Nazis

["Mitchell P. Warner" <indepth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Not sure you'll see this on the web, so I'll send it to you direct also. 


Simon,   I hope I don't get to many radicals coming out of the wood-work
with this one! but your mention of 'nazi colors' reminded me of an
encounter with single mindedness that I can't not pass on.  
	I was on the island of Ebeye, at Kwajalein Lagoon, where the USArmy still
shoots ICBM's from Calif. (did you ever get to Kwaj' or Ebeye?  You know, I
may have been crew on one of your C-130 Typhoon Chaser flights with the
54th Weather Squadron out of Guam). In Kwaj I met a German fellow who is a
world-class (his statement) model builder.  He was 12y.o. at the end of
WWII and the American occupation.  He became enamoured with the German
Battleship Prinz Eugen, which was involved in the battle which sank the
British ship HMS Hood. According to German gentleman (who I'll call Fred to
make things easier) the Prinz Eugen hit the Hood first, and it may have
been fires caused by P.E. hit that caused the HMS Hood to explode, NOT a
hit from the Bismark. It was better(?) PR for both UK and Hitler to claim
that the Hood was sunk by Bismark rather than possibly the Prinz Eugen.
Fred built a 1/100 scale model of the PE which was detailed very well. He
finally decided he must visit the watery grave of the PE to see it himself.
Turns out the PE was captured at the end of WWII, towed to USA where it was
repaired and then sailed with a mixed US/German crew to Majuro in the
Marshall Is. It eventually was used as a test ship in TWO A-Bomb blasts,
reportedly within one mile of ground zero.  The P.E. did NOT sink!.  US
towed the now glowing (just a joke!?) ship to Kwajalein for atomic decay
testing. There it began to leak. They tried to save it by running aground
on an island in the lagoon but only the stern got to the island slope
before the ship wouldn't move. The stern sank, water went to the bow, the
bow sank and the ship flipped upside-down as it slid down the underwater
slope of the island a bit. Today the stern stick out about 20 feet with the
bow at about 110 feet, all upside down.  Very strange to dive. One of the
BIG props still stick up out of the water. So Fred comes to Kwaj' (where
you can't stay unless you are military) and ends up in a tiny 0-Star (makes
Motel 6 look like the Taj Mahal) on the sad island of Ebey where the US
Army has shoved all the people they pushed off the home island of Kwaj'
(all in the same Lagoon, but NO water on Ebey! you can throw a rock in
ocean on both sides, and about 6000 people live in a place about 4 blocks
square with no place more than 6 feet above sea-level.  Typhoons are no fun. 
	Fred has copies of the original TOP SECRET plans of the ship when we meet
him at lunch after diving with our local guide who is Japanese/Marshall
Islander/Scotch!, name of Hideo, who knows the ship inside and out. 
	Fred has just flooded his borrowed video camera and asks for pics from me.
 I agree to shoot him on the ship the next day.  We arrive only to have him
unfurl a HUGE swastika flag while standing on the upthrust propeller shaft: 
	
http://www.guam.net/indepth/kwajlan/ebeye/

and later with him standing on the bottom at the stern of the ship. 

	He Says:  "I'm claiming the flag for the Third Reich!"

	"I don't think that's possible," I say, as to the best of my knowledge it
doesn't EXIST!
	
	Later we talk about islanders and politics, with Fred saying that the
Marshallese islanders deserved to be over-run by the USA, that they should
have been tougher and fought for what they believed (BTW: Fred now lives in
S. Fla! USA). I pointed out that at the end of WWII that the Russians want
to transport everyone with more than a high-school education to the prison
camps, effectively destroying Germany, and that it was the same Americans
that had mistreated the Marshall Islanders that saved the Germans from the
Russians.  
	Nothing is black and white except lithographs.

At Your Service, 
                         Mitch Warner

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