implied not a constitutional monarchy, but an emperor-centered state in which the emperor was above the constitution. The “imperial way” was embedded in kokutai as a motivating theology that penetrated every aspect of Japanese life.



Lester Brooks, in his book called “Behind Japan’s Surrender”, described Hirohito’s status in this system as one of “supremely paradoxical fiction.”



Brooks wrote:

Because the Emperor was head of the ‘national family’ and all Japanese (except naturalized ones) were related by blood to him, unblinking, wholehearted belief was given to such slogans as Emperor and People are One. Through ages eternal, past and future, each Japanese had a place in the supreme scheme of things. And the Emperor was the pole star by which he could orient himself and to which he could direct his devotion. It was the combination of three things deriving from this that made the Japanese character distinctly Japanese: unswerving loyalty to the Emperor system, deep conviction of their mission on earth, and belief that their inherited, divinely given qualities were superior.

The Japanese constitution, “given” to his subjects by Hirohito’s grandfather, the Emperor Meiji, stated “The Emperor is Heaven-descended, divine and sacred; he is preeminent above His subjects. He must be reverenced and is inviolable.”



In other words, the Emperor was understood to be a living god. And yet, his status as supreme commander of the armed forces was a title without actual authority, and his supremacy over the civilian cabinet was similarly constrained through an elaborate set of rituals, guardians and procedural mechanisms. While the emperor’s signature was required on direct orders (called rescripts) from time to time, in actuality the emperor had no ability to control policy or actions. This had been the case, to a greater or lesser degree, for more than 1000 years until 1868, during which shoguns and samurai ruled Japan and often kept emperors in seclusion and poverty. In 1868 the Meiji Restoration eliminated the shogun and returned the country to a powerful emperor system, but with the Meiji Constitution of 1890, which remained in force through World War II, an elected parliament assumed primary authority and the emperor’s powers were limited by the requirement that any order he issued needed to be signed by a “Minister of State.” And as a practical matter, orders always originated from the government bureaucracy rather than with from the palace.



So the “supremely paradoxical fiction” of the emperor was that he was the head of state, but he was not; all authority flowed from him, but it did not. The Allies began to understand this as early as 1943, and incorporated it into their postwar planning even as they allowed the public and the media to continue another fiction, the demonization of Hirohito.



Historians have mixed views on whether Hirohito was an active participant in the pursuit of what in Japan was called the Greater East Asia War, including its antecedents the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the war against the Republic of China launched in 1937. He did not object to either incursion, and his questions about the Chinese war dealt with how long it might take, and whether the Soviet Union might become involved. He authorized war against the United States, but said after the war that if he had not, there would have been a coup d’etat including complete with his assassination.



With his network of advisors and private intelligence channels, it’s likely that Hirohito, despite his isolation, always had a good sense of which way the wind was blowing; and by the summer of 1945, he had become convinced that Japan should end the war on any terms possible — although there is a current of historical opinion that says Hirohito actually delayed peace by waiting too long to break with his government’s militarists.



In any event, by midsummer the emperor’s views, those of his closest advisor, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Koichi Kido, and of the Prime Minister, Kantaro Suzuki, had begun to coincide around the view that the war needed to be brought to a close.



In early August, following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the issuance of the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies, Kido and Suzuki engineered the convening of an Imperial Conference to consider next steps. This in itself was not unusual. Typically, the conference brought together a dozen top military and civilian leaders; the emperor would listen in silence to a discussion of the issues, and would assent to whatever decisions emerged. At this conference, held late on the night of August 9 in a bomb shelter deep beneath the Imperial Palace, that’s what most in attendance expected.



The discussion revolved around possible conditions for Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam terms, which called for Japan’s capitulation, occupation by the Allies, the reduction of her territory to the principal islands of Japan, complete disarmament, and the punishment of war criminals. Some in the Japanese leadership hoped to mitigate the impact of these terms by attaching conditions, which included the continuation of the imperial family, the disarmament of the armed forces by Japan herself, the trial of war criminals by Japan herself, and a limitation on the duration and extent of occupation.



Two hours into the imperial conference, there was no resolution in sight. Some of the leaders, including foreign minister Shigenori Togo, were realists, willing to limit the conditions to retention of the Emperor system, while others, hoping to protract the war, favored listing all of the conditions. Finally, in an unprecedented, but premeditated step, Suzuki addressed the deity seated at the head of the table: “Your Imperial decision is requested as to which proposal should be adopted, the foreign minister’s or the one with the four conditions.” Then, the emperor-god spoke to the shocked group.



“Then I will state my opinion,” he said.

