Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • December 4, 2013 Remembering Pearl Harbor With each anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the survi- vors become more of a precious national resource. They remember the devastating event and the suspicions at the time. Once the veterans are gone, the rest of us will have to cut through several layers of official and mass media blandishment before we even approach the actual event, and the message it still carries. The message of convenience is one of eternal vigilance because Asian Bad Guys all over the world, now largely replaced by Islamic Bad Guys, hate “our way of life” and seek to destroy us if we let down our guard. The defense contracting industry, the states where military bases are a component of the local employment profile, and anyone who lives in simmering hatred of people who looks or act in any way different, need this message. The rest of us do not. Most wars are based on mutual fault or mutual miscal- culation. We need to remember this. While constant small wars benefit the generals and the bartenders around mili- tary bases, they drag the rest of us ever closer to fiscal and moral bankruptcy. People who remember the frantic welcome the Anglo- American soldiers experienced when they rolled into Paris in 1944 may think America is still loved around the world. They are very wrong. The American veterans who served in World War II were, in fact, widely respected in France and the Netherlands and those who are still around con- tinue to be welcomed with gratitude and respect. However, the American nation of the 21st century is increasingly seen as a “loose cannon” whose government does not rep- resent either the majority of Americans or the best inter- ests of democracy and the rest of the planet. I personally experienced this twice in recent years. “Custer Survivor,” published in 2010, touched off a response that looked something like the firestorm of flak tracers over Baghdad and was marginally more effective. People who had not read the book said that it came out through a subsidy publisher. That is not true. They said my last book was about the Bermuda Triangle. The book they referred to, “Presumed Lost,” featured an experienced yachtsman, the late Bob Gainer, who debunked the Ber- muda Triangle as a media myth. Once you got past the lies and flap, some people within the Custer community were desperately envious that somebody they had never heard of had discovered something they had never realized. They screamed and ranted over the fairly obvious disclosure that Sergeant August Finckle, C Company, Seventh Cav- alry, escaped Custer’s Last Stand and morphed into Frank Finkel, a prosperous farmer who rode out of the encircle- ment at the Little Bighorn in 1876, kept quiet about it until 1920, and then blurted it out at a horseshoe game at one of the three houses he owned in Dayton, Washington. Fictional biographies were shortly invented for Frank Finkel and for John Koster. More lies were told in direct contravention of newspaper articles that were published 25 years before I was born. Finkel never said he was in C Company -- but he did say so. He never said he was Finckle -- but he did say so. What kind of fool asserts facts that can easily by disproven by the text on printed pages of the very book he has admitted he set out to destroy? These newspa- per articles were written before I was born. I showed the rants to a psychiatrist, someone who took psychology in a pre-med program, and a corporate execu- tive who majored in psychology. The verdict was encap- sulated by one professional’s statement: “100 percent certifiable.” Meanwhile, the wild shrieks attracted Ted Schillinger, who produced and directed the documentary “Custer’s Last Man: I Survived Little Bighorn.” The History Channel has shown this 90-minute, impartial analysis of the Frank Finkel story four or five times. The controversy generated by people who hated the premise of a Custer’s Last Stand survivor led to the documentary. Had the naysayers simply kept quiet, the book would now be obscure and possibly out of print. The denouement came when two detractors uncovered and published a photograph of “Sergeant August Finckle” of the Seventh Cavalry which they said proved Sergeant August was a completely different guy from Farmer Frank. The photos were demonstrably photographs of the same guy. Every facial feature except for the hair – clearly affected by the aging process over a dozen years -- was identical. The detractors did not see this. Wyckoff Police Chief Benjamin Fox, 11 out of 12 members of the Glen Rock Activities Club, former Ridgewood Council member Jacques Harlow, and a couple of staffers at the Ridgewood Library joined a portrait photographer, a portrait painter, and a physical anthropologist in confirming that Finckle and Finkel were the same man. The third edition of “Custer Survivor” has recently been scheduled for June of 2014. The plausibility of “Operation Snow,” the inside story of Pearl Harbor, has been confirmed by a far more respect- able contingent. Three months after “Operation Snow” hit the streets, Herbert Romerstein and M. Stanton Evans came out with “Stalin’s Secret Agents,” an account of Soviet espionage inside the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. They spotted the same villain I described in “Operation Snow.” Three months after that, Benn Steil, a Ph.D. econo- mist with the Council on Foreign Relations, came out with “The Battle of Bretton Woods.” These books were written independently and by coincidence. Dr. Steil, using some of the same sources that I used, reported that Harry Dexter White was a Soviet agent. I must add that the Council on Foreign Relations used to be denounced by the John Birch Society as one of the secret agencies that secretly controlled the world (though, as Herotodus so often said, I do not believe it) and having a book confirming White’s economic treason and mention- ing his role in provoking Pearl Harbor pretty much con- firms that any objective scholar, left, right, or center, is able to recognize treason when