"...and we'll have a burial for him tomorrow.”

December 5, 2016 5:27 PM

William Callagan was captain of the USS Missouri, when she was hit by a kamikaze pilot. The only casualty was the pilot. Callaghan buried the pilot at sea. With dignity.
posted by dfm500 (11 comments total)

That was moving, and an object lesson for today's leaders. Thanks.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 5:54 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

A small glimmer of decency during the most barbaric time the world has ever known.
posted by freakazoid at 6:00 PM on December 5, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yes, but not sure about the takeaway: because a noble soul like Callagan treated his enemy with dignity, all Americans should do obeisance to a man who brags about treating absolutely nobody with dignity?
posted by homerica at 6:57 PM on December 5, 2016

My takeaway was that leaders should be noble, not Trump-like. I didn't see any call for blind fealty.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:59 PM on December 5, 2016 [14 favorites]

That was a very nice story - it's always good to hear of honor and empathy asserting itself amidst the hell that is war.

There was a bit of false equivalence at the end:

Americans today have a narrower blue-red, Clinton-Trump divide to transcend. By recognizing our common national values and interests we too can stretch William Callaghan-style, quash our baser impulses, and start healing.

As though the problem is not that Trump is a horrific polyphobic man-child being carried to the White House in a basket of deplorables, but instead it's just that we Republicans and Democrats have simply lost sight of our commonalities, and we both need to shake hands and walk it off.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 7:12 PM on December 5, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's a reminder to be the bigger person in The Ugliness that is to come.

These times call for courageous adults to fight and take control when we have petty thugs running things.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 7:22 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Folks, let's not go off onto the ill-advised Trump comparison. I know it's in the framing but let's take Trump stuff over to the designated containment thread and let this thread be about just the historical story.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:06 PM on December 5, 2016 [1 favorite]

This brings to mind the secret mission undertaken in the early 70s by the CIA to recover part of a sunken Soviet sub, the K-129. It was a massive undertaking that ended with the recovery of about a third of the sub (and possibly a nuclear missile, and Soviet cryptographical documents.) Six dead Russian sailors were recovered from the salvaged wreckage. They were given a burial at sea with military honors, their coffins draped in a USSR flag. In '92, the US gave Boris Yeltsin the flag from the burial and a video of the ceremony. IIRC the video moved Yeltsin to tears. The recovery mission was during the Cold War, but that was put aside for a moment of decency and respect.
posted by azpenguin at 9:21 PM on December 5, 2016 [9 favorites]

Referring to the Pearl Harbour dead as "martyrs" is not helpful. I thought the article, while telling an interesting story, was crassly written in a Tom Clancy idiom.
posted by Rumple at 10:39 PM on December 5, 2016 [10 favorites]

the most barbaric time the world has ever known

[Citation needed]
posted by acb at 3:55 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

1. It's easier to be gracious to an enemy who is dead or at least one who has lost.

2. how people get warm comfortable feelings out of this story and the one it reminds me of, the one about English and German soldiers playing football in the trenches together on Christmas Eve or however that goes, the one that ends with "and the next day, it was back to killing! but we found out we were all gentlemen together" or something to that effect. also, various stories about wonderful men on both sides of the American Civil War with their wonderful mustaches and kindness to horses.

to me it is the most sickening horror imaginable, for both stories, much worse than stories from the same wars about worse behavior. because sometimes people like to think that if we can re-awaken nobility and humanity and fellow-feeling within the souls of the powerful, why, then perhaps we can lessen the frequency of war, or the brutality of it, or the perception that it is both necessary and a worthy thing to spend one's life doing. but these stories say, nope! They were noble gentlemen all along, the whole time, up and down the hierarchies, just re-enacting their boyhood imagination-plays about gallantry and glory (and slaughter).

it's a little more tolerable as it regards WWII than other wars because what were we going to do, not fight it? (eventually?) sure, be noble there, where's the harm. but as a part of a grand narrative about war and its characters it is deeply depressing. as if the real horror of war is that people stop being courteous to one another.

also, speaking as a civilian woman, men teaching each other that as "warriors," they all have so much in common with "warriors" on the other side, that they are all just terrific noble guys in the same profession and they all should live by the same warrior code whatever their uniform, as it sets them apart as warriors, makes me uneasy and I always wonder if (as a civilian) it is intended to. the only person who doesn't sound ridiculous calling herself a warrior is Pat Benetar.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:16 AM on December 6, 2016 [2 favorites]