I agree with the foreign minister. My reasons are as follows. After serious consideration of conditions facing Japan both at home and abroad, I have concluded that to continue this war can mean only destruction for the homeland and more bloodshed and cruelty in the world. I cannot bear to have my innocent people suffer further. Ending the war is the only way to restore world peace and relieve the nation for the terrible suffering it is undergoing.” He countered the military men’s suggestions for a final, decisive battle that might allow Japan to negotiate better terms by citing a number of specific promises and projections that the military had not lived up to.

He continued,

I feel great pain when I think of those who have served me so faithfully: the soldiers and sailor who have been killed or wounded in distant battles, destitute families who have lost all their possessions — and often their lives as well — in air raids on the homeland. Indeed, disarmament of my brave and loyal military is excruciating to me. It is equally unbearable that those who have rendered me devoted service should be considered war criminals. However, for the sake of the country it cannot be helped. To relieve the people and to maintain the nation we must bear the unbearable . . . All of you, I think, will worry about me in this situation. But it does not matter what will become of me. Determined, as I have stated, I have decided to bring the war to an end immediately. For this reason I agree with the foreign minister’s proposal.

He had spoken for nearly half an hour. It was the longest public speech in his life to that point. Having achieved his objective, Suzuki immediately adjourned the conference. Some of the military leaders, still hoping for a way around the imperial command, looked for ways to delay. It took five more days, and considerable palace intrigue, for the emperor’s decision to be ratified by the cabinet, for it to be transmitted to the Allies through neutral Swedish and Swiss diplomatic channels, for the allies to transmit a response, for the language of that response to be parsed and discussed, and finally for the emperor to record a message to his people for broadcast over state radio. In the meantime, a group of army colonels attempted to engineer a last-ditch coup, and actually succeeded in penetrating the imperial palace grounds with the aim of taking the emperor prisoner. They also invaded the radio headquarters, seeking to prevent the broadcast of the speech. But in the end the uprising was put down, and mid-day on August 15, for the first time ever, the people of Japan heard the voice of the sacred crane, the Showa Emperor, speaking to them directly.



It was not a message written for immediate understanding, but for the ages; and it was written in an arcane form of Classical Japanese used only at court, with many words and inflections not familiar to ordinary Japanese. Even the English translation sounds stilted:

After pondering deeply the general trends of the world and the actual conditions obtaining in our empire today, we have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure. We have ordered our government to communicate with the governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that our empire accepts the provisions of their Joint Declaration.

He went on to explain his reasons:

The war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone . . . the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is indeed incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives . . . . The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will certainly be great . . . . However it is according to the dictate of the time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.

Mystified as his listeners may have been, the gist of the message was clear, the war was over. And it had been the quiet insistence of Hirohito, and his shrewd manipulation of the byzantine workings of the Japanese political system, that had at least hurried the end.



Of course, the story of Hirohito’s pivotal role would come out much later, and at the time of the surrender, the Allies were unaware of it. And certainly the American public and press knew nothing about it and continued to issue calls for a noose to be put around the emperor’s neck.



But American officials had come to the conclusion to accept the continuation of the imperial system, not because Hirohito helped end the war, but for strategic as well as practical reasons. First, U.S. occupation planners were convinced that keeping Hirohito was key to the success of the occupation. With Japanese cooperation, MacArthur projected, he could make do with 200,000 troops, as opposed to the 900,000 or more it might take otherwise. Indeed, even before occupying troops landed on the Japanese mainland, Hirohito had ordered demobilization to begin.



Secret U.S. planning for a postwar Japan began as early as 1943 and was in full swing during 1944. Early on, some zealous schemes had been put forward — for example the idea that Japan would not be allowed to surrender until it was virtually destroyed, and that that would be followed by a 25-year occupation. More rational thinking took hold, and although some of the early thinking was largely anti-emperor, a pro-emperor view gradually came to predominate: if having the emperor in place would help the development of the kind of government to which the Allies would be willing to hand over control, then the emperor should be kept on.



The reasoning went that an occupation could not happen without the involvement of Japanese officials and existing Japanese institutions; most Japanese officials viewed the Throne as the source of their own authority; and removing the institution of the emperor, or stripping him of all power, would lessen cooperation from the bureaucracy by making it feel it had lost its legitimacy.



The proponents also advanced a legal argument, based on the 1907 Hague Convention, which stipulated that an occupying power had no right to change the political institutions of an occupied country. Therefore, removing Hirohito would not alter the existence of the monarchy itself, and a successor would simply take his place.



Still, the final report of the occupation planning group made it clear that its recommendations were just that, and that the Supreme Allied Commander in Japan would have the final say. As it turned out, MacArthur, with President Truman’s support, accepted the council’s arguments. In effect, MacArthur’s policy of using the emperor to help implement demilitarization and other occupation aims coincided with the deeply-held concern kokutai beliefs of the Japanese bureaucracy.