he or she sees it. The book, incidentally, is published by Princeton University Press, which is not an organ of the ultra-right or the paranoid community. The most recent confirmation came from “The Mor- genthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy” by John Dietrich, who served with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Dietrich once rescued a defense atta- ché captured by rebels in the jungles of Surinam. He has a master’s degree in international relations and a job with the U.S. Immigration Service. Using all the proper academic footnotes, Dietrich outlines the fullest details I have ever seen of how White, acting on behalf of the Soviet Union, promoted the Morgenthau Plan to turn post-war Germany into five separate agricultural zones -- and then leaked the news about the plan through Drew Pearson, a hard-core leftist, to the U.S. press. The first fruit of the Morgen- thau Plan was to increase German resistance, head off a planned German collapse in the West, and make sure the Soviets took over a large portion of Germany. The plan backfired from the American viewpoint into the Battle of the Bulge, the last defiant military gasp of the Third Reich which cost the lives of 19,000 Americans and left 89,000 other Americans with wounds or severe frostbite. It was the bloodiest American battle of World War II, and it was brought on by an act of treason. The division of Germany into two separate countries for the next 50 years also undermined European resistance to Soviet communism, which is just what White intended, because it was just what his Soviet handlers intended. Dietrich documents everything he says, often from U.S. sources readily available for evaluation. In the end, he forcefully comes to the same conclusion as Herbert Romerstein, Benn Steil, and the notorious John Koster: The United States was manipulated into World War II at the costs of tens of thousands of American deaths, espe- cially in the Pacific, by forces hostile to “Christianity and capitalism” and hoped to see them superseded by “the Russian system.” White is quoted to that effect in a book published by his own brother. You will not read about this in books about how “the greatest generation” (Tom Brokaw) won “the good war” (Studs Terkel) or the rewrite of “The American Heritage History of World War II” by Stephen Ambrose in which Pearl Harbor was a surprise to the White House. Every Pearl Harbor survivor alive today is a precious national resource. I must have interviewed 20 Pearl Harbor survivors at various times and I never met one who did not believe Washington knew about the attack long before it happened. They were brave and angry enough to say so. They told the truth as they knew it. Excising their quotes as I often heard them given and replacing those honest words with blather about what a surprise it all was is what many of us have come to expect from the mass media. Brokaw, Terkel, and Ambrose did no service to America in wartime and they did no service promoting or extolling wars we could have avoided. Letters to the Editor Committee thanks supporters Dear Editor: At Thanksgiving, we at the Ridgewood Fourth of July Celebration would like to thank our 2013 supporters. As the fall chill sets in and we all prepare for the holiday season, the Fourth of July is a distant warm summertime memory. However, we wanted to take time to recognize the generous contributions of all the businesses and indi- viduals who “Support the Tradition.” Please help us thank them by giving them your support: Shop locally this holi- day season. We thank Charles and Susan Snyder, David Zuidema, Inc., the Valley Hospital, Applebee’s, Miss Patti’s School of Dance, the Shannon Rose, Boiling Springs Savings Bank, Downes Tree Service, Key Environmental Pest Control, the law office of Matthew Rogers, Ridgewood Press Printing & Copying Center, Stop & Shop, Tarvin Realtors, Terrie O’Connor Realtors, TD Bank, Columbia Bank, Ridgewood Fire Volunteer Association, Ridgewood PBA Local 20, JT’s Wines and Spirits, TKL Marketing, Atlantic Stewardship Bank, Bagelicious, ConnectOne Bank, Country Pancake House and Restaurant, the Daily Treat Restaurant, Hillman Lighting, Park West Tavern, Pediatricare, Ridgewood AM Rotary Club, David Rutherford, Attorney at Law, Ulrich, Inc., C.C. Van Emburgh Funeral Home, Emery Chiroprac- tic Group, Fidelity Lodge No. 113, It’s Greek to Me, Maple Eye Care, Pediatric Dental Associates, Ridgewood Guild, VFW Post 192, Belmar Spring Water, the American Red Cross, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Van Dyk Health Care, Parkwood Delicatessen, Wide World of Bagels, Whole Foods Market, Carlo’s Bakery, Goffle Brook Farm and Garden Center, and the Village Framer. We also would like to thank the many residents who sent us financial support and volunteered their time. The Ridgewood Fourth of July Celebration Commit- tee, Inc. is an all-volunteer community group of patriotic citizens who coordinate the Ridgewood Fourth of July Flag Raising, parade, and fireworks. All aspects of the celebra- tion, including the fireworks, parade bands, the evening performers, and the necessary police and fire personnel, are funded by the sale of fireworks tickets and the generous contributions made by local business and area residents. The committee was formed in 1910 to create a “safe and sane” holiday with an emphasis on patriotism. Today, we continue that goal and strive to educate the public about the true meaning of Independence Day. New members are always welcome. To learn more about how you can be part of the 2014 celebration, visit www.ridgewoodjuly4th.org or contact the committee at ridgewood4th@gmail.com. The Ridgewood Fourth of July Celebration Committee Ridgewood Reporter expresses gratitude Dear Editor: I want to publicly thank all those who saved my life on Oct. 29 and the weeks following that date. My cardiac arrest was treated immediately and pro- fessionally by Franklin Lakes Ambulance Corps Captain Laurie Burnette; former Franklin Lakes Mayor Thomas Donch; Lillian Turano, who is an advanced practicing nurse (continued on page 15)