Remember Able Baker Charlie? The little mouse in the Richard
Scarry books who bakes up white, fluffy loaves bigger than himself? In one story
Charlie accidentally bakes a babydoll who says “mama” inside a loaf so that all
the critters think the loaf is talking.
I just learned that his name is a reference to the phonetic
alphabet used by the US from 1941-1956.
The current words for “ABC” are “Alpha, Bravo, Charlie,” but before the
international code was determined, the US used “Able, Baker, Charlie” when they
wanted to transmit messages clearly. Were I older or a WWII history buff, I
probably would have known this, but learning it even now gave me a brief burst
of mimetic pleasure. Aha, Richard Scarry, I know what you are up to!
Although the family
didn’t go to Tinian this past weekend, we let our 12 year old son go with his
friend and his friend’s dad. The three
of them toured the island and saw where the Enola Gay was loaded up with the
nuclear warheads to drop on Japan. They also saw the four remaining runways from the second world war, which are named Able, Baker,
Charlie and Delta. Although the island is small,
during WWII it was the busiest airbase in the world. Thousands of
fighter jets took off and landed from these four runways built by the Marines during
the War in the Pacific, and 40,000 troops were living there at one time (now
the population is about 3000). Our son regaled us for several hours with his
new knowledge about Tinian, and I felt worse about not going. (Except that it
turned out that the special fare was actually only a one-way fare, so our
family would have had to spend about $1000 more than we thought.)
Richard Scarry was not one of the troops on Tinian. He
served at the Allied Forces Headquarters in North Africa and Italy as an editor,
writer and art director for the Morale Services Section. His career as author
and illustrator of children’s books took off after the war.
It is always rewarding to find an allusion where you never
saw one before. The world is so full of a number of things.
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| The plane to Tinian from Guam. Seats for 8. |
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| My son's view from his seat. |
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| I think this is part of one of the runways. |
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| A spout creating by a wave crashing into a cave. |
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| A nuclear bomb pit, now filled in. |
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| The view from Suicide Cliff. The story is that Japanese propaganda led some military and civilians to jump to their death rather than be captured and tortured by Americans. Several thousand Japanese were killed in the Battle of Tinian. Only 314 were captured. Meanwhile, only 1500 or so Americans were killed. Are the numbers high for the Japanese because of the suicides? |
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| The boy took several photos of this sign, one of 2 gas stations on the island. I think he was impressed with the cost. |