In September, Hirohito met with MacArthur, and a widely-circulated photo of the general towering over the emperor, dressed in formal attire but hatless, was seen as signifying the monarch’s submission to MacArthur’s authority, as well as providing the first hints to the Japanese people that their emperor was a mortal being just like them. In fact, the Japanese government considered the photo so disturbing that at first they tried to ban its reproduction in the newspapers. MacArthur’s staff continued contacts with Hirohito and his advisors, and persuaded him to issue, on January 1, 1946, an Imperial rescript in which Hirohito declared his humanity. It was actually an adroit piece of communication: the English translation implied a renunciation of divinity, referring to “the mistaken belief that the emperor is divine”; while the Japanese-language version for domestic consumption had him descending only partway from heaven, stating, in esoteric language, that the emperor was not a “manifest deity”, and not touching the accepted belief that he was a direct descendant of the sun goddess. And, and in fact, language added by Hirohito to the Allied first drafts included a full quotation of the Meiji emperor’s Charter Oath of 1868, one of the founding documents of modern Japan. The Charter Oath included principles of deliberative assemblies, free enterprise, and abolition of class distinctions. Thus, the rescript served to place Hirohito back at the center of national polity, but this time with a democratic constitutional monarchy.



Of course by this time the spread in Life magazine was already in the works, and the passage of time had already begun to soften attitudes in the U.S., but the perceived renunciation of divinity was particularly well-received by some of the erstwhile anti-Hirohito editorialists and politicians in the U.S.



Also at the urging of MacArthur’s staff, the Imperial Household Ministry, which had for centuries supervised the imperial family’s affairs, began in early 1946 a series of steps to humanize and demystify the emperor. He began to travel around the country, visiting schools and factories and riding in public parades. He would tip his hat to the crowds, and on several occasions shook hands with American servicemen — both unthinkable gestures in the past. Not everyone was thrilled by this — the Soviets considered it to be monarchist propaganda, and even the Australian foreign minister expressed concern — but the travels continued. Later in the year, Hirohito addressed the Japanese Diet to urge the adoption of a new constitution that would strip him of most of his traditional powers, referring to him only as the “symbol of the state and of the unity of the people”.



U.S. newspapers that had been critical of Hirohito began to modify their stance. The Washington Post editorialized, “The notion that Japanese militarism could not be destroyed unless the Emperor, too, were destroyed, was evidently not based on any knowledge of his personal character.”



It helped, of course, that the occupation authority could keep a firm censorial grip on the kind of information and news reporting that came out of Japan, so that by and large it could be ensured that a flow of positive news about Hirohito and the imperial family would reach U.S. readers.



When Hirohito died in 1989, 159 countries sent representatives, including President George Bush and 54 other heads of state. The occasion brought out criticism, especially from veterans groups, and some countries like the Netherlands, in deference to the still-vivid memories of wartime treatment at the hands of Japanese armed forces, sent cabinet-level representatives rather than royalty or heads of state. Still, the ceremony was a final indication of the emperor’s rehabilitation, both domestically in Japan and internationally.



After his radio address in 1945, Hirohito never again made a broadcast address to the nation. It was not until March 15 of this year, in the wake of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, that a Japanese emperor, Hirohito’s son Akihito, would again speak to the nation, this time on television. Akihito has continued the descent from heaven initiated by his father. His recent speech was delivered in standard Japanese, not the Classical Japanese of Hirohito’s speech, which is still spoken at court. He was the first emperor to marry a commoner; when he underwent prostate surgery in 2003, the public was informed — in the past the state of the emperor’s health had been kept secret. The cause of Hirohito’s death, pancreatic cancer, was not disclosed until after his death; it is unclear whether even Hirohito himself was told the diagnosis after he fell ill. Through Hirohito’s generation, royal offspring were largely raised by court-designated tutors, but Akihito and Empress Michiko actively raised their own children. The royal family and the Imperial Household Agency consciously look to European royalty for role models. To be sure, the imperial family still lives largely in isolation, and is perhaps surrounded by more ritual and stiffness than some of its European counterparts. Jokes about the royal family, commonplace in Great Britain, are out of bounds in Japan. But, although, like any royal institution, the Japanese monarchy is not without its controversial aspects and outright opponents, the Japanese people generally regard the royal family with affection and understand their emperor as a figurehead of the European kind, and no longer as a deity. In that sense, a generation later, the emperor’s change of clothes is complete.



U.S. government photo by Lt. Gaetano Faillance

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